poste maurice cortier, better known in the sahara as bidon cinq, is as remote a spot on earth in which man has ever lived. some 750 kilometers to the south is bourem on the niger river. if you go west of bourem another 363 kilometers, you reach timbuktu, the nearest thing to a city in that part of the sudan. if you travel north from bidon cinq 1,229 kilometers you reach colomb-béchar, the nearest thing to a city in southern algeria. there are no railroads, no highways. the track through the desert is marked by oil drums filled with gravel so the wind won't blow them away. there is an oil drum every quarter of a mile or so. you go from one to the next, carrying your own fuel and water. if you get lost, the authorities come looking for you in aircraft. sometimes they find you.

in the latter decades of the twentieth century, bidon cinq became an outpost of the sahara reforestation commission which was working north from the niger, and south from algeria as well as east from the atlantic. the water table in the vicinity of bidon cinq was considerably higher than had once been thought. even artesian wells were possible in some localities. more practical still were springs and wells exploited by the new solar-powered pumps that in their tens of thousands were driving back the sands of the world's largest desert.

johnny mccord and derek mason ate in the officer's mess, divorced from the forty or fifty arabs and songhai who composed their work force. it wasn't snobbery, simply a matter of being able to eat in leisure and discuss the day's activities free of the chatter of the larger mess hall.

derek looked down into his plate. "hiram," he drawled, "who ever invented this here cous cous?"

johnny looked over at the tall, easy-going canadian who was his second in command and scowled dourly. he was in no humor for their usual banter. "what's the matter with cous cous?" johnny growled.

"i don't know," derek said. "i'm a meat and potatoes man at heart."

johnny shrugged. "cous cous serves the same purpose as potatoes do. or rice, or spaghetti, or bread, or any of the other bland basic foods. it's what you put on it that counts."

derek stared gloomily into his dish. "well, i wish they'd get something more interesting than ten-year-old mutton to put on this."

johnny said, "where in the devil is pierre? it's nearly dark."

"reuben?" derek drawled. "why reuben went out to check the crops up in the northeast forty. took the horse and buggy."

that didn't help johnny's irritation. "he took an air-cushion jeep, instead of a copter? why, for heaven's sake?"

"he wanted to check quite a few of the pumps. said landing and taking off was more trouble than the extra speed helped. he'll be back shortly."

"he's back now," a voice from the door said.

pierre marimbert, brushing sand from his clothes, pushed into the room and made his way to the mess-hall refrigerator. he said nothing further until he had a can of beer open.

johnny said, "damn it, pierre, you shouldn't stay out this late in a jeep. if you got stuck out there, we'd have one hell of a time finding you. in a copter you've at least got the radio."

pierre had washed the dust from his throat. now he said quietly, "i wanted to check on as many pumps as i could."

"you could have gone back tomorrow. the things are supposed to be self-sufficient, no checking necessary more than once every three months. there's practically nothing that can go wrong with them."

pierre finished off the can of beer, reached into the refrigerator for another. "dynamite can go wrong with them," he said.

the other two looked at him, shocked silent.

pierre said, "i don't know how many altogether. i found twenty-two of the pumps in the vicinity of in ziza had been blown to smithereens—out of forty i checked."

johnny rapped, "how long ago? how many trees...?"

pierre laughed sourly. "i don't know how long ago. the transplants, especially the slash pine, are going to be just so much kindling before i get new pumps in."

derek said, shocked, "that's our oldest stand."

pierre marimbert, a forty-year-old, sun-beaten algerian colon, eldest man on the team, sank into his place at the table. he poured the balance of his can of beer into a glass.

johnny said, "what ... what can we do? how many spare pumps can you get into there, and how soon?"

pierre looked up at him wearily. "you didn't quite hear what i said, johnny. i only checked forty. forty out of nearly a thousand in that vicinity. twenty-two of them were destroyed, better than fifty percent. for all i know, that percentage applies throughout the whole in ziza area. if so, there's damn few of your trees going to be left alive. we have a few spare pumps on hand here, but we'd have to get a really large number all the way from dakar."

derek said softly, "that took a lot of men and a lot of dynamite. which means a lot of transport—and a lot of money. we've had trouble before, but usually it was disgruntled nomads, getting revenge for losing their grazing land."

johnny snorted, "damn little grazing this far north."

derek nodded. "i'm simply saying that even if we could blame our minor sabotage on the tuareg in the past, we can't do it this time. there's money behind anything this big."

johnny mccord said wearily, "let's eat. in the morning we'll go out and take a look. i'd better call timbuktu on this. if nothing else, the mali federation can send troops out to protect us."

derek grunted. "with a standing army of about 25,000 men, they're going to patrol a million and a half square miles of desert?"

"can you think of anything else to do?"

"no."

pierre marimbert began dishing cous cous into a soup plate, then poured himself a glass of vin ordinaire. he said, "i can't think of a better place for saboteurs. twenty men could do millions of dollars of destruction and never be found."

johnny growled, "it's not as bad as all that. they've got to eat and drink, and so do their animals. there are damned few places where they can."

from the door a voice said, "i am intruding?"

they hadn't heard her car come up. the three men scrambled to their feet.

"good evening," johnny mccord blurted.

"hell ... o!" derek breathed.

pierre marimbert was across the room, taking her in hand. "bonjour, mademoiselle. que puis-je faire pour vous? voulez-vous une biere bien fraiche ou un apéritif? il fait trés chaud dans le desert." he led her toward the table.

"easy, easy there, reuben," derek grumbled. "the young lady speaks english. give a man a chance."

johnny was placing a chair for her. "paul peterson, from poste weygand, radioed that you were coming. you're a little late, mademoiselle desage."

she was perhaps thirty, slim, long-legged, parisian style. even at bidon cinq, half a world away from the champs elysées, she maintained her chic.

she made a moue at johnny, while taking the chair he held. "i had hoped to surprise you, catch you off guard." she took in the sun-dried, dour-faced american wood technologist appraisingly, then turned her eyes in turn to derek and pierre.

"you three are out here all alone?" she said demurely.

"desperately," derek said.

johnny mccord said, "mademoiselle hélène desage, i am john mccord, and these are my associates, monsieur pierre marimbert and mr. derek mason. gentlemen, mademoiselle desage is with paris match, the french equivalent of life, so i understand. in short, she is undoubtedly here for a story. so ixnay on the ump-pays."

"i would love cold beer," hélène desage said to pierre, and to johnny mccord, "these days a traveling reporter for paris match must be quite a linguist. my english, spanish and italian are excellent. my german passable. and while i am not fluent in pig-latin, i can follow it. what is this you are saying about the pumps?"

"oh, lord," johnny said. "perhaps i'll tell you in the morning. but for now, would you like to clean up before supper? you must be exhausted after that 260 kilometers from poste weygand."

pierre said hurriedly, "i'll take mademoiselle desage over to one of the guest bungalows."

"zut!" she said. "the sand! it is even worse than between reggan and poste weygand. do you realize that until i began coming across your new forests i saw no life at all between these two posts?"

the three forestry experts bowed in unison, as though rehearsed. "mademoiselle," derek, from the heart, "calling our transplant forests is the kindest thing you could have said in these parts."

they all laughed and pierre led her from the room.

derek looked at johnny mccord. "wow, that was a slip mentioning the pumps."

johnny was looking through the door after her. "i suppose so," he said sourly. "i'll have to radio the brass and find out the line we're supposed to take with her. that's the biggest magazine in the french-speaking world and you don't get a job on it without knowing the journalistic ropes. that girl can probably smell a story as far as a tuareg can smell water."

"well, then undoubtedly she's already sniffing. because, between that clan of tuareg with its flocks and the pump saboteurs, we've got more stories around here than i ever expected!"