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Beneath the intense blue sky of illimitable space only one thing moved. With the world to itself it appeared to dawdle so slowly across the face of heaven that it might have been a microscopic insect that had set itself the impossible task of crawling across the roof of outer space. Alone in a universe from which all life had vanished it was as conspicuous as a fly on a whitewashed ceiling.

In fact, it was an aircraft. To be specific, a twin-engined Merlin on the establishment of the Air Police at Scotland Yard, London, England. With its altimeter registering 24,000 feet it was droning its solitary way due west.

Below, rolling away in a shimmering heat-haze to the eastern horizon was a flat plain, a grim landscape of low shrub, rock and sand, that comprises much of the hinterland of Argentina. Ahead, looming across the aircraft’s course like the end of the earth was the formidable chain of snow-capped giants that form the mighty Andes, their icy flanks glittering like broken glass, blue, green and crystal white, their lower slopes merging into a purple fantasy of deep shadows marked here and there by the vertical stripe of a torrent of melting snow that plunged down from the frozen world above.

At one point a volcano announced its presence in solemn but spectacular majesty. Every twenty seconds, with the punctuality of a chronometer it belched a plume of yellow sulphurous smoke towards the stratosphere, there to lose itself and disperse slowly in the direction of the unseen stars.

Beyond the mountains, as yet concealed from the eyes of the two men in the cockpit of the plane, Air Detective-Inspector ‘Biggles’ Bigglesworth and Sergeant-Pilot Algy Lacey, lay the machine’s destination, the long, narrow strip of the Republic of Chile, nearly three thousand miles from north to south yet only just over a hundred miles wide, with the Pacific Ocean stretching away beyond to the lost horizons of far distant shores.

Somewhere below the plane, although the pilots could not hope or expect to see it, was a notice board, painted red, on one side the word Argentina and on the other side, Chile. This was the official boundary mark of the two countries.

Somewhere, too, still a long way ahead, beyond the mountains, lay the Merlin’s ultimate objective, the airport of Los Cerrillos that serves Santiago, the capital of Chile, seven miles from the city and perched seventeen hundred feet above sea level.

From the altitude to which the Merlin had climbed to clear the tremendous obstacle that lay across its course nothing on the ground could be seen in any detail. There was no outstanding landmark, except the erupting volcano which, being one of many perhaps normally dormant, could not be identified by name and therefore served no useful purpose even though it may have been noted on the map of the country. There was no sign or indication of human life. The pilots might have been looking down on a section of the moon’s surface. Indeed, it seemed almost impossible that a land so apparently inhospitable could support a population, and this, to some extent, was true: but both knew that in the high tops of this remote region still dwelt the descendants of the original native inhabitants, never really conquered, wild yet dignified, their expressions revealing nothing of their thoughts after centuries of being governed—and in the early days maltreated—by white men from what was to them another world; Europe, a world of which they knew nothing and in which they had no interest.

The plane droned on through an atmosphere that was becoming more and more unstable as it neared the mountains. Both pilots looked often and long at the ground below as if they were searching for something, as in fact they were. So far they had seen no sign of what they sought, although this, in the circumstances, did not surprise them. An aircraft, particularly a broken one, is a very small mark indeed in open country, much less in a world as vast and chaotic as the one below. But Biggles, his eyes for ever going to his compass, knew they were on course and was satisfied that his navigational ability was reliable.

Presently, noticing Algy staring down with a look of concentration on his face he said: ‘What are you looking at?’

‘Nothing in particular. Just looking,’ Algy answered simply.

‘See anything?’

‘Nothing of the remotest interest to us in our search.’

Biggles went on. ‘I thought there was just a chance we might spot something as we crossed the plains, before I started climbing. I wouldn’t hold out much hope for the rest of the trip even if it’s there. What isn’t virgin forest on the lower ground will I imagine be nothing but broken rock. I’m going to climb a little higher to take plenty of room between those two peaks dead ahead. If I know anything the air near them will be turbulent and we’re likely to hit some stinking bumps. Feel as if you need a sniff of oxygen? It might freshen you up in more ways than one.’

‘No thanks. I’m okay, though it was decent of you to think of it.’

The Merlin rocked on through the rarefied atmosphere towards the eternally ice-capped peaks that towered in its path like sentinels guarding the entrance to the polar regions of a dead planet.

By this time the reader will no doubt be wondering for what possible reason an aircraft of the British Air Police could be operating over foreign territory so far from its base. To discover this it will be necessary to turn back the clock for six weeks and begin the operation where it really started, in London, at Police Headquarters, Scotland Yard.