[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine June 1961.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Someone out there didn't like trees.
He wanted to wreck the Sahara Project--and
he was willing to murder in the process!
I
One of the auto-copters swooped in and landed. Johnny McCord emptied
his pipe into the wastebasket, came to his feet and strolled toward the
open door. He automatically took up a sun helmet before emerging into
the Saharan sun.
He was dressed in khaki shorts and short-sleeved shirt, wool socks and
yellow Moroccan babouche slippers.
The slippers were strictly out of uniform and would have been frowned
upon by Johnny's immediate superiors. However, the Arabs had been
making footwear suitable for sandy terrain for centuries before there
had ever been a Sahara Reforestation Commission. Johnny was in favor
of taking advantage of their know-how. Especially since the top brass
made a point of staying in the swank air-conditioned buildings of
Colomb-Bechar, Tamanrasset and Timbuktu, from whence they issued
lengthy bulletins on the necessity of never allowing a Malian to see
a Commission employee in less than the correct dress and in less than
commanding dignity. While they were busily at work composing such
directives, field men such as Johnny McCord went about the Commission's
real tasks.
It was auto-copter 4, which Johnny hadn't expected for another half
hour. He extracted the reports and then peered into the cockpit to
check. There were two red lights flickering on the panel. Work for
Reuben. This damned sand was a perpetual hazard to equipment. Number 4
had just had an overhaul a few weeks before and here it was throwing
red lights already.
He took the reports back into the office and dumped them into the
card-punch. While they were being set up, Johnny went over to the
office refrigerator and got out a can of Tuborg beer. Theoretically, it
was as taboo to drink iced beer in this climate, and particularly at
this time of day, as it was to go out into the sun without a hat. But
this was one place where the Commission's medics could go blow.
By the time he'd finished the Danish brew, the card-punch had stopped
clattering so he took the cards from the hopper and crossed to the
sorter. He gave them a quick joggling--cards held up well in this dry
climate, though they were a terror further south--and sorted them
through four code numbers, enough for this small an amount. He carried
them over to the collator and merged them into the proper file.
He was still running off a report on the Alphabetyper when Derek Mason
came in.
Johnny drawled in a horrible caricature of a New England accent, "I
say, Si, did the cyclone hurt your barn any?"
Derek's voice took on the same twang. "Don't know, Hiram, we ain't
found it yet."