Free African Pursuit by David Alric Page A

fast asleep when I came in. Some guard!’ She swept out, throwing back a final shaft across her shoulder. ‘And, by the way, you snore like a pig!’
    Luke’s mind was racing as the nurse’s comments caused memories to come flooding back. ‘That poor girl’ was of course Lucinda Angstrom. A pity he had had to kill her; she’d been a nice kid, but if he was to succeed in taking the credit for her incredible scientific discovery and making himself the richest man on earth by abusing the power of making himself invisible at will, there had really been no other realistic option. After pushing Lucinda off the cliff into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean he had stolen her invisibility robe and all her research data, only to discover that he could not make any more invisibility clothes without obtaining supplies of the raw material, photogyraspar, from which they were made. This was vital, for the stolen research data gave no indication as to how long the original invisibility robe would retain its power. He had discovered that the ore from which photogyraspar was obtained came from a remote prehistoric crater deep in the Amazon jungle and had used a gang of criminals to get him to the crater and assist him in mining supplies of ore. His plan had gone well up to the point at which a group of explorers, including a young girl of thirteen, had landed their plane in the crater where the ore was being mined. A series of adventures had ended in all his fellow criminals being killed by animals and he had become dependent on using the explorers’ help to escape fromthe crater. He had pretended to befriend them with the intention of taking their pilot hostage and leaving them marooned in the crater. The pilot he had intended to kill once he reached civilization and then he would be free to make unlimited use of his knowledge and the ore he had acquired… Luke stopped short in his thoughts as he desperately attempted to recall the final moments of his stay in the crater. He was aware that a head injury (and that, it was now obvious to him, is what he must have sustained) could cause loss of memory of previous events, and particularly those immediately preceding the injury. He also knew that this memory loss could be permanent. In his case, however, it was vital that he should remember as much as possible of his final moments of consciousness or he might never know the results of his studies in the crater. As he struggled to recall the events of that day he gradually became drowsier and eventually fell asleep to the monotonous sound of the policeman snoring.
    The next morning Luke woke early and immediately started once again to try and remember the events preceding his accident. He tried to be logical. The two things he would have needed to take from the crater were his research data on invisibility – the original material he had stolen from Lucinda and the results of the additional research he had conducted in the crater – and the actual ore from which new robes could be made. He recalled loading all his data onto a USB memory stick from his computer but where had he concealed it? Of course! He suddenly remembered that he had hidden it in a false cavity in the heel of his shoe. It was vital that he regained his clothing. But what about the ore? He remembered that in the crater he had filled a box with highly concentrated ore that had turned out to be so heavy that he had found it impossible to move on his own. Whatever had happened to it?
    Just then he heard voices. Opening one eye he saw that a new nurse had come in to change his intravenous fluids and was chatting to the guard – a different one from yesterday.
    ‘So what happened to him?’ the guard was saying.
    ‘Apparently he walked backwards into a propeller,’ the nurse replied. ‘He was lucky not to have had his head cut off.’
    ‘Must have given him quite a turn just the same,’ joked the guard as he turned back to his newspaper.
    Luke, who had hurriedly closed