Prisoners of Fear

After returning to Odyssey, Eugene privately records an experience from his travels with Katrina that has changed his life. While serving with Around the World Missions, they receive an assignment in the Ashanti region of Central Africa. An isolated village has no way to summon medical help, so the couple studies its language and prepares to build a communications transmitter there.

At an airport in Zaire, pilot Roy Blaysig warns that the Ashanti village is cursed. Sheer cliffs block one side, and a dangerous river with an old rope bridge blocks the other. Roy claims that people who enter never leave, but Eugene and Katrina dismiss his belief in angry gods and arrange to be collected in a nearby field one week later.

Roy cannot land near the village, so Eugene, Katrina, and their equipment must descend by parachute. Neither has jumped before, and Roy even discovers that one parachute is broken just before handing it over. They survive the frightening drop and find themselves in a field near the village.

The first child they meet runs away in fear, then returns with his mother, Aman. When Eugene bows in greeting, Aman becomes convinced that he is a man called Morati who disappeared long ago. She calls Katrina the second wife and celebrates that Morati's return means the curse has ended.

Aman's son Kwame fetches his father, Gobir, but Gobir immediately sees that Eugene is not Morati. He distrusts the newcomers and warns that the gods remain angry over the village's past. Aman argues that the transmitter might end their isolation, and Gobir reluctantly allows Eugene to build it.

The entire village watches as Eugene switches on the completed tower. He promises that their first outside communication in more than twenty years is about to begin. Nothing happens. He checks a loose wire and tries again, but every call meets silence.

Eugene works into the night without finding the failure. Kwame concludes that Eugene is not Morati and cannot save them. Katrina reminds Eugene that the villagers have placed impossible expectations on him and suggests that their real work may include teaching them not to trust a supposed curse. Yet after the public failure, most villagers want nothing to do with them.

During a communal breakfast, a lightning strike appears to ignite a village house. Everyone races to carry water, and the fire is extinguished before it destroys the settlement. Gobir declares the blaze a warning that the gods are angry with the visitors. He orders the villagers to avoid Eugene and Katrina and refuses even the water Eugene brings.

With food dwindling and trust gone, Eugene returns to the transmitter. He discovers that a circuit breaker is missing, leaving him unable to repair it with the materials available. Kwame quietly visits and speaks of his dream of escaping the village by airplane. Eugene folds a page from the now-useless instruction manual into a paper plane, and Kwame joyfully teaches his friends to make more.

Aman sees how Eugene has restored her son's happiness and decides he has a gentle heart like Morati. She takes him to the hut the village has preserved for its lost friend. Inside is an old archaeological journal whose writing and terminology seem strangely familiar to Eugene.

Aman explains that Morati means wise one and that the man's original name was Leonard. Eugene recognizes his father's name and the journal he has not seen since childhood. The celebrated man who lived in the village twenty years earlier - the man everyone mistook Eugene for - is his own missing father.