It was only about a thousand miles away, and it only took them thirty-five minutes to spot the huge dam and lake and the mammoth installation. Some distance to the south and east of that they saw what had been called “Victoria Falls,” one of the biggest waterfalls on the planet.

Spectacular country!

Because the area had been marked “heavily defended,” Jonnie approached it cautiously. It was another branch mine they hadn't known the existence of.

They found the compound some distance to the east and landed a platoon with assault rifles and radiation ammunition to make a cautious approach. A half-hour later they had the report on mine radio. The place was deserted and, the platoon officer reported, not much different from the one in the Ituri Forest to the north.

The map had not shown the second platform at the minesite but it was quite close to the huge dam. They took the platoon back aboard and Jonnie began to cruise the area.

Trees, trees, trees. This was a high plateau, but not an open plain. Trees had been knocked down in swathes where elephant herds had passed through.

There were lots of little hills. Everything was masked with undergrowth except a few open places.

Cruising along, elephant and African buffalo looking up at them, Jonnie searched and searched. He had found before that it was one thing to look at a map and quite another to be on the ground, and he was experiencing it again.

Time after time, he studied the map while Stormalong in the copilot's seat kept them cruising above the treetops. Jonnie finally got out some dividers and very carefully measured the distance from the dam edge and then, taking the plane to that point and cruising it at the speed a horse walks, finally got them in the center of what must have been the point. Stormalong threw out a smoke flare to mark it and a couple of big elephants took off. It was a bowl in the ground, the edges of which rose about two hundred feet above the middle. It was like a crater, possibly even made with a bomb blast. It was about a thousand feet in diameter.

The bowl itself was so overgrown one could not see what was in it. But as the white smoke spired up, the truth hit Jonnie.

For centuries, perhaps, the company security officers of this planet had paid no attention to maintaining the elaborate planetary company defenses which once existed. No wonder Terl had thrown the map away. He looked so disappointed that Sir Robert tried to cheer him up. “We won't really know until we look closer.” But it certainly was wilderness, receiving no care for centuries.

Jonnie put them down on the upper edge of the crater, and with riflemen ready to handle any hostile game, others got axes and began to hack their way down.

“Be careful around here,” said Dr. MacKendrick. “This area had an insect called the tsetse fly that brought on sleeping sickness. Also the water had a worm in it that gets into the blood stream. I don't have much in the way of medicines but wear nets and stay out of the water.”

“Great,” said Jonnie. That was all they needed.

They cut their way down to the center of the bowl. They passed one of the transshipment poles three times before they spotted it. They paced out in various directions and located another two. The fourth was easy.

Jonnie took a shovel and started down through the humus. He was hoping the company maxim of “never salvage anything” would hold true. Two feet of dead leaves and humus down, he hit the platform.

Axes ringing, they were getting trees and brush out of the way. They found the concrete base of the operations firing dome and then finally the dome itself, upside-down and some distance away.

No console!

Wires were eventually uncovered within the concrete base. Typically Psychlo, they were still well insulated when you scraped the mold off.

Jonnie was struck by the absence of the power lines. There should be power lines coming in from the dam.

There was a power channel marked on the map and also that old squiggle he couldn't identify.

Light was failing and they would have kept on but MacKendrick made them get up to high ground. They spent the night listening to elephants trumpeting, lions roaring, and all the other cacophony of a very live jungle. But the night was quite cool since this plateau had a fairly high altitude.

In the morning they dug a crosscut trench and found the power line, being careful not to cut into it. They cut another trench and found the same line went on underground to the distant minesite.

And there was another cable they couldn't identify that went along with the power line.

Flogging their way through the brush, they went over to the huge dam. It was a real soaring monster of a dam. It seemed intact. The spillways were running. There were signs that Psychlos had landed near it and gone in and out the access door to the powerhouse in some recent time.

Jonnie had never been inside one of these dams before. They vibrated with sheer, raw power. The thunder of the water and the high whine of generators made it impossible to be heard.

It was the usual Psychlo conversion, he supposed. It was very, very old and some bits of the original man-equipment that had been cast aside were very much older.

Angus found the switchboard and bus bars– a vast, towering affair in a separate control room. Only two of the handles were clean and it didn't need a little tuft of fur caught in one of them to tell that Psychlos had come here to shut power on and off.

But what were all these other bus bars? They got some mine sacks and tried to wipe the panel down without causing short circuits. There were Psychlo letters inset into it. A whole row said, “Force Stage One, Force Stage Two, Force Stage Three.” A second row said, “Transshipment One, Transshipment Two, Transshipment Three.”

Jonnie gingerly rubbed some more with a mine sack, careful of closing any gap. “They're color-coded." He tried to tell Angus this but there was no talking in this place. They went back out.

"Terl," said Jonnie to Angus and Sir Robert, “is working on force equations. There is something on the north side of the American dam I think he must want. The squiggles on this map must have to do with force.” He sent Angus back into the power control house and placed some Scots along the underground line of squiggles and connected every one up with mine radios.

“Close Force Stage One!” he radioed to Angus.

The effect was far more drastic and dramatic than anything they expected.

All inferno broke loose!

Along the squiggle line of the map, all around the crater, trees erupted, splintered, soared, crashed.

It was as if a bomb had exploded.

Trunks and leaves and branches were falling for over a minute afterward.

Sir Robert was running to find out what had happened to their spotters. Were they all killed? Their radios had gone silent!

It took them an hour to dig the Scots out. One had been knocked unconscious, the rest were bruised and slightly cut. Six had been involved.

MacKendrick collected them and assessed the damages and began applying the antiseptics and tape. Jonnie made his way over to them from the dam. It looked like a first-aid station after a battle. The one who had been knocked out had come to now. He had been blown in the air.

Jonnie apologized to them.

The Scot that had been knocked out was grinning. “A little thing like that isn't likely to ruin a Scot!” he said. “What was it?”

Yes, indeed. What was it?

“Did I do something wrong?” Angus's voice came over the radio.

The Scots were all taking it as a joke so Jonnie said, “I think you did something right!” They were out of the area now. “Close that switch again!”

A bit of the tree wreckage stirred and moved and then was still. Jonnie cautiously moved toward the bowl. And couldn't leave the dam area!