[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from Amazing Stories October1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.copyright on this publication was renewed.]
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
Cautiously the young flight engineer stretched his cramped legs acrosssome gadgets in his crowded little compartment. Leaning back in hisswivel chair he folded a pair of freckled hands behind his neck andsmiled at Lee.
"This is it doctor; we're almost there."
The tall and lanky man at the frame of the door didn't seem tounderstand. Bending forward he peered through the little window near theengineer's desk, into the blue haze of the jets and down to the earthbelow, a vast bowl of desert land gleaming like silver in the glow ofthe sunrise.
"But this couldn't possibly be Washington," he finally said in a puzzledtone. "Why, we crossed the California coast only half an hour ago. Evenat 1200 miles an hour we couldn't be almost there."
The engineer's smile broadened into a friendly grin: "No, we're notanywhere near Washington. But in a couple of minutes you'll see Cephalonand that's as far as we go. One professor and 15 tons of termites to beflown from Wallabawalla Mission station, Northern Territory, Australia,to Cephalon, Arizona, U.S.A., one way direct. Those are ourinstructions. Say, this is the queerest cargo I've ever flown, doctor,if you don't mind my saying so."
Lee blinked. Removing his glasses which were fairly thick, he wiped themcarefully and put them on again as if to get a clearer picture of anunexpected situation. His long fingered hand went through his greyinghair and then down the cheek which was sallow, stained with the atabrinefrom his latest malaria attack and badly in need of a shave. His mouthformed a big "O" of surprise as nervously he said:
"I don't get it. I don't understand this business at all. First theDepartment of Agriculture extends an urgent letter of invitation to acompletely forgotten man out there in the Never-Never land. Then almoston the heels of the letter the government sends a plane. I would havebeen glad to mail to the Department samples of "Ant-termes Pacificus"sufficient for most scientific purposes if they needed them forexperiments in termite control; that would have been the simple and thesensible thing to do. But no, they want everything I have; you fellowsdrop out of the sky with a sort of habeas corpus and a whole wreckingcrew. You disturb the lives of my species, which took me ten years tobreed; you pack up their mounds lock, stock and barrel. And then youdrop me at some place I never even heard about—Cephalon. What is thisCephalon, anyway? If the place had any connotations to entomology, Iwould have known about it...."