Perhaps, I mused, trying to reason out a pattern, this fellow Pilon discovered or heard of a new ore find in, say, the jungle area east of the famous Katanga district, and told Chetzisky about it.
Of course, I admitted to myself, there was the problem of how the Doctor could get equipment into the area unnoticed. But maybe the answer lay in what Chetzisky had said to Chaslington; maybe there was no equipment problem. Who could tell but that Chetzisky may have found a simplified method of handling and working radioactive ores? He had told Chaslington our present methods were utterly outmoded, hadn't he?
It took Armstrong nearly a week to arrange for my trip to the Belgian Congo. He sent cables to Belgian officials at Leopoldville and to George Disney, chief of the commission with which Pilon was working, inviting their cooperation. In this way he hoped that the prestige of his title and name would lend a semi-official tone to my mission.
Meanwhile, Nevil Oxford phoned me twice, inquiring about our search for Chetzisky. His voice betrayed his uneasiness.
On the morning of my departure from Idlewild the New York Times, as if given confirmation to our conjectures, carried a front page story announcing a new uranium deposit in the Katanga area. Two university scientists who assayed samples stated the ore was among the highest grade yet discovered. Yield about three kilograms per ton.
As I boarded the Constellation I was confident that the chase was coming to an end. I was feverish with a sense of an approaching climax. For a long time I sat in quiet, optimistic thought, staring out the window port at a blue monotone of sky.
After lunch served by a stately blonde stewardess, the Englishman across the aisle struck up a conversation with me. He knew Africa very well, having served there many years for the Unilever enterprises.
He tried to teach me Swahili in one easy lesson, a sort of Esperanto devised by the Arab slave-traders and the lingua franca throughout Africa. I was interested, but a poor student. When I finally crawled into my berth at day's end, it was to dream of tangled jungles of African cedar and wild rubber trees, with limbs festooned with great, wrist-thick vines and monkeys scolding from the tree tops; and through it all the steady chatter of natives saying over and over again, "Simba," "Mungo," "N'Gana," "Bwana," stray bits of Swahili floating in my mind.
When I awoke, we were three hours out of Santa Maria in the Azores after refuelling. I took out my pocket calendar and checked off another day. Only twelve more remained to Chetzisky's deadline.
The plane swung down over the west African coast and then turned inland. Thirty-two hours after leaving Washington, it touched down on the runway at N'Dolo airfield in Leopoldville, Belgian Congo.