From these three, larger cultures were started. They all flourished. It was past midnight when Dawnay decided the real test could begin.
Dawnay drew a test tube of opaque bacteria-sodden sea water from the tank. It was sealed with a sterile rubber stopper. An assistant filled a hypodermic from the culture and handed it to Dawnay. The needle pierced the rubber stopper and the fluid produced a tiny swirl as it flowed into the opacity.
'Now another wait,' said Dawnay. Only a slight tremor in her voice indicated the tension she felt. 'So let's have some coffee.'
She had not told anyone outside the laboratory how close she believed she was to success, dreading the risk of anticlimax.
But Abu Zeki, drawn by the blaze of light from the laboratory windows, came over when the waiting period was almost over.
'Come in,' Dawnay said, 'you're in time to share in a success or help us find excuses for a failure.'
'It's working?' he asked hopefully.
Dawnay laughed uncertainly. 'In theory, yes. In practice - well, we'll know in a moment.'
She crossed to the bench where the test tube had been clamped inside a sterile cabinet. Gingerly she withdrew it and held it to the light as the others grouped around her.
Two-thirds of the water was clear and sparkling. She kept it aloft, staring, and even as they watched a few tiny heads of freed gas rose jauntily to the top of the tube.
Dawnay shook herself, bringing herself back to reality.
'It's been in the tube for precisely sixty-three minutes,' she murmured. 'Now we will test it in the tank.'
No need for sterility precautions or niceties of measurement now. Two tubes of culture were poured into the tank, and they all gathered round again to watch. Gradually little pools of clear water appeared, while fat, lazy bubbles appeared on the surface, burst, and were replaced by new bubbles.
'That's the nitrogen being released,' Dawnay said. 'The air pressure's altering.'
It was true. The barograph needle was moving up slowly but steadily.
'You haf done it!' exclaimed the girl from Zurich.
'We've done it,' Dawnay corrected. 'The rest is simply mechanics. Producing on a large enough scale. We must get an hour or so's rest and then check growth rates, the effects of temperature and salinity.' She turned to Abu. 'They'd better start planning mass production. Go and see Gamboul or Kaufman. Tell them I must have an interview as soon as possible tomorrow - I mean - this morning.'
She had no need to go into Baleb to see Gamboul. The Intel chief came to her, arriving at Dawnay's quarters while she was snatching a hurried breakfast. Gamboul asked merely for instructions, as if she were a secretary.
The result was that an hour later the Intel short-wave radio system was transmitting a long stream of orders to the cartel's headquarters in Vienna. Bulk chemical supplies of phosphates, proteins, and amino acids were to be sent by plane and ship irrespective of cost or country of origin.
Engineers were to be recruited to work on the Azaran oil installations, clearing the tanks of petroleum and making them ready as breeding tanks. Old pipelines were to be adapted, and new ones laid, to pump the anti-bacteria straight into the Persian Gulf.
The message was merely acknowledged. There were no queries, no promises nor excuses. That night the first squadron of transports flew to Baleb with engineers and cargoes of chemicals. Two of them had crashed in a violent air storm over the eastern Mediterranean and a third blew up when a miniature whirlwind caught it just as it was touching down. The rest got through.
The air lift went on the next day without respite, and the first ocean freighter, hurriedly loaded at Capetown, radioed her estimated time of arrival.
A week after the original test the first bulk supplies of anti-bacteria were poured into the sea at ten points on the Azaran coast, carefully selected after a study of tidal currents. The effect was noticeable within twelve hours.
Fleming, who had been allowed to go with Dawnay to the coast, stood at the edge of the water, where the desert sloped down to make long golden beaches, and watched fascinated as the great nitrogen bubbles came bursting to the surface of the waves. Even the storminess of the sea could not hide them, and in his lungs he could feel a tingling freshness of regenerated air.
He and Dawnay drove back on the third day. 'Now we must try to smuggle out some of the stuff with Neilson,' she said. 'This is all very fine, but it's merely local, and as you see, the weather remains quite unaffected by such a minor activity.'
'No hope of Intel sending it?' Fleming peered through a windscreen opaque from a sudden downpour of hail and storm rain.
'Not a chance,' Dawnay replied. 'They won't release it to anyone except on their own terms. And what those terms are they haven't yet said. But I can imagine.' Her words were drowned in a scream of wind which made the car shudder.
'The weather's worse,' she said, and there was a streak of alarm in her voice. 'I wonder if we're doing right, after all.
You see what's happening, John?'
He nodded, leaning forward to see the blurred image of the road. 'We're treating the sea around here and nowhere else. Millions of cubic feet of nitrogen are being released. It's building up a cone of high pressure in a localised zone; everywhere else the pressure's dam' nigh a vacuum, and the original bacteria will be sucking in the nitrogen as fast as we can pump it out. We'll never win this way, all we'll do is breed hurricanes.'
'God, how futile and helpless it all makes one feel,' muttered Dawnay.
For an hour Fleming drove on in silence, concentrating on keeping the car going in a land which was just a kaleidoscope of rain, mud, and wind.
Some ten miles from Baleb the wind dropped, though the rain continued. The air was abnormally clear, giving an illusion that objects were nearer than in fact they were.
'Look at that!' Fleming jerked his head towards the mountains along the horizon.
They stood out sharp and clear, lighter in colour than the purplish black clouds swirling above the crests. And right above them rose an immense spiral of greyish cloud, the top mushrooming and changing shape all the time.
'Tornado centre,' said Dawnay. 'We're in the calm area around it. Let's hope to God it doesn't move this way.'
'That funnel is right over Abu's village, I think,' muttered Fleming. 'His family must be getting it badly, unless they saw the clouds building up and got to the caves where Neilson is.'
But only Lemka had reached the cave when the tornado struck. She had clambered up the mountain with her daily basket of food for Neilson. He refused to let her go back when he noticed the abnormal calm and saw the clouds racing together towards the south.
At first Lemka protested. Her mother and the baby would be terrified by the storm. Besides, Yusel had promised to come with information about getting Neilson out with some contraband bacteria. But when the full fury of the tornado drove them into the recess of the cave she subsided into frightened silence.
'He'll be all right, and your family,' Neilson insisted with a cheerfulness he did not feel.
But things were not all right with any of them. Yusel had arrived at Abu's house shortly after Lemka had left with the food for Neilson. He had intended to set out earlier, hoping to accompany his sister because he had some good news for the American: he could smuggle a message to London the next day.
In his excitement he had not been very careful about his trip. He had not seen, through the rain and sandstorms, a car following a mile behind his.
Consequently he was absolutely unprepared when the door of Abu's house burst open and Kaufman pushed in with a couple of soldiers. Without orders, the soldiers pinioned Yusel and soon had him gagged and trussed in a chair, his arms and legs tied to it with rope.