I dressed, arranged for a plane to take me and Johnny Eagle into Tweedsmuir early next morning, and settled back with a drink for Nevil Oxford's broadcast. The commercial came on. I gritted my teeth and waited. Then Nevil broke in, his voice tense and pregnant with fear: "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight I am breaking the biggest story of my career. It has taken me a long time to decide on telling it. But it must be told." There was a pause. I sat bolt-upright. Had he lost his courage again? Then Nevil was speaking again, his tone almost inaudible. "If a letter that went out to the governments of the world a month ago is true--and I fear horribly that it is--you and I have only six days to live. The world will end next Monday. Yet nothing is being...." The voice was cut off and organ music filled the air waves. I stood up and flung my glass at the wall. You warn them and they throttle you; the ostrich hadn't a thing on them. I went down to the lobby and bought a few magazines to read myself to sleep with, but at two in the morning I was still awake. I put on the radio to get some slumber music. Instead there was a deluge of breathless newscasts and special bulletins. Nevil had started things popping all right, despite being cut off the air. Curious, angry newsmen had dug up the story and spread it in the headlines of _Extras_ from coast to coast. At this moment it was being shortwaved to every part of the world. Already public opinion was beginning to simmer. A special dawn meeting of the cabinet was called. I fell off to sleep smiling; there was hope. 4 In the morning when I read the newspapers on the way to Lulu Island airport, my mood darkened. While public opinion shrieked for action, successive conferences on what was to be done ended in decisions to hold other conferences on what was to be done. Horn-rimmed intellectuals argued hotly whether the Chetzisky question was not one for United Nations discussion. And we make fun of Nero who fiddled while Rome burned! The day was clear, ideal for flying. It was the fifth day before the end of Time. I bit my lips and looked out at the earth falling away under us. Four o'clock that afternoon our pontoon-equipped plane swept low over the spruce and jack pine and meadows of wild hay for a smooth landing on Burns Lake, our approach scattering a brood of mallard ducks. We refuelled and were off again. I intended to fly on, watching for the Twin peaks and when darkness fell, to land on one of the mountain tarns and make camp. Below us the somber stands of evergreen were being swallowed up in the vast shadow spreading out from the western ridges. Turning up a valley corridor I saw the peaks towering above us, summits capped with white and the forested flanks gashed with couloirs in which the snow gleamed.