any day.' He pushed the Queen Air right over the manual, squeezing an extra fifteen knots out of her.
He picked out the showgrounds from almost seven miles out. A pod of giant balloons floated above it like colourful. whales. The vast carparks were a-glitter with reflected sunlight from thousands of vehicles.
He turned back on to a direct heading for Firgrove and leant forward in his seat, peering ahead through the windscreen and puffing on the fat cigar. He was still running calculations of speed and time and distance through his head.
'If I'm going to meet them, it should be five or six minutes-' He broke off as a beam of sunlight reflected from something ahead and below caught his eye. He pushed his horn-rimmed spectacles up on his nose, once again hating his weak myopic eyes and peered fretfully down, trying to find it again.
He had left the built-up residential areas behind, and was flying over the open countryside, studded with small villages and criss-crossed with roads.
The patterns of ploughed lands and plantations of trees disturbed his eye, and threw up a hundred decoys and optical tricks to confuse him. He searched frantically, sweeping the open sky briefly and then concentrating on the earth below. He expected the Centurion to be well under him.
He saw the shadow first. It flitted and jumped like a grasshopper across the fields. A moment later he saw the tiny blue aircraft. It was a thousand feet below him and two miles directly ahead. He pushed the nose of the Queen Air down into a dangerous altitude and dived to intercept.
The two aircraft were converging at almost five hundred knots, and before Garry could get the Queen Air down to the same altitude as the Centurion it had passed like a blue flash below him.
Garry hauled up one wing into a maximum-rate turn and came round behind the Centurion. He used the Queen Air's superior speed and the dive to overhaul the smaller aircraft.
'We'll be there in about ten minutes,' Michael warned Ramsey. 'You'd better get ready.' Ramsey leant forward and reached down to the gaudily painted cylinders bolted to the floorboards between his feet. Carefully he opened the tap on the neck of each of the bottles. He felt the rush of internal pressure checked immediately by the gate of the main valve in the connecting T-piece.
Now it needed only to thumb the valve-lever across, half a turn in an anticlockwise direction, to send the mixed and activated gas hissing into the long hose and spraying out through the nozzle under the Centurion's belly.
Ramsey straightened up and glanced across at Michael in the pilot's seat beside him.
'All set-' he began, and then broke off and stared with astonishment through the side-window beside Michael's head.
An enormous silver fuselage filled the entire frame of the window. Another aircraft was flying wing-tip to wing-tip with them, and the pilot peered across at them. He was a large baby-faced man with dark horn-rimmed glasses and the stub of a cigar clamped in one corner of his mouth.
'Garry!' shouted Michael in consternation. Garry lifted his right hand and stabbed downwards with his thumb, an unmistakable gesture.
Instinctively Michael flung the Centurion into a tight descending turn, and dropped away towards the earth like a stone. He levelled out just above the tree- tops.
He glanced in his rearview mirror and saw the Queen Air's round silver nose a hundred yards from his tail and closing rapidly. He hauled the Centurion up and around hard, but the moment he levelled out the silver machine loomed up beside him. Garry had always been a far better pilot than he was, and the Queen Air had the wings to out fly him.
'I can't get away from him.' 'Fly straight for the target,' Ramsey ordered brusquely. 'There is nothing he can do.' Michael had hoped that Ramsey would abandon the operation now, but reluctantly he turned back on to his original track. He was down to two hundred feet above the tops of the tallest trees. Garry followed him round and came up alongside him. Their wing- tips were only a yard apart.
Once again Garry signalled him to land. Instead, Michael snatched up the microphone of his radio, knowing that Garry would be tuned to i 18,7 megahertz.
'I'm sorry, Garry,' he cried. 'I have to do it. I'm sorry.' Garry's voice boomed through the radio speaker into the cabin. 'Land immediately, Mickey. It's not too late. We can still get you out of this.
Don't be a fool, man.'
Michael shook his head vehemently and pointed ahead. Garry's expression hardened. He dropped back, and before Michael could react he slid in sideways and thrust the Queen Air's wing-tip under the Centurion's tail.
Then he came back hard on the control-wheel and flicked the smaller plane's tail up, so she tumbled forward into an almost vertical dive.
The Centurion was too low and the dive too steep for Michael to recover before he hit the top branches of a tall blue- gum tree.
Michael threw up his hands as he saw it coming, but a dry branch as thick as a man's arm stabbed through the windscreen that had been weakened by Sean's bullet. The point of the branch caught Michael at the base of his throat. It found the notch between his collar-bones and went through with the ease of a hypodermic needle, transfixing his upper torso and coming out between his shoulder- blades.
The momentum of the falling aircraft snapped the branch off, and the jagged butt protruded from his throat like an ugly twisted lance.
The Centurion drove on, crashing and crackling through the tree-tops. First one wing then the other were ripped away, braking the aircraft's speed, until it fell clear of the trees and the wingless fuselage hit the ground, and bounced and skidded to rest at the edge of a field of standing maize stalks.
Ramsey Machado dragged himself upright in the seat, amazed that he was still alive. He looked across at Michael. Michael's mouth was wide open in a silent shriek; the jagged branch stuck out of his throat, and a fountain of his blood spurted over the remains of the shattered windscreen.
Ramsey released the catch of his seat-belt and tried to lift himself out of his seat. He found himself anchored, and he looked down. His left leg was broken. It was twisted like a piece of boiled spaghetti between the seat and the gas-cylinders. The leg of his trousers was ripped up to the knee, and the stainless-steel valve-handle was buried deeply in the flesh of his calf.
As he stared at it, he became aware of the faint hiss of escaping gas. His leg had twisted the valve-handle into the open position. Cyndex was spurting into the hose and spraying from the nozzle under the fuselage.
Ramsey grabbed at the door-handle and threw all his weight upon it. It was jammed solid. He placed both hands under the knee of his injured leg and hauled upon it, trying to pull it free. The leg elongated, and he heard the ends of shattered bone-shards grate together deep in his flesh, but it was held inexorably as in a bear-trap by the stainless-steel valve- handle.
Suddenly he smelt the odour of almonds; his nostrils began to burn and sting. Silver mucus flooded from both nostrils and drooled over his lips and down his chin. In their sockets his eyes turned to coals of fire and his vision dimmed.
In the darkness the agony assailed him. It surpassed any conception that he had ever had of pain. He began to scream. He screamed and screamed sitting in a puddle of his own urine and faeces until at last his lungs collapsed and he could scream no more.
Centaine Courtney-Malcomess sat on a fallen log at the edge of the forest and watched the puppy and the child at play.
The puppy was the pick of Dandy Lass of Weltevreden's last litter before Centaine had been forced to have the gallant old bitch put down. The puppy had inherited all her mother's best points. She would be a champion also, Centaine was convinced of it.
Nicky was working her with an old silk stocking stuffed with guinea- fowl feathers. He learnt as quickly as the puppy. He seemed to have a way with dogs and horses.
It's in his blood, Centaine thought complacently. He's a true Courtney, despite the name and the fancy Spanish title.
She went on to think of her other Courtneys.
Tomorrow Shasa and Elsa Pignatelli were marrying in the little slave church that Centaine had so lovingly restored. It would be one of the biggest weddings to be held in the Cape of Good Hope for at least a decade. Guests were coming from England and Europe and Israel and America.
There would have been a time not so many years ago when Centaine would have wanted to make all the plans and supervise all the preparations for the wedding herself Now she was content to leave it all to Bella and Elsa Pignatelli.
'Let them get on with it,' she told herself firmly. 'I've got my hands full with my roses and my dogs and Nicky.' She thought about Bella. Bella was contrite and chastened, but Centaine was not satisfied that it was enough. She had debated long and hard with herself and with Shasa before at last agreeing to cover for the girl and shield her from the full consequences of her treason and the righteous fury of the law.
Still, she has a penance to perform. Grimly Centaine justified her leniency. Isabella will dedicate the rest of her life to 'Making amends.
She owes a lifetime of service to every member of this family and to all the people of this wonderful land of ours whom she betrayed. I'll see to it that she pays all her debts in full,
