Виктор Сапарин - The Trial of Tantalus

"That is what I thought," was the other's somewhat puzzling reply.

And now as he lay helpless on the desolate volcanic islet it seemed to Barch that Svensen had had some hidden motive in showing him over the gaol. Why had he gone to all that trouble? And why had they spent so much time in the virus laboratories?

He cast his eyes once more over the rocks that held him captive. He already loathed the sight of them. His leg ached intolerably. The knee had swollen and turned blue and the slightest movement gave him excruciating pain. He tore off the sleeve of his shirt and bandaged his knee as best he could. If only he had something to eat and could build a fire!

Were they searching for him? Of course! But try and find a man stranded in the midst of the vast Pacific ocean, especially when he had no way of communicating his whereabouts.

But he had to find a more comfortable position. To lie any longer on these rough rocks was unbearable. From where he was he could see a flat hollow not far off, which seemed overgrown with some sort of moss. Gritting his teeth, he dragged himself over to it. Yes, this was better.

And suddenly he saw water! It was a mere trickle running in a hollow between two stones. But it was clear. Water! He bent over and put his lips to the rough surface of the rock, lapping up the blessed moisture, drop by drop.

The setting sun had reached the horizon. It sank quickly into the sea as if it had dropped off some invisible nail in the sky. A cool breeze came up.

Barch decided to try and sleep. But as soon as he closed his eyes new scenes from the past flashed before his weary vision.

... He saw himself sitting on the verandah looking out over a field of sugar-cane. The plantation presented a pitiful spectacle. The once tall, sharp-leaved plants were withered, as after a prolonged drought and their stalks and leaves were covered with ugly spots and partly eaten away.

Barch had just returned from an inspection flight. The Tantalus had ruined two-thirds of all the sugar plantations on Jamaica. Where had that confounded virus come from? Even Clara, whose brain retained all the information on biology ever known to man, had nothing to say on this score. No one had ever seen or described a virus resembling the Tantalus. One would think that in the twenty-first century such unexpected discoveries would be altogether excluded!

Barch, who was a veteran of Biological Defence, had been entrusted with the difficult task of unravelling the mystery of the Tantalus. Where had it come from? He had made exhaustive enquiries but so far all his efforts had been unavailing.

A soft hum in the air caused him to raise his head. A flock of about fifty sprayers, looking like giant umbrellas, were passing in checkerboard formation over the fields leaving a cloud of light yellow mist in their wake. The chemists and biologists of the Central Laboratory were working day and night in an effort to find effective means of fighting the dangerous pest. Judging by the colour, this was something new.

There had already been talk of quarantining the whole island.

The sprayers bobbing up and down on the horizon like some fantastic sunflowers began to disappear one by one as they landed on a distant field.

Barch was still staring at the field before him when his Universal buzzed. He pressed the reception button and almost at once the face of Carey, chief of Biological Defence, appeared on the screen.

"Listen Barch," he shouted with his broad grin that made him look like the smiling young men in last century's tooth-paste advertisements, "still fussing with Tantalus? Drop it for a while. Forget about it for a couple of days at least. I have something more exciting for you. There's been a mysterious outbreak of disease among elephants in Central Africa. We can't trace it at all. Now, we've got to work fast before it has a chance to spread. I suggest you go down there at once. You can return to your Tantalus later on-the break will only help you to find a clue to your mystery. That's what I always do when I hit a snag. Well, what do you say?"

Barch, who needed nothing at the moment so much as an opportunity to apply his energies to something tangible and practical, agreed with alacrity.

"Charlie and App are already on their way," Carey told him. "Charlie from Ireland, App from Nicaragua. You'll be the third of the party. Keep in touch with me."

He gave the bearings and switched off.

Five minutes later Barch was on his way. Oh, there were no mishaps on that flight! His flying machine cut through the air at a good speed, heading straight for the point he had indicated on the map.

After two hours of flying he saw a lake in the distance framed in bamboo thickets, and beyond it, a small house facing a large clearing. This was the elephant reserve where Ngarroba, Vice-President of the African Academy of Sciences, now away on Venus, was conducting his experiments. Barch pressed the landing button and the craft proceeded to choose a landing strip. It flew over the clearing once or twice, coming down lower each time and finally touched down alongside another first-aid plane standing there. Barch was just shaking hands with Charlie when App's plane appeared overhead.

Since time was precious the three men went down at once to the lake. They found the elephants on the sandy beach that had been churned up by their mighty feet. Less handsome than their Indian relatives, with disproportionately large heads, they stood or lay in the sand, listless and inert. Their enormous ears hung limp as rags and their trunks drooped weakly on the ground.

Bandy, Ngarroba's assistant, moved about among the huge beasts as if they were grey boulders instead of living creatures. And the animals paid no more attention to him than to the birds hopping about on the sand.

"Looks bad," said App watching the scene with a frown.

Bandy's black face was grey with worry and fatigue.

"It started yesterday," he said. "Just look at them."

"What did they eat?" Charlie asked.

"The same as usual," said Bandy, shrugging his shoulders. "That's their favourite food," he added pointing to the reeds.

Leaving Charlie and App to examine the sick elephants, Barch went over to the reed thickets.

He cut a few stalks and scrutinized them carefully, but could find nothing to arouse suspicion. Then he walked along the shore for about two kilometres, studying the reeds carefully as he went. But they were everywhere the same. He took samples for analysis from different places and went back to where the planes were parked.

Charlie and App were already there.

"It's anaemia," said App. "A very pernicious form."

"I took their blood for analysis," added Charlie.

Inside Charlie's plane, the gurgling sound of liquids being poured in and out of test-tubes and the winking of tiny electric light bulbs indicated that the automatic analyser was at work.

Climbing into his own machine, Barch cut up the reed stalks he had brought into small pieces and fed them into the automatic researcher. Meanwhile, to save time, he examined some of the cuttings under the microscope. He had scrutinized a good dozen cuttings without finding anything out of the ordinary, when a rash of tiny spots on the underside of one of the leaves caught his attention.

The spots were so infinitesimal as to be almost invisible on the delicate green background. Barch cut off a small piece of the leaf with one of the spots and increased the magnification. Now the spot looked like a miniature volcano with a crater in the middle.

The buzzers of two of the automatic researchers told Barch that their task had been completed. Without getting up, he reached for the blue slips. The first contained an analysis of the ash content; everything was normal except for an unexpected admixture of manganese. The other slip gave the composition of the protoplasm which did show some slight deviations that were worth examining.