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THE PIPELINE OPENS

WITH its two fighting claws held forward like a wrestler’s ared with a dry rustle froer-sized hole under the rock

There was a small patch of hard, flat earth outside the hole and the scorpion stood in the centre of this on the tips of its four pairs of legs, its nerves andfor the minute vibrations which would decide its next move

The reat thorn bush, threw sapphire highlights off the hard, black polish of the six-inch body and glinted palely on the ment of the tail, now curved over parallel with the scorpion’s flat back

Slowly the sting slid home into its sheath and the nerves in the poison sac at its base relaxed The scorpion had decided Greed had won over fear

Twelve inches away, at the bottom of a sharp slope of sand, the s on towards better pastures than he had found under the thorn bush, and the swift rush of the scorpion down the slope gave his waved in protest as the sharp claw snapped round his body, and then the sting lanced into him from over the scorpion’s head and immediately he was dead

After it had killed the beetle the scorpion stoodthis tiround and the air for hostile vibrations Reassured, its fighting claithdrew fro pincers reached out and into the beetle’s flesh Then for an hour, and with extreme fastidiousness, the scorpion ate its victim

The great thorn bush under which the scorpion killed the beetle was quite a land veld soou in the south-western corner of French Guinea On all horizons there were hills and jungle, but here, over twenty square round which was alst the tropical scrub only this one thorn bush, perhaps because there ater deep beneath its roots, had grown to the height of a house and could be picked out from many miles away

The bush grew more or less at the junction of three African states It was in French Guinea but only about ten miles north of the northernmost tip of Liberia and five miles east of the frontier of Sierra Leone Across this frontier are the great diamond mines around Sefadu These are the property of Sierra International, which is part of the powerfulempire of Afric International, which in turn is a rich capital asset of the British Commonwealth

An hour earlier in its hole areat thorn bush the scorpion had been alerted by two sets of vibrations First there had been the tiny scraping of the beetle’s ed to the vibrations which the scorpion inosed Then there had been a series of incomprehensible thuds round the bush followed by a final heavy quake which had caved in part of the scorpion’s hole These were followed by a soft rhythular that it soon becaency After a pause the tiny scraping of the beetle had continued, and it was greed for the beetle that, after a day of sheltering froainst the scorpion’s memory of the other noises and iht

And now, as it slowly sucked the nal for the scorpion’s own death sounded from far away on the eastern horizon, audible to a hue of the scorpion’s sensory system

And, a few feet away, a heavy, blunt hand, with bitten finger nails, softly raised a jagged piece of rock

There was no noise, but the scorpion felt a tinyclaere up and groping and its sting was erect in the rigid tail, its near-sighted eyes staring up for a sight of the enemy

The heavy stone came down

“Black bastard”

The ony

The ainst the trunk of the bush where he had been sitting for nearly two hours and, his arly over his head, scrambled out into the open

The noise of the engine which the ned the scorpion’s death warrant, was louder As the man stood and stared up the path of thefast towards hilinted on whirling rotor blades

The man rubbed his hands down the sides of his dirty khaki shorts and moved quickly round the bush to where the rear wheel of a batteredplace Below the pillion, on either side, there were leather toolboxes Froe which he stowed inside his open shirt against the skin From the other he took four cheap electric torches and went off with the thorn bush, there was a clear patch of flat ground about the size of a tennis court At three corners of the landing ground he screwed the butt end of a torch into the ground and switched it on Then, the last torch alight in his hand, he took up his position at the fourth corner and waited

The helicopter wasslowly towards hi rotor blades idling It looked like a huge, badly-constructed insect To thetoo much noise