Away! we know that tears are vain,

Mason!" Dimly I realised that it was Jackstraw speaking, that he had my head and shoulders supported in the crook of his arm. His voice was low, but with a peculiarly carrying quality. "Wake up, Dr Mason. Ah, good, good. Easy does it now, Dr Mason." Groggily, Jackstraw's strong arm helping, I levered myself up into an upright sitting position. A brilliant flame of pain lanced like a scalpel through my head, I felt everything blurring once more, consciously, almost violently, shook off the shadows that were creeping in on me again, then looked dazedly up at Jackstraw. I couldn't see very well, I thought for one frightening moment that the vision centre had been damaged when the back of my head had struck against the iron-hard ice-capthe ache there was almost as severe as the one in my foreheadbut I soon discovered that it was only the blood seeping from the cut on my forehead that had frozen and gummed together the lids of my right eye. "No idea who did it, Dr Mason?" Jackstraw wasn't the man to ask stupid questions like 'What happened?" "No idea at all." I struggled to my feet. "Have you?" "Hopeless." I could sense rather than see the shrug in the darkness. "As soon as you stopped, three or four of them came out. I don't know where they went -1 was out to the south rigging up the antenna." "The radio, Jackstraw!" I was beginning to think again. "Where's the radio?" "No worry, Dr Mason, I have it with me," Jackstraw said grimly. "It's here. . . . Any idea whyT "None.. . . Yes, I have." I thrust my hand into the inside pocket of my parka, then looked at Jackstraw in disbelief. "My gunit's still there!" "Nothing else missing?" "No. Spare ammo clip therewait a moment," I said slowly. I hunted around in my parka pocket, but with no success. "A paper -1 took a newspaper cutting from Colonel Harrison's pocketit's gone." "A cutting? What was in it, Dr Mason?" "You're talking to one of the world's prize idiots, Jackstraw." I shook my head in self-reproach, winced as the pain struck again. "I've never even read the damn' thing." "If you had," Jackstraw murmured philosophically, "you'd probably know why it was taken from you." "Butbut what was the point in it?" I asked blankly. "For all they know I might have read it a dozen times." "I think they know you haven't even read it once," Jackstraw said slowly. "If you had, they'd have digital camera protection filter known it by the fact that you would have said or done something they would have expected you to say or do. But because you haven'twell, they know they're still safe. They must have been desperate to take a chance like this. It is a great pity. I do not think, Dr Mason, that you will ever see that paper again." Five minutes later I had washed and bandaged the cut on my foreheadI'd savagely told an inquiring Zagero that I'd walked into a lamp-post and refused to answer all other questionsand set off with Jackstraw in the strengthening light of the newly-risen moon. We were late for our rendezvous, but when I switched the receiver into the antenna I heard Joss's call-up sign come through straight away. I acknowledged, then asked without preamble: "What news from Uplavnik?" "Two things, Dr Mason." Hillcrest had taken the microphone over from Joss, and, even through the distortion of the speaker, his voice sounded strange, with the flat controlled unemotiona-lism of one speaking through a suppressed anger. "Uplavnik has been in touch with HMS Tritonthe carrier coming up the Davis Strait. Triton is in constant communication with the British Admiralty and the Government. Or so I gather. "The answers to your questions are these. Firstly, the passenger list from BOAC in America is not yet through, but it is known from newspaper reports that the following three people were aboard: Marie LeGarde, the musical comedy star, Senator Hoffman Brewster of the United States and a Mrs Phyllis Dansby-Gregg, who appears to be a very prominent London socialite." I wasn't greatly excited over this item of news. Marie LeGarde had never been a suspect. Mrs Dansby-Greggand, by implication, Helene Fleminghad never had more than a faint question mark against their names, and I had already come to the conclusion that it was long odds against the man who was, or purported to be, Senator Brewster being one of the killers. "The second thing is this. The Admiralty cannot or will not say why the plane has been forced down, but I gather there must have been a most vital reason. Uplavnik suggests, on what basis I cannot say, perhaps it is officially inspired, that some person aboard the plane must have been in possession of something of the utmost importance, so important that complete secrecy was vital. Don't ask me what it was. A microfilm, a formula, something, perhaps, only committed to memoryit sounds fanciful, but