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lashes at him. Barrett had only seen that in old movies. He was startled to see that it could happen in real life.
    “All right,” he agreed, experimentally batting his own back at her, “and you can call me Mr. Barrett. Look, Izzy, what do you want with me, huh? Safari? Photos of native villages? Pictures of the quaint natives in their natural habitat? Hunt with gun or camera, rock hounding, plant collecting—what?”
    By way of answer she fumbled with the insides of a fat purse. The result of this excavation was a thick paperback. She dumped it on the table. When he made no move in its direction she nudged it toward him.
    “I’ve read your book, you see.”
    Barrett took another slug of the corrosive elixer. It settled in his belly like boiling syrup.
    “Sunuvagun! That means my audience has just doubled. I’m flattered.”
    “Mr. Barrett,” she continued, refusing to be put off by his snide attitude, “your book is well written. It may never be a best seller, but there is a marvelous insight in there. A deep feeling for the people, and especially for the land, shines through the commercial chapters on flesh-pots and shopping bazaar bargains.”
    “Oh, crap!” he shouted, slamming the glass down on the table. “I wrote the goddamn book to make some money, not to inspire adulation in slap-happy tourists or would-be literary critics! No, that’s unfair, and not true. I wrote it to try and make some money. So far I figure, with the time I put into it, and the effort—I’m good at sentences but lousy at paragraphs—I just about broke even.
    “As for anything above that, I guess you haven’t talked to many people around here or you’d already know that I’m nuts. Screwy, loony, ready for the rock ranch. Even sensible nuts look for lost cities. Me, I’m after a lost hamlet.”
    “I don’t think a magnificent delusion qualifies you for insanity, Mr. Barrett. You’re not as crazy as you’d like me to believe. Just a little misguided. But you’re not afraid of the deep jungle. That shows in your book. And you’re not afraid of the Wanderi. That shows in your book. I need all that.
    “And there’s one other thing. You knew my father.”
    Barrett put down his drink, looked at her differently. “Your father?” Places, names, recent history fell neatly into place and formed a picture.
    “Hardi . . . Hardi . . . you’re John Hardi’s kid?”
    “That’s right,” she confessed proudly. She couldn’t keep the pride out of her voice. Barrett shook his head in disbelief.
    “My brilliant intuitive powers strike again—ten minutes too late to prevent my making an ass of myself. I can only repeat, John Hardi’s daughter, what do you want of me? This time I promise to listen. Cross my heart and hope to pry.” He did so.
    Whammo, hand into purse again. This time it disgorged a map of central Africa. She spread it out on the table. One delicate finger descended in the wild, empty regions near Lake Tanganyika.
    “You know this area?” Barrett leaned over the map, looked up at her and spoke softly for the first time.
    “Izzy, nobody knows that area. The jungle grows so tough and thick there that . . . listen, if gravity were reversed, or turned on edge, you could still walk in that forest. I’ve probed at its fringes, yes, and I think I know it as well as any man who can read or write. Matter of fact, I was near that area just a few weeks go.” He smiled. “I had an accident.”
    She looked excited. “Then the stories they told me were true! That’s terrific!”
    “Yeah. I thought so at the time—up to a point.”
    “But it is, it is! Don’t you see, George, my father’s plane went down somewhere in there over fifteen years ago. You know my father was a biochemist. It was believed at the time that he was working on some great discovery that would be of tremendous value to all mankind.”
    “Sure, sure,” Barrett said placatingly. “The eternal eulogy for all scientists who disappear suddenly