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Edvard pointed, and at last I made out what he'd seen.

High in the air, and heading towards us, was the dark shape of some kind of small plane.

I reached out for my rifle, propped against the side of the truck, and shouted at Danny and Kat to get out here.

"It's in trouble," Edvard said.

The engine was stuttering as the plane angled steeply over the distant buildings, a dark shape against the flaring storm. We watched it pass quickly overhead and come down in the desert perhaps half a kilometre beyond the truck.

Danny and Kat were out by now. "What was it?"

Edvard told them.

I said, "I'll go and check it out."

Edvard's hand gripped my arm. "It's no coincidence. A flyer doesn't just drop out of the sky so close. They knew we were here. They want something."

We all looked to Danny. He nodded. "Okay, I'll go with you. Edvard, Kat, stay here."

Kat nodded, moved to Edvard's side. Danny entered the truck and came back holding a rifle. We set off across the sands, towards where the flyer had come down.

"Je-sus Christ..." I said, bubbling with excitement. "Wonder who it is?"

Danny flashed me a look. "Whoever it is, chances are they're dangerous." He raised his rifle.

I could see he was thinking more about the flyer, and what might be salvaged from it, than who the pilot might be.

My mind was in turmoil. What if the pilot were a woman? I recalled the images of models in the magazines I'd hoarded over the years, their flawless, immaculate beauty, their haughty you're-not-good-enough gazes.

My heart was thudding by the time we crested a slipping dune.

In the stuttering white light of the magnetic storm we could see that the flyer had pitched nose-first into the desert. Its near wing was crumpled, snapped into flapping sections.

I thought of the irony of finding a beautiful woman sitting in the cockpit... dead.

I took a step fonvard. Danny said, "Remember, careful."

I nodded and led the way.

We approached slowly, as if the crumpled machine were a wounded animal.

"A glider," Danny said, "jerry-rigged with an old turbo."

I lifted my rifle and we stepped cautiously towards the shattered windshield of the cockpit.

"Oh," I said, as I made out the figure slumped against the controls.

It was a man, an old, wizened man, thin and bald and stinking. Even from a distance of two metres I could smell his adenoid-pinching body odour.

Danny cracked the cockpit's latch with the butt of his rifle. He hauled back the canopy, checked the pilot for weapons, then felt for his pulse.

"Alive," he said, but his gaze was ranging over the craft and the supplies packed tight around the cockpit.

I reached out and gently eased the pilot back into his seat, his head lolling. I looked for injuries; his torso seemed fine, but his left leg was snapped at the shin and bleeding.

Danny thought about it. I guessed he was calculating the worth of the glider and the supplies against the long-term cost of giving refuge to another needy stray. "Okay, go back to the truck and tell Kat to get it over here. Tell Ed to have his equipment ready."

I took off at a run.

Five minutes later Kat braked the truck beside the glider and we jumped out. Edvard limped through the sand and knelt in the cockpit's hatch. After examining the pilot he did something to the leg, tying off the shattered limb, then nodded to Danny and me. We eased the pilot from the glider, trying to ignore his sourdough body odour, and carried him over to the truck.

On the way I realized that he wasn't as old as I'd first thought. He was in his forties, perhaps, though his skeletal frame and bald head made him look older. He wore tattered shorts and a ripped T-shirt and nothing else.

We installed him in the lounge and Edvard got to work on the leg, aided by Kat. Danny fetched the toolkit and for the next couple of hours we took the glider apart and stowed it in the cargo hold. We ferried the supplies, packed in three silver hold-alls, to the galley.

"Water," Danny grinned as he passed me the canisters. "And dried meat, for chrissake!"

"Where the hell he get meat from?"