Deadly Sky (ePub), The by David Hill Page B

stopped. Next Sunday, Lily had said. That meant Alicia was going to be on the same plane as them, back to Tahiti! Aw, no, he thought.
Please
don’t let her be sitting next to me!
    Lily was right. A path did lead up the mini mountain. At the end of the beach, a faded wooden sign read
‘MONT DUFF’.
They can’t spell, thought Darryl, then realised that it must be the French word for ‘mount’. He moved up between more dark-leafed trees, over clumps of rock. Orange and blue butterflies drifted past. After only five minutes, he was sweating.
    A clump of different rocks lay to one side of the track: an old ruin of some sort. Was that one of the temples Alicia had talked about? The ones missionaries had made them pull down? Around a bend, and he stopped to stare at a long building, the size of ten or twelve garages, with heavy corrugated iron roof and sides, no windows, just one thick door at the end. What was that for: storing coconuts or something?
    He met nobody. Mangareva seemed asleep, like Lily had said. He passed a grove of trees where enormous oranges hung. Could he take— no, they must belong to somebody.
    When he came out into the full sunlight, his back was streaming with perspiration. A huge blue bowl of sky curved above. Ahead of him, steep slopes of springy grass and a few shrubs angled up to the gaunt mound of rock he’d seen from the ferry yesterday afternoon. Only yesterday? It seemed as though he had been on the island much longer than that. So much was happening!
    He felt grateful for the straw hat. Even his ears were sweating now. Ten minutes plodding and panting, and he reached the base of the rock. The track zig-zagged on up.
    Below him, the sea spread, pale green that became blue-green. A wave washed slowly up the beach, then washed even more slowly back out again. Just offshore, like shadows beneath the surface, Darryl could make out the dark shapes of what must be the reef. Yeah, it would be great if they could explore there.
    The rock was rough and sharp: he wouldn’t want to fall here. What’s-her-name’s mother had cut herself on coral and got infected. He’d better not get this stuff into his skin.
    Up an angle between two shoulders of rock. A short grassy bit, a tiny oasis on the stony ground. His nose was sweating as well, now. The sun burned through his shirt.
    A flight of rough steps had been cut into the black slope. A shadow passed across the ground, and ahuge white-and-grey bird hung above him, wings outstretched and motionless. It slid on, skimming sideways and down towards the ocean.
    How much further? Man, he felt glad he wasn’t climbing a
big
mountain in this heat. Another nearly level bit: the ground beneath his feet was rippled like a solid black mud pool. A waist-high pile of stones stood just ahead. He was at the top.
    ‘Wow!’ he yelled, and lifted his arms above his head. ‘Amazing! Wow!’ Just as well nobody was around to
hear
him, either. The Pacific stretched to a circle of horizon. The island curved away, other rocky heights lifting out of the trees. Over to one side, a strip of thick reef a couple of kilometres long, with a black stripe running along it. The airport.
    Which direction was Mururoa? It would have been incredible to be up here and see the flash of that nuclear explosion. His book said how the Hiroshima mushroom cloud poured up to 45,000 feet above the city. Six miles – nearly 10 kilometres – high: just imagine.
    Another white shape curved down the sky. Darryl remembered what Alicia had said about the seabirds blinded by the nuclear flash. OK, it must be hard for people here to understand what the tests were for. OK Number Two: he could understand why they didn’t want it happening in their ocean. But it had to happen somewhere. The bombs had to be made, to keep thefree world safe. All the politicians said so.
    He sat for a while, his back against the pile of stones. He felt his breathing slow down, his body relax. It would be easy to fall asleep