Senator of what I didn’t know. But impressive. Impressive enough to ensure its reverent transportation to the United States. I removed the lid with care, gentleness, and as much respectful reverence as if Richard Hoskins actually were inside, which I knew he wasn’t.

Whatever lay inside was covered with a rug. I lifted the rug gingerly; Susan brought the lantern nearer, and there it lay, cushioned in blankets and cotton wool. A polished cylinder, seventy-five inches in length, eleven inches in diameter, with a whitish pyroceram nose cap. Just lying there, there was something frightening about it, something unutterably evil; but perhaps that was just because of what was in my own mind.

“What is it?” Susan’s voice was so low that she bad to come closer to repeat the words. “Oh, Johnny, what in the world is it?”

“The twister.”

“The — the what?”

“The twister.”

“Oh, dear God!” She had it now. “This — this atomic device that was stolen in South Carolina. The twister.” She rose unsteadily to her feet and backed away. “The twister!”

“It won’t bite you,” I said. I didn’t feel too sure about that either. “The equivalent of five thousand tons of T.N.T. Guaranteed to blast any ship on earth to smithereens, if not actually vaporise. And that’s just what Carreras intends to do.”

“I-I don’t understand.” Maybe she was referring to the actual hearing of the words — our talk was continually being punctuated by the screeching of metal and the sounds of wood being crushed and snapped to the meaning of what I was saying. “You when he gets the gold from the Ticonderoga and tranships it to this vessel he has standing by, he’s going to blow up the Campari with — with this?”

“There is no ship standing by. There never was. When he’s loaded the gold aboard, the kind-hearted Miguel Carreras is going to free all the passengers and crew of the Campari and let them off in the Fort Ticonderoga. As a further mark of his sentimentality and kindness he’s going to ask that Senator Hoskins here and his two presumably illustrious companions be taken back for burial in their native land.

The captain of the Ticonderoga would never dream of refusing — and, if it came to the bit, Carreras would make certain that he damned well didn’t refuse. See that?” I pointed to a panel near the tail of the twister.

“Don’t touch it!” If you can imagine anyone screaming in a whisper, then that’s what she did.

“I wouldn’t touch it for all the money in the Ticonderoga,” I assured her fervently. “I’m even scared to look at the damned thing. Anyway, that panel is almost certainly a timing device which will be preset before the coffin is transhipped. We sail merrily on our way, hell-bent for Norfolk, the army, navy, air force, F.B.I., and what have you — for Carreras’ radio stooges aboard the Ticonderoga will make good and certain that the radios will be smashed and we’ll have no means of sending a message. Half an hour, an hour after leaving the Campari — an hour, at least, I should think; even Carreras wouldn’t want to be within miles of an atomic device going up — well, it would be quite a bang.”

“He’ll never do it — never.” The emphatic voice didn’t carry the slightest shred of conviction. “The man must be a fiend.”

“Grade one,” I agreed. “And don’t talk rubbish about his not doing it. Why do you think they stole the twister and made it appear as if Dr. Slingsby Caroline had lit out with it? from the very beginning it was with the one and only purpose of blowing the Fort Ticonderoga to kingdom come. So that there would be no possibility of any comeback, everything hinged on the total destruction of the Ticonderoga and everyone aboard it, including passengers and crew of the Campari. Maybe Carreras’ two fake radiomen could have smuggled some explosives aboard but it would be quite impossible to smuggle enough to ensure complete destruction. Hundreds of tons of high explosives in the magazines of a British battle cruiser blew up in the last war, but still there were survivors. He couldn’t sink it by gunfire — a couple of shots from a moderately heavy gun and the Campari’s decks would be so buckled that the guns would be useless — and even then there would be bound to be survivors. But with the twister there will be no chances of survival. None in the world.”

“Carreras’ men,” She said slowly, “They killed the guards in this atomic research establishment?”

“What else? And then forced Dr. Caroline to drive out through the gates with themselves and the twister in the back. The twister was probably en route to their island, by air, inside an hour, but someone drove the brake wagon down to Savannah before abandoning it. No doubt to throw suspicion on the Campari, which they knew was leaving Savannah that morning. I’m not sure why, but I would take long odds it was because Carreras, knowing the Campari was bound for the Caribbean, was reasonably sure that she would be searched at her first port of call, giving him the opportunity to introduce his bogus Marconi man aboard.”

While I had been talking I’d been studying two circular dials inset in the panel on the twister. Now I spread the rug back in position with all the loving care of a father smoothing out the bedcover over his youngest son and started to screw the coffin lid back in position. For a time Susan watched me in silence, then said wonderingly, “Mr. Cerdan. Dr. Caroline. The same person. It has to be the same person. I remember now. At the time of the disappearance of the twister it was mentioned that only one or two people so far know how to arm the twister.”

“He was just as important to their plans as the twister. Without him, it was useless. Poor old doc Caroline has had a rough passage, I’m afraid. Not only kidnapped and forced to do as ordered, but knocked about by us also, the only people who could have saved him. Under constant guard by those two thugs disguised as nurses. He bawled me out of his cabin the first time I saw him, but only because he knew that his devoted nurse, sitting beside him with her dear little knitting bag on her lap, had a sawed-off shotgun inside it.”

“But but why the wheel chair? Was it necessary to take such elaborate?”

“Of course it was. They couldn’t have him mingling with the passengers, communicating with them. It helped conceal his unusual height. And it also gave them a perfect reason to keep a nonstop watch on incoming radio messages. He came to your father’s cocktail party because he was told to — the coup was planned for that evening and it suited Carreras to have his two armed nurses there to help in the takeover. Poor old Caroline. That dive he tried to make from his wheel chair when I showed him the earphones wasn’t made with the intention of getting at me at all; he was trying to get at the nurse with the sawed-off shotgun, but Captain Bullen didn’t know that, so he laid him out.” I tightened the last of the screws and said, “don’t breathe a word of this back in the sick bay — the old man talks non-stop in his sleep — or anywhere else. Not even to your parents. Come on. That sentry may come to any minute.”

“You you’re going to leave that thing her?” She stared at me in disbelief. “You must get rid of it you must!”

“How? Carry it up a vertical ladder over my shoulder? That thing weighs about three hundred fifty pounds altogether, including the coffin. And what happens if I do get rid of it? Carreras finds out within hours. Whether or not he finds out or guesses who took it doesn’t matter: what does matter is that he’ll know he can no longer depend on the twister to get rid of all the inconvenient witnesses on the Campari. What then? My guess is that not one member of the crew or passengers will have more than a few hours to live. He would have to kill us then no question of transhipping us to the Ticonderoga. As for the Ticonderoga, he would have to board it, kill all the crew, and open the sea cocks. That might take hours and would inconvenience him dangerously, might wreck all his plans. But he would have to do it. The point is that getting rid of the twister is not going to save any lives at all; all it would accomplish is the certain death of all of us.”