A Twist of Sand

I set off up the steep track, which narrowed to a spine across the back of a huge, eroded peak; it ran clean across the summit. It was well defined. There was no other way, for the ground fell away on both sides to a colossal drop. On the left it must have been every bit of fifteen hundred feet, and slightly less on the right. The wind tugged at me as I strode forwards. Thank God there was less sand, although I could still feel the rasp of it on the wind's breath.

The path struck across the peak and converged at two great boulders. There was no sign of Anne. She must have remained pretty far up, I thought. I strode between the two boulders and in passing my eye caught something on. my right.

Anne was sitting with her back against one of them.

"Anne. ..." I started.  Fear ran like ice down my spine.

She was dead.

The eyes were half shut and her face had a curious look of resentment -- resentment as if she had been taken away from something which meant more than the loss of her life.

I could scarcely distinguish the bullet hole from the bright scarlet of her sweater.

I wrenched up the sweater and saw the neat surgical incision of the Luger bullet. There was scarcely any blood. It had crushed in the left nipple. A few strands of ragged nylon from her brassiere fringed the hole. It might have been passion, not death, which stared at me. She was sitting neatly. Stein must have shot her as she sat.

There was almost no violence about the whole scene. Only the expression of resentment. Only the puckering of the right eyelid. I knelt down and kissed the rumpled lid. I pulled the sweater down and straightened the unseemly dent on the outside. Only then, a great, blind rage overwhelmed me. I have killed men with weapons -- with torpedoes, with fire, with machine-guns -- but now I longed for the feel of killing with my fingers, the gurgle of life being choked out, of hot blood reeling under pressure to make it eternally cold. It was so overpowering that it made me icy-cool in caution. I saw it all -- she had found his precious beetle, and, her work done, he had killed her with as little compassion as he had had for the Kroo boy. Why murder for a blasted beetle ? It kept going through and through my mind. He had sent me up here to be killed. He wouldn't do that himself, not only because I think he was frightened, but because of Johann. Johann would kill me and Stein would kill Johann. Then he would beat it for Curva dos Dunas with enough food and water and a plausible story. There couldn't be any search -- not in this forbidden country. John Garland's hands would be tied. He might be as suspicious as hell, but he'd never be able to prove anything.

I edged forward on my knees and peered round the rock. As sure as clockwork, there came Johann. He was coming quickly, the Remington under his arm. His head was swaying like a hound's on the scent.

I drew back farther, sheltering half behind a huge boulder. I had no plan. I was as kill-crazy as he.

Johann rounded the rock and stopped short when he saw Anne's body. He wasn't fifteen feet from me. Now or never.

I sprang forward. In a flash Johann covered me with the rifle.

"She died very easy," he said. "I died very hard all those years with the little black men; I died. I died over and over. You will die slowly, Captain Peace." He swung the Remington back without taking his burning eyes off me and threw it sideways over the cliff. I felt a brief feeling for him; I, too, wanted to kill with my hands. He pulled a sailor's knife from his belt and we faced each other like wrestlers. He wasn't afraid. He was fearful only lest he would do it too quickly.

I moved so that the rock was on my left and slightly behind me. He saw I was unarmed and grinned, a fiendish, satisfied grin. He was going to enjoy the fight, like a sailor fights a harlot in bed. As he reached forward with the knife, I whipped my right hand out of my pocket and extended the palm. It was my faintest hope. As he saw Trout's little mascot hand he blenched and I whipped forward and grabbed his knife hand with my left and slipped my right under his armpit. It was the same grip which had torn Hendrik's arm out of its socket. Johann struck punily at my kidneys with his left, but there was no force in the blows --  there never can be, with that fearful hold.