“Come along then, let’s find out.”
The voices seemed to be coming from a point below them, not too far below, and just a bit to their right.
They proceeded most cautiously in the direction of the voices, careful not to start any pebbles or small stones rolling downward. Easing themselves down, the two men came to a ledge. It projected out like the roof of a shed or porch. Tom Brewster got down on his stomach. He wormed his way forward. The voices were coming, it appeared, from directly beneath him.
Inching ahead, Tom Brewster came to the edge of the ledge. Carefully, he craned his head forward and looked down. He saw the tops of two men’s heads. A third man was stretched out on a makeshift bed of brush, covered with a worn cloth.
The third man was Dr. Weber. The doctor’s cheeks were sunken. His color was bad. He looked completely ill and worn out. Towering over the doctor was Perez Soto. Thomas Brewster couldn’t see the other man’s face, but he knew it must have anger written on it from the tone of his voice.
Dr. Weber groaned as he turned on his side. Brewster could see that his hands were bound behind his back. His ankles were also lashed together.
“You old fool!” Perez Soto said. “Why should it make any difference to you whether I get the cesium or Brewster gets it? You’re a scientist. Bah! A scientist should put his science before all else.”
Brewster heard the doctor’s reply in a voice barely audible: “There are certain things even a scientist places a greater value on—friendship, loyalty, humanity.”
Perez Soto leaned over the old man, his arm raised as if to strike him. Brewster had all he could do to keep himself from leaping off the ledge onto Perez Soto’s back. But Soto’s henchman stood, gun in hand, by the old man’s side.
“I give you this day, and no more, my fine doctor,” Perez Soto said. “By nightfall, if you do not reveal to me the location of the cesium strike, the world will lose one of its most eminent scientists!”