If thou offerst to touch the string.

agreed. "But there are no other Keith Mallorys. Keith Mallory," Jensen repeated rhetorically. "Who hadn't heard of Keith Mallory in the palmy, balmy days before the war? The finest mountaineer, the greatest rock climber New Zealand has ever producedand by that, of course, New Zealanders mean the world. The human fly, the climber of the unclimbable, the scaler of vertical cliffs and impossible precipices. The entire south coast of Navarone," said Jensen cheerfully, "consists of one vast, impossible precipice. Nary a hand or foot-hold in sight." "I see," Mallory murmured. "I see indeed. 'Into Navarone the hard way.' That was what you said." "That was," Jensen acknowledged. "You and your gangjust four others. Mallory's Merry Mountaineers. Hand-picked. Every man a specialist. You'll meet them all tomorrowthis afternoon, rather." They travelled in silence for the next ten minutes, turned up right from the dock area, jounced their uncomfortable way over the massive cobbles of the Rue Souers, slewed round into Mohammed All square, passed in front of the Bourse and turned right down the Sherif Pasha. Mallory looked at the man behind the wheel. He could see his face quite clearly now in the gathering light. "Where to, sir?" "To see the only man in the Middle East who can give you any help now. Monsieur Eugene Viachos of Navarone." "You are a brave man, Captain Mallory." Nervously Eugene Viachos twisted the long, pointed ends of his black moustache. "A brave man and a foolish one, I would saybut I suppose we cannot call a man a fool when he only obeys his orders." His eyes left the large drawing lying before him on the table and sought Jensen's impassive face. "Is there no other way, Captain?" he pleaded. Jensen shook his head slowly. "There are. We've tried them all, sir. They all failed. This is the last." "He must go, then?" "There are over a thousand men on Kheros, sir." Vlachos bowed his head in silent acceptance, then smiled faintly at Mallory. "He calls me 'sir.' Me, a poor Greek hotel-keeper and Captain Jensen of the Royal Navy calls me 'sir.' It makes an old man feel good." He stopped, gazed off vacantly into space, the faded eyes and tired, lined face soft with memory. "An old man, Captain best digital camera for travel Mallory, an old man now, a poor man and a sad one. But I wasn't always, not always. Once I was just middle-aged, and rich and well content. Once I owned a lovely land, a hundred square miles of the most beautiful country God ever sent to delight the eyes of His creatures here below, and how well I loved that land!" He laughed self-consciously and ran a hand through his thick, greying hair. "Ah, well, as you people say, I suppose it's all in the eye of the beholder. 'A lovely land,' I say. 'That blasted rock,' as Captain Jensen has been heard to describe it out of my hearing." He smiled at Jensen's sudden discomfiture. "But we both give it the same nameNavarone." Startled, Mallory looked at Jensen. Jensen nodded. "The Vlachos family has owned Navarone for generations. We had to remove Monsieur Viachos in a great hurry eighteen months ago. The Germans didn't care overmuch for his kind of collaboration." "It washow do you saytouch and go," Vlachos nodded. "They had reserved three very special places for my two sons and myself in the dungeons in Navarone. . . . But enough of the Viachos family. I just wanted you to know, young man, that I spent forty years on Navarone and almost four days"he gestured to the table"on that map. My information and that map you can trust absolutely. Many things will have changed, of course, but some things never change. The mountains, the bays, the passes, the caves, the roads, the houses and, above all, the fortress itselfthese have remained unchanged for centuries, Captain Mallory." "I understand, sir." Mallory folded the map carefully, stowed it away in his tunic. "With this, there's always a chance. Thank you very much." "It is little enough, God knows." Viachos's fingers drummed on the table for a moment, then he looked up at Mallory. "Captain Jensen informs me that most of you speak Greek fluently, that you will be dressed as Greek peasants and will carry forged papers. That is well. You will bewhat is the word?self-contained, will operate on your own." He paused, then went on very earnestly. "Please do not try to enlist the help of the people of Navarone. At all costs you must avoid that. The Germans are ruthless. I know. If a man helps you and is found out, they will destroy not only that man but his entire villagemen, women and children. It has happened before. It will happen again." "It happened in Crete," Mallory

And quickly sixty of Robin Hood's men

his understanding smile began to replace the sadness in his eyes. So am I. Lars leaned forward to kiss her, gently at first and then with an urgency that showed Killashandra the depths of his apprehension for her. Then, with a spring in his step and a jaunty set to his shoulders, he went in search of food. Killashandra did have to endure the official apologies and insincere protestations of the Elders, all nine of them. She made the obligatory responses, consoling herself with the thought that their days were numbered, and she would shorten that number as much as possible. She pretended to be far weaker than she actually was, for once the symbiont began its work, her recovery was markedly swift. But, for official visits, she managed to assume the appearance of debility so that her convalescence had to be supervised by Nahia and Hauness, skilled medical practitioners that they were. This gave the conspirators ample time to plan an orderly and discreet exodus of people in jeopardy from Elderly tyrannies. Olav had smuggled his miniature detector unremarked into the Conservatory as a piece of Haunesss diagnostic equipment. At first they had been bitterly disappointed when it responded to Lars proximity, despite his pockets being full of white crystal shards. If Trag approached with Lars, the device remained silent, so Killashandras theory that crystal resonance confused the detector was correct. But her resonance was gone and, with the imminent arrival of the scout ship, there would be no chance for Trag to usher a few refugees past the security curtain at the shuttleport arch. Fortunately Lars also remembered that Killashandra had disrupted the monitors by singing the crystal fragments. These, resonating discordantly as the wearer hummed, fooled the detector. It was then only a matter of experimentation to discover just what quantity of crystal provided adequate shielding. Perfect pitch was actually a handicap, the more out-of-tune the note, the more the white crystal reacted, and deluded the detector. A week after the attack, Olav had no further excuse to stay at the Conservatory, and left, it was said, for the islands. He had been able to convince the Elders of his determination to send more islanders to the public concerts. Actually, he stayed in the City and made a few minor but important alterations to his appearance. The next day, he reported to Hauness and Nahia in Killashandras suite, bearing documents that proved him to be the qualified empath whom Hauness and Nahia had drafted from their hvl-f1000 digital camera flash clinic to attend Killashandra. Now that Killashandra was recovering, they wished to return to their other patients in Ironwood. Nahias the one who ought to be leaving, Lars had bitterly objected. Shes the most vulnerable of us all. No, Lars, Trag had said. She is needed here, and she needs to be here for reasons which you might not understand but for which I esteem her. Trags unstinted approval of the woman did much to placate Lars but he told Killashandra that, in leaving, he keenly felt himself the traitor. Then come back with the Revision Force, she said, more than a little irritated by Larss self-reproach on this and other issues. She immediately regretted the suggestion at the look of relief in Larss face. But it was a solution which could resolve many of Larss doubts, especially when she knew he loved his home world and would be happy enough sailing the Pearl Fisher around the islands. She was somewhat relieved that Lars would be happy on Optheria once the government had been changed. The Federation will need people with leadership potential. Trag says it usually takes a full decade before a new provisional government is appointed, much less ratified by the Federation. You might even end up a bureaucrat. Lars snorted derisively. Thats the most unlikely notion youve had. Not that I wouldnt like to get back here unprejudiced. Id like to make sure the change is going to be beneficial. And ensure that you had official permission to sail about in your beloved islands. She managed to keep the bitterness out of her voice for she could think of many things that a man with Larss abilities and talents could do, once free to move about the galaxy. It rankled that her body was not sufficiently mended to add that argument to verbal ones. Lars was treating her as if she were fragile. He was gentle and affectionate. His caresses, though frequent, were undemanding, leaving her frustrated. He was so solicitous of her comfort that she was frequently tempted to wreak a bit of violence on him. Although her jagged, red scars looked more painful than they were, a lover as considerate as Lars had always been would be reluctant to approach her. The symbiont couldnt work fast enough for her. But would it have repaired her before the scout ship brought them to the Regulus Federation Base? She tried to overcome her desire for Lars and to ignore the fact that time was running out for them both. It was too soon and not soon enough when Mirbethan communicated the

Nor with other men's wives have lain."

"Not quite. I haven't much hope from it, but I thought I might try the deductive reasoning act for a change. But before we can deduce, we have to have some facts we can deduce from. And we're very short on facts. That's why I asked you out hereto see if you could help me." "I'll do anything I can, you know that." She lifted her head as the aurora swelled and flamed to the incandescent climax of its performance, and shivered violently as its unearthly beautiful colourings struck a million sparks of coloured light, red and green and yellow and gold, off the ice spicules in the sky. "I don't know why, that makes me feel colder than ever. . . . But I think I've already told you everything I know, everything I can remember, Dr Mason." Tm sure you have. But you may have missed some things just because you couldn't see they mattered anyway. Now, as I see it, we have three big questions looking for an answer. How come the crash in the first place? How was the coffee spiked? How was the radio broken? If we can turn up anything that can throw a light on even one of these, we may be a long way towards finding out what we want to know." Ten freezing minutes later we were still a long way from finding out anything. I'd taken Margaret Ross step by step from the Customs Hall, where she'd met her passengers, to the plane where she had settled them down, flown with them to Gander, watched them go through the same process again, flown them out of Gander, watched her as she'd served their evening meal, and still I'd learnt nothing, turned up nothing suspicious, off-beat or abnormal that could even begin to account for the crash. Then, slowly, just as she was describing the serving of the meal, her voice trailed away into silence, and she turned and stared at me. "What's the matter, Miss Ross?" "Of course," she said softly. "Of course! What a fool I am! Now I see. "What do you see?" I demanded. "The coffee. How it was tampered with. I'd just served Colonel Harrisonhe was in the rear seat, so he was the last to be served -when he wrinkled his nose and asked if I could smell something burning. I couldn't, but I made some sort of joke about something burning on the galley hotplate and I'd just got back there when I heard the Colonel calling, and when I looked round he had the door of the starboard washroom open and smoke was coming out. Not much, just a little. I digital camera children c called the captain, and he hurried aft to see what it was, but it was nothing serious, just a few papers burningsomebody had been careless with a cigarette, I suppose." "And everybody rose out of their seats and crowded to have a look?" I asked grimly. "Yes. Captain Johnson ordered them all back to their seats -they were upsetting the trim of the plane." "And you didn't think this worth mentioning to me," I said heavily. "No importance at all?" "I'm sorry. Itit did seem unimportant, unrelated to anything. That was hours before the crash, so" "It doesn't matter. Who could have gone into the galley then -anybody in the front seats, I suppose?" "Yes. They all seemed to crowd down past the middle" "They? Who were 'They'?" "I don't know. Whatwhy do you ask?" "Because by knowing who was there, we might find out who wasn't." "I'm sorry," she repeated helplessly. "I was a little upset for a moment, then Captain Johnson was in front of me shooing everybody back to their seats and I couldn't see." "All right." I changed my approach. "This was the men's washroom, I take it?" "Yes. The powder room is on the port side." "Can you remember who went in there, say, any time up to an hour beforehand?" "An hour? But the cigarette end" "Do you believe now that the fire was caused deliberately?" I asked. "Of course." She stared at me, wide-eyed. "Right. And we're dealing, obviously, with hardened professional criminals. The whole success of their plan depended on causing this excitement. Do you for a moment believe that they were going to let the whole thing hinge on the mere off-chance of a smouldering butt-end setting some papers alightespecially setting them alight at the correct moment?" "But how" "Easy. You can get a little plastic tube with a central composition shield dividing it into two compartments. In one compartment you have a free acid, in the other a different acid enclosed in a