"'I'll be in touch, Judy," I said. "Keep remembering things." I turned to go and her hand was on my arm.
"Be careful," she said. She sounded like she meant it. I patted her cheek and left. Mona would be at her place now, I saw by my watch. I drove there and she greeted me in a silk robe. The thrusting points that pushed the fabric sharply out told me she hadn't a damn thing under it. I kissed her and my hands told me I was right.
"Stay here tonight, Nick," Mona said. "You're only twenty minutes from the airbase here. I'll drive you out in the morning."
I had been about to say no to her but suddenly that seemed like a lousy idea. Only this time I'd go by my own watch. I moved my hands down the neck of the silk robe and it fell open. I bent down and buried my head in those great, soft pillows. I didn't really come up for air until sometime near midnight. We went to bed formally then, to sleep, and I slept well with Mona in my arms. But I'd set my inner alarm clock and I woke up on the dot of seven. Mona pot up sleepily, and peered at me as I dressed.
"I'll drive myself out to the base." I said. "You go back to sleep. You'll only have to turn right around and come back again anyway. This could be a while."
She nodded and lay there, watching me shave. When I was ready to leave got up and went to the door with me, beautifully naked. Her eyes, as she watched me go, were a mixture of undecipher able thoughts, but they glowed with a strange intensity. She was, I decided again as I drove off, a most unusual creature.
I was waiting at the base when Lieutenant Dodd Dempster arrived. He was tall, blond and handsome, but there was also self-indulgence in his face, a just-beneath-the-surface weakness. He was also nervous as all hell.
"I know you've been asked a lot of questions during the inquiry on the beachhead tragedy," I began. "But my government has a few more. In fact, Lieutenant, I've been involved in certain other aspects of a broader picture. How many times have you been at The Ruddy Jug?"
The question took him off guard and his eyes looked at me quickly. I didn't wait for an answer but pressed further.
"We know you've been there so there's no need lying about it," I said. "Who were the men you met there? What did they want of you?"
The man glanced nervously about the room where we'd gone to talk, an officers' lounge.
"Look, I've been waiting for all this to come out sooner or later," he said. "And there's a lot I'd like to tell. I just can't keep it bottled up any more. But I won't talk here. Let's get away from here and maybe we can make a deal."
The deal part was strictly out, I knew, but I let him think differently. "I'll listen," I said. "Where do you want to go?"
"I'm supposed to take this jet out for a practice flight," he said. "It's a two seater. Why don't you come with me and we can talk in the plane."
"I guess you can't get much more private than that," I said. "I'll suit up with you. Let's go."
I wasn't letting him out of my sight, not for a single minute. In the pilot's wardroom I found an extra suit that I could struggle into and I followed Dempster out to where a jet, a new and advanced version of the Hawker-Siddley, waited on the runway. Dempster took the controls and we streaked skyward. In seconds, we were moving across the horizon. Dempster began to talk, his voice agitated.
"I got into something," he said. "And I want out. But I want to protect myself, too."
"Suppose you start with some answers first," I said. "You were put in contact with some men. Who were they and where did they come from?"
"I never knew more than their first names," he replied. "But they operated out of a ranch in the outback. I was there three or four times for conferences. I could fly you over the place if you like."
"Go ahead," I said. "I'd like that very much." I was beginning to feel elated. A few of the breaks were going my way for a change. Dempster had obviously been hiding from the inevitable for some while and was ready to stop running.
"They wanted you to wreck the war-games maneuvers," I said. His silence was more revealing than anything he might have said. Finally he spoke.
"I can't name names because I don't know them," he asserted. "But I can lead you to them. It's up to you to do the rest."
"You just point out that ranch for me," I said. "You didn't really seem surprised when I showed up. Why?"
"I guess I've been expecting it ever since the inquiry" he answered. "I didn't really think they'd close the books on it." He lapsed into silence again and I looked down at the dry, arid, parched land of the outback. It was land that had become a vast dustbowl, forbidding, seldom explored by white men. Only the aborigines, one of the oldest nomadic races in existence, seemed able to live off the arid land. Poor soil conservation practices had done their share, but years of drought had done more. It was a flat land, with occasional great meteoric rock formations dotting the vast reaches. On the fringes some hardy pioneers managed cattle but in the heart of it there was nothing but the parched land, the winds and the aborigines. I looked at the vast territory as it rushed by beneath our wings. It was red-brown country with the ridges of the mountains like corrugated cardboard. The very air seemed to shimmer from the unceasing heat of it, the burning sun turning it into a vast oven. It was a forbidding and frightening land and I knew that from the jet, streaking high across it only a vague idea of its awesomeness came through.
As we continued to fly deeper into the outback at jet speed, I knew that we'd covered damn near six hundred miles already, and I wondered how the men could move in and out of Townsville so frequently if their ranch was way the hell out here in nowhere.
"Dempster," I called. "Are you sure you haven't overshot the place?" The pilot turned to look at me and I saw his hand reach out to the instrument board. Too late, I saw his finger come down on the ejector button. I felt myself being hurtled, seat and all, out of the plane. I went upwards with the tremendous force of the ejection mechanism and then, all in a matter of seconds, I felt the tug of the parachute opening up. As I floated down, the jet was a small streak receding in the distance. I'd been suckered in. They had gotten to Dempster another way, no doubt convincing him that to get rid of me was the only really safe move. The chute swayed a moment, then dropped me gently onto the dry soil.
The jet was out of sight as I unsnapped the harness that had me strapped to the chute lines. I let it fall to the ground and lay there — a silken shroud. I quickly pulled the flight suit from me. I'd only been down a minute and I was already feeling like a boiled lobster in it I gazed around and saw empty space, as far as the eye could see, dry land, parched soil. And there was silence — the silence of a tomb, unearthly, unbroken. I tossed a coin and started walking toward what I thought might be east. I'd walked perhaps twenty minutes when I took off my clothes, stripping down to shorts and my shirt, which I tied around my waist Thinking about Dempster made me forget my plight for a little while. He'd no doubt crash the plane somewhere and go into hiding. Or his flight schedule had been already laid out for him. In any case, he wouldn't be around. I'd kept them from killing him like the others, only to have him turn the tables on me.
The sun burned into me and though I kept walking, I could feel the enervating effects of the unfiltered rays. Soon I was dropping to one knee every little while and resting. I began to take a realistic look at my position. It was a lot worse than I admitted to myself then. I'd only been on the desert land for a little while. I had plenty of optimism and hope left. I decided that the only was to keep walking in as straight a line as I could manage. I'd come to something, sooner or later. And I did. More space.