"Get us out of here!" Abbott heard himself shouting in English and Portuguese and Spanish, as he watched the nuclear catastrophe.

Grinding the gears, the driver threw the transmission into reverse, sped backward. The overseer clung to the side mirror as the truck bounced. The truck swerved into a wide backward turn.

An Indian screamed as he died under the wheels. The other Indians dropped their shovels and ran as fast as their ankle chains allowed. The truck driver did not pause as he threw the truck into first gear and accelerated.

Abbott shouted into the hand radio, "Explosion at Unit One! Evacuate all work areas. Get our people into the shelters. Issue the oxygen and the anticontamination suits. Turn on the sirens right now and get..."

"Shut up!" a command blared from the radio. "What's going on there? We only see some smoke..."

"You idiot! That's radioactive sodium hydroxide. That's gaseous lye. Anybody who breathes that dies! Anyone it touches is contaminated."

"Is that Mr. Abbott?" the voice asked.

"Yes, this is Abbott. Unit One's exploding. The core could go any second. That's plutonium! You understand? Plutonium!"

"Yes, sir. Doing it right away. The alarms..."

Switching off his hand radio, Abbott leaned from the truck's window to look back. Swirling red road dust obscured his view of the reactor dome. But above the narrow slash through the jungle, he saw the billowing white cloud of caustic sodium hydroxide. Flames and black smoke leaped from the burning jungle. But he heard no more explosions.