Mauritius, where we had met. I had sought the answer then, but in life Peace was not the man to be approached-not even by his closest friend-if he did not want to be approached. I saw now that his tense, highly nervous state in the days preceeding his death was not, as I, thought, due to the weight of his secret, but was caused by the shadow of the heartattack which had killed him. The superficial explanation he had given for asking me to come all the way to Mauritius from South Africa was, of course, a blind. That was clear to me soon after our meeting. I had left the Royal Navy to take charge (thanks to my knowledge of navigation) of the head office of NACCAM, an advanced commercial air and sea navigational system, in

Johannesburg. Under my supervision, we had installed navigational aids for ships and aircraft round the southern, strategic tip of Africa. Peace had cabled me asking if I would meet him to discuss the installation of a similar system in the islands of the Indian Ocean. He had suggested Mauritius as the rendezvous, since the island is only six hours by jet from Johannesburg. Peace's message came as a surprise to me, for I had been out of touch with him for several years, although his work in connection with the British missile mission to

America had kept his name constantly in the news.

For months before his death, Peace had been the centre of a bitter controversy over an Anglo-American missile. British scientists had developed a small light-weight nuclear power plant for missiles and satellites. The newspapers nicknamed it SNAP-System for Nuclear Auxiliary Power. The motor, according to the papers, was considerably in advance of anything in America or Russia.