'Is that a truck?'

'I would expect so, yes.'

'If it's a breakdown, just keep on going.'

'Okay.'

We were coming up on the lights very fast and he began flickering the heads as a warning and I wondered whether he'd be able to judge how much room there was to go past at this speed before it was too late to do anything about it. Chirac was all right but there was a bit too much garlic-and-Gauloises philosophy about him, the thing is to die like a man, so forth, absolute balls because whether you die like a man or the back end of a pantomime horse you're going to stop breathing when it happens.

There were some other lights, white ones, moving around in the ravine below the road and then I got it and stopped worrying and sat back and watched him put the Renault through the gap between the edge of the road and the police car and ambulance standing on the other side. Nobody tried to slow us: they were all busy down in the ravine, two of them carrying a stretcher.

'There was an accident,' Chirac said.

'It looks like it.'

He reached for the blue packet and manoeuvred a cigarette out one-handed. 'Some people drive too fast,mon ami.'

It looked like a false sunrise as we topped the dunes a mile from South 4 camp, the brilliance of the derrick-lamps lifting into the sky and flaring there among the stars.

We were already running parallel with a wire guard-fence hung at intervals with notices: Defense d'Entrer — Defense de Fumer — Danger du Mort. Trucks moved beyond the fence, unloading sections of piping, and the derrick lamps shone down on storage tanks and a fleet of jeeps and half-tracks

'The drill is down to four thousand metres,' Chirac said as we began slowing, 'and last week they make a core-drilling and bring up oil in the sandstone, so it will be not long now before they strike. But like I tell you, they are a lousy outfit, so maybe the oil will be lousy too.'

The two guards checked our papers with the gates still closed, then gave us passes and let us through and Chirac drove at the regulation 20 kph past the living-quarters to the south end of the airstrip where the windsock was hanging limp a hundred yards from the hangar. From here the immediate skyline was a frieze of pumping-units, rigs, hutments and vehicles, with the towering derrick and radio masts rising behind them. The steady drone of the diesels sounded from the rotary table half a mile away but here it was relatively quiet and I could hear voices from inside the security-zone where the first stages of the pipeline were being set up.

The hangar was a single-span stressed-iron unit, an item of ex-war stock with the original camouflage design showing faintly through the silver heat-reflecting paint. There weren't many lamps burning inside and for a moment I didn't see the glider because its matt night-blue finish gave it the same tone as the shadows on the corrugated walls.

Chirac put his hands on his hips.

'Et voila! Mais queue vache, hein? What a cow! But it will fly very well, and that is what we need.'

Much bigger than I'd expected: a three-seater pod-and-boom design, shoulder-wing, straight dihedral, very large chord, ugly to look at because of the lump at the front end and the almost black paint.

'Have you flown this type?'

'Mon Dieu,there isn't another like this! The Algerians used it for radio-observer drops during the war, then the Meteo converted it for research on thermal currents, then Anglo-Beige put different mainplanes on it for low-altitude surveys, and now look what we do, we maketrappe beneath the cabin and paint it like this!Tout simplement, he is a cow! But I can fly anything,mon ami, even a cow, so we shall go well up there, don't worry please.'

He fished for his Gauloises and lit up and remembered the fire-risk and saidmerde and scuffed the thing out. I wished he were a degree less nervy.

I'd expected a lot of interest from the drilling-crews but the only people in the hangar were the three riggers doping the fabric of the new trap-door and a man in flying-gear coming across to us from the far end.

'What's our cover-story for this flight, Chirac?'

'Comment?'

'What's the official reason for our using this glider?'

'Oh yes, I will tell you that. It was being flown for Anglo-Belge on a magnetic-rock survey a few days before, but the wind becomes too low, you see, so it was force-landed on the nearest airstrip, which was this place. Now we are going to take it back to Anglo.'

'Why at night?'

'The wind is good right now.'

'Why the blue paint?'

'Ecoutez, mon ami,who the hell asks to know a thing like this?' He jerked a thumb towards the main camp. 'That drill does not stop, never, day and night, you see, unless it breaks or it strikes oil, and then they are even more busy than always, you un'erstand? When they work they have no time to think of different things, and when theystop work they are too damnfatigue to do anything but sleep. They do not wish to ask about theplaneur.' He turned as the man in the flying-gear came up.'Pierre, je to presente Monsieur Gage, l'Anglais dont je t'ai parle. This is Pierre Batagnier, who will fly the airplane that will tow us.'

Small compact man, more flesh on him than Chirac, much less nervy about the eyes. We shook hands and he went over to the riggers.

'Alors, Michel, tu es pret?'

Ten minutes, the man said, and it would take longer than that to warm his engines.

Chirac got the map and spread it across a crate and the pilot joined us. 'Okay, now listen please. Pierre will tow us to the north-east of here until three thousand metres of altitude, and that will bring us somewhere by the third Philips radio beacon at this blue mark here. This is because it is a normal route made by airplanes across the drilling-complex from South 4 to the Anglia-Beige Roches Vertes II, so nobody will think it strange to hear us go that way, you see? After this point we will slip the cable, and Pierre will return here alone.'

I kept thinking of base.

'Now we shall be for ourselves, and we will make a circle to bring us east of the Algerian platinum-prospecting camp right here, and then we will go down maybe a hundred metres at a fifteen-degree angle of glide to make a good speed for our final run to the target area, you un'erstand?'

Kept thinking of the arabesque room below the dome, some kind of association, mustn't ignore, think later.

'And now we will cross the No. 2 Philips radio tower, the blue mark here, at maybe a hundred kph of airspeed, using these red marks for our bearings. They are Petrocombine South 5, South 6 and the Anglo Roches Brunes B drilling camps, and we shall see their lights on the derricks. We will gain the target area maybe sixty minutes from when we have begun, here at the radio tower. So it is at this point you must start to make the figures for dead-reckoning on theordinateur Sony, you un'erstand?'

"What's this distance here: Philips tower to target?'

'Ninety-seven kilometres. Of course we will go a little more far than this in actual air-distance, because of our angle of glide, but that will depend of the winds we will find as we make our approach.'

The arabesque room and the way she'd been holding the gun at me when I'd gone in. Some kind of association. Important? Something overlooked?

'Now please tell me if there is anything you will wish me to repeat, about this thing.'

'You've made it clear enough. The wind-factor governs the situation at both ends of the flight, is that it?'

Cellulose. Dope-nail-varnish. Sense of smell strongly associative. Dismiss.

'C'est Va.If there is no wind when we will make the circle over this complex here, we must make a less big angle of glide, not to lose too much altitude. And if there is no wind near the end of our approach to the target area, I must stay much higher so that I have my chance to get back here, or anyway so that I come down somewhere not far from any water and people, you know?' He began folding the map. 'Of course when I tell you" no wind" like that, I mean any wind that is not good enough to go higher.B'en, je crois que c'est tout.'