The Radioactive Camel Affair

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Napoleon Solo shielded his eyes against the blazing sun. Under the folds of his burnoose, the heavy Mauser automatic had worn a sore place on his hip, and he shifted the belt supporting its makeshift holster. Beneath his aching thighs, the dromedary lurched and swayed, picking its way over the shale which slanted up to a massive limestone bluff a thousand feet above them. The caravan was a big one — a long line of camels, horses, men and women, some mounted and some on foot, snaking its way for almost a mile across the desolate plateau. It had been nearly five hours since they had struggled up the steep valley from the last village — five hours of torment for Solo as the sun had risen inexorably in the sky and the caravan had climbed towards the southwest, through barren foothills pockmarked with patches of thin scrub, along a ridge of rock and sand where nothing but thorn bushes broke the monotony of the scorched terrain, and now across this bleak upland slope beyond which — he fervently hoped — their path would at last tilt downwards again.

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