The day of the Triffids
by
John Wyndham

PENGUIN BOOKS.

"One of Great Britain's most serious and literate pioneers of
intelligent science fiction ...  Wyndham always wrote well and
imaginatively'- Financial Times John Wyndham was born in 19o3. Until
1911 he lived in Edgbaston, Birmingham, and then in many parts of
England. After a wide experience of the English preparatory school he
was at Bedales from 1918 till 1921. Careers which he tried included
farming, law, commercial art, and advertising, and he first started
writing short stories, intended for sale, in 1925.

From 1930 till 1939 he wrote stories of various kinds under different
names, almost exclusively for American publications. He also wrote
detective novels. During the war he was in the Civil Service and
afterwards in the Army. In 1946 he went back to writing stories for
publication in the USA and decided to try a modified form of what is
unhappily known as 'science fiction'. He wrote The Day of the
Triffids and The Kraken Wakes (both of which have been translated into
several languages), The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos (filmed as The
Village of the Damned), The Seeds of Time, Trouble with Lichen, The
Outward Urge (with Lucas Parkes), Consider Her Ways and Other Stories,
Web and Chocky, all of which have been published as Penguins. John
Wyndham died in March 1969.

THE END BEGINS
When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding
like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

I felt that from the moment I woke. And yet, when I started
functioning a little more sharply, I mis gave After all, the odds were
that it was I who was wrong, and not everyone else though I did not see
how that could be. I went on waiting, tinged with doubt But presently
I had my first bit of objective evidence a distant clock struck what
sounded to me just like eight. I listened hard and suspiciously. Soon
another clock began, on a loud, dedsive note. In a leisurely fashion it
gave an indisputable eight Then I kne things were awry.

The way I came to miss the end of the world well, the end of the world
I had known for close on thirty years was sheer acddent: like a lot of
survival, when you come to think of it.

In the nature of things a good many somebodies are always in hospital,
and the law of averages had picked on me to be one of them a week or so
before. It might just as easily have been the week before that in
which case I'd not be writing now: I'd not be here at all.

But chance played it not only that I should be in hospital at that
particular time, but that my eyes, and indeed my whole head, should be
wreathed in bandages and that's why I have to be grateful to whoever
orders these averages. At the time, however, I was only peevish,
wondering what in thunder went on, for I had been in the place long
enough to know that, next to the matron, the clock is the most sacred
thing in a hospital.

Without a clock the place simply couldn't latch. Each second there's
someone consulting it on births, deaths, doses, meals, lights, talking,
working, sleeping resting, visiting, ckessing, washing and hitherto
it had decreed that someone should begin to wash and tidy me up at
exactly three minutes after 7 a.m. That was one of the best reasons I
had for appreciating a private room. In a public ward the messy
proceeding would have taken place a whole unnecessary hour earlier. But
here, today, clocks of varying reliability were continuing to strike
eight in all directions and still nobody had shown up.

Much as I disliked the sponging process, and useless as it had been to
suggest that the help of a guiding hand as far as the bathroom could
eliminate it, its failure to occur was highly disconcerting.

Besides, it was normally a close foreruaner of breakfast, and I was
feeling hungry.

Probably I would have been aggrieved about it any morning, but today,
this Wednesday 8 May, was an occasion of particular personal
importance. I was doubly anxious to get all the fuss and routine over
because that was the day they were going to take off my bandages.

I groped around a bit to find the bell-push, and let them have a full
five seconds clatter, just to show what I was thinking of them.

While I was waiting for the pretty short-tempered response that such a
peal ought to bring, I went on listening.

The day outside, I realized now, was sounding even more wrong than I
had thought. The noises it made, or failed to make, were more like
Sunday than Sunday itself and I'd come round again to being absolutely
assured that it was Wednesday, whatever else had happened to it.

Why the founders of St. Merryn's Hospital chose to erect their
institution at a main road crossing upon a valuable office site and
thus expose their patients' nerves to constant bee ration is a foible
that I never properly understood. But for those fortunate enough to be
suffering from complaints unaffected by the wear and tear of continuous
trafiqc, it did have the advantage that one could lie abed and still
not be out of touch, so to speak, with the flow of life. Customarily
the west-bound buses thundered along trying to beat the lights at the
corner; VILE END BZGS 9 as often as not a pig-squeal of brakes and a
salvo of shots from the silencer would tell that they hadn't. Then the
released cross-traffic would roy and roar as it started up the
incline.

_And every now and then there would be an interlude: a good grinding
bump, followed by a general stoppage exceedingly tantalizing to one in
my condition where the extent of the contretemps had to be judged en
rely by the degree of profanity resulting. Certainly, neither by day
nor during most of the night, was there any chance of a St. Merryn
patient being under the impression that the common round had stopped
just because he, personally, was on the shelf for the moment.

But this morning was different. Disturbingly because mysteriously
different. No wheels rumbled, no buses roared, no sound of a car of
any kind, in fact, was to be heard. No brakes, no horns, not even the
clopping of the few rare horses that still occasionally passed. Nor,
as there should be at such an hour, the composite tramp of work-bound
feet.

The more I listened, the queerer it seemed and the less I cared for it.
In what I reckoned to be ten minutes of careful listening I heard five
sets of shufiadng, hesitating footsteps, three voices bawling
unintelligibly in the distance, and the hysterical sobs of a woman.
There was not the cooing of a pigeon, not the chirp of a sparrow.
Nothing but the humming of wires in the wind ... A nasty, empty
feeling began to crawl up inside me. It was the same sensation I used
to have sometimes as a child when I got to fancying that horrors were
lurking in the shadowy corners of the bedroom; when I aren't put a foot
out for fear that something should reach from under the bed and grab my
ankle; daren't even reach for the switch lest the movement should cause
something to leap at me. I had to fight down the feeling, just as I
had had to when I was a kid in the dark. And it was no easier. It's
surprising how much you don't grow out of when it comes to the test.
The elemental fears were still tour thing along with me, waiting their
nice, and pretty.

nearly getting it just because my eyes were bandaged, and the traffic
had stopped ... When I had pulled myself together a bit, I tried the
reasonable approach. Why does traffic stop ? Well, usually because
the road is closed for repairs. Perfectly simple. Any time now they'd
be along with pneumatic drills as another touch of aural variety for
the long-suffering patients. But the trouble with the reasonable line
was that it went further. It pointed out that there was not even the
distant hum of traffic, not the whistle of a train, not the hoot of a
tugboat. Just nothing until the clocks began chiming a quarter past
eight.

The temptation to take a peep not more than a peep, of course; just
enough to get some idea of what on earth could be happening, was
immense. But I restrained it. For one thing, a peep was a far less
simple matter than it sounded. It wasn't just a case of lifting a
blindfold: there were a lot of pads and bandages. But, more
importantly, I was scared to try.

Over a week's complete blindness can do a lot to frighten you out of
taking chances with your sight. It was true that they intended to
remove the bandages today, but that would be done in a special dim
light, and they would only allow them to stay off if the inspection of
my eyes were satisfactory. I did not know whether it would be. It
might be that my sight was Permanently impaired. Or that I would not
be able to see at all I did not know yet ... I swore, and hid hold of
the bell-push again. It helped to relieve my feelings a bit.

No one, it seemed, was interested in bells. I began to get as much
annoyed as worried. It's humiliating to be dependent, anyway, but it's
a still poorer pass to have no one to depend on. My patience was
whittling down. Something, I decided, had got to be done about it.

If I were to bawl down the passage and generally raise hell, somebody
ought to show up if only to tell me what they thought of me.

I turned back the sheet, and got out of bed. I'd never seen the room I
was in, and though I had a fairly good THE END BBGIN$ II idea by ear of
the position of the door, it wasn't all that easy to find. There
seemed to be several puzzling and unnecessary obstacles, but I got
across at the cost of a stubbed toe and minor damage to my shin. I
shoved my head out into the passage.

"Hey? I shouted."I want some breakfast. Room forty-eight' For a
moment nothing happened. Then came voices all shouting together. It
sounded like hundreds of them, and not a word coming through clearly.

It was as though I'd put on a record of crowd noises and an
ill-disposed crowd at that. I had a nightmarish flash wondering
whether I had been transferred to a mental home while I was sleeping,
and that this was not St. Merryn's Hospital at all. Those voices simply
didn't sound normal to me. I closed the door hurriedly on the babel,
and groped my way back to bed. At that moment bed seemed to be the one
safe, comforting thing in my whole baffling environment. As if to
underline that there came a sound which checked me in the act of
pulling up the sheets. From the street below rose a scream, wildly
distraught and contagiously terrifying. It came three times, and when
it had died away it seemed still to tingle in the air.

I shuddered. I could feel the sweat prickle my forehead under the
bandages. I knew now that something fearful and horrible was
happening. I could not stand my isolation and helplessness any
longer.

I had to know what was going on around me. I put my hands up to my
bandages; then, with my fingers on the safety-pins, I stopped  ...
Suppose the treatment had not been successful? Suppose that when I
took the bandages off I were to find that I still could not see ?

That would be worse still a hundred times worse ... I lacked the
courage to be lone and find out that they had not saved my sight. And
even if they had, would it be safe yet to keep my eyes uncovered ?

I dropped my hands, and lay back. I was wild at myself and the place,
and I did some silly, weak cursing.

Some little while must have passed before I got a proper hold on things
again, but after a bit I found myself churning round in my mind once
more after a possible explanation. I did not find it. But I did
become absolutely convinced that, come all the paradoxes of hell, it
was Wednesday. For the previous day had been notable, and I could
swear that no more than a single night had passed since then.

You'll, find it in the records that on Tuesday, 7 },fay, the Earth's
orbit passed through a cloud of comet debris. You can even believe it,
if you like millions did. Maybe it was so. I can't prove anything
either way. I was in no state to see what happened; but I do have my
own ideas. All that I actually know of the occasion is that I had to
spend the evening in my bed listening to eye-witness accounts of what
was constantly claimed to be the most emarkable celestial spectacle on
record.

And yet, until the thing actually began nobody had ever heard a word
about this supposed comet, or its debris ... Why they broadcast it,
considering that everyone who could walk, hobble, or be carried was
either out of doors or at windows enjoying the greatest free firework
display ever, I don't know. But they did, and it helped to impress on
me still more heavily what it meant to be sightless. I got round to
feeling that if the treatment had not been successful I'd rather end
the whole thing than go on that way.

It was reported in the news-bulletins during the day that mysterious
bright green flashes had been seen in the Californian skies the
previous night. However, such a lot of things did happen in California
that no one could be expected to get greatly worked up over that, but
as further reports came in this comet-debris motif made its appearance,
and it stuck.

Accounts arrived from all over the Pacific of a night made brilliant by
green meteors said to be 'sometimes in such numerous showers that the
whole sky appeared to be wheeling about us." And so it was, when you
come to think of it.

As the night line moved toward the brilli2no: of the display was in no
way decreased. Occasional green flashes became
visible even before darkness fell. The announcer, giving an account of
the phenomenon in the six o'clock news, advised everyone that it was an
amazing scene, and one not to be missed. He mentioned also that it
seemed to be interfering seriously with short-wave reception at long
distances, but that the medium waves on which there would be a running
commentary were unaffected, as, at present, was television. He need
not have troubled with the advice. By the way everyone in the hospital
got excited about it, it seemed to me that there was not the least
likelihood of anybody missing it except myself.

And, as if the radio's comments were not enough, the nurse who brought
me my supper had to tell me all about it.

"The sky's simply full of shooting stars," she said."All bright
green. They make people's faces look frightfully ghastly.

Everybody's out watching them, and sometimes it's almost as light as
day only all the wrong colour. Every now and then there's a big one so
bright that it hurts to look at it. It's a marvelous sight.

They say there's never been anything like it before. It is such a pity
you can't see it, isn't it iv 'his," I agreed, somewhat shorfiy.

"We've drawn back the curtains in the wards so that they can all see
it," she went on."If only you hadn't those bandages you'd have a
wonderful view of it from here."

"Oh," I said.

"But it must be better still outside, though. They say thousands of
people are out in the parks and on the Heath watching it all And on all
the flat roofs you can see people standing and looking up."

"How long
do they expect it to go on Y I asked, patiently.

"I don't know, but they say it's not so bright now as it was in other
places. Still, even if you'd had your bandages off today I don't
expect they'd have let you watch it. You'll have to take things gently
at first, and some of the flashes are very bright.

They Ooooh!"

"Why non oh ?" I inquired.

"That was such a brilliant one then {t made the whole loom look green.
What a pity you couldn't see it."

"Isn't it?" I agreed."Now do go
away, there's a good girl." I tried listening to the radio, but it was
making the same 'ooohs' and 'aaahs' helped out by gentlemanly tones
which bhtheredabout this 'magnificent spectacle' and 'unique
phenomenon' until I began to feel that there was a party for all the
world going on, with me as the only person not invited.

I didn't have any choice of entertainment, for the hospital radio
system gave only one programme, take it or leave it.

After a bit I gathered that the show had begun to wane. The announcer
advised everyone who had not yet seen it to hurry up and do so, or
regret all his life that he had missed it.

The general idea seemed to be to convince me that I was passing up the
very. thing I was born for. In the end I got sick of it, and switched
off. The last thing I heard was that the display was diminishing fast
now, and that we'd probably be out of the debris area in a few hours.

There could be no doubt in my mind that all this had taken place the
previous evening for one thing, I should have been a great deal
hungrier even than I was had it been longer ago.

Very well, what was this then ? Had the whole hospital, the whole
city, made such a night of it that they'd not pulled round yet ?

About which point I was interrupted as the chimes of clocks, near and
far, started announcing nine.

For the third time I played hell with the bell As I lay waiting I could
hear a sort of murmurous ness beyond the door. It seemed composed of
whimperings, slitherings, and shufflings, punctuated occasionally by a
raised voice in the distance.

But still no one came to my room.

By this time I was slipping back. The nasty, childish fancies were on
me again. I found myself waiting for the un seeable door to open, and
horrible things to come padding in in fact, THE END BEGINS 15 I wasn't
perfectly sure that somebody or something wasn't in already, and
stealthily prowling round the room ... Not that I'm given to that kind
of thing, really ... It was those damned bandages over my eyes, the
medley of voices that had shouted back at me down the corridor. But I
certainly was getting the willies - and once you get 'em, they grow.

Already they were past the stage where you can shoo them off by
whistling or singing at yourself.

It came at last to the straight question: was I more scared of
endangering my sight by taking off the bandages, or of staying in the
dark with the willies growing every minute ?

If it had been a day or two earlier I don't know what I'd have done
very likely the same in the end but this day I could at least tell
myself: "Well, hang it, there can't be a lot of harm if I use common
sense. After all, the bandages are due to come off today. I'll risk
it." There's one thing I put to my credit. I was not far enough gone
to tear them off rapidly. I had the sense and the self control to get
out of bed and pull the blind down before I started on the
safety-pins.

Once I had the coverings off, and had found out that I could see in the
dimness, I felt a relief that I'd never known before.

Nevertheless, the first thing I did after assuring myself that there
were indeed no malicious persons or things lurking under the bed or
elsewhere, was to slip a chair-back under the door-handle. I could,
and did, begin to get a better grip on myself then. I made myself take
a whole hour gradually getting used to full daylight. At the end of it
I knew that thanks to swift first-aid, followed by good doctoring my
eyes were as good as ever.

But still no one came.

On the lower shelf of the bedside table I discovered a pair of dark
glasses thoughtfully put ready against my need of them.

Cautiously I put them on before I went right close to the window.

The 1owe part of it was not made to open, so that
the view was restricted. Squinting down and sideways I could see one
or two people who appeared to be wandering in an odd, kind of aimless
way farther up the street. But what struck me most, and at once, was
the sharpness, the clear definition of everything even the distant
housetops view across the opposite roofs. And then I noticed that no
chimney, large or small, was smoking ... I found-my clothes hung
tidily in a cupboard. I began to feel more normal once I had them on.
There were some cigarettes still in the case. I lit one, and started
to get into the state of mind where, though everything was still
undeniably queer, I could no longer understand why I had been quite so
near panic.

It is not easy to think oneself back to the outlook of those days.

We have to be more self-reliant now. But then there was so much
routine, things were so inter linked Each one of us so steadily did his
little part in the right place that it was easy to mistake habit and
custom for the natur law and all the more disturbing, therefore, when
the routine was in any way upset.

When getting on for half a lifetime has been spent in one conception of
order, reorientation is no five-minute business.

Looking back at the shape of things then, the amount we did not know
and did not care to know about our daily lives is not only astonishing,
but somehow a bit shocking. I knew practically nothing, for instance,
of such ordinary things as how my food reached me, where the fresh
water came from, how the clothes I wore were woven and made, how the
drainage of cities kept them healthy. Our life had become a complexity
of specialists all attending to their own jobs with more or less
efficiency, and expecting others to do the same. That made it
incredible to me, therefore, that complete disorganization could have
overtaken the hospital. Somebody somewhere, I was sure, must have it
in hand unfortunately it was a some body who had forgotten all about
Room 48.

Nevertheless, when I did go to the door again and peer into the
corridor I was forced to realize that what ever had happened it was
affecting a great deal more than the single inhabitant of Room 48.

Just then there was no one in sight, though in the distance I could
hear a pervasive murmur of voices. There was a sound of shuffling
footsteps, too, and occasionally a louder voice echoing hollowly in the
corridors, but nothing like the dan I had shut out before. This time I
did not shout. I stepped out cautiously why cautiously? I don't know.
There was just something that induced it.

It was difficult in that reverberating building to tell where the
sounds were coming from, but one way the passage finished at an
obscured french window, with the shadow of a balcony rail upon it, so I
went the other. Rounding a corner, I found myself out of the
private-room wing and on a broader corridor.

When I first looked along it I thought it empty, then as I moved
forward I saw a figure come out of a shadow. He was a man wearing a
black jacket and striped trousers, with a white cotton coat over
them.

I judged him to be one of the staff doc to - but it was curious that he
should be crouching against the wall and feeling his way along.

"Hullo, there," I said.

He stopped suddenly. The face he turned towards me was grey and
frightened.

"Who are you ?" he asked, uncertainly.

"My name's Masen," I told him."William Masen. I'm a patient Room 48.
And I've come to find out why
"You can see ?" he interrupted,
swiftly.

"Certainly I can. Just as well as ever," I assured him."It's a
wonderful job. Nobody came to un bandage my eyes, so I did it
myself.

I don't think there's any harm done. I took But he interrupted
again.

"Please take me to my office. I must telephone at once." I was slow
to catch on, but everything ever since I woke that morning had been
bewildering
"Whe's thatlv I asked.

"Fifth floor, wet wing. The haree's on the door Doctor Soames."

'_All right," I agreed, in some surprise."Where are we now?" The man
rocked his head from side to side, his face tense and exasperated.

"How the hell should I know ?" he said, bitterly."You've got eyes,
damn it. Use them. Can't you see I'm blind?" There Was nothing to
show that he was blind. His eyes were wide open, and apparently
looking straight at me.

"Wait here a minute," I said. I looked round. I found a large map
painted on the wall opposite the lift gate. I went back and told
him.

"Good. Take my arm," he directed."You turn right as you come out of
the lift. Then take the first passage on the left, said it's the third
door." I followed instructions. We met no one at all on the way.

Inside the room I led him up to the desk, and handed him the telephone.
He listened for some moments. Then he groped about until he found the
rest, and rattled the bar impatiently.

Slowly his expression changed. The irritability and the harassed lines
faded away. He looked simply tired very tired. He put the receiver
down on the desk. For some seconds he stood silently, looking as
though he was staring at the wall opposite.

Then he turned.

"It's useless dead. You dra still here ?" he added.

"Yes," I told him.

His fingers felt along the edge of the desk.

"Which way am I facing ? Where's the damned window ?" he demanded,
with a return of irritability."It's right behind you," I said.

He turned, and stepped towards it, both hands extended.

He felt the sill and the sides carefully, and stepped back a pace.

Before I had realized what he was doing he had launched himself full at
it, and crashed through ...  I didn't look to see.
After all, it was the fifth floor.

When I moved, it was to sit down heavily in the chair. I took a
cigarette from a box on the desk, and lit it shakily. I sat there for
some minutes while I steadied up, and let the sick feeling subside.

After a while it did. I left the room, and went back to the place
where I had first found him. I still wasn't feeling too good when I
got there.

At the far end of the wide corridor were the doors of a ward.

The panels were frosted save for ovals of clear glass at face level. I
reckoned there ought to be someone on duty there that I could report to
about the doctor.

I opened the door. It was pretty dark in there. The curtains had
evidently been drawn after the previous aight's display was over and
they were still drawn."Sister ?" I inquired.

"She ain't 'ere," a man's voice said."What's more," it went on, 'she
ain't been 'ere for ruddy hours, neither. Can't you pull them ruddy
curtains, mate, and let's 'ave some flippin' light ?

Don't know what's come over the bloody place this morning."

"Okay," I agreed.

Even if the whole place were disorganized, it didn't seem to be any
good reason why the unfortunate patients should have to lie in the
dark.

I pulled back the curtains on the nearest window, and let in a shaft of
bright sunlight. It was a surgical ward with about twenty patients,
all bedridden. Leg injuries mostly, several amputations, by the look
of it.

"Stop fooling about with 'em, mate, and pull 'em back," said the same
voice.

I turned and looked at the man who spoke. He was a dark, burly fellow
with a weather-beaten skin. He was sitting up in bed, facing directly
at me and at the light. His eyes seemed to be gazing into my own, so
did his neighbour's, and the next man's ...  For a few moments I stared
back at them. It took that long to register. Then: "I -- they they
seem to be stuck," I said."I'll find someone to see to them." And
with that I fled the ward.

I was shaky again, and I could have done with a stiff drink.

The thing was beginning to sink in. But I found it difficult to
believe that all the men in that ward could be blind, just like the
doctor, and yet ... The lift wasn't working, so I started down the
stairs. On the next, floor I pulled myself together, and plucked up
the courage to look into another ward. The beds there were all
disarranged.

At first I thought the place was empty, but it wasn't - not quite.

Two men in nightclothes lay on the floor. One was soaked in blood from
an unhealed incision, the other looked as if some kind of congestion
had seized him. They were both quite dead. The rest had gone.

Back on the stairs once more, I realized that most of the background
voices I had been hearing all the time were coming up from below, and
that they were louder and closer now.

I hesitated a moment, but there seemed to be nothing for it but to go
on making my way down.

On the next turn I nearly tripped over a man who lay across my way in
the shadow. At the bottom of the flight lay somebody who actually had
tripped over him and cracked his head on the stone steps as he
landed.

At last I reached the final turn where I could stand and look down into
the main hall. Seemingly everyone in the place who was able to move
must have made instinctively for that spot either with the idea of
finding help or of getting outside. Perhaps some of them had got
out.

One of the main entrance doors was wide open, but most of them couldn't
find it. There was a tight-packed mob of men and women, nearly all of
them in their hospital nightclothes, milling slowly and helplessly
around. The motion pressed those on the outskirts cruelly against
marble corners or ornamental projections. Some of them were crushed
breathlessly against the walls. Now and then one would trip. If the
press of bodies allowed him to fall, there was little chance that it
would let him come up again.

The place looked well, you'll have seen some of Dor's pictures of
sinners in hell. But Dor couldn't include the sounds: the sobbing, the
murmurous moaning, and occasionally a forlorn cry.

A minute or two of it was all I could stand. I fled back up the
stairs.

There was the feeling that I ought to do something about it.

Lead them out into the street, perhaps, and at least put an end to that
dreadful slow milling. But a glance had been enough to show that I
could not hope to make my way to the door to guide them there.

Besides, if I were to, if I did get them outside what then ?

I sat down on a step for a while to get over it, with my head in my
hands and that awful conglomerate sound in my ears all the time.

Then I searched for, and found, another staircase. It was a narrow
sexy ice flight which led me out by a back way into the yard.

Maybe I'm not telling this part too well. The whole thing was so
unexpected and shocking that for a time I deliberately tried not to
remember the details. Just then I was feeling much as though it were a
nightmare from which I was desperately but vainly seeking the relief of
waking myself. As I stepped out into the yard I still half-refused to
believe what I had seen.

But one thing I was perfectly certain about. Reality or nightmare, I
needed a drink as I had seldom needed one before.

There was nobody in sight in the little side street outside the yard
gates, but almost opposite stood a pub. I can recall its name now
"The Ahme'm Arms'. There was a board bearing a reputed likeness of
Viscount Montgomery hanging from an iron bracket, and below, one of the
doors stood open. I made straight for it.

Stepping into the public bag gave me for the moment a comforting sense
of normality. It was prosaically and familiurly like dozens of others.

But although there was no one in that part, there was certainly
something going on in the saloon bar, round the corner.

I heard heavy breathing. A cork left its bottle with a pop. A pause.
Then a voice remarked: "Gin, blast it! T'hell with gin?

There followed a shattering crash. The voice gave a sozzled chuckle.

"Thash the mirror. Wash good of mirrors, anywayl Another cork
popped.

"S damned gin again," complained the voice, offended.

with gin." This time the bottle hit something soft, thudded to the
floor, and lay there gurgling away its contents.

"Hey!' I called."I want a drink." There was a silence. Then:
"Who're you ?" the voice inquired, cautiously.

"I'm from the hospital," I said."I want a drink."

"Don' 'member y'r
voice. Can you see?"

"Yes," I told him.

"Well then, for God's sake get over the bar, Doc, and find me a bottle
of whisky."

"I'm doctor enough for that," I said.

I climbed across, and went round the corner. A large bellied red-faced
man with a greying walrus mustache stood there clad only in trousers and
a collarless shirt. He was fairly drunk. He seemed undecided whether
to open the bottle he held in his hand, or to use it as a weapon.

"F you're not a doctor, what are you iv he demufided, suspiciously.

"I was a patient but I need a drink as much as any doctor," I said.
"That's gin again you've got there," I added.

"Oh, is it! B-- gin," he said, and slung it away. It went through the
window with a lively crash.

"Give me that corkscrew," I told him_

I took down a bottle of whisky from the shelf, opened it, and handed it
to him with a glass. For myself I chose a stiff brandy with very
little soda, and then another. After that my hand wasn't shaking so
much.

I looked at my companion. He was taking his whisky neat, out of the
bottle.

"You'll get drunk," I said.

He paused and turned his head towards me. I could have sworn that his
eyes really saw me.

"Get drunk I Damn it, I am drunk," he said, scornfully.

He was so perfectly right that I didn't comment. He brooded a moment
before he announced: "Gotta get drunker. Gotta get mush drunker." He
leaned closer."D'you know what ? - I'm blind. Thash what I am
blind's a bat. Everybody's blind's a bat."Cept you. Why aren't you
blind's a bat ?"

"I don't know," I told him.

"S that bloody comet, b-- it l Thash what done it. Green shootin'
shtarsh - an' now everyone's blind's a bat. D'ju shee green shootin'
shtarshiv
"No," I admitted.

"There you are. Proves it. You didn't see 'em: you aren't blind.

Everyone else saw 'em' - he waved an expressive arm 'all's blind's
bats. B-- comets, I say." I poured myself a third brandy, wondering
whether there might not be something in what he was saying."Everyone
blind ?" I repeated.

"Thash it. All of 'em. Prob'ly everyone in the world 'cept you," he
added, as an afterthought.

"How do you know ?" I asked.

"S'easy. Listen? he said.

We stood side by side leaning on the bar of the dingy pub, and
listened. There was nothing to be heard nothing but the rustle of a
dirty newspaper blown down the empty street. Such a quietness held
everything as cannot have been known in those parts for a thousand
years and more.

"See what I mean?"

"S'obvious," said the man.

"Yes," I said slowly."Yes I see what you mean." I decided that I
must get along. I did not know where to.

But I must find out more about what was happening.

"Are you the landlord ?" I asked him.

"Wha' if I am ?" he demanded, defensively.

"Only that I've got to pay someone for the double brandies."

"Ah
forget it."

"But, look here * "Forget it, I tell you. D'ju know
why?

"Cause what's the good'f money to a dead man ? An' th ash what I am 's
good as. Jus' a few more drinks." He looked a pretty robust specimen
for his age, and I said so.

"Wha's good of living blind's a bat iv he demanded, aggressively.

"Thash what my wife said. An' she was right only she's more guts than
I have. When she found as the kids was blind too, what did she do ?
Took 'em into our bed with her, mad turned on the gas. Thash what she
done. An' I hadn't the guts to stick with 'em. She's got pluck, my
wife, more'n I have. But I will have soon. I'm going' back up there
soon when I'm drunk enough." What was there to say ? What I did say
served no purpose save to spoil his temper. In the end he groped his
way to the stairs and disappeared up them, bottle in hand. I didn't
try to stop him, or follow him_ I watched him go. Then I knocked back
the last of my brandy, and went out into the silent street.

Z
THE COMING OF THE TRIFFIDS THIS is a personal record. It involves a
great deal that has vanished for ever, but I can't tell it In any other
way than by using the words we used to use for those vanished things,
so they have to stand. But even to make the setting intelligible I
find that I shall have to go back farther than the point at which I
started: When I was a child we lived, my father, my mother, and myself,
in a southern suburb of London. We had a small house which my father
supported by conscientious daily attendance at his desk in the Inland
Revenue Department, and a small garden at which he worked rather harder
during the summer.

There was not a lot to distinguish us from the ten or twelve million
other people who used to live in and around London in those days.

My father was one of those persons who could add a column of figures
even of the ridiculous coinage then in use locally with a flick of the
eye, so that it was natural for him to have in mind that I should
become an accountant. As a result, my inability to make any column of
figures reach the same total twice caused me to be something of a
mystery as well as a disappointment to him. Still, there it was: just
one of those things. And each of a succession of teachers who tried to
show me that mathematical answers were derived logically and not
through some form of esoteric inspiration was forced to give up with
the assurance that I had no head for figures. My father would read my
school reports with a gloom which in other respects they scarcely
warranted. His mind worked, I think, this way: no head for figures no
idea of finance no money'.

THE DAY OV THE TRIFFID$

"I really don't know what we shall do with you. What do you want to do
?" he would ask.

And until I was thirteen or fourteen I would shake my head, conscious
of my sad inadequacy, and admit that I did not know.

My father would then shake his head.

For him the world was divided sharply into desk-men who worked with
their brains, and non-desk-men who didn't, and got ditty How he
contrived to maintain this view which was already a century or so out
of date I do not know, but it pervaded my early years to such an extent
that I was late in perceiving that a weakness in figures did not of
necessity condemn me to the life of a street-sweeper or a scullion.

It did not occur to me that the subject which interested me most could
lead to a career and my father failed either to notice, or, if he did,
to care that reports on my biology were consistently good.

It was the appearance of the triffids which really decided the matter
for us. Indeed, they did a lot more than that for me.

They provided me with a job and comfortably supported me.

They also on several occasions almost took my life. On the other hand,
I have to admit that they preserved it, too, for it was a triffid sting
that had landed me in hospital on the critical occasion of the 'comet
debris'.

In the books there is quite a lot of loose speculation on the sudden
occurrence of the triffids. Most of it is nonsense. Certainly they
were not spontaneously generated as many simple souls believed.

Nor did most people endorse the theory that they were a kind of sample
visitation harbingers of worse to come if the world did not mend its
ways and behave its troublesome self. Nor did their seeds float to us
through space as specimens of the horrid forms life might assume upon
other, less favoured worlds at least, I am satisfied that they did
not.

I learned more about it than most people because triffids were my job,
and the firm I worked for was intimately, if not very gracefully,
concerned in their public appearance. Nevertheless, their true origin
still remains obscure. My own belief, for what it is worth, is that
they were the outcome of a series of
ingenious biological meddlings and very likely accidental at that.

Had they been evolved anywhere but in the region they were we should
doubtless have had a well-documented ancestry for them. As it was, no
authoritative statement was ever published by those who must have been
best qualified to know. The reason for this lay, no doubt, in the
curious political conditions then prevailing.

The world we lived in then was wide, and most of it was open to us,
with little trouble. Roads, railways, and shipping nes laced it, ready
to carry one thousands of miles safely and in comfort. If we wanted to
travel more swiftly still, and could afford it, we travelled by
aeroplane. There was no need for anyone to take weapons or even
precautions in those days.

You could go just as you were to wherever you wished, with nothing to
hinder you other than a lot of forms and regulations. A world so tamed
sounds utopian now. Nevertheless, it was so over five-sixths of the
globe though the remaining sixth was something different again.

It must be difficult for young people who never knew it to envisage a
world like that. Perhaps it sounds like a golden age though it wasn't
quite that to those who lived in it. Or they may think that an Earth
ordered and cultivated almost all over sounds dull - but it wasn't
that, either. It was rather an exciting place for a biologist, anyway.
Every year we were pushing the northern limit of growth for food plants
a little farther back. New fields were growing quick crops on what had
historically been simply tundra or barren land.

Every season, too, stretches of desert both old and recent were
reclaimed and made to grow grass or food. For food was then our most
pressing problem, and the progress of the regenertion schemes and the
advance of the cultivation lines on the maps was followed with almost
as much attention as an earlier generation had paid to battle-fronts.

Such a swerve of interest from swords to plough shares was undoubtedly
a social improvement, but, at the same time, it was a mistake for the
optimistic to claim it as showing a change in the human spirit. The
human spirit continued much as before ninety-five per cent of it
wanting to live in peace; and the other five per cent considering its
chances if it should risk starting anything.

It was chiefly because no one's chances looked too good that the lull
continued.

Meanwhile, with something like twenty-five million new mouths begging
for food every year the supply problem became steadily worse, and after
years of ineffective propaganda a couple of atrocious harvests had at
last made the people aware of its urgency.

The factor which had caused the militant five per cent to relax a while
from fomenting discord was the satellites. Sustained research in
rocketry had at last succeeded in attaining one of its objectives. It
had sent up a missile which stayed up.

It was, in fact, possible to rite a rocket far enough up for it to fall
into an orbit round the earth. Once there it would continue to circle
like a tiny moon, quite inactive and innocuous until the pressure on a
button should give it the impulse to drop back, with devastating
effect.

Great as was the public concern which followed the triumphant
announcement of the first nation to establish a satellite weapon
satisfactorily, a still greater concern was felt Over the failure of
others to make any announcement at all even when they were known to
have had similar successes. It was by no means pleasant to realize
that there was an unknown number of menaces up there over your head,
quietly circling and circling until someone should arrange for them to
drop and that there was nothing to be done about them. Still, life has
to go on and novelty is a wonderfully short-lived thing. One became
used to the idea perforce. From time to time there would be a panicky
flare-up of expostulation when reports circulated that as well as
satellites with atomic heads there were others with such things as crop
diseases, cattle diseases, radioactive dusts, viruses, and infections
not only of familiar kinds, but brand-new sorts recently thought up in
laboratories, all THE COMING OF The TRIFFIDS 29 floating around up
there. Whether such uncertain and potentially back-firing weapons had
actually been placed is hard to say. But then, the limits of folly
itself particularly of folly with fear on its heels are not easy to
define. A virulent organism, unstable enough to become harmless in the
course of a few days (and who is to say that such could not be bred ?)
could be considered to have strategic uses if dropped in suitable
spots.

At least the United States Government took the suggestion seriously
enough to deny emphatically that it controlled any satellites designed
to conduct biological warfare directly upon human beings. One or two
minor nations, whom no one suspected of controlling any satellites at
all, hastened to make similar declarations. Other, and major, powers
did not. In the face of this ominous reticence the public began
demanding to know why the United States had neglected to prepare for a
form of warfare which others were ready to use and just what did
'directly' mean, anyway? At this point all parties tacitly gave up
denying or confirming anything about satellites, and an intensified
effort was made to divert the public interest to the no less important,
but far less acrimonious, matter of food scarcity.

The laws of supply and demand should have enabled the more enterprising
to organize commodity monopolies, but the world at large had become
antagonistic to declared monopolies. However, the laced-company system
really worked very smoothly without anything so imputable as Articles
of Federation. The general public heard scarcely anything of such
little difficulties within the pattern as had to be untangled from time
to time. Hardly anyone heard of even the existence of Umberto
Christoforo Palanguez, for instance. I only heard of him myself years
later in the course of my work.

Umberto was of assorted Latin descent, and something South American by
nationality. His first appearance as a possibly disruptive spanner in
the neat machinery of the edible oil interests occurred when he walked
into the offices of the Arctic and European Fish-Oil Company, and
produced a bottle of pale pink oil in which he proposed to interest
them.

Arctic and European displayed no eagerness. The trade was pretty well
tied up. However, they did in the course of time get around to
analysing the sample he had left with them.

The first thing they discovered about it was that it was not a
fish-oil, anyway: it was vegetable, though they could not identify the
source. The second revelation was that it made most of their best
fish-oils look like grease-box fillers. Alarmed, they sent out what
remained of the sample for intensive study, and put round hurried
inquiries to know if Mr Palanguez had mad other approaches.

When Umberto called again the managing director received him with
flattering attention.

"That is a very remarkable oil you brought us, Mr Palanguez," he
said.

Umberto nodded his sleek, dark head. He was well aware of the fact.

"I have never seen anything quite like it," the managing director
admitted.

Umberto nodded again.

"No ?" he said, politely. Then, seemingly as an afterthought, he
added: "But I think you will, sehor. A very great deal of it." He
appeared to ponder."It will, I think, come on the market seven, maybe
eight, years from now." He smiled.

The managing director thought that unlikely. He said, with a frank
air: "It is better than our fish-oils."

"So I am told, senior,"
agreed Umberto.

"You are proposing to market it yourself, Mr. Palanguez ?" Umberto
smiled again.

"Would I being showing it to you if I did?"

"We might reinforce one of
our own oils synthetically," observed the managing director,
reflectively.

"With some of the vitamins but it would be costly to synthesize all of
them: even if you could," Umberto said gently.

"Besides," he added,
"I am told that this oil will easily undersell your best fish-oils,
anyway."

"H'm," said the managing director."Well, I suppose you have
a proposition, Mr Palanguez.

Shall we come to it ?" Umberto explained: "There are two ways of
dealing with such an unfortunate matter. The usual one is to prevent
it happening or at least to delay it until the capital sunk in present
equipment has been paid off. That is, of course, the desirable way."

The managing director nodded. He knew plenty about that.

"But this time I am so so ray for you, because, you see, it is not
possible." The managing director had his doubts. His inclination was
to say,
"You'd be surprised," but he resisted it, and contented himself with a
non-committah
"Oh ?"

"The other way," suggested Umberto, 'is to produce the thing
yourself before the trouble starts."

"Ah!" said the managing
director.

"I think," Umberto told him,
"I think that I might be able to supply you with seeds of this plant
in, maybe, six months' time.

if you were to plant then you could begin production of oil in five
years or it might be six for full yield."

"Just nicely in time, in
fact," observed the managing director.

Umberto nodded.

"The other way would be simpler," remarked the managing director.

"If it were possible at all," Umberto agreed."But unfortunately your
competitors are not approachable or suppressible." He made the
statement with a confidence which caused the managing director to study
him thoughtfully for some moments.

"I see," he said at last."I wonderer you don't happen to be s Soviet
citizen, Mr Palanguez iv
"No," said Umberto."On the whole my life has been lucky but I have
very varied connexions ... That brings us to considering the other
sixth of the world that part which one could
not visit with such facility as the rest. Indeed, permits to visit the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were almost unobtainable, and the
movements of those who did achieve them were strictly circumscribed. It
had deliberately organized itself into a land of mystery. Little of
what went on behind the veiling secrecy which was almost pathological
in the region was known to the rest of the world.

What was was usually suspect. Yet, behind the curious propaganda which
distributed the laughable while concealing all likely to be of the
least importance, achievements undoubtedly went on in many fields.

One was biology. Russia, who shared with the rest of the world the
problem of increasing food supplies, was known to have been intensively
concerned with attempts to reclaim desert, steppe, and the northern
tundra.

In the days when information was still exchanged she had reported some
successes. Later, however, a cleavage of methods and views had caused
biology there, under a man called Lysenko, to take a different course.
It, too, then succumbed to the endemic secrecy. The lines it had taken
were unknown, and thought to be unsound but it was anybody's guess
whether very successful, very silly, or very queer things were
happening there if not all three at once.

"Sunflowers," said the managing director, speaking absentmindedly out
of his own reflections."I happen to know they were haying another
shot at improving the yield of Sunflowerseed off. But it isn't that."

"No," agreed Umberto."It is not that." The managing director
doodled.

"Seeds, you said. Do you mean that it is some new species ?

Because if it is merely some improved strain more easily processed - `i
understand that it is a new species - something quite new." When you
haven't actually seen it yourself? It may, in fact, be some modified
kind of sunflower ?"

"I have seen a picture, senior. I do not say
there is no sunflower there at all I do not say there is no turnip
there. I do
not say that there is no nettle or even no orchid there. But I do say
that if they were all fathers to it they would none of them know their
child. I do not think it would please them greatly, either."

"I see.
Now what was the figure you had in mind for getting us the seeds of
this thing ?" Umberto named a sum which stopped the managing
director's doodling quite abruptly. It made him take off his glasses
to regard the speaker more closely. Umberto was unabashed.

"Consider, senior," he said, ticking off points on his fingers.

"It is difficult. And it is dangerous very dangerous. I do not fear
but I do not go to danger to amuse myself. There is another man, a
Russian. I shall have to bring him away, and he must be paid well.
There will be others that he must pay first. Also I must buy an
aeroplane a jet aeroplane, very fast.

All these things cost money.

"And I tell you it is not easy. You must have seeds that are good.
Many of the seeds of this plant are infertile. To make sure, I have to
bring you seeds that have been sorted. They are valuable. And in
Russia everything is a state secret and guarded. Certainly it will not
be easy."

"I believe that. But all the same
"Is it so much, senior ?
What will you say in a few years when these Russians are selling their
oil all over the world and your company is finished ?"

"It will need thinking over, Mr Palanguez."

"But of course, senior,'
Umberto agreed, with a smile."I can wait a little while. But I'm
afraid I cannot reduce my price." Nor did he.

The discoverer and the inventor are the bane of business.

A little sand in the works is comparatively a mere nothing you just
replace the damaged parts, and go on. But the appearance of a new
process, a new substance, when you are all organized and tickling
nicely, is the very devil. Sometimes it is worse than that- it just
cannot be allowed to occur. Too much is at stake. If you can't use
legal methods, you must try others.

For Umberto had understated the case. It was not simply that the
competition of a cheap new oil would send Arctic and European and their
associates out of business. The effects would be widespread. It might
not be fatal to the groundnut, the olive, the whale, and a number of
other oil industries, but it would)>e a nasty knock. Moreover, there
would be violent repercussions in dependent industries, in margarine,
soap, and a hundred more products from face-creams to house-paints, and
beyond. Indeed, once a few of the more influential concerns had
grasped the quality of the menace Umberto's terms came to seem almost
modest.

He got his agreement, for his samples were convincing, if the rest was
somewhat vague.

In point of fact it cost those interested quite a lot less than they
had undertaken to pay, for after Umberto went off with his aeroplane
and his advance he was never seen again. But that is not to say he was
altogether unheard of.

Some years later an indeterminate individual giving simply the name
Fedor turned up at the offices of Arctic and European Oils. (They had
dropped
"Fish' from both their title and activities then.) He was, he said, a
Russian. He would like he said, some money, if the kind capitalists
would be good enough to spare some.

His story was that he had been employed in the first experimental
triffid station in the district of Elovsk in tcamchatka. It was a
forlorn place, and he greatly disliked it. His desire to get away had
caused him to listen to a suggestion from another worker there, to be
specific, one Tovarich Nikolai Alexandrovich Bakinoff, and the
suggestion had been backed up by several thousand roubles.

It did not require a great deal of earning. He had simply to remove a
box of sorted fertile triffid seeds from its rack, and substitute a
similar box of infertile seeds. The purloined box was to be left at a
certain place at a certain time. There was 5
practically no risk. It might be years before the substitution was
discovered.

A further requirement, however, was a little more tricky.

He was to see that a pattern of lights was laid out on a large field a
mile or two from the plantation. He was to be there himself on a
certain night. He would hear an aeroplane flying directly above. He
would switch on the lights. The plane would land. The best thing he
could do then would be to get away from the neighbour hood as soon as
possible before anyone should arrive to investigate.

For these services he would receive not only the comfortable wad of
roubles, but if he should succeed in leaving Russia he would find more
money waiting for him at the offices of Arctic and European, in
England.

By his account the operation had gone entirely to plan.

Fedor had not waited once the plane was down. He had switched off the
lights, and beat it.

The plane had stopped only a short time, perhaps not ten minutes,
before it took off again. From the sound of the jets he judged that it
was climbing steeply as it went. A minute or so after the noise had
died away he heard the sound of engines again. Some more planes went
over headed east, after the other. There might have been two, or more,
he could not tell. But they were travelling very fast, with their jets
shrieking ... The next day Comrade Baltinoff was missing. There had
been a lot of trouble, but in the end it was decided that Baltinoff
must have been working alone. So it had all passed off safely for
Fedor.

He had cautiously waited for a year before he made a move.

It had cost him almost the last of his roubles by the time he had
bought his way through the final obstacles. Then he had had to take
various jobs to live, so that he had spent a long time in reaching
England. But now he had, could he have some money, please ?

Something had been heard about Elovsk by that time. And the date he
gave for the plane landing was within probability.

So they gave him some money. They also gave him a job, and told him to
keep his mouth shut. For it was clear that though Umberto had not
personally delivered the goods, he had at least saved the situation by
broadcasting them.

Arctic-European had not at first connected the appearance of the
triffids with Umberto, and the police of several countries went on
keeping an eye open for him on their behalf. It was not until some
investigator produced a specimen of triffid oil for their inspection
that they realized that it corresponded exactly with the sample Umberto
had shown there and that it was he seeds of the trifd he had set out to
bring.

Wlaat happened to Umberto himself will never be definitely known.

It is my guess that over the Pacific Ocean, somewhere high up in the
stratosphere he and Comrade Baltinoff found themselves attacked by the
planes that Fedor had heard in pursuit. It may be that the first they
knew of it was when cannon-shells from Russian fighters started to
break up the. fir And I think, too, that one of those shells blew to
pieces s certain twelve Cinch cube of plywood the receptacle like a
small tea-chest in which, according to Fedor, the seeds were packed.

Perhaps Umberto's plane exploded, perhaps it just fell to pieces.

Whichever it was, I am sure that when the fragments began their long,
long fall towards the sea they left behind them something which looked
at first like a white vapour.

It was not vapour. It was a cloud of seeds, floating, so infinitely
light they were, even in the rarefied air. Millions of gossamer-slung
triffid seeds, free now to dlrift where the winds of the world should
take them ...  It might be weeks, perhaps months, before they would sink
to earth at last, many of them thousands of miles from their starting
place.

That is, I repeat, conjecture. But I cannot see a more probable way in
which that plant, intended to be kept secret, could
come, quite suddenly, to be found in almost every part of
the world.

My introduction to a triffid came early. It so happened that we had
one of the first in the locality growing in our own garden.

The plant was quite well developed before any of us bothered to notice
it, for it had taken root along with a number of other casuals behind
the bit of hedge that screened the rubbish heap.

It wasn't doing any harm there, and it wasn't in anyone's way.

So when we did notice it later on we'd just take a look at it now and
then to see how it was getting along, and let it be.

However, a triffid is certainly distinctive, and we couldn't help
getting a bit curious about it after a time. Not, perhaps, very
actively, for there are always a few unfamiliar things that somehow or
other manage to lodge in the neglected corners of a garden, but enough
to mention to one another that it was beginning to look a pretty queer
sort of thing.

Nowadays when everyone knows only too well what a triffid looks like it
is difficult to recall how odd and somehow foreign the first ones
appeared to us. Nobody, as far as I know, felt any misgiving or alarm
about them then. I imagine that most people thought of them when they
thought of them at all in much the same way that my father did.

I have a picture in my memory of him examining ours and puzzling over
it at a time when it must have been about a year old. In almost every
detail it was a half-size replica of a fully grown triffid - only it
didn't have a name yet, and no one had seen one fully grown. My father
leant over, peering at it through his horn-rimmed glasses, fingering
its stalk, and blowing gently through his gingery mustache as was his
habit when thoughtful. He inspected the straight stem, and the woody
hole from which it sprang. He gave curious, if not very penetrative
attention to the three small, bare sticks which grew straight up beside
the stem. He smoothed the short sprays of leathery green leaves
between his finger and thumb as if their texture might tell him
something. Then he peered into the curious, funnel-like formation at
the top of the stem, still puffing reflectively but inconclusively
through his mustache. I remember the first time he lifted me up to
look inside that conical cup and see the tightly-wrapped whorl within.
It looked not unlike the new, close-rolled frond of a fern, emerging a
couple of inches from a sticky mess in the base of the cup. I did not
touch it, but I knew the stuff must be sticky because there were flies
and other small insects struggling in it.

More than once my father ruminated that it was pretty queer, and
observed that one of these days he really must try to find out what it
was. I don't think he ever made the effort, nor, at that stage, was he
likely to have learned much if he had tried.

The thing would be about four feet high then. There must have been
plenty of them about, growing up quietly and inoffensively, with nobody
taking any particular notice of the mat least, it seemed so, for if the
biological or botanical experts were excited over them no news of their
interest percolated to the general public. And so the one in our
garden continued its growth peacefully, as did thousands like it in
neglected spots all over the world.

It was some little time later that the first one picked up its roots,
and walked.

That improbable achievement must, of course, have been known for some
time in Russia where it was doubtless classified as a state secret, but
as far as I have been able to confirm its first occurrence in the
outside world took place in Indo-China -which meant that people went on
taking practically no notice.

Indo-China was one of those regions from which such curious and
unlikely yarns might be expected to drift in, and frequently did the
kind of thing an editor might conceivably use if news were scarce and a
touch of the 'mysterious East' would liven the paper up a bit. But in
any case the Indo-Chinese specimen can have had no great lead. Within
a few weeks reports of walking plants were pouring in from Sumatra,
Borneo, 39 Belgian Congo, Colombia, Brazil,
and most places in the neighbour hood of the equator.

This time they got into print, all right. But the much handled stories
written up with that blend of cautiously defensive frivolity which the
Press habitually employed to cover themselves in matters regarding
sea-serpents, elementals, thought-transference, and other irregular
phenomena prevented anyone from realizing that these accomplished
plants at all resembled the quiet, respectable weed beside our rubbish
heap. Not until the pictures began to appear did we realize that they
were identical with it save in size.

The news-reel men were quickly off the mark. Possibly they got some
good and interesting pictures for their trouble of flying to outlandish
places, but there was a current theory among cutters that more than a
few seconds of any one news subject - except a boxing match - could not
fail to paralyse an audience with boredom. My first view, therefore,
of a development which was to play such an important part in my future,
as well as in so many other people's, was a glimpse sandwiched between
a hula contest in Honolulu, and the First Lady launching a battleship.
(That is no anachronism. They were still building them; even admirals
had to live.) I was permitted to see a few triffids sway across the
screen to the kind of accompaniment supposed to be on the level of the
great movie going public: "And now, folks, get a load of what our
cameraman found in Ecuador. Vegetables on vacation. You've only seen
this kind of thing after a party, but down in sunny Ecuador they see it
any time and no hangover to foil owl Monster plants on the marchl Say,
that's given me a big ideal Maybe if we can educate our potatoes right
we can fix it so they'll walk right into the pot. How'd that be, Momma
?" For the short time the scene was on, I stared at it, fascinated.

There was our mysterious rubbish-heap plant grown to a height of seven
feet or more. There was no mistaking it and it was 'walking' I The
hole, which I now saw for the first time, was shaggy with little
rootlet hairs. It would have been almost spherical but for three
bhintly-tapered projections extending from the lower part. Supported
on these, the main body was lifted about a foot clear of the ground.

When it 'walked' it moved rather like a man on crutches.

Two of the blunt 'legs' slid forward, then the whole thing lurched as
the rear one drew almost level with them, then the two in front slid
forward again. At each 'step' the long stem whipped violently back and
forth: it gave one a kind of seasick feeling to watch it. As a method
of progress it looked both strenuous and clumsy faintly reminiscent of
young elephants at play. One felt that if it were to go on lurching
for long in that fashion it would be bound to strip all its leaves if
it did not actually break its stem. Nevertheless, ungainly though it
looked, it was contriving to cover the ground at something like an
average walking pace.

That was about all I had time to see before the battleship launching
began. It was not a lot, but it was enough to incite an investigating
spirit in a boy. For, if that thing in Ecuador could do a trick like
that, why not the one in our garden ?

Admittedly ours was a good deal smaller, but it did look the same ... 
About ten minutes after I got home I was digging round our triffid,
carefully loosening the earth near it to encourage it to 'walk."

Unfortunately there was an aspect of this self-propelled plant
discovery which the news-reel people had either not experienced, or
chosen for some reason of their own not to reveal. There was no
warning, either. I was bending down intent on clearing the earth
without harming the plant, when something from nowhere hit me one
terrific slam, and knocked me out ...  I woke up to find myself in bed,
with my mother, my father, and the doctor watching me anxiously. My
head felt as if it were split open, I was aching all over, and, as I
later discovered, THE COMING OF THE TRIFFID$ one side of my face was
decorated with a blotchy-red raised weal. The insistent questions as
to how I came to be lying unconscious in the garden were quite useless;
I had no faintest idea what it was that had hit me. And some little
time passed before I learned that I must have been one of the first
persons in England to be stung by a triffid and get away with it. The
triffid was, of course, immature. But before I had fully recovered my
father had found out what had undoubtedly happened to me, and by the
time I went into the garden again he had wreaked stern vengeance on our
triffid, and disposed of the rernin On a bonfire ...  Now that walking
plants were established facts the Press lost its former tepidity, and
bathed them in publicity. So a name had to be found for them. Already
there were botanists wallowing after their custom in polysyllabic
dog-Latin and Greek to produce variants on ambulans and pseudo podia
but what the newspapers and the public wanted was something easy on the
tongue and not too heavy on the headlines for general use. If you
could see the papers of that time you would find them referring to:
Trichots Trinits Tricusps Tripedais Trigenatea Tripeds Trigohs Triquets
Trilogs Tripods Tridentarea Trippets and a number of other mysterious
things not even beginning with 'tri' though almost all cent red on the
feature of that active, three-pronged root.

There was argument, public, private, and bar-parlour, with heated
championship of one term or another on near-scientific, quasi.
etymological and a number of other grounds, but 4z
gradually one term began to dominate this philological
gymkhana.

In its first form it was not quite acceptable, but common usage
modified the original long first 'i', and custom quickly wrote in a
second 'f', to leave no doubt about it. And so emerged the standard
term. A catchy little name originating in some newspaper office as a
handy label for an oddity but destined one day to be associated with
pain, fear, and misery TRIFFID?* . , The first wave of public interest
soon ebbed away. Triffids were, admittedly, a bit weird but that was,
after all, just because they were novelties. People had Felt the same
about novelties of other days about kangaroos, giant lizards, black
swans. And, when you came to think of it, were triffids all that much
queerer than mud fish ostriches, tadpoles, and a hundred other things ?
The bat was an animal that had learned to fly: well, here was a plant
that had learned to walk what of that?

But there were Features of it to be less casually dismissed.

On its origins the Russians, true to type, lay low and said nuts.

Even those who had heard of Umberto did not yet connect him with it.

Its sudden appearance, and even more, its wide distribution promoted
very puzzled speculation. For though it matured more rapidly in the
tropics, specimens in various stages of development were reported from
almost any region outside the polar circles and the deserts.

People were surprised, and a little disgusted, to learn that the
species was carnivorous, and that the flies and other insects caught in
the cups were actually digested by the sticky substance there. We in
temperate zones were not ignorant of insectivorous plants, but we were
unaccustomed to find them outside special hothouses, and apt to
consider them as in some way slightly indecent, or at least
improper.

But actually alarming was the discovery that the whorl topping a
triffid's stem could lash out with a slender stinging weapon ten long,
4 capable of discharging enough poison to
kill a man if it struck squarely on his unprotected skin.

As soon as this danger was appreciated there followed a nervous
smashing and chopping of triffids ever? where until it occurred to
someone that all that was necessary to make them harmless was the
removal of the actual stinging weapon.

At this, the slightly hysterical assault upon the plants declined, with
their numbers considerably thinned. A little later it began to be a
fashion to have a safely-docked triffid or two about one's garden.

It was found that it took about two years for the lost sting to be
dangerously replaced, so that an annual pruning assured that they were
in a state of safety where they could provide vast amusement for the
children.

In temperate countries, where man had succeeded in putting most forms
of nature save his own under a reasonable degree of restraint, the
status of the triffid was thus made quite clear.

But in the tropics, particularly in the dense forest areas, they
quickly became a scourge.

The traveller very easily failed to notice one among the normal bushes
and undergrowth, and the moment he was in range the venomous sting
would slash out. Even the regular inhabitant of such a district found
it difficult to detect a motionless triffid cunningly lurking beside a
jungle path. They were uncannily sensitive to any movement near them,
and it was hard to take them unawares.

Dealing with them became a serious problem in such regions.

The most favoured method was to shoot the top off the stem, and the
sting with it. The jungle natives took to carrying long, light poles
mounted with hooked knives which they used effectively if they could
get their blows in first but not at all if the triffid had a chance to
sway forward and increase its range by an unexpected four or five feet.
Before long, however, these pike-like devices were mostly superseded by
spring operated guns of various types. Most of them shot spinning
discs, crosses, or small boomerangs of thin steel. As a rule they were
inaccurate above about twelve yards, though capable of
slicing a triffid stem neatly at twenty-five if they hit it. Their
invention pleased both the authorities who had an almost unanimous
distaste for the indiscriminate toting of rifles and the users who
found the missiles of razor-blade steel far cheaper and lighter than
cartridges, and admirably adaptable to silent banditry.

Elsewhere immense research into the nature, habits, and constitution of
the triffid went on. Earnest experimenters set out to determine in the
interests of science how far and for how long it could walk; whether it
could be said to have a front, or could perform its march in any
direction with equal clumsiness; what proportion of its time it must
spend with its roots in the ground; what reactions it showed to the
presence of various chemicals in the soil; and a vast quantity of other
questions, both useful and useless.

The largest specimen ever observed in the tropics stood nearly ten feet
high. No European specimen over eight feet had been seen, and the
average was little over seven. They appeared to adapt easily to a wide
range of climate and soils.

They had, it seemed, no natural enemies other than man.

But there were a number of not un obvious characteristics which escaped
comment for some little time. It was, for instance, quite a while
before anyone drew attention to the uncanny accuracy with which they
aimed their stings, and that they almost invariably struck for the
head. Nor did anyone at first take notice of their habit of lurking
near their fallen victims. The reason for that only became clear when
it was shown that they fed upon flesh as well as upon insects. The
stinging tendril did not have the muscular power to tear firm flesh,
but it had strength enough to pull shreds from a decomposing body and
lift them to the cup on its stem.

There was no great interest, either, in the three little leafless
sticks at the base of the stem. There was a light notion that they
might have something to do with the reproductive system that system
which tends to be a sort of botanical glory-hole for all parts of
doubtful purpose until they can be sorted
out and more specifically assigned later on. It was assumed,
consequently, that their characteristic of suddenly losing their
immobility and rattling a rapid tattoo against the main stem was some
strange form of triffidian amatory exuberanc Possibly my uncomfortable
distinction of getting myself stung so early in the triffid era had the
effect of stimulating my interest, for I seemed to have a sort of link
with them from then on. I spent or 'wasted', if you look at me through
my father's eyes a great deal of fascinated time watching them.

One could not blame him for considering this a worthless pursuit, yet,
later, the time turned out to have been better employed than either of
us suspected, for it was just before I left school that the Arctic and
European Fish-Oil Company reconstituted itself, dropping the word
"Fish' in the process.

The public learned that it and similar companies in other countries
were about to farm triffids on a large scale in order to extract
valuable oils and juices, and to press highly nutritious oil-cake for
stock feeding. Consequently, triffids moved into the realm of big
business overnight.

Right away I decided my future. I applied to the Arctic and European
where my qualifications got me a job on the production side.

My father's disapproval was somewhat qualified by the rate of pay,
which was good for my age. But when I spoke enthusiastically of the
future he blew doubtfully through his mustache. He had real faith only
in a type of work steadied by long tradition, but he let me have my
way."After all, if the thing isn't a success you'll find out young
enough to start in on something more solid," he conceded.

There turned out to be no need for that. Before he and my mother were
killed together in a holiday air-bus crash five years later they had
seen the new companies drive all cornpethag oils off the market, and
those of us who had been in at the beginning apparently well set for
life.

One of the early comers was my friend Walter Lucknor.

There had been some doubt at first about taking Walter on.

He knew little of agriculture, less of business, and lacked the
qualifications for lab. work. On the other hand, he did know a lot
about triffids he had a kind of inspired knack with them.

What happened to Walter that fatal May years later I do not know though
I can guess. It is a sad thing that he did not escape. He might have
been immensely valuable later on. I don't think anybody really
understands triffids, or ever will, but Walter came nearer to beginning
to understand them than any man I have known. Or should I say that he
was given to intuitive feelings about them ?

It was a year or two after the job had begun that he first surprised
me.

The sun was close to setting. We had knocked off for the day and were
looking with a sense of satisfaction at three new fields of nearly
fully-grown triffids. In those days we didn't simply corral them as we
did later. They were arranged across the fields roughly in rows at
least the steel stakes to which each was tethered by a chain were in
rows, though the plants themselves had no sense of tidy
regimentation.

We reckoned that in another month or so we'd be able to start tapping
them for juice. The evening was peaceful, almost the only sounds that
broke it were the occasional rattlings of the tdffids' little sticks
against their stems. Walter regarded them with his head slightly on
one side. He removed his pipe.

"They're talkative tonight," he observed.

I took that as anyone else would, metaphorically.

"Maybe it's the weather," I suggested."I fancy they do it more when
it's dry." He looked sidelong at me, with a smile.

q])o you talk more when it's dry ?"

"Why should ?" I began, and then
broke off."You don't really mean you think they're roll ring I said
noticing his expression.

"Well, why not?" THE COMING OF THE TRIFFID$ 47 "But it's absurd.
Plants talkingl' "So much more absurd than plants walking ?" he
asked.

I stared at them, and then back at him.

"I never thought' I began, doubtfully.

"You try thinking of it a bit, and watching them I'd be interested to
hear your conclusions," he said.

It was a curious thing that in all my dealings with triffids such a
possibility had never occurred to me. I'd been prejudiced, I suppose,
by the love theory. But once he had put the idea into my mind, it
stuck. I couldn't get away from the feeling that they might indeed be
rattling out secret messages to one another.

Up to then I'd fancied I'd watched triffids pretty closely, but when
Walter was talking about them I felt that I'd noticed practically
nothing. He could, when he was in the mood, talk on about them for
hours, advancing theories that were sometimes wild, but sometimes not
impossible.

The public had by this time grown out of thinking triffids freakish.
They were clumsily amusing, but not greatly interesting.

The Company found them interesting, however. It took the view that
their existence was a piece of benevolence for everyone particularly
for itself. Walter shared neither view.

At times, listening to him; I began to have some misgivings myself.

He had become quite certain that they 'talked."

"And that," he argued,
'means that somewhere in them is intelligence. It can't be seated in a
brain because dissection shows nothing like a brain but that doesn't
prove there isn't something there that does a brain's job.

"And there's certainly intelligence there, of a kind. Have you noticed
that when they attack they always go for the unprotected parts?

Almost always the head but sometimes the hands? And another thing: if
you look at the statistics of casualties, just take notice of the
proportion that has been stung across the eyes, and blinded. It's
remarkable and significant."

"Of what ?" I asked.

"Of the fact that they know what is the surest way to put a man out of
action in other words, they know what they're doing. Look at it this
way. Granted that they do have intelligence; then that would leave us
with only one important superiority sight. We can see, and they can't.
Take away our vision, and the superiority is gone. Worse than that our
position becomes inferior to theirs because they are adapted to a
sightlfss existence, and we are not."

"But even if that were so, they
can't do things. They can't handle things. There's very little
muscular strength in that sting-lash," I pointed out.

"True, but what's the good of our ability to handle things if we can't
see what to do with them ? Anyway, they don't need to handle things
not in the way we do. They can get their nourishment direct from the
soil, or from insects and bits of raw meat. They don't have to go
through all the complicated business of growing things, distributing
them, and usually cooking them as well. In fact, if it were a choice
for survival between a triffid and a blind man, I know which I'd put my
money on."

"You're assuming equal intelligence," I said.

"Not at all. I don't need to. I should imagine it's likely to be an
altogether different type of intelligence, if only because their needs
are so much simpler. Look at the complex processes we have to use to
get an assimilable extract from a triffid. Now reverse that.

What does the triffid have to do ? Just sting us, wait a few days, and
then begin to assimilate us. The simple natural course of things." He
would go on like that by the hour until listening to him would have me
getting things out of proportion, and I'd find myself thinking of the
triffids as though they were some kind of competitor. Walter himself
never pretended to think otherwise. He had, he admitted, thought of
writing a book on that very aspect of the subject when he had gathered
more material
"Had ?" I repeated."What's stopping you ?" THE COMING
OF THE TRIFFID$ 49

"Just this." He waved his hand to include the farm generally.

"It's a vested interest now. It wouldn't pay anyone to pat out
disturbing thoughts about it. Anyway, we have the triffids controlled
well enough so it's an academic point, and scarcely worth raising."

"I
never can be quite sure with you," I told him."I'm never certain how
far you are serious, and how far beyond your facts you allow your
imagination to lead you. Do you honestly think there is a danger in
the things ?" He puffed a bit at his pipe before he answered.

"That's fair enough," he admitted, 'because well, I'm by no means sure
myself. But I'm pretty certain of one thing, and that is that there
could be danger in them. I'd feel a lot nearer giving you a real
answer if I could get a line on what it means when they patter.

Somehow I don't care for that. There they sit, with everyone thinking
no more of them than they might of a pretty odd lot of cabbages, yet
half the time they're pattering and clattering away at one another.

Why ? What is it they patter about? That's what I want to know." I
think Walter rarely gave a hint of his ideas to anyone else, and I kept
them confidential, partly because I knew no one who wouldn't be more
sceptical than I was myself, and partly because it wouldn't do either
of us any good to get a reputation in the firm as crackpots.

For a year or so more we were working fairly close together.

But with the opening of new nurseries and the need for studying methods
abroad I began to travel a lot. He gave up field work, and went into
the research department. It suited him there, doing his own
researching as well as the Company's. I used to drop in to see him
from time to time. He was for ever making experiments with his
triffids, but the results weren't clearing his general ideas as much as
he had hoped. He had proved, to his own satisfaction at least, the
existence of a well developed intelligence- and even I had to admit
that his results seemed to show something more than instinct. He was
still convinced that the pattering of the socks was a form of
communication. For public consumption he had shown that the sticks were
something more, and that a triffid deprived of them gradually
deteriorated. He had also established that the infertility rate of
triffid seeds was something like ninety-five per cent.

"Which," he remarked, 'is a damned good thing. If they all germinated
there'd soon be standing room only for triffid$ only on this planet."

With that, too, I agreed. Triffid seed time was quite a sight.

The dark green pod just below the cup was glistening and distended,
about half as big again as a large apple. When it burst, it did it
with a pop that was audible twenty yards away.

The white seeds shot into the air like steam, and began drifting away
on the lightest of breezes. Looking down on a field of trifi:ids' late
in August you could well get the idea that some kind of desultory
bombardment was in progress.

It was Walter's discovery again that the quality of the extracts was
improved if the plants retained their stings. In consequence, the
practice of docking was discontinued on farms throughout the trade, and
we had to wear protective devices when world rig among the plants.

At the time of the accident that had landed me in hospital I was
actually with Walter. We were examining some specimens which were
showing unusual deviations. Both of us were wearing wire-mesh masks.

I did not see exactly what happened.

All I know is that as I bent forward a sting slashed viciously at my
face and smacked against the wire of the mask. Ninetynine times in a
hundred it would not have mattered; that was what the masks were for.

But this one came with such force that some of the little poison sacs
were burst open, and a few drops from them went into my eyes.

Walter got me back into his lab. and administered the antidote in a
few seconds. It was entirely due to his quick work that they had the
chance of saving my sight at all. But even so, it had meant over a
week in bed, in the dark.

While I lay there I had quite decided that whell - and if- I
5I had my sight back I was going to apply for a
transfer to another side of the business. And if that did not go
through, I'd quit the job altogether.

I had built up a considerable resistance to triffid poison since my
first sting in the garden. I could take, and had taken, without very
much harm, stings which would have laid an inexperienced man out very
cold indeed. But an old saying about a pitcher and a well kept on
recurring to me. I was taking my warning.

I spent, I remember, a good many of my enforcedly dark hours deciding
what kind of job I would try for if they would not give me that
transfer.

Considering what was just around the corner for us all, I could
scarcely have found a contemplation more idle.

THE GROPING CITY
I LEVT the pub door swinging behind me as I made my way to the center
of the main road. There I hesitated.

To the left, through miles of suburban streets, lay the open country;
to the right, the West End of London, with the City beyond. I was
feeling somewhat restored, but curiously detached now, and rudderless.
I had no glimmering of a plan, and, in the face of what I had at last
begun to perceive as a vast and not merely local catastrophe, I was
still too stunned to begin to reason one out. What plan could there be
to deal with such a thing ? I felt forlorn, cast into desolation, and
yet not quite real, not quite myself here and now.

In no direction was there any tratc, nor any sound of it.

The only signs of life were a few people here and there cautiously
groping their ways along the shop-fronts.

The day was perfect for early summer. The sun poured down from a deep
blue sky set with tufts of white woolly clouds. All of it was clean
and fresh save for a smear made by a single column of greasy smoke
coming from somewhere behind the houses to the north.

I stood there indecisively for a few minutes. Then I turned east,
Londonwards ... To this day I cannot say quite why. Perhaps it was an
instinct to seek familiar places, or the feeling that if there were
authority anywhere it must be somewhere in that direction.

The brandy had made me more hungry than ever, but I did not find the
problem of feeding as easy to deal with as it should have been.

And yet, there were the shops, untenanted and unguarded, with food in
the windows and here was I, with hunger and the means to pay or, if I
did not wish to pay, I had only to smash a window and take what I
wanted.

Nevertheless, it was hard to persuade oneself to do that. I was not
yet ready to admit, after nearly thirty years of a reasonably
right-respecting existence and law-abiding life, that things had
changed in any fundamental way. There was, too, a feeling that as long
as I remained my normal self, things might even yet in some
inconceivable way return to their normal. Absurd it undoubtedly was,
but I had a very strong sense that the moment I stove-in one of those
sheets of plate-glass I should leave the old order behind me for ever:
I should become a looter, a sacker, a low scavenger upon the dead body
of the system that had nourished me. Such a foolish niceness of
sensibility in a stricken worldl - and yet it still pleases me to
remember that civilized usage did not slide off me at once, and that
for a time at least I wandered along past displays which made my mouth
water while my already obsolete conventions kept me hungry.

The problem resolved itself in a sophistical way after perhaps half a
mile. A taxi, after mounting the pavement, had finished up with its
radiator buried in a pile of delicatessen.

That made it seem different from doing my own breaking in.

I climbed past the taxi, and collected the makings of a good meal.

But even then, something of the old standards still clung: I
conscientiously left a fair price for what I had taken lying on the
counter.

Almost across the road there was a garden. It was the kind that had
once been the graveyard of a vanished church. The old headstones had
been taken up and set back against the surrounding brick wall, the
cleared space tufted over and laid out with gravel led paths. It
looked pleasant under the freshly leafed trees, and to one of the seats
there I took my lunch.

The place was withdrawn and peaceful. No one else came in, though
occasionally a figure would shuffle past the railings at the
entrance.

I threw some crumbs to a few sparrows, the first birds I had seen that
day, and felt all the better for watching their perky indifference to
calamity.

When I had finished eating I lit a cigarette. While I sat there
smoking it, wondering where I should go, and what I should do, the
quiet was broken by the sound of a piano played somewhere in a block of
apartments that overlooked the garden. Presently a girl's voice began to
sing. The song was Byron's ballad: if So, we'll go no more a-roving So
late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving and the moon
he still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast
And the heart must pause to breathes Awl love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for lovin& And the day returns too soon, Yet
we'll go no more a-roving By the light of the moon.

I listened, looking up at the pattern that the tender young leaves and
the branches made against the fresh blue sky. The song finished.

The notes of the piano died away. Then there was a sound of sobbing.

No passion: softly, helplessly, forlorn, heartbroken. Who she was,
whether it was the singer or another weeping her hopes away, I do not
know. But to listen longer was more than I could endure. I went
quietly back into the street, seeing it only mistily for a while.

Even Hyde Park Comer, when I reached it, was almost deserted. A few
derelict cars and lorries stood about on the roads.

Very little, it seemed, had gone out of control when it was in motion.
One bus had run across the path and come to rest in the Green Park; a
runaway horse with shafts still attached to it lay beside the Axtill
memorial against which it had cracked its skull.
The only moving things were a few men and a lesser number of women
feeling their way carefully with hands and feet where there were
railings, and shuffling forward with protectively outstretched arms
where there were not. Also, and rather unexpectedly, there were one or
two cats, apparently intact visually, and treating the whole situation
with that self possession common to cats. They had poor luck prowling
through the eerie quietness the sparrows were few, and the pigeons had
vanished.

Still magnetically drawn towards the old centre of things, I crossed in
the direction of Piccadilly. I was just about to start along it when I
noticed a sharp new sound a steady tapping not far away, and coming
closer. Looking up Park Lane, I discovered its source. A man, more
neatly dressed than any other I had seen that morning, was walking
rapidly towards me, hitting the wall beside him with a white stick. As
he caught the sound of my steps he stopped, listening alertly.

"It's all right," I told him."Come on." I felt relieved to see him.
He was, so to speak, normally blind. His dark glasses were much less
disturbing than the staring but useless eyes of the others.

"Stand still, then," he said."I've already been bumped into by God
knows how many fools today. What the devil's happened ? Why is it so
quiet ? I know it isn't night I can feel the sunlight. What's gone
wrong with everything?" I told him as much as I knew.

When I had finished he said nothing for almost a minute, then he gave
a short, bitter laugh.

"There's one thing," he said."They'll be needing all their damned
patronage for themselves now." With that he straightened up, a little
defiantly.

"Thank you. Good luck," he said to me, and set off westwards wearing
an exaggerated air of independence.

The sound of his briskly confident tapping gradually died away behind
me as I made my way up Piccadilly.

There were more people to be seen now, and I walked among
the scatter of stranded vehicles in the road. Out there I was much
less disturbing to the people feeling their way along the fronts of the
buildings, for every time they heard a step close by they would stop
and brace themselves against a possible collision. Such collisions
were taking place every now and then all down the street, but there was
one that I found significant.

The subjects of it had been groping along a shop front from opposite
irections until they met with a bump. One was a young man in a
well-cut suit, but wearing a tie obviously selected by touch alone: the
other a woman who carried a small child. The child whined something
inaudible. The young man had started to edge his way past the woman.

He stopped abruptly.

"Wait a minute," he said."Can yo child see?"

"Yes," she said.

"But I can't." The young man turned. He put one finger on the
plate-glass window, pointing.

"Look, Sonny, what's in there ?" he asked.

"Not Sonny," the child objected.

"Go on, Mary. Tell the gentleman," her mother encouraged her.

"Pretty ladies," said the child.

The man took the woman by the arm, and felt his way to the next
window.

"And what's in here ?" he asked, again.

"Apples and tings," the child told him.

"Fine!' said the young man.

He pulled off his shoe, and hit the window a smart smack with the heel
of it. He was inexperienced: the first blow did not do it, but the
second did. The crash reverberated up and down the street. He
restored his shoe, put an arm cautiously through the broken window, and
felt about until he found a couple of oranges. One he gave to the
woman and one to the child. He felt about again, found one for
himself, and began to peel it. The woman fingered hers.

"But-' she began.

"What's the matter ? Don't like oranges ?" he asked.

"But it isn't right," she said."We didn't ought to take 'em.

Not like this."

"How else are you going to get food ?" he inquired.

"I suppose well, I don't know," she admitted, doubtfully.

"Very well. That's the answer. Eat it up, now, and we'll go and find
something more substantial." She still held the orange in her hand,
head bent down as though she were looking at it.

"All the same, it don't seem right," she said again, but there was less
conviction in her tone.

Presently she put the child down, and began to peel the orange  ... 
Piccadilly Circus was the most populous place I had found so far.

It seemed crowded after the rest, though there were probably less than
a hundred people there, all told. Mostly they were wearing queer,
ill-assorted clothes, and were prowling restlessly around as though
still semi-dazed. Occasionally a mishap would bring an outburst of
profanity and futile rage rather alarming to hear because it was itself
the product of fright, and childish in temper. But with one exception
there was little talk and little noise. It seemed as though their
blindness had shut People into themselves.

The exception had found himself a position out on one of the
traffic-islands. He was a tall, elderly, gaunt man with a bush of wiry
grey hair, and he was holding forth emphatically about repentance, the
wrath to come, and the uncomfortable prospects for sinners. Nobody was
paying him any attention: for most of them the day of wrath had already
arrived.

Then, from a distance, came a sound which caught everyone's attention:
a gradually swelling chorus: And when I die, Don't bury me at all Just
pick bones In a kohol.

Dreary and un tuneful it slurred through the empty streets, echoing
dismally back and forth. Every head in the Circus was turning now left,
now right, trying to place its direction. The prophet of doom raised
his voice against the competition. The song wailed discordantly
closer: Put a bottle of booze At my head and at " my feet then, I'm
sure my bones rill keep.

And as an accompaniment to it there was the shuffle of feet more or
less in step.

From where I stood I could see them come in single file out of a side
street into Shaftesbury Avenue, and turn towards the Circus. The
second man had his hands on the shoulders of the leader, the third on
his, and so on, to the number of twenty-five or thirty. At the
conclusion of that song somebody started Beer, Beer, Glorious
Beer/pitching it in such a high key that it petered out in confusion.

They trudged steadily on until they reached the centre of the Circus,
then the leader raised his voice. It was a considerable voice, with
parade-ground quality: "Companee-ee-ee - HALTI' Everybody else in the
Circus was now struck motionless, all with their faces turned towards
him, all trying to guess what was afoot. The leader raised his voice
again, mimicking the manner of a professional guide: "Ere we are, gents
one an' all. Piccabloodydilly Circus. The Centre of the World. The
"Lib of the Universe. Where all the hobs had their wine, women, and
song." He was not blind, far from it. His eyes were ranging round,
taking stock as he spoke. His sight must have been saved by some such
accident as mine, but he was pretty drunk, and so were the men behind
him.

"An' ve'll'ave it, too," he added."Next stop, the well-known Caffy
Royal an' all drinks on the house."

"Yus - but what ahaht the women ?"
asked a voice, and there was a laugh.

"Oh, women."S that what you want ?" said the leader.

He stepped forward, and caught a girl by the arm. She screamed as he
dragged her towards the man who had spoken, but he took no notice of
that.

"There yare, chum. An' don't say I don't treat you right.

It's a peach, a smasher fit hat makes any difference to you."

"Hey, what about me ?" said the next man.

"You, mate ? Well, let's see. Like 'em blonde or dark ?"

Considered later, I suppose I behaved like a fool. My head was still
full of standards and conventions that had ceased to apply. It did not
occur to me that if there was to be any survive anyone adopted by this
gang would stand a far better chance than she would on her own. Fired
with a mixture of schoolboy heroics and noble sentiments, I waded in.

He didn't see me coming until I was quite close, and then I slogged for
his jaw.

Unfortunately, he was a little quicker ... When I next took an
interest in things I found myself lying in the road. The sound of the
gang was diminishing into the distance, and the prophet of doom,
restored to eloquence, was sending threatful bolts of damnation,
hell-fire, and a brimstone gehenna hurtling after them.

With a bit of sense knocked into me, I became thankful that the affair
had not fallen out worse. Had the result been reversed, I could
scarcely have escaped making myself responsible for the men he had been
leading. After all, and whatever one might feel about his methods, he
was the eyes of that party, and they'd be looking to him for food as
well as for drink.

And the women would go along, too, on their own account as soon as they
got hungry enough. And now I came to look around me I felt doubtful
whether any of the women hereabouts would seriously mind, anyway. What
with one thing and another, it looked as if I might have had a lucky
escape from promotion to gang leadership.

Remembering that they had been headed for the Cafe Royal, I decided to
revive myself and clear my head at the Regent Palace Hotel. Others
appeared to have thought of that before me, but there were quite a lot
of bottles they had not found.

I think it was while I was sitting there comfortably with a brandy in
front of me and a cigarette in my hand that I at last began to admit
that what I had seen was all real and decisive.

There would be no going back ever. It was finish to all I had known
 ...  Perhaps it had needed that blow to drive it home. Now I came face
to face with the fact that my existence simply had no focus any longer.

My way of life, my plans, ambitions, every expectation I had had, they
were all wiped out at a stroke along with the conditions that had
formed them. I suppose that had I had any relatives or close
attachments to mourn I should have felt suicidally derelict at that
moment. But what had seemed at times a rather empty existence turned
out now to be lucky. My mother and father were dead, my one attempt to
marry had miscarried some years before, and there was no particular
person dependent on me. And, curiously, what I found that I did feel
with a consciousness that it was against what I ought to be feeling was
release ... It wasn't just the brandy, for it persisted. I think it
may have come from the sense of facing something quite fresh and new to
me. All the old problems, the stale ones, both personal and general,
had been solved by one mighty slash. Heaven alone knew as yet what
others might arise and it looked as though there would be plenty of
them but they would be no,. I was emerging as my own master, and no
longer a cog.

It might well be a world full of horrors and dangers that I should
have to face, but I could take my own steps to deal with it I would no
longer be shoved hither and thither by forces and interests that I
neither understood nor cared about.

No, it wasn't altogether the brandy, for even now, years afterwards, I
can still feel something of it though possibly the brandy did
over-simplifyings a little just then.

or Then there was, too, the little question of what to
do next; how and where to start on this new life. But I did not let
that worry me a lot for the present. I drank up, and went out of the
hotel to see what this strange world had to offer.

SHADOWS BEFORE
IN order to give a reasonable berth to the Card Royal mob I struck up.a
side street into Soho, intending to cut back to Regent Street higher
up.

Perhaps hunger was driving more people out of their homes.

Whatever the reason, I found that the parts I now entered were more
populous than any I'd seen since I left the hospital.

Constant collisions took place on the pavements and in the narrow
streets, and the confusion of those who were trying to get along was
made worse by knots of people clustering in front of the now frequently
broken shop windows. None of those who crowded there seemed to be
quite sure what kind of shop they were facing. Some in the front
sought to find out by groping for any recognizable objects; others,
taking the risk of disembowelling themselves on standing splinters of
glass, more enterprisingly climbed inside.

I felt that I ought to be showing these people where to find food.

But should I ? If I were to lead them to a food shop still intact
there would be a crowd which would not only have swept the place bare
in five minutes, but have crushed a number of its weaker members in the
process. Soon, anyway, all the food would be gone, then what was to be
done with the thousands dam outing for more? One might collect a small
party and keep it alive somehow for an uncertain length of time but who
was to be taken, and who left ? No obviously right course presented
itself, however I tried to look at it.

What was going on was a grim business without chivalry, with no give
and all take about it. A man bumping into another and feeling that he
carried a parcel would snatch it and duck away on the chance that it
contained something to eat, while the loser clutched futioudy at the Jr
indiscriminately. Once, I had to
step hurriedly aside to avoid being knocked down by an elderly man who
darted into the roadway with no care for possible obstacles.

His expression was vastly cunning, and he clutched avariciously to his
chest two cans of red paint. On a corner my way was blocked by a group
almost weeping with frustration over a bewildered cluld who could see,
but was just too young to understand what they wanted of it.

I began to become uneasy. Fighting with my civilized urge to be of
some help to these people was an instinct that told me to keep clear.

They were already fast losing ordinary restraints.

I felt, too, an irrational sense of guilt at being able to see while
they could not. It gave me an odd feeling that I was hiding from them
even while I moved among them. Later on, I found how right the
instinct was.

Close to Golden Square I began to think of turning left and working
back to Regent Street where the wider roadway would offer easier going.
I was about to take a corner that would lead me that way when a sudden,
piercing scream stopped me. It stopped everyone else, too. All along
the street they stood still, turning their heads this way and that,
apprehensively trying to guess what was happening. The alarm coming on
top of their distress and nervous tension started a number of the women
whimpering: the men's nerves weren't in any too good a state, either;
they showed it mostly in short curses at being startled.

For it was an ominous sound, one of the kind of things they had been
subconsciously expecting. They waited for it to come again.

It did. Frightened, and dying into a gasp. But less alarming now that
one was ready for it. This time I was able to place it.

A few steps took me to an alley entrance. As I turned the corner a cry
that was half a gasp came again.

The cause of it was a few yards down the alley. A girl was crouched on
the ground while a burly man laid into her with a thin brass rod. The
back of her dress was torn, and the flesh beneath showed red weals. As
I came closer I saw why she did not run away
her hands were tied together behind her back, and a cord tethered them
to the man's left wrist.

I reached the pair as his arm was raised for another stroke.

It was easy to snatch the rod from his un expecting hand and bring it
down with some force upon his shoulder. He promptly lashed a heavy
boot out in my direction, but I had dodged back quickly, and his radius
of action was limited by the cord on his wrist. He made another
swiping kick at the air while I was feeling in my pocket for a knife.

Finding nothing there, he turned and kicked the girl for good measure,
instead. Then he swore at her and pulled on the cord to bring her to
her feet. I slapped him on the side of his head, just hard enough to
stop him, and make it sing for a bit somehow I could not bring myself
to lay out a blind man, even this type. While he was steadying himself
from that I stooped swiftly and cut the cord which joined them. A
slight shove on his chest sent him staggering back, and half turned him
so that he lost his bearings.

With his freed left hand he let out a fine raking swing. It missed me
but ultimately reached the brick wall. After that he lost interest in
pretty well everything but the pain of his cracked knuckles. I helped
the girl up, loosed her hands, and led her away down the alley while he
was still blistering the air behind us.

As we turned into the street she began to come out of her daze.

She turned a smeary tear-stained face, and looked up at me.

"But you can xee/' she said, incredulously.

"Certainly I can," I told her.

"Oh, thank God I Thank God I I thought I was the only on' she said, and
burst into tears again.

I looked around us. A few yards away there was a pub with a gramophone
playing, glasses smashing, and a high old time being had by all. A few
yards beyond that was a smaller pub, still intact. A good heave with
my shoulder broke in the door to the saloon bar. I half carried the
girl in, and put her in a chair. Then I dismembered another chair and
put two of its . 65 legs through the handles of the
swinging doors for the discouragement of further visitors before I turned
my attention to the restoratives at the bar.

There was no hurry. She sipped at, and Shuffled over, the first drink.
! gave her time to get sorted out, twiddling the stem of my glass, and
listening to the gramophone in the other pub churning out the currently
popular if rather lugubrious ditty: My love' s locked up in a
frigidaire, and my heart's in a deep-freeze pack.

She's gone }with a guy, I'd not knorr where, But she wrote that she'd
never come back.

Now she don't care for me no more I'm just a one-man frozen store, 4nd
it ain't nice To be on ice With my love locked up in a frigidaire, And
my heart in a dee2O-freee pack.

While I sat I stole an occasional covert look at the girl. Her
clothes, or the remnants of them, were good quality. Her voice was
good, too probably not stage or movie acquired, for it had not
deteriorated under stress. She was blonde, but quite a number of
shades sub-platinum. It seemed likely that beneath the smudges and
smears she was good-looking. Her height was three or four inches less
than mine, her build slim, but not thin. She looked as if she had
strength if it were necessary, but strength which, in her approximately
twenty-four years, had most likely not been applied to anything more
important than hitting balls, dancing, and, probably, restraining
horses. Her well-shaped hands were smooth, and the finger-nails that
were still unbroken showed a length more decorative than practical.

The drink gradually did good work. By the end of it she was
sufficiently recovered for habit of mind to assert itself.

"God, I must look awful," she remarked.

It did not seem that anyone but me was likely to be in a position to
notice that, but I left it.

She got up, and walked over to a mirror.

*I certainly do," she confirmed."Where
"You might try through there," I suggested.

Twenty minutes or so passed before she came back. Considering the
limited facilities there must have been, she'd made a good job: morale
was much restored. She approximated now to the film-director's idea of
the heo'me after tough-house rather than the genuine thing.

"Cigarette?" I inquired, as I slid another fortifying glass across.

While the pulling round process was completing itself we swapped
stories. To give beg time I let her have mine first.

Then she said: "I'm damned ashamed of myself. I'm not a bit like that,
really' - like you found me, I mean. In fact, I'm reasonably self
reliant though you might not think it. But somehow the whole thing had
got too big for me. What has happened is bad enough, but the awful
prospect suddenly seemed too much to bear, and I panicked. I began to
think that perhaps I was the only person left in the whole world who
could see. It got me down, and all at once I was frightened and silly,
I cracked, and howled like a girl in a Victorian melodrama.

I'd never, never have believed it of me."

"Don't let it worry you," I
said."We'll probably be learning a whole lot of surprising things
about ourselves soon."

"But it does worry me. If I start off by
slipping my gears like that' she left the sentence unfinished.

I was near enough to panic in that hospital," I said."We're human
beings, not calculating machines." Her name was Josella Playton.

There seemed to be something not unfamiliar about that, but I could not
place it. Her home was in Dene Road, St John's Wood. The district
fitted in more or less with my surmises. I remembered Dene Road.

Detached, comfortable houses, mostly ugly, but all expensive.

SHADOWS BEFORE 67 Her escape from the general affliction had been no
less a matter of luck than mine well, perhaps more. She had been at a
party on the Monday night a pretty considerable party, it seemed.

"I reckon somebody who thinks that kind of thing funny must have been
fooling with the drinks," she said."I've never felt so ill as I did
at the end of it -and I didn't take a lot." Tuesday she recollected as
a day of blurred misery and record hangover. About four in the
afternoon she had had more than enough of it. She rang the bell and
gave instructions that come comets, earthquakes, or the day of
judgement itself, she was not to be disturbed. Upon that ultimatum she
had taken a strong dose of sleeping-draught which on an empty stomach
had worked with the efficiency of a knock-out drop.

From then on she had known nothing until this morning when she had been
awakened by her father stumbling into her room.

"Josella," he was saying, 'for God's sake get Doctor Mayle.

Tell him I've gone blind stone blind." She had been amazed to see that
it was already almost nine o'clock. She got up and dressed hurriedly.
The servants had answered neither her father's bell nor her own. When
she went to rouse them, she had found to her horror that they, too,
were blind.

With the telephone out of order, the only course seemed to be for her
to take the car and fetch the doctor himself. The quiet streets and
absence of traffic had seemed queer, but she had already driven almost
a mile before it came to her what had happened. When she realized, she
had all but turned back in panic but that wasn't going to do anyone any
good. There still was the chance that the doctor might have escaped
the malady, whatever it was, just as she had herself. So, with a
desperate but waning hope, she had driven on.

Half-way down Regent Street the engine started to miss and splutter;
finally it stopped. In her hurried start she had not looked at the
gauge: it was the reserve tank she had run She sat there for a moment,
dismayed. Every face in sight was now turned towards her, but she had
realized by this time that not one of those she saw could see or help
her. She got out of the car, hoping to find a garage somewhere nearby
or, if there was none, prepared to walk the rest of the way. -, she
slammed the door behind her, a voice called: "Hey! Just a minute,
mate!" She turned, and saw a man groping towards her.

"What is it ?" she asked. She was by no means taken with the look of
him.

His manner changed on hearing her voice.

"I'm lost. Dunno where I am," he said.

"This is Regent Street. The New Gallery cinema's just behind you," she
told him, and turned to go.

"Just show me where the kerb is, miss, will you ?" he said.

She hesitated, and in that moment he came close. The outstretched hand
sought and touched her sleeve. He lunged forward, and caught both her
arms in a painful grip.

"So you can see, can you!" he said."Why the hell should you be able
to see when I can't - nor anyone else ?" Before she could realize what
was happening he had turned her and tripped her, and she was lying in
the road with his knee in her back. He caught both her wrists in the
grasp of one large hand, and proceeded to tie them together with a
piece of string from his pocket. Then he stood up, and pulled her on
to her feet again.

"All right," he said."From now on you can do your seeing for me.

I'm hungry. Take me where there's a bit of good grub.

Get on with it." Josella dragged away from him.

"I won't. Undo my hands at once. I - He cut that short with a smack
across her face.

"That'll be enough o' that, my girl Come on now. Get cracking.

Food, d'yea hear ?" SHADOWS BEFORE 69 "I won't, I tell you."

"You
bloody well will, my girl," he assured her.

And she had.

She'd done it watching all the time for a chance to get away.

And he'd been expecting just that. Once she almost brought it off, but
he had been too quick. Even as she had pulled free he had put out a
foot to trip her, and before she could get up he had a grip on her
again. After that he had found the strong cord and tethered her to his
wrist.

She had led him first to a cuff, and directed him to a refrigerator.
The machine was no longer working, but it was to red with food that was
still fresh. The next call was a bar where he wanted Irish whiskey.
She could see it, perched up on a shelf beyond his reach.

"If you'd untie my hands she suggested.

"What, and have you crown me with a bottle ? I wasn't born yesterday,
my girl. No, I'll have the Scotch. Which is it?" She told him what
was in the various bottles as he laid his hand on them.

'1 think I must have been dazed," she explained."I can see now half a
dozen ways I could have outwitted him. Probably I'd have killed him
later on if you hadn't come along. But you can't change and turn
brutal all at once at least, I can't. I didn't seem to be able to
think properly at first. I'd a sort of feeling that things like that
didn't happen nowadays, and that somebody would come along and stop it
soon." There had been a row in that bar before they left. Another
party of men and women discovered the open door and came in.

Incautiously her captor instructed her to tell them what was in the
bottle they found. At that they all stopped talking, and turned their
sightless eyes towards her. There was a whisper, then two men stepped
warily forward. They had a purposeful look on their faces. She jerked
at the cord.

"Look outl' she cried.

Without the least hesitation her captor swung out his boot.

It was a lucky kick. One of the men folded up with a yell of pain. The
other jumped forward, but she side-stepped and he brought up against
the counter with a crash.

"You bloody well leave her alone," roared the man who held her.

He turned his face menacingly this way and that.

"She's mine, blast you. I found her." But it was clear that the rest
were not intending to give up that easily. Even had they been able to
see the danger in her companion's expression it would not have been
likely to stop them. Josella started to realize that the gift of
sight, even at second hand, was now something vastly surpassing all
riches, and the chance of it not to be released without bitter
contest.

The others began to close in, with their hands questing in front of
them. Reaching out with one foot, she hooked the leg of a chair, and
overturned it in their way.

"Come onl' she cried, dragging the other man back.

Two men tripped over the fallen chair, and a woman fell on top of them.
Swiftly the place became a struggling confusion.

She steered a way through it, and they escaped into the street.

She scarcely knew why she did it save that the prospect of being
enslaved to act as the eyes of that group had seemed even worse than
her present plight. Nor did the man give her any thanks. He merely
directed her to find another bar: an empty one.

"I think," she said judicially, 'that though you wouldn't have guessed
it to look at him, he wasn't perhaps too bad a man really.

Only he was frightened. Deep down inside him he was much more
frightened than I was. He gave me some food and something to drink.

He only started beating me like that because he was drunk, and I
wouldn't go into his house with him. I don't know what would have
happened if you hadn't come along." She paused. Then she added: "But
I am pretty ashamed of myself. Shows you what a modern young woman can
come to after all, doesn't it? Screaming, and collapsing with the yap
ours - Helll' She was looking, and obviously feeling, rather better
though she winced as she reached for her glass.

SHADOWS BEFORE 7I
`i think," I said, 'that I've been fairly dense over this business and pretty lucky. I ought to have made more of the implications when I
saw that woman with the child in Piccadilly. It's only been chance
that's stopped me from falling into the same kind of mess that you
did."

"Anybody who has had a great treasure has always led a
precarious existence," she said, reflectively.

"I'll go on bearing that in mind, henceforth," I told her.

"It's already very well impressed on mine," she remarked.

We sat listening to the uproar from the other pub for a few minutes.

"And what," I said at last, 'just what do we propose to do now ?"

"I must get back home. There's my father. It's obviously no good
going on to try to find the doctor now even if he has been one of the
lucky ones." She seemed about to add something, but hesitated.

"Do you mind if I come, too?" I asked."This doesn't seem to me the
sort of time when anyone like us should be wandering about on his or
her own." She turned with a grateful look.

"Thank you. I almost asked, but I thought there might be somebody
you'd be wanting to look for."

"There isn't," I said."Not in London,
at any rate."

"I'm glad. It's not so much that I'm afraid of getting
caught again I'll be much too careful for that. But, to be honest,
it's the loneliness I'm afraid of. I'm beginning to feel so so cut off
and stranded." I was starting to see things in another new light.

The sense of release was tempered with a growing realization of the
grimness that might lie ahead of us. It had been impossible at first
not to feel some supeority, and, therefore, confidence.

Our chances of surviving the catastrophe were a million times greater
than those of the rest. Where they must fumble, grope, and guess, we
had simply to walk in and take. But there were going to be a lot of
things beyond that ...  I said: "I wonder just how many of us have
escaped and can still see? I've come across one other man, a child,
and a baby: you've met none. It looks to me as if we are going to find
out that sight is very rare indeed. Some of the others have evidently
grasped already that their only chance of survival is to get hold of
someone who can see.

When they all understand that, the outlook's going to be none too
good." The future seemed to me at that time a choice between a lonely
existence, always in fear of capture, or of gathering together a
selected group which we could rely on to protect us from other
groups.

We'd be filling a kind of leader-cure prisoner role - and along with it
went a nasty picture of bloody gang wats being fought for possession of
us. I was still uncomfortably elaborating these possibilities when
Josella r called me to the present by getting up.

`i must go," she said."Poor father. It's after four o'clock.* Back
in Regent Street again, a thought suddenly struck me.

"Come across," I said. `i fancy I rememb a shop somewhere here  ... 
The shop was still there. We equipped ourselves with a couple of
usefumooking sheath knives, and belts to cat' them.

"Make me feel like a pirate," said Jon, as she buckled hers on.

"Bet', I imsgine, to be I pirate than t pirate's raoul' I told her.

A few yards up the street we came upon a large, shiny saloon car.

It looked the kind of craft that should simply have purred.

But the noise when I started it up sounded louder in our ears than all
the normal traffic of a busy street, We made our way northward,
zigzagging to avoid derelicts and wanderers stricken into immobility in
the middle of the road by the sound of our approach. All the way heads
turned hopefully towards us as we came; and faces fell as we went
past.

One building on our route was blazing fiercely, and a cloud of smoke
rose from another fire somewhere along Oxford Street. There were more
people about in Oxford street, but we got through them
neatly, then passed the B.B.C and so north to the carriage way in
Regent's Park.

It was a relief to get out of the streets and reach an open space - and
one where there was no unfortunate people wandering and groping.

The only moving things we could see on the broad stretches of grass
were two or three little groups of triffids lurching southwards.

Somehow or other they had contrived to pull up their stakes and were
dragging them along behind them on their chains. I remembered that
there were some undocked specimens a few tethered, but most of them
double-fenced, in an enclosure beside the zoo and wondered how they had
got out. Josella noticed them, too.

"It's not going to make much difference to them," she said.

For the rest of the way there was little to delay us. Within a few
minutes I was pulling up at the house she pointed out. We got out of
the car, and I pushed open the gate. A short drive curved round a bed
of bushes which hid most of the house front from the road. As we
turned the corner Josella gave a cry, and ran forward. A figure was
lying on the gravel, chest downwards, but with the head turned to show
one side of its face. The first glance at it showed me the bright red
streak across the cheek.

"Stop !" I shouted at her.

There was enough alarm in my voice to check her.

I had spotted the triffid now. It was lurking among the bushes, well
within striking range of the sprawled figure.

"Back! Quick!" I said.

Still looking at the man on the ground, she hesitated.

"But I must she began, turning towards me. Then she stopped.

Her eyes widened, and she screamed.

I whipped round to find a triffid towering only a few feet behind me.

In one automatic movement I had my hands over my eyes.

I heard the sting whistle as it lashed out at me but there was no
knockout, no agonized butting, even. One's mind can move like
lightning at such a moment: nevertheless, it was more instinct than
reason which sent me leaping at it before it had time to strike
again.

I collided with it, overturning it, and even as I went down with it my
hands were on the upper part of its stem, trying to pull off the cup
and the sting. Triffid stems do not snap but they can be mangled.

This one was mangled thoroughly before I stood up.

Josella/was standing in the same spot, transfixed.

"Come here," I told her."There's another in the bushes behind you."

Shelglanced fearfully over her shoulder, and came.

"But it hit you 1' she said, incredulously."Why aren't you ?"

"I don't know. I ought to be," I said.

I looked down at the fallen triffid. Suddenly remembering the knives
that we'd acquired with quite other enemies in mind, I used mine to cut
off the sting at its base. I examined it.

"That explains it," I said, pointing to the poison-sacs."See, they're
collapsed, exhausted. If they'd been full, or even part full ... I
turned a thumb down.

I had that, and my acquired resistance to the poison, to thank.

Nevertheless, there was a pale red mark across the back of my hands and
my neck that was itching Like the devil. I rubbed it while I stood
looking at the sting.

"It's queer I murmured, more to myself than to her, but she heard me.

"What's queer' "I've never seen one with the poison-sacs quite empty
like this before. It must have been doing a hell of a lot of
stinging." But I doubt if she heard me. Her attention had reverted to
the man who was lying in the drive, and she was eyeing the triffid
standing by.

"How can we get him away ?" she asked.

"We can't - not till that thing's been dealt with," I told her.

Besides well, I'm afraid we can't help him now."

"You mean, he's dead?"

I nodded."Yes. There's not a doubt of it I've seen others who have
been stung. Who was he ?" I added.

"Old Pearson. He did gardening for us, and chauffeuring for my father.
Such a dear old man I've known him all my life."

"I'm sorry - I began,
wishing I could think of something more adequate, but she cut me
short.

"Lookl - oh, lookl' She pointed to a path which ran round the side of
the house. A black-stockinged leg with a woman's shoe on it protruded
round the corner.

We prospected carefully, and then moved safely to a spot which gave a
better view. A girl in a black dress lay half on the path and half in
a flower-bed. Her pretty, fresh face was scarred with a bright red
line. Joselh choked. Tears came into her eyes.

"Oh[oh, it's Annie[ Poor little Annie," she said.

I tried to console her a little.

"They can scarcely have known it, either of them," I told her.

"When it is strong enough to kill, it's mercifully quick." We did not
see any other triffid in hiding there. Possibly it was the same one
that had attacked them both. Together we crossed the path and got into
the house by the side-door.

Josella called. There was no answer. She called again. We both
listened in the complete silence that wrapped the house. She turned to
look at me. Neither of us said anything. Quietly she led the way
along a passage to a baize-covered door. As she opened it there was a
swish, and something slapped across door and frame, an inch or so above
her head. Hurriedly she pulled the door shut again, and turned
wide-eyed to me.

"There's one in the hall," she said.

She spoke in a frightened half-whisper, as though it might be
Listening.

We went back to the outer door, and into the garden once more.

Keeping to the grass for silence we made our way round the house until
we could look into the lounge-hall. The french window which led from
the garden was open, and the glass of one
side was shattered. A trail of muddy blobs led over the step and
across the carpet. At the end of it a triffid stood in the middle of
the room. The top of its stem almost brushed the ceiling, and it was
swaying ever so slightly. Close beside its damp, shaggy hole lay the
body of an elderly man clad in a bright silk dressing-gown. I took
hold of Josella's arm. I was afraid she might rush in there.

"Is it your father ?" I asked, though I knew it must be.

"Yes," she said, and put her hands over her face. She was trembling
slightly.

I stood still, keeping an eye on the triffid inside lest it should move
our way. Then I thought of a handkerchief and handed her mine.

There wasn't much anyone could do. After a little while she took more
control of herself. Remembering the people we had seen that day, I
said: "You know, I think I would rather that had happened to me than be
like those others."

"Yes," she said, after a pause.

She looked up into the sky. It was a soft, depth less blue, with a few
little clouds floating like white feathers.

"Oh, yes," she repeated with more conviction."Poor Daddy.

He couldn't have stood blindness. He loved all this too much."

She glanced inside the room again."What shall we do ? I can't leave
- At that moment I caught the reflection of movement in the remaining
window-pane. I looked behind us quickly to see a triffid break clear
of the bushes and start across the lawn. It was lurching on a line
that led straight towards us. I could hear the leathery leaves
rustling as the stem whipped back and forth.

There was no time for delay. I had no idea how many more there might
be round the place. I grabbed Josella's arm again, and ran her back by
the way we had come. As we scrambled safely into the car, she burst
into real tears at last.

She would be the better for having her cry out. I lit a cigarette, and
considered the next move. Naturally, she was SHADOWS BEFORE 77 not
going to care for the idea of leaving her father as we had found him.
She would wish that he should have a proper burial and, by the looks of
it, that would be a matter of the pair of us digging the grave and
effecting the whole business.

And before that could even be attempted it would be necessary to fetch
the means to deal with the triffids that were already there, and keep
off any more than might appear. On the whole, I would be in favour of
dropping the whole thing but then, it was not my father ... The more I
considered this new aspect of things, the less I liked it. I had no
idea how many triffids there might be in London. Every park had a few
at least. Usually they kept some docked ones that were allowed to roam
about as they would, often there were others, with stings intact,
either staked, or safely behind wire-netting. Thinking of those we had
seen crossing Regenes Park, I wondered just how many they had been in
the habit of keeping in the pens by the zoo, and how many had escape
There'd be a number in private gardens, too; you'd expect all those to
be safely docked but you never can tell what fool carelessness may go
on. And then there were several nurseries of the things, and
experimental stations a little further out ...  While I sat there
pondering, I was aware of something nudging at the back of my mind;
some association of ideas that didn't quite join up. I sought it for a
moment or two: then, suddenly, it came. I could almost hear Walter's
voice speaking, saying: "I tell you, a triffid's in a damn sight
better position to survive than a blind man." Of course, he had been
talking about a man who had been blinded by a triffid sting. All the
same, it was a jolt. More than a jolt. It scared me a bit.

I thought back. No, it had just arisen out of general speculation nevertheless, it seemed a bit uncanny now ..."Take away our sight,"
he had said, ai
"And our superiority to them is gone."

tax trips Of course, coincidences are happening all the time but it's
just now and then you happen to notice them ... A crunch on the gravel
brought me back to the present. A triffid came swaying down the drive
towards the gate. I leant across, and screwed up the window.

"Drive on! Drive on I' said Josella hysterically.

"We're all right here," I told her."I want to see what it does."

Simultameously I realized that one of my questions was solved. Being
accustomed to triffids, I had forgotten how most people felt about an
undocked one. I suddenly understood that there would be no question of
coming back here.

Josella's feeling about an armed triffid was the general idea get well
away from it, and stay away.

The thing paused by the gate post. One could have sworn that it was
listening. We sat perfectly still and quiet. Josella staring at it
with horror. I expected it to lash out at the car, but it didn't.

Probably the muffling of our voices inside had misled it into thinking
we were out of range.

The little bare stalks began abruptly to clatter against its stem.

It swayed, lumbered clumsily off to the right, and disappeared into the
next driveway. Josella gave a sigh of relief.

"Oh, let's get away before it comes back," she implored.

I started the car, turned it ound, and we drove off Londoowards
again.

A LIGHT IN THE NIGHT
Jos/LLA began to recover her self-possession. With the deliberate and
obvious intention of taking her mind off what lay behind us she asked:
"Where are we going now ?"

"Clerkenwell first," I told her.

"After that we'll see about getting you some more clothes. Bond Street
for them, if you like, but Clerkenweu first."

"But why Clerkenwell ?

Good heavens !" She might well exclaim. We had turned a corner to see
the street seventy yards ahead of us filled with people. They were
coming towards us at a stumbling run, with their arms outstretched
before them. A mingled crying and screaming came from them. Even as
we turned into sight of them, a woman at the front tripped and fell;
others tumbled over her, and she disappeared beneath a kicking,
struggling heap. Beyond the mob, we had a glimpse of the cause of it
all: three dark-leaved stalks swaying over the panic-stricken heads. I
accelerated, and swung off into a by-road.

Josella turned a terrified face.

"Did did you see what that was ? They were driving them."

"Yes," I said."That's why we are going to Clerkenwell There's a place
there that makes the best triffid-guns and masks in the world." We
worked back again, and picked up our intended route, but we did not
find the clear run I had hoped for. Near King's Cross Station there
were many more people on the streets.

Even with a hand on the horn it was increasingly difficult to get
along. In front of the station itself it became impossible.

Why there should have been such crowds in that place I don't know.

All the people in the district seemed to have converged
upon it. We could not get through the people, and a glance behind
showed that it would be almost as hopeless to try to go back. Those we
had passed had already closed in on our track.

"Get out, quick I' I said. `i think they're after us."

"But' Josella
began.

"Hurry I' I said shortly.

I blew. a final blast on the horn, and slipped out after her, leaving
the engine running. We were not many seconds too soon. A man found
the handle of the rear door. He pulled it open, and pawed inside. We
were all but pushed over by the pressure of others making for the car.
There was a shout of anger when somebody opened the front door and
found the seats there empty, too. By that time we had ourselves safely
become members of the crowd. Somebody grabbed the man who had opened
the rear door under the impression that it was he who had just got out.
Around that the confusion began to thrive. I took a firm grip of
Josella's hand, and we started to worm our way out as un obviously as
possible.

Clear of the crowd at last, we kept on foot for a while, looking out
for a suitable car. After a mile or so we found it a station-waggon,
likely to be more useful than an ordinary body for the plan that was
beginning to form vaguely in my mind.

In Clerkenwell they had been accustomed for two or three centuries to
make fine, precise instruments. The small factory I had dealt with
professionally at times had adapted the old skill to new needs. I
found it with little difficulty, nor was it hard to break in. When we
set off again there was a comforting sense of support to be derived
from several excellent triffidguns, some thousands of little steel
boomerangs for them, and some wire-mesh helmets that we had loaded into
the back.

"And now clothes ?" suggested Josella, as we started.

"Provisional plan, open to criticism and correction," I told her.

"First what you might call apied-hid-terre: i.e. somewhere to pull
ourselves together and discuss things."

"Not another bar," she protested."I've had quite enough of bars for
one day."

"Improbable though my friends might think it with every
thing free so have I," I agreed."What I was thinking of was an empty
flat. That should ia be difficult to find. We could ease up there
awhile, and settle the rough plan of campaign.

Also, it would be convenient for spending the night or, if you find the
trammels of convention still defy the peculiar circumstances, well,
maybe we could make it two flats."

"I think I'd be happier to know
there was someone close at hand."

"Okay," I agreed."Then operation
Number Two will be ladles' and gents' outfitting. For that perhaps we
had better go our separate ways both taking exceedingly good care not
to forget which flat it was that we decided on."

"Yes
she said, but a little doubtfully.

"It'll be all right," I assured her."Make a rule for yourself not to
speak to anyone, and nobody's going to guess you can see.

It was only being quite unprepared that landed you in that mess
before,."In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king."

"Oh,
yes Wells said that, didn't he? - Only ha the story it turned out not
to be true
"The crux of the difference lies in what you mean by the
word "country' -aatria in the original," I said."Caecorum in 1atria
luscus rtx imltrat am#i - a classical gentleman called Fullonius said
it first: it's all anyone seems to know about him.

But there's no organized parr is no State, here only chaos.

Wells imagined a people who had adapted themselves to blindness.

I don't thin that is going to happen here I don't see how it can
"What
do you think is going to happen ?" y guess would be no better than
yours. And soon we shall begin to know, anyway. Better get back to
matters in hand.

Where were we ?* "Choosing clothes."

"Oh, yes. Well, it's simply a matter of slipping into a shop, adopting
a few trifles, and slipping out again. You'll not meet any triffids in
Central London at least, not yet."

"You talk so lightly about taking
things," she said.

"I don't feel quite so lightly about it," I admitted."But I'm not
sure that that's virtue it's more likely merely habit. And an
obstinate refusal to face facts isn't going to bring anything back, or
help us at all. I think we'll have to try to see ourselves not as the
robbers of all this, but more as well, the unwilling heirs to it."

"Yes. I suppose it is something like that," she agreed, in a qualified
way.

She was silent for a time. When she spoke again she reverted to the
earlier question.

"And after the clothes ?" she asked.

"Operation Number Three," I told her, 'is, quite definitely, dinner."

There was, as I had expected, no great difficulty about the flat. We
left the car locked up in the middle of the road in front of an
opulent-looking block, and climbed to the third storey.

Quite why we chose the third I can't say, except that it seemed a bit
more out of the way. The process of selection was simple. We knocked
or we rang, and if anyone answered, we passed on. After we had passed
on three times we found a door where there was no response. The socket
of the rim-lock tore off to one good heft of the shoulder, and we were
in.

I had not, myself, been one of those addicted to living in a flat with
a rent of some z,ooo a year, but I found that there were decidedly
things to be said in favour of it. The interior decorators had been, I
guessed, elegant young men with just that ingenious gift for combining
taste with advanced topicality which is so expensive. Consciousness of
fashion was the mainspring of the place. Here and there were certain
unmistakable dernier cris, some of them undoubtedly destined had the
world pursued its expected course to become the rage of tomorrow:
others, I would say, a dead loss from their
very inception. The overall effect was all Trade Fair in its neglect
of human foibles a book left a few inches out of place, or with the
wrong colour on its jacket would ruin the whole carefully considered
balance and tone so, too, would the person thoughtless enough to wear
the wrong clothes when sitting upon the wrong luxurious chair or
sofa.

I turned Josella who was staring wide-eyed at it all.

"Will this little shack serve or do we go further?" I asked.

"Oh, I guess we'll make out," she said. And together we waded through
the delicate cream carpet to explore.

It was quite uncalculated, but I could scarcely have hit upon a more
satisfactory method of taking her mind off the events of the day.

Our tour was punctuated with a series of exclamations in which
admiration, envy, delight, contempt, and, one must confess, malice, all
played their parts. Josella paused on the threshold of a room rampant
with all the most aggressive manifestations of femininity."I'll sleep
here," she said.

"My Godl' I remarked."Well, each to her taste."

"Don't be nasty.

I probably won't have another chance to be decadent. Besides, don't
you know there's a bit of the dumbest film-star in every girl ? So
I'll let it have its final fling."

"You shall," I said."But I hope
they keep something quieter around here. Heaven preserve me from
having to sleep in a bed with a mirror set in the ceiling over it."

"There's one above the bath, too," she said, looking into an adjoining
room.

"I don't know whether that would be the zenith or nadir of decadence,"
I said."But anyway, you'll not be using it. No hot water."

"Oh, I'd
forgotten that. What a shame!" she exclaimed, disappointedly.

We completed our inspection of the premises, finding the rest less
sensational. Then she went out to deal with the matter of clothes. I
made an inspection of the apartment's resources and limitations, and
then set out on an expedition of my own.

As I stepped outside, another door farther down the passage opened. I
stopped, and stood still where I was. A young man came out, leading a
fair-haired girl by the hand. As she stepped over the threshold he
released his grasp."Wait just a minute, darling," he said.

He took three or four steps on the silencing carpet. His outstretched
hands found the window which ended the passage.

His fingers went straight to the catch and opened it. I had a glimpse
of a fire-escape outside.

"What are you doing, Jimmy ?" she asked.

"Just making sure," he said, stepping quickly back to her, and feeling
for her hand again."Come along, darling." She hung back.

"Jimmy I don't like leaving here. At least we know where we are in our
own flat. How are we going to feed ? How are we going to live ?"

"In
the flat, darling, we shall't feed at an and therefore not live long.
Come along, sweetheart. Doa't be afraid."

"But I am, Jimmy I am." She
clung to him, and he put one arm round her.

"We'll be all right, darling. Come along."

"But Jimmy, that's the
wrong way-' "You've got it twisted round, dear. It's the right way."

"Jimmy I'm so frightened. Let's go back."

"It's too late, darling."

By the window he paused. With one hand he felt his position very
carefully. Then he put both arms round her, holding her to him.

"Too wonderful to last, perhaps," he said softly."I love you, my
sweet. I love you so very, very much." She turned her lips up to be
kissed.

As he lifted her he turned, and stepped out of the window ... *
"You've got to grow a hide," I told myself."Got to. It's either'
that or stay permanently drunk. Things like that must be happening all
around. They'll go on happening. You can't help it.

Suppose you'd given them food to keep them alive for another few days ?
What after that ? You've got to learn to take it, and come to terms
with it. There's nothing else but the alcoholic funk-hole. If you
don't fight to live your own life in spite of it, there won't be any
survival ... Only those who can make their minds tough enough to stick
it are going to get through ... It took me longer than I had expected
to collect what I wanted.

Something like two hours had passed before I got back. I dropped one
or two things from my armful in negotiating the door. Josella's voice
called with a trace of nervousness from that over-feminine room.

"Only me," I reassured her, as I advanced down the passage with the
load.

I dumped the things in the kitchen, and went back for those I'd
dropped. Outside her door I paused."You can't come in," she said.

"That wasn't quite my intended angle," I protested."What I want to
know is, can you cook ?"

"Boiled egg standard," said her muffled
voice.

"I was afraid of that. There's an awful lot of things we're going to
have to learn," I told her.

I went back to the kitchen..I erected the oil-stove I had brought on
top of the useless electric cooker, and got busy.

When I'd finished laying the places at the small table in the
sitting-room, the effect seemed to me fairly good. I fetched a few
candles and candlesticks to complete it, and set them ready. Of Josella
there was still no visible sign, though there had been sounds of
running water some little time ago. I called her.

"Just coming," she answered.

I wandered across to the window, and looked out. Quite consciously I
began saying good-bye to it all. The sun was low.

Towers, ships, fun. des of Portland stone were white or pink against
the dimming sky. Fires had broken out here and there. The smoke
climbed in big black smudges, sometimes with a lick of flame at the
bottom of them. Quite likely, I told myself, I would never in my life
again see any of these familiar buildings after tomorrow. There might
be a time when one would be able to come back but not to the same
place. Fires and weather would have worked on it: it would be visibly
dead and abandoned. But now, at a distance, it could still masquerade
as a living city.

My father once told me that before Hitler's war he used to go around
London with his eyes more widely open than ever before, seeing the
beauties of buildings that he had never noticed before and saying
goodbye to them. And now I had a similar feeling. But this was
something worse. Much more than anyone could have hoped for had
survived that war but this was an enemy they would not survive. It was
not wanton smashing and wilful burning that they waited for this time:
it was simply the long, slow, inevitable course of decay and
collapse.

Standing there, and at that time, my heart still resisted what my head
was telling me. Even yet I had the feeling that it was all something
too big, too unnatural really to happen. Yet I knew that it was by no
means the first time that it had happened. The corpses of other great
cities are lying buried in deserts, and obliterated by the jungles of
Asia. Some of them fell so long ago that even their names have gone
with them.

But to those who lived there their dissolution can have seemed no more
probable or possible than the necrosis of a great modern city seemed to
me ... It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and
comforting hallucinations to trust that 'it can't happen here' that
one's own little time and place is beyond cataclysms. And now it was
happening here. Unless there should be some miracle I was looking on
the beginning of the end of London and very likely, it seemed, there
were other men, not unlike me, who were looking on the beginning of the
end of New York, Paris, San Francisco, Buenos
Aires, Bombay, and all the rest of the cities that were destined to go
the way of those others under the jungles.

I was still looking out when a sound of movement came from behind me. I
turned, and saw that Josella had come into the room. She was wearing a
long, pretty frock of palest blue georgette with a little jacket of
white fur. In a pendant on a simple chain a few blue-white diamonds
flashed, the stones that gleamed in her ear-clips were smaller but as
fine in colour.

Her hair and her face might have been fresh from a beauty parlour
She crossed the floor with a flicker of silver slippers and a glimpse
of gossamer stockings. As I went on staring without speaking, her
mouth lost its little smile.

"Don't you like it?" she asked, with childish half-disappointment.

"It's lovely you're beautiful," I told her."I - well, I just wasn't
expecting anything like this ... Something more was needed.

I knew that it was a display which had little or nothing to do with me.
I added: "You're saying goodbye ?" A different look came into her
eyes.

"So you do understand. I hoped you would."

"I think I do. I'm glad
you've done it. It'll be a lovely thing to remember," I said.

I stretched out my hand to her and led her to the window.

"I was saying goodbye, too to all this." What went on in her mind as
we stood there side by side is her secret. In mine there was a kind of
kaleidoscope of the life and ways that were now finished or perhaps it
was more like flipping through a huge volume of photographs with one
all comprehensive 'do-you-remember ?" We looked for a long time, lost
in our thoughts. Then she sighed. She glanced down at her dress,
fingering the delicate silk.

"Silly? Rome burning?" she said, with a rueful little smile.

"No sweet," I said."Thank you for doing it. A gesture
and a reminder that with all the faults there was so much
beauty. You couldn't have done or looked a lovelier thing."

Her smile lost its ruefulness.

"Thank you, Bill." She paused. Then she added: "Have I said thank you
before ? I don't think I have. If you hadn't helped me when you did
"But for you," I told her, `i should probably by now be lying maudlin and
sozzled in some bar. I have just as much to thank you for.

This is no time to be alone." Then, to change the end, I added: "And
speaking of drink, there's an excellent Amontillado here, and some
pretty good things to follow. This is a very well-found flat." I
poured out the sherry, and we raised our glasses.

"To health, strength and luck," I said.

She nodded. We drank.

"What," Josella asked, as we started on an expensive-tasfng pit, 'what
if the owner of all this suddenly comes back?"

"In that case we will
explain and he or she should be only too thankful to have someone here
to tell him which bottle is which, and so on but I don't think that is
very likely to happen."

"No," she agreed, considering."No.

I'm afraid that's not very likely. I wonder' She looked round the
room. Her eyes paused at a fluted white pedestal."Did you try the
radio I suppose that thing is a radio, isn't it?"

"It's a television
projector, too," I told her."But no good.

No power."

"Of course, I forgot. I suppose we'll go on forgetting
things like that for quite a time."

"But I did try one when I was
out," I said."A battery affair.

Nothing doing. All broadcast bands as silent as the grave."

"That
means it's like this everywhere?"

"I'm afraid so. There was something
pip-pip ping away around forty-two me tres Otherwise nothing. Not even
carriers. I wonder who and wheare he was, poor chap."

"It's - it's
going to be pretty grim, Bill, isn't it ?"

"It's - no, I'm not going
to have my dinner clouded," I said.

"Pleasure before business and the future is definitely business.

Let's talk about something interesting like how many love affairs you
have had and why somebody hasn't married you long before this or has he
? You see how little I know. Life story, please."

"Well," she said,
"I was born about three miles from here.

My mother was very annoyed about it at the time." I raised my
eyebrows.

"You see, she had quite made up her mind that I should be an American.
But when the car came to take her to the airport it was just too late.
Full of impulses, she was I think I inherited some of them." She
prattled on. There was not much remarkable about her early life, but I
think she enjoyed herself in summarizing it, and forgetting where we
were for a while. I enjoyed listening to her babble of the familiar
and amusing things that had all vanished from the world outside. We
worked lightly through childhood, school-days, and 'coming out' - in so
far as the term still meant anything.

"I did nearly get married when I was nineteen," she admitted, 'and
aren't I glad now it didn't happen. But I didn't feel like that at the
time. I had a frightful row with Daddy who'd broken the whole thing up
because he saw right away that Lionel was a spizzard and ..."A what
?" I interrupted.

"A spizzard. A sort of cross between a spiv and a lizard the lounge
kind. So then I cut my family off and went and lived with a girl I
knew who had a fit. And my family cut off my allowance, which was a
very silly thing to do because it might have had just the opposite
effect from what they intended. As it happened, it didn't, because all
the girls I knew who were making out that way seemed to me to have a
very wearing sort of time of it. Not much fun, an awful lot of
jealousy to put up with and so much planning. You'd never believe how
much planning it needs to keep one or two second strings in good
condition or do I mean two or three spare strings ?" She pondered.

"Never mind," I told her."I get the general idea. You just didn't
want the strings at all."

"Intuitive, you are. All the same, I
couldn't just sponge on the girl who had the flat. I did have to have
some money, so I wrote the book." I did not think I'd heard quite
aright.

"You made a book ?" I suggested.

"I rote the book." She glanced at me, and smiled."I must look
awfully dumb that's just the way they all used to look at me when I
told them I was writing a book. Mind you, it wasn't a very good book I
mean, not like Aldous or Charles or people of that kind, but it
worked." I refrained from inquiring which of many possible Charles's
this referred to. I simply asked: "You mean it did get published ?"

"Oh, yes. And it really brought in quite a lot of money. The film
rights
"What was this book?" I asked, curiously.

"It was called Sex is My Future." I stared, and then smote my
forehead.

"Josella Playton, of course. I couldn't think why that name kept on
nearly ringing bells. You wrote that thing ?" I added,
incredulously.

I couldn't think why I had not remembered before. Her photograph had
been all over the place not a very good photograph now I could look at
the original, and the book had been all over the place, too, Two large
circulating libraries had banned it, probably on the title alone. After
that, its success had been assured, and the sales went rocketing up
into the hundred thousands. Josella chuckled. I was glad to hear it.

"Oh, dear," she said."You look just like all my relatives did."

"I can't blame them," I told her.

"Did you read it ?" she asked.

I shook my head. She sighed.

"People are funny. All you know about it is the title and the
publicity, and you're shocked. And it's such a harmless little book,
really. Mixture of green-sophisticated and pink-romantic, with patches
of school-girly-purple. But the title was a good idea."

"All depends
what you mean by good," I suggested."And you put your own name to it,
too."

"That," she agreed, 'was .a mistake. The publishers persuaded
me that it would be so much better for publicity. From their point of
view they were right. I became quite notorious for a bit it used to
make me giggle inside when I saw people looking speculatively at me in
restaurants and places they seemed to find it so hard to tie up what
they saw with what they thought. Lots of people I didn't care for took
to turning up regularly at the flat, so to get rid of them, and because
I'd proved that I didn't have to go home, I went home again.

"The book rather spoiled things, though. People would be so
literal-minded about the title. I seem to have been keeping up a
permanent defensive ever since against people I don't like and those I
wanted to like were either scared or shocked.

What's so annoying is that it wasn't even a wicked book it was just
silly-shocking, and sensible people ought to have seen that." She
paused contemplatively. It occurred to me that the sensible people had
probably decided that the author of Sex is My future would be
silly-shocking, too, but I forbore to suggest it. We all have our
youthful follies embarrassing to recall but people somehow find it hard
to dismiss as a youthful folly anything that has happened to be a
financial success.

"It sort of twisted everything," she complained."I was writing
another book to try to balance things up again. But I'm glad I'll
never finish it- it was rather bitter."

"With an equally alar g title
?" I asked.

She shook her head: "It was to be called Here the Forsaken."

"H'm well, it certainly lacks the snap of the other," I said
"Quotation ?"

"Yes." She nodded."Mr Congreve: "Here the forsaken Virgin rests from
Love."

"Er- oh," I said, and thought that one over for a bit.

"And now," I suggested, `i think it's about time we began to rough
out a plan of campaign. Shall I throw around a few observations first
?" We lay back in two superbly comfortable armchairs. On the low table
between us stood the coffee apparatus and two glasses. Josella's was
the small one with the Cointreau. The plutocratic-looking balloon with
the puddle of unpriceable brandy was mine. Josella blew out a feather
of smoke, and took a sip of her drink. Savouring the flavour, she
said: "I wonder whether we shall ever taste fresh oranges again?

Okay, shoot."

"Well, it's no good blinking facts. We had better clear
out soon. If not tomorrow, then the day after. You can begin to see
already what's going to happen here. At present there's still water in
the tanks. Soon there won't be. The whole city will begin to stink
like a great sewer. There are already some bodies lying about every
day there will be more." I noticed her shudder. I had for the moment,
in taking the general view, forgotten the particular application it
would have for her. I hurried on: "That may mean typhus, or cholera,
or God knows what. It's important to get away before anything of that
kind starts." She nodded agreement to that.

"Then the next question seems to be, where do we go ? Have you any
ideas ?" I asked her.

"Well I suppose, roughly, somewhere out of the way. A place with a
good water supply we can be sure of, a well, perhaps. And I should
think it would be best to be as high up as we reasonably can some place
where there'll be a nice clean wind."

"Yes," I said, 'i'd not thought
of the clean wind part, but you're right. A hilltop with a good water
supply that's not so easy offhand." I thought a moment.

"The Lake District ? No, too far. Wales, perhaps ? Or maybe Exmoor
or Dartmoor - or right down in Cornwall ? Around Land's End we'd have
the prevailing south-west wind coming in untainted over the Atlantic.

But that, too, was a long way. We should be dependent on towns when it
became safe to visit them again."

"What about the Sussex Downs ?"

Josella suggested. `i know a lovely old farmhouse on the north side,
looking right across towards Pulborough. It's not on the top of hills,
but it's well up the side. There's a Wind-pump for water, and I think
they make their own electra city It's all been converted and
modernized."

"Desirable residence, in fact. But it's a bit near
populous places. Don't you think we ought to get further away ?"

"Well, I was wondering. How long is it going to be before it'll be
safe to go into the towns again ?"

"I've no real idea," I admitted.

"I'd something like a year in mind surely that ought to be a safe
enough margin ?"

"I see. But if we do go too far away, it isn't going
to be at all easy to get supplies later on." "That is a point,
certainly," I agreed.

We dropped the matter of our final destination for the moment, and got
down to working out details for our femoral. In the morning, we
decided, we would first of all acquire a lorry a capacious lorry- and
between us we made a list of the essentials we would put into it. If
we could finish the stocking up, we would start on our way the next
evening, if not and the list was growing to a length which made this
appear much the more likely we would risk another night in London, and
get away the following day.

It was close on midnight when we had finished adding our own socondary
wants to the list of musts. The result resembled a department-store
catalogue. But if it had done no more than serve to take our minds off
ourselves for the evening it would have been worth the trouble.

Josella yawned, and stood up.

"Sleepy," she said. - And silk sheets waiting on an ecstatic bed." She
seemed to float across the thick carpet. With her hand on the
door-knob she stopped and turned to regard herself solemnly' in a long
mirror.

"Some things were fun," she said, and kissed her hand to her
reflection.

"Good night, you vain, sweet vision," I said.

She turned with a small smile, and then vanished through the door like
a mist drifting away.

I poured out a final drop of the superb brandy, warmed it in my hands,
and sipped it.

"Never never again now will you see a sight like that," I told myself.
"Sic transit ... And then, before I should become utterly morbid, I
took myself to my more modest bed.

, I was stretched in comfort on the edge of sleep when there came a
knocking at the door.

"Bill," said Josella's voice."Come quickly. There's a light?

"What sort of a light ?" I inquired, struggling out of bed.

"Outside. Come and look." She was standing in the passage wrapped in
the sort of garment that could have belonged only to the owner of that
remarkable bedroom.

"Good God!' I said, nervously.

"Don't be a fool," she told me, irritably."Come and look at that
light." A light there certainly was. Looking out of her window
towards what I judged to be the north-east, I could see a bright beam
like that of a searchlight pointed unwaveringly upwards.

"That must mean there's somebody else there who
can see," she said.

"It must," I agreed.

I tried to locate the source of it, but in the surrounding darkness I
was unable to decide. No great distance away, I was sure, and seeming
to start in mid-air which probably meant that it was mounted on a high
building. I hesitated.

"Better leave it till tomorrow," I decided.

The idea of trying to find our way to it through the dark streets was
far from attractive. And it was just possible highly unlikely, but
just possible that it was a trap. Even a blind man who was clever and
desperate enough might be able to wire such a thing up by touch.

I found a nail-file and squatted down with my eye on the level of the
window-sill. With the point of the file I drew a careful line in the
paint, marking the exact direction of the beam's source. Then I went
back to my room.

I lay awake for an hour or more. Night magnified the quiet of the
city, making the sounds which broke it the more desolate. From time to
time voices rose from the street, edgy and brittle with hysteria. Once
there came a freezing scream which seemed to revel horribly in its
release from sanity.

Somewhere not far away a sobbing went on endlessly, hopelessly.

Twice I heard the sharp reports of single pistol shots.

 ...  I gave heartfelt thanks to whatever it was that had brought Josella
and me together for companionship.

Complete loneliness was the worst state I could imagine just then.

Alone one would be nothing. Company meant purpose, and purpose helped
to keep the morbid fears at bay.

I tried to shut out the sounds by thinking of all the things I must do
the next day, the day after, and the days after that; by guessing what
the beam of light might mean, and how it might affect us.

But the sobbing in the background went on and on and on, reminding me
of the things I had seen that day, and would see tomorrow ... The
opening of the door brought me sitting up in sudden alarm. It was
Josella, carrying a lighted candle. Her eyes were wide and dark, and
she had been crying.

"I can't sleep," she said."I'm frightened horribly frightened. Can
you hear them all those poor people ? I can't stand it.

 ...  She came like a child for comfort. I'm not sure that her need of
it was much greater than mine.

She fell asleep before I did, with her head resting on my shoulder.

Still the memories of the day would not leave me in peace..

But, in the end, one does sleep. My last recollection was of the
sweet, sad voice of the girl who had sung: So we'll go no more a-rovin'
 ...  When I awoke I could hear Josella already moving around in the
kitchen. My watch said nearly seven o'clock. By the time I had shaved
uncomfortably in cold water and dressed myself, there was a smell of
toast and coffee drifting through the apartment I found her holding a
pan over the oil stove She had an air of self-possession which was hard
to associate with the frightened figure of the night before. Her manner
was practical, too.

"Canned milk, I'm ffa, ai The fudge opped. Everything else is all
right, though," she said.

It was difficult for a moment to believe that the expediently dressed
form before me had been the ballroom vision of the previous evening.
She had chosen a dark-blue skiing suit with white-topped socks rolled
above sturdy shoes. On a dark leather belt she wo a finely-made
hunting knife to replace the mediocre weapon I had found the day
before. I have no idea how I expected to find her dressed, nor whether
I had given the matter my thought, but the practicality of her choice
was by no means the only impression I received as I saw her.

"Will I do, do you think ?" she said.

"Eminently," I assured her. I looked down at myself."I wish I'd had
as much forethought. Gents' lounge-suiting isn't quite the rig for the
job," I added.

"You could do better," she lgreed, with a candid glance at my crumpled
suit.

"That light last night," she went on, 'came from the University Tower
at least, I'm pretty sure it did. There's nothing else noticeable
exactly on that line. It seems about the right distance, too." I went
into the room, and looked along the scratch I had
drawn on the sill. It did, as she said, point directly at the tower.
And I noticed something more. The tower was flying two flags on the
same mast. One might have been left hoisted by chance, but two must be
a deliberate signal; the daytime equivalent of the light. We decided
over breakfast that we would postpone our planned programme and make
investigation of the tower our first job for the day.

We left the flat about half an hour later. As I had hoped, the station
waggon standing out in the middle of the street had escaped the
attentions of prowlers, and was intact. Without delaying further, we
dropped the suitcases that Josella had acquired into the back among the
triffid gear, and started off.

Few people were about. Presumably weariness and the chill in the air
had made them aware that night had fallen, and not many had yet emerged
from whatever sleeping-places they had found. Those who were to be
seen were keeping more to the gutters and less to the walls than they
had on the previous day.

Most of them were now holding sticks or bits of broken wood with which
they tapped their way along the kerb. It made for easier going than by
the house fronts with their entrances and projections, and the tapping
had decreased the frequency of collisions.

We threaded our way with little difficulty, and after a time turned
into Store Street to see the University Tower at the end of it rising
straight before us.

"Steady," said Josella, as we turned into the empty road."I think
there's something happening at the gates." She was right. As we came
nearer we could see a not inconsiderable crowd beyond the end of the
street. The previous day had given us a distaste for crowds. I swung
right down Gower Street, ran on for fifty yards or so, and stopped.

"What do you reckon's going on there ? Do we investigate or clear out
?" I asked.

"I'd say investigate," Josella replied promptly.

"Good. Me too," I agreed.

"I remember this part," she added."There's a garden behind these
houses. If we can get in there we ought to be able to see what's
happening without mixing ourselves up in it." We left the car, and
started peering hopefully into basement areas. In the third we found
an open door. A passage straight through the house led into the
garden. The place was common to a dozen or so houses, and curiously
laid out, being for the most part at the level of the basements, and
thus below that of the surrounding streets, but on the far side, that
closest to the University Building, it rose to a kind of terrace
separated from the road by tall iron gates and a low wall. We could
hear the sound of the crowd beyond it as a kind of composite murmur.

We crossed the lawn, made our way up a sloped gravel path and found a
place behind a screen of bushes whence we could watch.

The crowd that stood in the road outside the University gates must have
numbered several hundred men and women.

It was larger than the sound of it had led us to expect, and for the
first time I realized how much quieter and more inactive a crowd of
blind people is than a comparably-sized crowd of the sighted. It is
natural, of course, for they must depend almost entirely on their ears
to know what is happening so that the quietness of each is to the
advantage of all, but it had not been obvious to me until that
moment.

Whatever was going on was right at the front. We managed to find a
slightly higher mound which gave us a view of the gates across the
heads of the crowd. A man in a cap was talking volubly through the
bars. He did not appear to be making a lot of headway, for the part
taken in the conversation by the man on the other side of the gates
consisted almost entirely of negative head shakes
"What is it ?" Josella asked, in a whisper.

I helped her up beside me. The talkative man turned so that we had a
glimpse of his profile. He was, I judged, about thirty, with a
straight, narrow nose, and rather bony features. What showed of his
hair was dark, but it was the intensity of his manner that was more
noticeable than his appearance.

As the colloquy through the gates continued to get nowhere his voice
became louder and more emphatic though without visible effect on the
other. There could be no doubt that the man beyond the gates was able
to see; he was doing so watchfully, through horn-rimmed glasses. A few
yards behind him stood a little knot of three more men about whom there
was equally little doubt. They, too, were regarding the crowd and its
spokesmen with careful attention. The man on outside grew more heated.
His voice rose as if he were talking as much for the benefit of the
crowd as for those behind the railings.

"Now listen to me," he said, angrily."These people here have got just
as much bloody right to live as you have, haven't they? It's not their
fault they're blind, is it? It's aobody's fault but it's going to be
you: fault if they starve, and you know it." His voice was a curious
mixture of the tough and the educated so that it eas hard to place him
as though neither style seemed quite natural to him, somehow.

"I've been showing them where to get food. I've been doing what I can
for them, but Christ, there's only one of me, and there's thousands of
them. You could be showing 'em where to get food, too but are you ? helping? What are you doing about it ? Damn all, that's what. Just sweet
el Fay but look after your own lousy skins. I've met your kind before.
It's
"Damn you, Jack, I'm all right" - that's your motto." He Smiled with
contempt, and raised a long, oratorical finger.

"Out there," he said, waving his hand towards London at large, out
there there are thousands of poor devils only wanting someone to show
them how to get the food that's there for the taking. - And you could
do it. All you've got to do is show them. But do you ? Do you, you
buggers ? No, what you do is shut yourselves in here and let them
bloody well starve when each one of you could keep hundreds alive by
doing no more than coming out and showing the poor sods
where to get the grub. God almighty, aren't you people human ?"

The man's voice was violent. He had a case to put, and he was putting
it passionately. I felt Josella's hand unconsciously clutching my arm,
and I put my hand over hers. The man on the far side of the gate said
something that was inaudible where we stood.

"How long?" shouted the man on our side."How in hell would I know
how long the food's going to last ? What I do know is that if bastards
like you don't muck in and help, there ain't going to be many left
alive by the time they come to clear this bloody mess up." He stood
glaring for a moment."Fact of it is, you're scared scared to show
'em where the food is.

And why ? Because the more these poor devils get to eat, the less
there's going to be for you lot. That's the way of it, isn't it ?

That's the truth- if you had the guts to admit it." Again we failed to
hear the answer of the other man, but, whatever it was, it did nothing
to mollify the speaker. He stared back grimly through the bars for a
moment. Then he said: "All right if that's the way you want it !" He
made a lightning snatch between the bars, and caught the other's arm.

In one swift movement he dragged it through, and twisted it. He
grabbed the hand of a blind man standing beside him, and clamped it on
the arm.

"Hang on there, mate," he said, and jumped towards the main fastening
of the gates.

The man inside recovered from his first surprise. He struck wildly
through the bars behind him with his other hand. A chance swipe took
the blind man in the face. It made him give a yell, and tighten his
grip. The leader of the crowd was wrenching at the gate fastening.

At that moment a rifle cracked. The bullet pinged against the
railings, and whirred off on a ricochet. The leader checked suddenly,
undecided.

Behind him there was an outbreak of curses, and a scream or two.

The crowd swayed back and forth as though uncertain whether to run or
to charge the gates. The decision was made for them by those in the
courtyard. I saw a youngish-looking man tuck something under his arm,
and I dropped down, pulling Josella with me as the clatter of a
sub-machine gun began.

It was obvious that the shooting was deliberately high; nevertheless,
the rattle of it and the whizz of glancing bullets was alarming. One
short burst was enough to settle the matter.

When we raised our heads the crowd had lost entity and its components
were groping their ways to safer parts in all three possible
directions. The leader paused only to shout something unintelligible,
then he turned away, too. He made his way northwards up Malet Street,
doing his best to rally his following behind him.

I sat where we were, and looked at Josella. She looked thoughtfully
back at me, and then down at the ground before her. It was some
minutes before either of us spoke."Well ?" I asked, at last.

She raised her head to look across the road, and then at the last
stragglers from the crowd pathetically fumbling their ways.

"He was right," she said."You know he was right, don't you ?" I
nodded.

"Yes, he was right ...  And yet he was quite wrong, too.

You see, there is no "they" to come to clear up this mess I'm quite sure
of that now. It won't be cleared up. We could do as he says. We could
show some, though only some, of these people where there is food.

We could do that for a few days, maybe for a few weeks, but after that- what ?"

"It seems so awful, so callous ..."If we face it squarely,
there's a simple choice," I said.

"Either we can set out to save what can be saved from the wreck and
that has to include ourselves: or we can devote ourselves to stretching
the lives of these people a little longer.

That is the most objective view I can take.

"But I can see, too, that the more obviously humane course is also,
probably, the road to suicide. Should we spend our time in prolonging
misery when we believe that there is no chance of saving the people in
the end? Would that be the best use to make of ourselves iv She nodded
slowly.

"Put like that, there doesn't seem to be much choice, does there ?

And even if we could save a few, which are we going to choose ? - and
who are me to choose ? - and how long could we do it, anyway ?"

"There's nothing easy about this," I said."I've no idea what
proportion of semi-disabled persons it may be possible for us to
support when we come to the end of handy supplies, but I don't imagine
it could be very high."

"You've made up your mind," she said, glancing
at me.

There might or might not have been a tinge of disapproval in her
voice.

"My dear," I said."I don't like this any more than you do.

I've put the alternatives baldly before you. Do we help those who have
survived the catastrophe to rebuild some kind of life ? - or do we
make a moral gesture which, on the face of it, can scarcely be more
than a gesture ? The people across the toad there evidently intend to
survive." She dug her fingers into the earth, and let the soil trickle
out of her hand.

"I suppose you're right," she said."But you're right when you say I
don't like it."

"Our likes and dislikes as decisive factors have now
pretty well disappeared," I suggested.

"Maybe, but I can't help feeling that there must be something wrong
about anything that starts with shooting."

"He shot to miss and it's
very likely he saved fighting," I pointed out.

The crowd had all gone now. I climbed over the wall, and helped
Josella down on the other side. A man at the gate opened it to let us
in.

"How many of you ?" he asked.

"Just two of us. We saw your signal last night," I told him.

"Okay."Come along, and we'll find the colonel," he said, leading us
across the forecourt.

The man whom he called the Colonel had set himself up in a small room
not far from the entrance, and intended, seemingly, for the porters. He
was a chubby man just turned fifty or thereabout. His hair was
plentiful but well-trimmed, and grey. His mustache matched it, and
looked as if no single hair would dare to break the ranks. His
complexion was so pink, healey, and fresh that it might have belonged
to a much younger man; his mind, I discovered later, had never ceased
to do so. He was sitting behind a table with quantities of paper
arranged on it in mathematically exact blocks, and an unsoiled sheet of
pink blotting-paper placed squarely before him.

As we came in he turned upon us, one after the other, an intense,
steady look, and held it a little longer than was necessary. I
recognized the technique. It is intended to convey that the user is a
percipient judge accustomed to taking summarily the measure of his man;
the receiver should feel that he now faces a reliable type with no
nonsense about him or, alternatively, that he has been seen through and
had all his weaknesses noted. The right response is to return it in
kind, and be considered a 'useful fella'. I did. The Colonel picked
up his pen.

"Your names, please ?" We gave them.

"And addresses ?"

"In the present circumstances I fear they won't be
very useful," I said."But if you tea By feel you must have them' We
gave them too.

He murmured something about system, organization, and relatives, and
wrote them down. Age, occupation, and all the rest of it followed.

He bent his searching look upon us again, scribbled a note upon each
piece of paper, and put them in a file.

"Need good men. Nasty business this. Plenty to do here, though.

Plenty. Mr Beadley'll tell you what's wanted." We came out into the
hall again. Josella giggled.

"He forgot to ask for references in triplicate but I gather we've got
the job," she said.

Michael Beadley, when we discovered him, turned out to be in decided
contrast. He was lean, tall, broad-shouldered, and slightly stooping
with something of the air of an athlete run to books. In repose his
face took on an expression of mild gloom from the darkness of his large
eyes, but it was seldom that one had a glimpse of it in repose. The
occasional streaks of grey in his hair helped very little in judging
his age. He might have been anything between thirty-five and fifty.
His obvious weariness just then made an estimate still more difficult.
By his looks he must have been up all night, nevertheless he greeted us
cheerfully and waved an introductory hand towards a young woma,* who
took down our names again as we gave them.

"Sandra Telmoat' he explained."Santtr is OUR professional membrancer
- continuity is her usual work, so we regard it as particularly
thoughtful of providence to contrive her presence here just now." The
young woman nodded to me, and looked harder at Joselb.

"We've met before," she said, thoughtfully. She glanced down at the
pad on her knee. Presently a faint smile passed across her pleasant
though un exotic countenance
"Oh, yes, of course," she said, in reeoliectiom
"What did I tell you? The ting clings like a flypaper' Josella
observed to me.

"What's this about ?" inquired Michael Beadley.

I explained. He turned a more careful scrutiny on Joselhshe sighed.

"Please forget it," she suggested."I'm a bit tired of living it
down." That appeured to surprise him agreeably.

"All right," he said, and dismissed the matter with a nod. He turned
back to the table."Now to get on with things. You've seen Jaques ?"

"If that is the Colonel who is playing at Civil Service, we have," I
told him.

He grinned.

"Got to know how we stand. Can't get anywhere without knowing, your
ration-strength," he said, in a fair imitation of the Colonel's manner.
"But it's quite true, though," he went on.

"I'd better give you just a rough idea of how things do stand.

Up to the present there are about thirty-five of us. All sorts.

We ope and expect that some more will come in during the day. Out of
those here now, twenty-eight can see. The others are wives or husbands
and there are two or three children who cannot. At the moment the
general idea is that we move eway from here sometime tomorrow if we can
be ready in time to be on the safe side, you understand." I nodded.
"We'd decided to get away this evening for the same reason," I told
him.

"What have you for transport ?" I explained the present position of
the station-waggon."We were going to stock up today," I added.

"So far we've practically nothing except a quantity of anti-triffid
gear." He raised his eyebrows. The girl Sandra also looked at me
curiously.

"That's a queer thing to make your first essential," he remarked.

I told them the reasons. Possibly I made a bad job of it, for they
neither of them looked much impressed. He nodded casually, and went
on: "Well, if you're coming in with us, here's what I suggest.

Bring in your car, dump your stuff, then drive off and swap it for a
good big lorry. Then oh, does either of you know anything about
doctoring ?" he broke off to ask. We shook our heads.

He frowned a little."That's a pity. So far we've got no one
who does. It'll surprise me if we're not needing a
doctor before long and anyway, we ought all of us to have inoculations
 ...  Still, it's not much good sending you two off on a medical
supplies scrounge. What about food and general stores ? Suit you ?"

He flipped through some pages on a clip, detached one of them, and
handed it to me. It was headed No. x 5, and below was a typed list of
canned goods, pots and pans, and some bedding.

"Not rigid," he said, 'but keep reasonably close to it, and we'll avoid
too many duplications. Stick to best quality. With the food,
concentrate on value for bulk I mean, even if corn flakes are your
leading passion in life, forget 'em. I suggest you keep to warehouses
and big wholesalers." He took back the list, and scribbled two or
three addresses on it."Cans and packets are your food line don't get
led away by sacks of flour, for instance; there's another party on that
sort of stuff." He looked thoughtfully at Josella."Heavyish work,
I'm afraid, but it's the most useful job we can give you at present. Do
as much as you can before dark. There'll be a general meeting and
discussion here about nine-thirty this evening." As we turned to go:
"Got a pistol ?" he asked.

"I didn't think of it," I admitted.

"Better just in case. Quite effective simply fired into the air," he
said. He took two pistols from a drawer in the table, and pushed them
across."Less messy than that," he added, with a look at Josella's
handsome knife."Good scrounging to you." Even by the time we set out
after unloading the stationwaggon we found that there were still fewer
people about than on the previous day. The ones that were showed an
inclination to get on the pavements at the sound of the engine rather
than to molest us.

The first lorry to take our fancy proved useless, being filled with
wooden cases too heavy for us to remove. Our next find was luckier a
five-tonner, almost new, and empty. We transshipped, and left the
station-waggon to its fate.

At the first address on my list the shutters of the loading bay were
down, but they gave way without much difficulty to the persuasions of a
crowbar from a neighbouring shop, and rolled up oasily. Inside, we
made a find. Three lorries stood backed up to the platform. One of
them was fully loaded with cases of canned meat.

"Can you drive one of these things ?" I asked Josella.

She looked at it.

"Well, I don't see why not. The general idea's the same, isn't it ?
And there's certainly no traffic problem." We decided to come back and
fetch it later, and took the empty lorry on to another warehouse where
we loaded large piles of blunkets, rugs, and quilts, and then went on
further to acquire a noisy miscellany of pots, pans, cauldrons, and
kettles.

When we had it filled we felt we'd put in a good morning's work on a
job that was heavier than we had thought. We satisfied the appetitite
it had given us at a small pub hitherto untouched.

The mood which filled the business and commertial districts was
gloomy though it was a gloom that still had more the style of a normal
Sunday or public holiday than of collapse. Very few people at all were
to be seen in those parts.

Had the catastrophe come by day, instead of by night after the workers
had gone home, it would have been a hideously different scene.

When we had refreshed ourselves we collected the already loaded lorry
from the food warehouse, and drove the two of them slowly and
uneventfully back to the University. We parked them in the forecourt
there, and set off again. About six-thirty we returned once more with
another pair of well loaded lorries, and a feeling of useful
accomplishment.

Michael Beadicy emerged from the building to inspect our
contributions. He approved of it all, save half a dozen cases that I
had added to my second load."What are they?" he asked.

"Triffid guns, and bolts for them," I told him.

He looked at me thoughtfully.

"Oh, yes, You arrived with a lot of anti-triffid stuff," he remarked.

"I think it's likely we'll need it," I said.

He considered. I could see that I was being put down as a bit unsound
on the subject of triffids. Most likely he was accounting for that by
the bias my job might be expected to give aggravated by a phobia
resulting from my recent sting and he was wondering whether it might
connote other, Perhaps less harmless, unsoundnesses.

"Look here," I suggested, 'we've brought in four full loads between us.
I just want enough space in one of them for these cases.

If you think we can't spare that, I'll go out and find a trailer, or
another lorry."

"No, leave 'em where they are. They don't take a lot
of room," he decided.

We went into the building and had some tea at an improvised canteen
that a pleasant-faced, middle-aged woman had competently set up
there.

"He thinks," I said to Joslh 'that I've got a bee in my bonnet over
triffids."

"He'll learn I'm afraid," she replied."It's queer that no
one else seems to have seen them about."

"These people have all been
keeping pretty much to the centre, so it's not very surprising.

After all, we've seen none ourselves today."

"Do you think they'll
come right down here among the Streets ?" `i couldn't say. Maybe lost
ones would."

"How do you think they got loose ?" she asked.

"If they worry at a stake hard enough and long enough, it'll usually
come in the end. The breakouts we used to get some IIO
times on the farms were due as a rule to their all crowding up
against one section of the fence until it gave way."

"But couldn't you
make the fences stronger ?"

"We could have done, but we didn't want
them fixed quite permanently. It didn't happen very often, and when it
did it was usually simply from one field to another, so we'd just drive
them back, and put up the fence again. I don't think any of them mill
intentionally make this way. From a triffid point of view a city must
be much like a desert, so I should think they'll be moving outwards
towards the open country on the whole. Have you ever used a
triffid ?" I added.

She shook her head.

tarter I've done something about these clothes I was thinking of
putting in a bit of practice, if you'd like to try," I suggested.

I got back an hour or so later feeling more suitably clad as a result
of having infringed on her idea of a ski-suit and heavy shoes, to find
that she had changed into a becoming dress of spring-green. We took a
couple of the triffid guns, and went out into the garden of Russell
Square, close by. We had spent about half an hour snipping the topmost
shoots off convenient bushes when a young woman in a brick-red lumber
jacket and an elegant pair of green trousers strolled across the grass
and levelled a small camera at us.

"Who are you the Press ?" inquired Josella.

"More or less," said the young woman, - at least, I'm the official
record. Elspeth Cary."

"So soon ?" I remarked."I trace the hand of
our order conscious Colonel."

"You're quite right," she agreed.

She turned to look at Josella
"And you are Miss Playton. I've often
wondered
"Now look here," interrupted Josella."Why should the one
static thing in a collapsing world be my reputation ? Can't we forget
it?"

"Um," said Miss Cary, thoughtfully, "Uh-huh." She turned to
another subject."What's all this about triffids ?" she asked.

We told her.

"They think," added Josella, 'that Bill here is either scary or scatty
on the subject." Miss Cary turned a straight look at me. Her face was
interesting rather than good-looking, with a complexion browned by
stronger suns than ours. Her eyes were steady, observant, and dark
brown.

"Are you ?" she asked.

"Well, I think they're troublesome enough to be taken seriously when
they get out of hand," I told her.

She nodded."True enough. I've been in places where they are out of
hand. Quite nasty. But in England well, it's hard to imagine that
here."

"There'll not be a lot to stop them here now," I said.

Her reply, if she had been about to make one, was forestalled by the
sound of an engine overhead. We looked up and presently saw a
helicopter come drifting across the roof of the British Museum.

"That'll be Ivan," said Miss Cary."He thought he might manage to find
one. I must go and get a picture of him landing See you later."

And she hurried off across the grass.

Josella lay down, clasped her hands behind her head, and gazed up into
the depths of the sky. When the helicopter's engine ceased it sounded
very much quieter than before we had heard it.

"I can't believe it," she said."I try, but I still can't really
believe. It can't all be going. going. going ... This is some kind
of dream. Tomorrow this garden will be full of noise. The red buses
will be roaring along over there, crowds of people will be scurrying
along the pavements, the traffic lights will be flashing ... A world
doesn't just end like this it can't - it isn't possible ...  I was
feeling like that, too. The houses, the trees, the absurdly grandiose
hotels on the other side of the Square were all too normal too ready to
come to life at a touch ..."And yet," I said,
"I suppose that if they had been able to think at all the dinosaurs
would have thought much the same thing.

It just does happen from time to time, you see."

"But why to us ?

It's like reading in the papers about the astonishing things that have
happened to other people but always to other people. There's nothing
special about us."

"Isn't there always a "why me"? Whether it's the
soldier who's untouched when all his pals are killed, or the fellow who
gets' run in for fiddling his accounts ? Just plain blind chance, I'd
say."

"Chance that it happened? - or chance that it happened now .

"Now, I mean. It was bound to happen some time in some way. It's an
unnatural thought that one type of eatum should dominate y."

"I don't
see why."

"Why, is a heck of a question. But it is an inescapable
conclusion that life has to be dynamic and not static.

Change is bound to come one way or another. Mind you, I don't think
it's quite done with us this time, but it has had a damned good try.s
"Then you don't think it really is the end of people, I mean ?"

"It
might be. But-weal, I don't think so- this time." It could be the
end.

I had no doubt of that. But there would be other little groups like
ours. I saw an empty world with a few scattered communities trying to
fight their way back to control of it. I had to believe that some, at
least, of them would succeed.

"No," I repeated, 'it need not be the end. We're still very adaptable,
and we've a flying start compared with our ancestors. As long as there
are any of us left sound and healthy we've got a chance -a thundering
good chance." Josella made no answer. She lay facing upwards with a
faraway look in her eyes. I thought perhaps I could guess something of
what was passing in her mind, but I said nothing.

She did not speak for a little while, then she said:

"You know, one of the most shocking things about it . I realize how
easily we have lost a world that seemed so sate and certain." She was
quite right. It was that simple. that seemed somehow to be the
nucleus of the shock. From very familiar it one forgets all the forces
which keep the balance, and thinks of security as normal. It is not.

I don't think it had ever before occurred to me that man's supremacy is
not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one
think. It is due to the brain's capacity to make use of the
information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His
civilization, all that he has achieved or might achieve hangs upon his
ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet.

Without that, he is lost. I saw for a moment the true tenuousness of
his hold on his power, the miracles that he had wrought with such a
fragile instrument ... Josella had been pursuing her own line of
thought
"It's going to be a very queer sort of world what's left of it.

I don't think we're going to like it a lot," she said, reflectively.

It seemed to me an odd view to take rather as if one should protest
that one did not like the idea of dying or being born. I preferred the
notion of finding out first how it would be, and then doing what one
could about the parts of it one disliked most, but I let it pass.

From time to time we had heard the sound of lorries driving up to the
far side of the building. It was evident that most of the foraging
parties must have returned by this hour. I looked at my watch, and
reached for the triffid-guns lying on the grass beside me.

"If we're going to get any supper before we hear what other people feel
about all this, it's time we went in," I said.

CONFERENCE
I fancy all of us had expected the meeting to be simply a kind of
briefing talk. Just times, course instructions, the day's objective
that kind of thing. Certainly I had no expectation of the food for
thought that we received.

It was held in a small lecture-theatre lit for the occasion by an a
rangement of car head lamps and batteries. When we went in, some
half-dozen men and two women who appeared to have constituted
themselves a committee were conferring behind the lecmrer's desk. To
our surprise we found nearly a hundred people seated in the body of the
hall. Young women predominated at a ratio of about four to one. I had
not realized until Josella pointed it out to me how few of them were
able to see.

Michael Beadley dominated the consulting group by his height. I
recognized the Colonel beside him. The other faces were new to me,
save that of Elspeth Cary who had now exchanged her camera for a
notebook, presumably for the benefit of posterity. Most of their
interest was cent red round an elderly man of ugly but benign aspect
who wore gold-rimmed spectacles, and fine white hair trimmed to a
rather political length. They all had an air of being a little worried
about him.

The other woman in the party was little more than a girl perhaps
twenty-two or three. She did not appear happy at finding herself where
she was. She cast occasional looks of nervous uncertainty at the
audience.

Sandra Telmont came in, carrying a sheet of foolscap. She studied it a
moment, then briskly broke the group up, and sorted it into chairs.
With a wave of her hand she directed Michael to the desk, and the
meeting began.

He stood there a little bent, watching the audience from
CONVERZNCE XI
sombre eyes as be waited for the murmuring to die down.

When he spoke, it was in a pleasant, practised voice, and with a
fireside manner.

"Many of us here," he began, 'must still be feeling humbled under this
catastrophe. The world we knew has ended in a flash. Some of us may
be feeling that it is the end of everything
It is not. But to all of you I will say at once that it can be the end
of everything if,e let it.

"Stupendous as this disaster is, there is still a margin of survival.
It may be worth remembering just how that we are not unique in looking
upon vast calamity. Whatever the myths that have grown up about it,
there can be no doubt that somewhere far back in our history there was
a Great Flood. Those who survived that must have looked upon a
disaster comparable in scale with this, and, in some ways, more
formidable.

But they cannot have despaired: they must have begun again as we can
begin again.

"Self-pity and a sense of high tragedy are going to build nothing at
all. So we had better throw them out at once, for it is builders that
we must become.

"And further to deflate any romantic dramatization I would like to
point out to you that this, even now, is not the worst that could have
happened. I, and quite likely many of you, have spent most of our
lives in expectation of something worse. And I still believe that if
this had not happened to us, that worse thing would.

"From 6 August 194, the margin of survival has narrowed appallingly.
Indeed, two days ago it was narrower than it is at this moment. If you
need to dramatize, you could well take for your material the years
succeeding x94 when the path of safety started to shrink to a
tight-rope along which we had to walk with our eyes deliberately closed
to the depths beneath us.

"In any single moment of the years since then the fatal slip might have
been made. It is a miracle that it was not. It is a double miracle
that can go on happening for years.

"But sooner or later that slip must have occurred. It would not have
mattered whether it came through malice, carelessness, or sheer
accident: the balance would have been lost, and the destruction let
loose.

"How bad it would have been, we cannot say. How bad it could have been
well, there might have been no survivors: there might possibly have
been no planet ..."An now contrast our situation. The Earth is
intact, unscarred, still fruitful. It can provide us with food and raw
materials. We have repositories of knowledge that can teach us to do
anything that has been done before though there are some things that
may be better unremembered. And we have the means, the health, and the
strength to begin to build again." He did not make a long speech, but
it had effect. It must have made quite a number of the members of his
audience begin to feel that perhaps they were at the beginning of
something after all, rather than at the end of everything. In spite of
his offering little but generalities there was a more alert air in the
place when he sat down.

The Colonel, who followed him, was practical and factual.

He reminded us that for reasons of health it would be advisable for us
to get away from all built-up areas as soon as practicable which was
expected to be at about x 5:00 hours on the following day.

Almost all the primary necessities as well as extras enough to give a
reasonable standard of comfort had now been collected. In considering
our stocks our aim must be to make ourselves as nearly independent of
outside sources as possible for a minimum of one year. We should spend
that period in virtually a state of siege. There were, no doubt, many
things we should all like to take besides those on our lists, but they
would have to wait until the medical staff (and here the girl on the
committee blushed deeply) considered it safe for parties to leave
isolation and fetch them. As for the scene of our isolation, the
committee had given it considerable thought, and, bearing in mind the
de lemma of compactnesa CONVENIENCE self-sufficiency, and detachment,
had come to the conclusion that a country boarding-school or, failing
that, some 'arge country mansion would best serve our purposes.

Whether the committee had in fact not yet decided on any particular
place, or whether the military notion that secrecy has some intrinsic
value persisted in the Colonel's mind, I cannot say, but I have no
doubt that his failure to name the place, or even the probable
locality, was the gravest mistake made that evening. At the time,
however, his practical manner had a further reassuring effect.

As he sat down, Michael rose again. He spoke encouragingly to the
girl, and then introduced her. It had, he said, been one of our
greatest worries that we had no one among us with medical knowledge,
therefore, it was with great relief that he welcomed Miss Bert. It was
true that she did not hold medical degrees with impressive letters, but
she did have high nursing qualifications. For himself he thought that
knowledge recently attained might be worth more than degrees acquired
years ago.

The girl, blushing again, said a little piece about her determination
to carry the job through, and ended a trifle abruptly with the
information that she would inoculate us all against a variety of things
before we left the hall.

A small, sparrow-like man whose name I did not catch rubbed it in that
the health of each was the concern of all, and that any suspicion of
illness should be reported at once since the effects of a contagious
disease among us would be serious.

When he had finished Sandra rose and introduced the last speaker of the
group: Dr E. H. Vorless, D.Sc of Edinburgh, Professor of Sociology at
the University of Kingston.

The white-haired man walked to the desk. He stood there a few moments
with his finger-tips resting upon it, and his head bent down as if he
were studying it. Those behind regarded him carefully, with a trace of
anxiety. The Colonel leaned over to whisper something to Michael who
nodded without taking his eyes off the Doctor. The old man looked up.
He passed a hand over his hair.

"My friends," he said,
"I think I may claim to be the oldest among you. In nearly seventy
years I have learned, and had to unlearn, many things though not nearly
so many as I could have wished. But if, in the course of a long study
of man's institutions, one thing has struck me more than their
stubbornness, it is their variety.

"Well indeed do the French say a#tres tempt, autres maum.

We must all see, if we pause to think, that one kind of community's
virtue may well be another kind of community's crime: that what is
frowned upon here may be considered laudable elsewhere; that customs
condemned in one century are condoned in another. And we must also see
that in each conlmunity and each period there is a widespread belief in
the moral rightness of its own customs.

"Now, clearly, since many of these beliefs conflict they cannot all be
"right" in an absolute sense. The most judgement one can pass on them
if one has to pass judgements at all is to say that they have at some
period been "right" for those communities that hold them. It may be
that they still are, but it frequently is found that they are not, and
that the communities who continue to follow them blindly without heed
to changed circumstances do so to their own disadvantage perhaps to
their ultimate destruction." The audience did not perceive where the
introduction might be leading. It fidgeted. Most of it was accustomed
when it encountered this kind of thing to turn the radio off at once.

Now it felt trapped. The speaker decided to make himself clearer.

"Thus," he continued, 'you would not expect to find the same manners,
customs, and forms in a penurious Indian village living on the edge of
starvation as you would in, say, Mayfair.

Similarly the people in a warm country where life is easy are going to
differ quite a deal from the people of an overcrowded, hardworking
country as to the nature of the principal virtues. In other words,
different environments set different standards
"I point this out to you
because the world we knew is gone finished.

"The conditions which framed and taught us our standards have gone with
it. Our needs are now different, and our aims must be different.

If you want an example, I would suggest to you that we have all spent
the day indulging with perfectly easy consciences in what two days ago
would have been housebreaking and theft. With the old pattern broken,
we have now to find out what mode of life is best suited to the new.

We have not simply to start building again: we have to start thinking
again which is much more difficult and far more distasteful.

"Man remains physically adaptable to a remarkable degree.

But it is the custom of each community to form the minds of its young
in a mould, introducing a binding agent of prejudice.

The result is a remarkably tough substance capable of withstanding
successfully even the pressure of many innate dendencies and
instincts.

In this way it has been possible to produce a man who against all his
basic sense of self-preservation will voluntarily risk death for an
ideal but also in this way is produced the dolt who is sure of
everything and knows what is "right".

"In the time now ahead of us a great many of these prejudices we have
been taught will have to go, or be radially altered.

We can accept and retain only one primary prejudice, and that is that
the race is worth preserving. To that consideration all else will for
a time at least be subordinate. We must look at all we do, with the
question in mind: "Is this going to help our race survive or will it
hinder us ?" If it will help, we must do it, whether or not it
conflicts with the ideas in which we were brought up. If not, we must
avoid it even though the ommission may clash with our previous notions
of duty, and even of justice.

"It will not be easy: old prejudices die hard. The simple rely on a
bolstering mass of maxim and precept, so do the timid, so do the
mentally lazy and so do all of us, more than we imagine. Now that the
organization has gone, our ready Iao reckoners for conduct within it no
longer give the right answers. We must have the moral courage to think
and to plan for ourselves." He paused to survey his audience
thoughtfully. Then he said: "There is one thing to be made quite clear
to you before you decide to join our community. It is that those of us
who start on this task will all have our parts to play. The men must
work the women must have babies.

Unless you can agree to that there can be no place for you in our
community." After an interval of dead silence, he added: "We can
afford to support a limited number of women who cannot see, because
they will have babies who can see. We cannot afford to support men who
cannot see. In our new world, then, babies become very much more
important than husbands." For some seconds after he stopped speaking
silence continued, then isolated murmurs grew quickly into a general
buzz.

I looked to Josella. To my astonishment she was grinning impishly.

"What do you find funny about this ?" I asked, a trifle shortly.

"People's expressions mostly," she replied.

I had to admit it as a reason. I looked round the place, and then
across at Michael. His eyes were moving from one section to another of
the audience as he tried to sum up the reaction.

"Michael's looking a bit anxious," I observed.

"He should worry," said Josella."If Brigham Young could bring it off
in the middle of the nineteenth century, this ought to be a pushover."

"What a crude young woman you are at times," I said."Were you in on
this before ?"

"Not exactly, but I'm not quite dumb, you know.
Besides, while you were away someone drove in a bus with most of these
blind girls on board. They all came from some institution. I said to
myself, why collect them from there when you could gather up thousands
in a few streets round here ? The answer obviously was that (a) being
blind before this happened they had been trained to do work of some
kind, and (b) they were all girls. The deduction wasn't terribly
difficult."

"H'm," I said."Depends on one's outlook, I suppose. I
must say, it wouldn't have struck me. Do you ?"

"Sh-sh," she told me, as a quietness came over the hall.

A tall, dark, purposeful-looking, youngish woman had risen. While she
waited, she appeared to have a mouth not made to open, but later it
did.

"Are we to understand," she inquired, using a kind of carbon steel
voice, 'are we to understand that the last speaker is advocating free
love ?" And she sat down, with spine-jarring decision.

Doctor Vorless smoothed back his hair as he regarded her.

"I think the questioner must be aware that I never mentioned love,
free, bought, or bartered. Will she please make her question clearer
?"

The woman stood up again.

"I think the speaker understood me. I am asking if he suggests the
abolition of the marriage law ?"

"The laws we knew have been abolished
by circumstances.

It now falls to us to make laws suitable to the conditions, and to
enforce them if necessary."

"There is still God's law, and the law of
decency."

"Madam. Solomon had three hundred or was it five hundred
?

- wives, and God did not apparently hold that against him. A
Mohammedan preserves rigid respectability with three wives. These are
matters of local custom. Just what our laws in these matters, and in
others, will be is for us all to decide later for the greatest benefit
of the community.

"This committee, after discussion, has decided that if we are to build
a new state of things and avoid a relapse into barbarism which is an
appreciable danger we must have certain undertakings from those who
wish to join us.

"Not one of us is going to recapture the conditions we have lost. What
we offer is a busy life in the best conditions we can contrive, and the
happiness which will come of achievement against odds. In return we
ask willingness and fruitfulness.

There is no compulsion. The choice is yours. Those to whom our offer
does not appeal are at perfect liberty to go elsewhere, and start a
separate community on such lines as they prefer.

"But I would ask you to consider very carefully whether or not you
dghold a warrant from God to deprive any woman of the happiness of
carrying out her natural functions." The discussion which followed was
a rambling affair descending frequently to points of detail and
hypothesis on which there could as yet be no answers. But there was no
move to cut it short. The longer it went on, the less strangeness the
idea would have.

Josella and I moved over to the table where Nurse Bert had set up her
paraphernalia. We took several shots in our arms, and then sat down
again to listen to the wrangling.

"How many of them will decide to come, do you think ?" I asked her.

She glanced round.

"Nearly all of them -by the morning," she said.

I felt doubtful. There was a lot of objecting and questioning going
on. Josella said: "If you were a woman who was going to spend an hour
or two before you went to sleep tonight considering whether you would
choose babies and an organization to look after you, or adherence to a
principle which might quite likely mean no babies and no one to look
after you, you'd not really be very doubtful, you know. And after all,
most women want babies, anyway the husband's just what Doctor Vorless
might call the local means to the end."

"That's rather cynical of
you."

"If you really think that's cynical you must be a very
sentimental character. I'm talking about real womea not those in the
magazine-movie-make-believe world."

"Oh," I said.

CONFEB. ENCB iz She sat pensively a while, and gradually acquired a
frown.

At last she said: "The thing that worries me is how many will they
expect ?

I like babies, all right, but there are limits." After the debate had
gone on raggedly for an hour or so, it was wound up. Michael asked
that the names of all those willing to join in his plan should be left
in his office by ten o'clock the next morning. The Colonel requested
all who could drive a lorry to report to him by 7:00 hours, and the
meeting broke up.

Josella and I wandered out of doors. The evening was mild.

The light on the tower was again stabbing hopefully into the sky.

The moon had just risen clear of the Museum roof. We found a low wall,
and sat on it, looking into the shadows of the Square garden, and
listening to the faint sound of the wind in the branches of the trees
there. We smoked a cigarette each almost in silence. When I reached
the end of mine, I threw it away, and drew a breath."Josella," I
said.

"M'm ?" she replied, scarcely emerging from her thoughts.

"Josella," I said again."Er - those babies. I'd er - I'd be sort of
terribly proud and happy if they could be mine as well as yours."

She sat quite still for a moment, saying nothing. Then she turned her
head. The moor flight was glinting on her fair hair, but her face and
eyes were in shadow. I waited, with a hammered and slightly sick
feeling inside me. She said, with surprising calm: "Thank you, Bill,
dear. I think I would, too." I sighed. The hammering did not ease up
much, and I saw that my hand was trembling as it reached for hers. I
didn't have any words, for the moment. Josella, however, did. She
said: "But it isn't quite as easy as that, now." I was jolted.

"What do you mean ?" I asked.

She said, consideringly: "I think that if I were those people in there
- she nodded in the direction of the tower
"I think that I should make
a rule. I should divide us up into lots. I should say every man who
marries a sighted girl must take on two blind girls as well I'm pretty
sure that's what I should do." I stared at her face in the shadow.

"You don't mean that," I protested.

"I'm afraid I do, Bill."

"But, look here
"Don't you think they may
have some idea like that in their minds from what they've been saying
?"

"Not unlikely," I conceded."But if they make the rule, that's one
thing. I don't see
"You mean you don't love me enough to take on two other women as well
?" I swallowed. I also objected: "Look here. This is all crazy. It's
unnatural. What you're suggesting' She put up a hand to stop me.

"Just listen to me, Bill. I know it sounds a bit startling at first,
but there's nothing crazy about it. It's all quite clear and it's not
very easy.

"All this' - she waved her hand around 'it's done something to me. It's
like suddenly seeing everything differently.

And one of the things I think I see is that those of us who get through
are going to be much nearer to one another, more dependent on one
another, more like well, more like a tri than we ever were before.

"All day long as we went about I've been seeing unfortunate people who
are going to die very soon. And all the time I've been saying to
myself: "There, but for the grace of God ..." And then I've told
myself: "This is a miracle! I don't deserve anything better than any
of these people. But it has happened.

Here I still am so now it's up to me to justify it." Somehow it's made
me feel closer to other people than I have ever done
before. That's made me keep wondering all the time what I can do to
help some of them.

"You see, we must do something to justify that miracle, Bill.

I might have been any of these blind girls; you might have been any of
these wandering men. There's nothing big we can do. But if we try to
look after just a few and give them what happiness we can, we shall be
paying back a little just a tiny part of what we owe. You do see that,
don't you, Bill ?" I turned it over in my mind for a minute or more.

`i think," I said, 'that that's the queerest argument I've heard today
if not ever. And yet' "And yet it's right, isn't it, Bill ?

I know it's right. I've tried to put myself in the place of one of
those blind girls, and I know We hold the chance of as full a life as
they can have, for some of them. Shall we give it them as a part of
our gratitude or shall we simply withhold it on account of the
prejudices we've been taught ? That's what it amounts to." I sat
silently for a time. I had not a moment's doubt that Josella meant
every word she said. I ruminated a little on the ways of purposeful,
subversive-minded women like Florence Nightingale and Elizabeth Fry.

You can't do anything with such women and they so often turn out to
have been right after all.

"Very well," I said at last."If that's the way you think it ought to
be. But I hope She cut me short.

"Oh, Bill, I knew you'd understand. Oh, I'm glad so very glad.

You've made me so happy." After a time: "I hope' I began again.

Josella patted my hand.

"You won't need to worry at all, my dear. I shall choose two nice,
sensible girls."

"Oh," I said.

We went on sitting there on the wall hand in hand, looking at the
dappled trees but not seeing them very much, at least,
I wasn't. Then in the building behind us someone started up a
gramophone, playing a Strauss waltz. It was painfully nostalgic as it
leaked through the empty courtyard. For an instant the road before us
became the ghost of a ballroom; a swirl of colour, with the moon for a
crystal chandelier.

Josella slid off the wall. With her arms outstretched, her wrists and
fingers rippling, her body swaying, she danced, light as a fiisdedown,
in a big circle in the moonlight. She came round to me, her eyes
shining and her arms beckoning.

And we danced, on the brink of an unknown future, to an echo from a
vanished past.

8 FRUSTRATION
I was walking through an unknown, deserted city where a bell rang
dismally and a sepulchral, disembodied voice called in the emptiness:
"The Beast is Loosel Bewarel The Beast is Loose l' when I woke to find
that a bell really was ringing. It was a hand bell that jangled with a
brassy double clatter so harsh and startling that for a moment I could
not remember where I was. Then, as I sat up still bemused, there came
a sound of voices calling
"Fire!" I jumped just as I was from my blankets, and ran into the
corridor. There was a smell of smoke there, a noise of hurried feet,
doors banging. Most of the sound seemed to come from my right where
the bell kept on clanging and the frightened voices were calling, so it
was that way I turned and ran. A little moonlight filtered in through
tall windows at the end of the passage, relieving the dimness just
enough for me to keep to the middle of the way and avoid the people who
were feeling their way along the walls.

I reached the stairs. The bell was still clanging in the hall below. I
made my way down as fast as I could through smoke that grew thicker.
Near the bottom"I tripped and fell forward.

The dimness became a sudden darkness in which a light burst like a
cloud of needles, and that was all ... The first thing was an ache in
my head. The next was a glare when I opened my eyes. At the first
blink it was as dazzling as a klieg light, but when I started again and
edged the lids up more cautiously it turned out to be only an ordinary
window, and grimy, at that. I knew I was lying on a bed, but I did not
sit up to investigate further; there was a piston pounding away in my
head that discouraged any kind of movement. So I lay there quietly,
and studied the ceiling until I discovered that my wrists were tied
together, That snapped me out of my lethargy,
in spite of the thumping head. I found it a very neat job. Not
painfully tight, but perfectly efficient. Several turns of insulated
wire on each wrist, and a complex knot on the far side where it was
impossible for me to reach it with my teeth. I swore a bit, and looked
around. The room was small and, save for the bed on which I lay,
empty.

"Hey I"I'called."Anybody around here ?

After half a minute or so there was a shuffle of feet outside.

The door was opened, and a head appeared. It was a small head 2ith a
tweed camp on the top of it. It had a stringy looking choker beneath,
and a dark unshaven ness across its face. It was not turned straight
at me, but in my general direction.

' "Ullo, cock," it said, amiably enough."So you've come to, 'ave yet
? Ang on a bt, an 111 get you a cup o char. And It vanished again.

The instruction to hang on was superfluous, but I did not have to wait
long. In a few minutes he returned, carrying a wire-handled can with
some tea in it."Where are yet ?" he said.

"Straight ahead of you, on the bed," I told him.

He groped forward with his left hand until he found the foot of the
bed, then he felt his way around it, and held out the
"Ere, yare, chum. It'll taste a bit funny-like 'cause ol' Charlie put
a shot of rum in it, but I reckon you'll not mind that." I took it
from him, holding it with some difficulty between my bound hands. It
was strong and sweet, and the rum hadn't been stinted. The taste might
be queer, but it worked like the elixir of life itself.

"Thanks," I said."You're a maxcie worker. My haree's Bill' His, it
seemed, was Alf.

"What's the line, Alf? What goes on here ?" I asked him.

He sat down on the side of the bed, and held out a packet
with a box of matches. I took one, lit his first, then
my own, and gave him back the box.

"It's this way, mate," he said."You know there was a bit of a shindy
up at the University yesterday morning maybe you was there ?"

I told him I'd seen it.

"Well, after that lark, Coker - he's the chap that did the talking - he
got kinda peeved."Hokay," 'e says, nasty-like.

"They must've asked for it. I put it to 'em fair and square in the
first place. Now they can take what's comin' to them."

Well, we'd met up with a couple of other fellers and one old girl what
can still see, an' they fixed it all up between them.

He's a lad, that Coker."

"You mean he framed the whole business there wasn't any fire or anything ?" I asked.

"Fire my aunt fanny ! What they done was fix up a tripwire or two,
light a lot of paper and sticks in the hall, an' start in ringing the
ol' hell. We reckoned that them as could see would be the first along,
on account of there bein' a bit of light still from the moon.

And sure enough they was. Coker an' another chap was gavin' them the
k.o. as they tripped, an' passin' them along to some of us chaps to an'
out to the lorry. Simple as kiss your 'and."

"H'm," I said,
ruefully.

"Sounds efficient, that Coker. How many of us mugs fell into that
little trap ?"

"I'd say we got a couple of dozen though it turned out
as five or six of 'em was blinded. When we'd loaded up about all we'd
room for in the lorry, we beat it, and left the rest to sort their
selves out." Whatever view Coker took of us, it was clear that Alf bore
us no animosity. He appeared to regard the whole affair as a bit of
sport. I found it a little too painful to class it so, but I mentally
raised my hat to Alf. I'd a pretty good idea that in his position I'd
be lacking the spirit to think of anything as a bit of sport. I
finished the tea, and accepted another cigarette from him.

THE DAY OV THU. TRXFVXDS
"And what's the programme now ?" I asked him.

"Coker's idea is to make us all up into parties, an' put one of you
with each party. You to look after the scrounging, and kind of act as
the eyes of the rest, like. Your job'll be to help us keep going'
until somebody comes along to straighten this perishin' lot out."

"I
see," I said.

He cocked his head towards me. There weren't any flies on All He had
caught more in my tone than I had realized was there.

"Yu reckon that's going' to be a long time?" he said
"I don't know.

What's Coker say ?" Coker, it seemed, had not been committing himself
to details.

Alf had his own opinion, though.

' "F you ask me, I reckon there ain't nobody going' to come..

if there was, they'd're been 'ere before this. Different if we was in
some little town in the country. But London? It Stands to reason they'd
come 'ere afore anywhere else. No, the way I see it, they ain't come
yet an' that means they ain't never going' to come an' that means there
ain't nobody to come.

Cor, blimey, 'oo'd ever're thought it could 'appen like thisl' I didn't
say anything. Alf wasn't the sort to be jollied with facile
encouragements.

"Reckon that's the way you see it, too ?" he said, after a bit.

"It doesn't look so good," I admitted."But there still is a chance,
you know people from somewhere abroad ..." He shook his head.

"They'd're come before this. They'd're had loud-speaker cars round the
streets tellin' us what to do, before this. No, chum, we've 'ad it:
there ain't nobody nowhere to come. That's the fact of it." We were
silent for a while, then: "Ah, well, 't'weren't a bad ole life while it
lasted," he said.

We talked a little about the kind of life it had been for him.

He'd had various jobs, each of which seemed to have included some
interesting under-cover work. He summed it up:
"One way
an' another I didn't do so bad. What was your racket ?"

I told him. He wasn't impressed.

"Triffids, huh! Nasty damn things, I reckon. Not natcheral as you
might say." We left it at that.

Alf went away, leaving me to my cogitations and a packet of his
cigarettes. I surveyed the outlook, and thought little of it. I
wondered how the others would be taking it. Particularly what would be
Josena's view.

I got off the bed, and went across to the window. The prospeet was
poor. An interior well with sheer, white-filed sides for four storeys
below me, and a glass skylight at the bottom.

There wasn't much to be done that way. Alf had locked the door after
him, but I tried it, just in case. Nothing in the room gave me
inspiration. It had the look of belonging in a third rate hotel,
except that everything save the bed had been thrown OUT.

I sat down again on the bed, and pondered. I could perhaps tackle Alf
successfully, even with my hands tied providing he had no knife.

But probably he had a knife, and that would be unpleasant. It would be
no good a blind man threatening me with a knife; he would have to use
it to disable me. Besides, there would be the difficulty of
discovering what others I would have to pass before I could find my way
out of the building. Moreover, I did not wish Alf any harm. It seemed
wiser to wait for an opportunity one was bound to come to a sighted man
among the sightless.

An hour later Alf: came back with a plate of food, a spoon, and more
tea.

"Bit rough-like," he apologized."But they said no knife and fork, so
there it is." While I was tackling it, I asked about the others. He
couldn't tell me much, and didn't know any names, but I found out that
there had been women as well as men among these that had been brought
here. After that I was left alone for
some hours which I spent doing my best to sleep off the headache.

When Alf reappeared with more food and the inevitable can of tea, he
was accompanied by the man he had called Coker.

He looked more tired now than when I had seen him before.

Under his arm he carried a bundle of papers. He gave me a searching
look.

"You know the idea ?" he asked.

"What Alf's told me," I admitted.

"All right, then." He dropped his papers on the bed, picked up the top
one, and unfolded it. It was a street-plan of Greater London. He
pointed to an area covering part of Hampstead and Swiss Cottage,
heavily outlined in blue pencil.

"That's your beat," he said."Your party works inside that area, and
not in anyone else's area. You can't have each lot going after the
same pickings. Your job is to find the food in that area, and see that
your party gets it that, and anything else they need. Got that ?"

"Or what ?" I said, looking at him.

"Or they'll get hungry. And if they do, it'll be just too bad for you.
Some of the boys are tough, and we're not any of us doing this for fun.

So watch your step. Tomorrow morning we'll run you and your lot up
there in lorries. After that it'll be your job to keep 'em going until
somebody comes along to tidy things up."

"And if nobody does come ?"

I asked.

"Somebody's got to come," he said grimly."Anyway, there's your joband mind you keep to your area." I stopped him as he was on the point
of leaving.

"Have you got a Miss Playton here ?" I asked.

"I don't know any of your names," he said.

"Fair-haired, about five-foot six or seven, grey-blue eyes," I
persisted.

"There's a girl about that size, and blonde. But I haven't looked at
her eyes. Got something more important to do," he said, as he left.

I studied the map. I was not greatly taken with the
district allotted to me. Some of it was a salubrious enough suburb,
indeed, but in the circumstances a location that included docks and
warehouses would have had more to offer. It was doubtful whether there
would be any sizeable storage depots in this part. Still, 'can't all
'ave a prize' as Alf would doubtless express it and anyway, I had no
intention of staying there any longer than was strictly necessary.

When Alf showed up again I asked him if he would take a note to
Josella. He shook his head."Sorry, mate. Not allowed." I promised
him it should be harmless, but he remained firm.

I couldn't altogether blame him. He had no reason to trust me, and
would not be able to read the note to know that it was as harmless as I
claimed. Anyway, I'd neither pencil nor paper, so I gave that up.

After pressing, he did consent to let her know that I was here, and to
find out the district to which she was being sent. He was not keen on
doing that much, but he had to allow that if there were to be any
straightening out of the mess it would be a lot easier for me to find
her again if I knew where to start looking.

After that I had simply my thoughts for company for a bit.

The trouble was that I was not wholeheartedly set on any course.

There was a damnable ability to see the points on both sides. I knew
that common sense and the long-term view backed up Michael Beadley and
his lot. If they had started, Josella and I would doubtless have gone
with them and worked with them and yet I knew I would have been uneasy.
I'd never be quite convinced that nothing could have been done for the
sinking ship, never quite sure that I had not rationalized my own
preference. If, indeed, there was no possibility of organized rescue,
then their proposal to salvage what we could was the intelligent
course. But, unfortunately, intelligence is by no means the only thing
that makes the human wheels go round. I was up against the very
conditioning that the old Doctor had said was so hard to break. He was
dead right about the difficulty of adopting new principles. If, for
instance, some kind of relief should miraculously arrive, I knew just
what kind of a louse I'd feel to have cleared out, whatever the motives
- and just how much I'd despise myself and the rest for not having
stayed here in London to help for as long as it was possible.

But if, on the other hand, help did not come, how would I have felt
about having wasted my time and frittered my efforts away when
stronger-minded people had started getting on with the salvage while
the going was good ?

I knew I ought to make my mind up once and for all on the right course,
and stick to it. But I could not. I see-sawed.

Some hours later when I fell asleep I was still see-sawing.

There was no means of knowing which way Josella had made up her mind.
I'd had no personal message from her. But Alf had put his head in once
during the ewning. His communication had been brief.

"Westminster," he said."Corl Don't reckon that lot's goto' to find
much grub in the
"Ouses o' Pathame. at." , I was woken by Alf coming in early the
following morning.

He was accompanied by a bigger, shifty-eyed man who fingered a bum her
knife with unnecessary ostentation. Alf advanced, and dropped an
armful of clothes on the bed. His companion shut the door, and leaned
against it, watching with a crafty eye, and toying with the knife.

"Give us yer mitts, mate," said Alf.

I held my hands out towards him. He felt for the wires on my wrists,
and snipped them with a cutter.

"Now just you put on that there robber, chum," he said, stepping
back.

I got myself dressed while the knife-fancier followed every movement I
made, like a hawk. When I'd finished, Alf produced a pair of
handcuffs."There's just these," he mentioned.

I hesitated. The man by the door ceased to lean on it, and brought his
knife forward a little. For him this was evidently the interesting
moment. I decided maybe it was not the time to try anything, and held
my wrists out. Alf felt around, and clicked on the cuffs. After that
he went and fetched me my breakfast.

Nearly two hours later the Other man turned up again, has knife well in
evidence. He waved it at the door.

"C'mon," he said. It was the only remark I ever heard him make.

With the consciousness of the knife producing an uncomfortable feeling
in my back, we went down a number of flights of stairs, and across a
hall. In the street two loaded lorries were waiting. Coker, with two
companions, stood by the tailboard of one. He beckoned me over.
Without saying anything he passed a chain between my arms. At each end
of it was a strap.

One was fastened already round the left wrist of a burly blind man
beside him; the other he attached to the right wrist of a similar tough
case, so that I was between them. They weren't taking any unavoidable
chances.

"I'd not try any funny business, if I were you," Coker advised me.

"You do right by them, and they'll do right by you." The three of us
climbed awkwardly on to the tailboard, and the two lorries drove off.

We stopped somewhere near Swiss Cottage, and piled out.

There were perhaps twenty people in sight, prowling with apparent
aimlessness along the gutters. At the sound of the engines every one
of them had turned towards us with an incredulous expression on his
face, and as if they were parts of a single mechanism they began to
close hopefully towards us, calling out as they came. The drivers
shouted to us to get clear.

They backed, turned, and rumbled off by the way we had come. The
converging people stopped. One or two of them shouted after the
lorries; most turned hopelessly and silently back to their wandering.

There was one woman about fifty yards away; she broke into hysterics,
and began to bang her head against a wall. I felt sick.

I turned towards my companions.

"Well, what do you want first ?" I asked them.

"A billet," said one."We got to 'ave some place to doss down." I
reckoned I'd have to find that at least for them. I couldn't just
dodge out and leave them stranded right where we were.

Now we'd come this far, I couldn't do less than find them a centre, a
kind of headquarters, and put them on their feet.

What was wanted was a place where the receiving, storing, and feeding
could be done, and the whole lot kept together. I court ted them.
There were fifty-two; fourteen of them women.

The best course seemed to be to find a hotel. It would save the
trouble of fitting out with beds and bedding.

The place we found was a kind of glorified boarding-house made up of
four Victorian terrace-houses knocked together, giving more than the
accommodation we needed. There were already half a dozen people in the
place when we got there.

Heaven knows what had happened to the rest. We found the remnant
huddled together and scared in one of the lounges an old man, an
elderly woman (who turned out to have been the manageress), a
middle-aged man, and three girls. The manageress had the spirit to
pull herself together and hand out some quite high-sounding threats,
but the ice, even of her most severe boarding-house manner, was thin.

The old man tried to back her up by blustering a bit. The rest did
nothing but keep their faces turned nervously towards us.

I explained that we were moving in. If they did not like it, they
could go; if, on the other hand, they preferred to stay and share
equally what there was, they were free to do so. They were not
pleased. The way they reacted suggested that somewhere in the place
they had a cache of stores that they were not anxious to share. When
they grasped that the intention was to build up bigger stores their
attitude modified perceptibly, and they prepared to make the best of
it.

I decided I'd have to stay on a day or two just to get
the par set up. I guessed Josella would be feeling much the same about
her lot. Ingenious man, Coker- the trick is called holding the baby.
But after that I'd dodge out and join her.

During the next couple of days we worked systematically, tackling the
bigger stores nearby mostly chain-stores, and not very big, at that.
Nearly everywhere there had been others before us. The fronts of the
shops were in a bad way. The windows were broken in, the floors were
littered with half opened cans and spilt packages which had
disappointed the finders, and now lay in a sticky, stinking mass among
the fragments of window-glass. But as a rule the loss was small and
the damage superficial, and we'd find the larger cases in and behind
the shop untouched.

It was far from easy for blind men to carry and manoeuvre heavy cases
out of the place and load them on handcarts. Then there was the job of
getting them back to the billet, and stowing them. But practice began
to give them a knack with it.

The most hampering factor was the necessity for my presence.

Little or nothing could go on unless I was there to direct. It was
impossible to use more than one working party at a time, though we
could have made up a dozen. Nor could much go on back at the hotel
while I was out with foraging squads. Moreover, such time as I had to
spend investigating and prospecting the district was pretty much wasted
for everyone else. Two sighted men could have got through a lot more
than twice the work.

Once we had started I was too busy during the day to spend much thought
beyond the actual work in hand, and too tired at night to do anything
but sleep the moment I lay down. Now and again I'd say to myself, 'by
tomorrow night I'll have them pretty well fixed up enough to keep them
going for a bit, anyway. Then I"Ll Light out of this, and find
Josella." That sounded all right but every day it was tomorrow that
I'd be able to do it, and each day it became more difficult.

Some of them had begun to learn a bit, but still practically nothing,
from foraging to can-opening, could go on without my being around. It
seemed, the way things were going, that I became less, instead of more
dispensable.

None of it was their fault. That was what made it difficult.

Some of them were trying so damned hard. I just had to watch them
making it more and more impossible for me to play the skunk and walk
out on them. A dozen times a day I cursed the man Coker for contriving
me into the situation but that didn't help to solve it: it just left me
wondering how it could end.. , , I had my first inkling of that,
though I scarcely recognized it as such, on the fourth morning or maybe
it was the fifth just as we were setting out. A woman called down the
stairs that there were two sick up there; pretty bad, she thought.

My two watchdogs did not like it.

"Listen," I told them."I've had about enough of this chain gang
stuff. We'd be doing a lot better than we are now without it,
anyway."

"An' have you slinkin' off to join your old mob?" said someone.

"I'd not fool yourself," I said."I could have slugged this pair of
amateur gorillas any hour of the day or night. I've not done it
because I've got nothing against them other than their being a pair of
dim-witted nuisances ..."Ere one of my attachments began to
expostulate.

"But," I went on, 'if they don't let me see what's wrong with these
people, they can begin expecting to be slugged any minute from now."

The two saw reason, but when we reached the room, they took good care
to stand as far back as the chain allowed. The casualties turned out
to be two men, one young, one middle aged Both had high temperatures
and complained of agonized pain in the bowels. I didn't know much
about such things then, but I did not need to know much to feel
worried. I could think of nothing but to direct that they should be
carried to an empty house nearby, and to tell one of
the women to look after them as best she could.

That was the beginning of a day of setbacks. The next, of a very
different kind, happened around noon.

We had cleared most of the food-shops close to us, and I had decided to
extend our range a little. From my recollections of the neighbour hood
I reckoned we ought to find another shopping street above half a mile
to the north, so I led my party that way. We found the shop there, all
right, but something else, too.

As we turned the corner and came into view of them, I stopped. In
front of a chain-store grocery a party of men were trundling out cases
and loading them on to a lorry. Save for the difference in the
vehicle, I might have been watching my own party at work. I halted my
group of twenty or so, wondering what line we should take. My
inclination was to withdraw and avoid possible trouble by finding a
clear field elsewhere; there was no sense in coming into conflict when
there was plenty scattered in various stores for those who were
organized enough to take it. But it did not fall to me to make the
decision. Even while I hesitated a red-headed young man strode
confidently out of the shop door. There was no doubt that he was able
to see or, a moment later, that he had seen US.

He did not share my in decisions He reached swiftly for his pocket. The
next moment a bullet hit the wall beside me with a smack.

There was a brief tableau. His men and mine turning their sightless
eyes towards one another in an effort to understand what was going on.
Then he fired again, I supposed he had aimed at me, but the bullet
found the man on my left. He gave a grunt as though he was surprised,
and folded up with a kind of sigh. I dodged back round the corner,
dragging the other watchdog with me.

"Quick," I said."Give me the key to these cuffs. I can't do a thing,
like this."

He didn't do anything except give a knowing
grin. He was a one-idea man.

"Huh," he said."Come off it. You don't fool me."

"Oh, for God's
sake, you damned clown I said, pulling on the chain to drag the body of
watchdog number one nearer so that we could get better cover.

The goon started to argue. Heaven knows what subtleties his dimwits
were crediting me with. There was enough slack on the chain now for me
to raise my arms. I did, and hammered both fists at his head so that
it went back against the wall with a crack. That disposed of his
argument. I found the key in his side pocket.

"Listen," I told the rest."Turn round, all of you, and keep going
straight ahead. Don't separate, or you'll have had it.

Get moving now." I got one wristlet open, ridded myself of the chain,
and scrambled over the wall into somebody's garden. I crouched there
while I got rid of the other cuff. Then I moved across to peer
cautiously over the far angle of the wall. The young man with the
pistol had not come rushing after us as I had half expected. He was
still with his party, giving them an instruction.

And now I came to think of it, why should he hurry ? Since we had not
fired back at him he could reckon we were unarmed, and we wouldn't be
able to get away fast.

When he'd finished his directions he walked out confidently into the
road to a point where he had a view of my retreating group, and then
began to follow them. At the corner he stopped to look at the two
prone watchdogs. Probably the chain suggested to him that one of them
had been the eyes of our gang, for he put the pistol back in his pocket
and began to follow the rest in a leisurely fashion.

That wasn't what I had expected, and it took me a minute to see his
scheme. Then it came to me that his most profitable course would be to
follow them to our headquarters, and see what pickings he could hijack
there. He was, I had to admit, either much quicker than I at spotting
chances, or had previously given more thought to the
possibilities that might arise than I had. I was glad that I had told
my lot to keep straight on. Most likely they'd get tired of it after a
bit, but I reckoned they'd none of them be able to find the way back to
the hotel and so lead him to it. As long as they kept together, I'd be
able to collect them all later on without much difficulty.

The immediate question was what to do about a man who carried a pistol,
and didn't mind using it.

In some parts of the world one might go into the first house in sight,
and pick up a convenient firearm. Hampstead was not like that; it was
a highly respectable suburb, unfortunately.

There might possibly be a sporting gun to be found somewhere, but I
would have to hunt for it. The only thing I could think of was to keep
him in sight and hope that some opportunity would offer a chance to
deal with him. I broke a branch off a tree, scrambled back over the
wall, and began to tap my way along the kerb, looking, I hoped,
indistinguishable from the hundreds of blind men one had seen wandering
the streets in the same way.

The road ran straight for some distance. The red-headed young man was
perhaps fifty yards ahead of me, and my party another fifty ahead of
him. We continued like that for something over half a mile. To my
relief, none of the front party showed any tendency to turn into the
road which led to our base. I was beginning to wonder how long it
would be before they decided that they had gone far enough, when an
unexpected diversion occurred. One man who had been lagging behind the
rest finally stopped. He dropped his stick, and doubled up with his
arms over his belly. Then he sagged to the ground and lay there,
rolling with pain. The others did not stop for him. They must have
heard his moans but probably they had no idea he was one of
themselves.

The young man looked towards him, and hesitated. He altered his
course, and bore across towards the contorted figure. He stopped a few
feet away from him, and stood gazing down. For perhaps a quarter of a
minute he regarded him carefully. Then
slowly, but quite deliberately, he pulled his pistol out of his pocket,
and shot him through the head.

The party ahead stopped at the sound of the shot. So did I. The young
man made no attempt to catch up with them in fact, he seemed suddenly
to lose interest in them altogether.

He turned round, and came walking back down the middle of the road. I
remembered to play my part, and began to tap my way forward again. He
paid no attention as he passed, but I was able to see his face: it was
worried, and there was a grim set to his jaw ... I kept going as I was
until he was a decent distance behind me, then I hurried on to the
rest. Brought up short by the sound of the shot, they were arguing
whether to go on further or not.

I broke that off by telling them that now I was no longer encumbered
with my two watchdogs we would be ordering things differently. I was
going to get a lorry, and I would be back in ten minutes or so to run
them back to the billet in it.

The finding of another organized party at work produced a new anxiety,
but we found the place intact. The only news they had for me there was
that two more men and a woman had been taken with severe belly pains
and removed to the other house.

We made what preparations we could for defence against any marauders
arriving while I was away. Then I picked a new party, and we set off
in the lorry, this time in a different direction.

I recalled that in former days when I had come up to Hampstead Heath it
had often been by way of a bus terminus where a number of small shops
and stores clustered. With the aid of the street-plan I found the
place again easily enough not only found it, but discovered it to be
marvellously intact. Save for three or four broken windows, the area
looked simply as if it had been closed up for a week-end.

But there were differences. For one thing, no such silence
had ever before hung over the locality, weekday or Sunday.

And there were several bodies lying in the street. By this time one
was becoming accustomed enough to that to pay them little attention. I
had, in fact, wondered that there were not more to be seen, and had
come to the conclusion that most people sought some kind of shelter
either out of fear, or later when they became weak. It was one of the
reasons that one felt a disinclination to enter any dwelling-house.

I stopped the lorry in front of a provision store and listened for a
few seconds. The silence came down on us like a blanket.

There was no sound of tapping sticks, not a wanderer in sight.

Nothing moved.

"Okay," I said."Pile out, chaps." The locked door of the shop gave
way easily. Inside there was a neat, unspoiled array of tubs of
butter, cheeses, sides of bacon, cases of sugar, and all the rest of
it. I got the others busy. They had developed tricks of working by
now, and were more sure of their handling. I was able to leave them to
get on with it for a bit while I examined the back storeroom and then
the cellar.

It was while I was below, investigating the nature of the cases down
there that I heard a sound of shouts somewhere outside. Close upon it
came a thunder of trampling boots on the floor above me. One man came
down through the trapdoor, and pitched on his head. He did not move or
make another sound. I jumped to it that there must be a battle with a
rival gang in progress up there. I stepped across the fallen man, and
climbed the ladder-like stair cautiously, holding up one arm to protect
my head.

The first view was of numerous scuffling boots, unpleasantly close, and
backing towards the trap. I nipped up quickly and got clear before they
were on me. I was up just in time to see the plate-glass window in the
front give way. Three men from outside fell in with it.

A long green lash whipped after them, striking one as he lay. The
other two scrambled among the wreckage of the display, and came
stumbling further into the shop. They pressed back against the rest,
and two more men fell through the open trap-door.

It did not need more than a glimpse of that lash to tell what had
happened. During the work of the past few days I had all but forgotten
the triffids. By standing on a box I could see over the heads of the
men. There were three triffids in my field of view: one out in the
road, and two closer, on the pavement.

Four mej lay on the ground out there, not moving. I understood then
why these shops had been untouched; and why there had been no one to be
seen in the neighbour hood of the Heath. At the same time I cursed
myself for not having looked at the bodies in the road more closely.
One glimpse of a sting mark would have been enough warning.

"Hold it," I shouted."Stand where you are." I jumped down from the
box, pushed away the men who were standing on the folded-back lid of
the trap, and got it closed.

"There's a door back here," I told them."Take it easy now." The
first two took it easy. Then a triffid sent its sting whistling into
the room through the broken window. One man gave a scream as he
fell.

The rest came on in panic, and swept me before them. There was a jam
in the doorway. Behind us stings swished twice again before we were
clear.

In the back room I looked round panting. There were seven of us
there.

"Hold it," I said again."We're all right in here." I went back to
the door. The rear part of the shop was out of the triffids'' range -as
long as they stayed outside. I was able to reach the trap-door in
safety, and raise it. The two men who had fallen down there since I
left re-emerged. One nursed a broken arm; the other was merely
bruised, and cursing.

Behind the back room lay a small yard, and across that a door in an
eight-foot brick wall. I had grown cautious. Instead of going
straight to the door I climbed on the roof of an outhouse to
prospect.

The door, I could see, gave into a narrow alley running the full length
of the block. It was empty.

But beyond the wall on the far side which seemed to terminate the
gardens of a row of private houses, I could make out the tops of two
triffids motionless among the bushes. There might well be more. The
wall on that side was lower, and their height would enable them to
strike right across the alley with their stings. I explained to the
others.

"Bloody unnatural brutes," said one."I always did hate them
bastards." I investigated farther. The building next but one to the
north side mrued out to be a car-hire service with three of its cars on
the premises. It was an awkward job getting the party over the two
intervening walls, particularly the man with the broken arm, but we
managed it. Somehow, too, I got them all packed into a large
Daimler.

When we were all set I opened the outer doors of the place, and ran
back to the car.

The triffids weren't slow to be interested. That uncanny sensitiveness
to sounds told them something was happening.

As we drove out, a couple of them were already lurching towards the
entrance. Their stings whipped out at us, and slapped harmlessly
against the closed windows. I swung hard round, bumping one, and
toppling it over. Then we were away up the road, making for a
healthier neighbour hood
The evening that followed was the worst I had spent since the calamity
occurred. Freed of the two watchdogs, I took over a small room where I
could be alone. I put six lighted candles in a row on the mantel shelf
and sat a long while in an armchair, trying to think things out. We
had come back to find that one of the men who had been taken sick the
night before was dead; the other was obviously dying and there were
four new cases. By the time our evening meal was over, there were two
more still. What the complaint was I had no idea.

With the lack of service and the way things were going in general, it
might have been a number of things. I thought of typhoid, but I'd a
hazy idea that the incubation period ruled that out not that it would
have made much difference if I had known. All I did know about it was
that it was something nasty enough to make that red-haired young man
use his pistol, and change his mind about following my party.

It began to look to me as if I had been doing my group a questionable
service from the first. I had succeeded in keeping them alive, placed
between a rival gang on one side, and triffids encroaching from the
Heath on the other. Now there was this sickness, too. And, when all
was said and done, I had achieved only the postponement of starvation
for a little while. A things were now, I did not see my way.

And then there was Josella on my mind. The same sorts of things, maybe
worse, were as likely to be happening in her district ... I found
myself thinking of Michael Beacuey and his lot again. I had known then
that they were logical, now I began to think that perhaps they had a
truer humanity, too. They had seen that it was hopeless to try to save
any but a very few.

To give an empty hope to the rest was little better than cruelty.

Besides, there were ourselves. If there were purpose in anything at
all, what had we been preserved for ? Not simply to waste ourselves on
a forlorn task, surely ...  ?

I decided that tomorrow I would go in search of Josella and we would
settle it together ... The latch of the door moved with a click. The
door itself opened slowly.

"Who's that ?" I said.

"Oh, it is you," said a girl's voice.

She came in, closing the door behind her.

"What do you want ?" I asked.

She was tall and slim. Under twenty I guessed. Her hair waved
slightly. Chestnut-coloured, it was. She was quiet, but one had to
notice her- it was the texture of her as well as the line. She had
placed my position by my movement and voice.

Her gold-brown eyes were looking just over my left shoulder, otherwise
I'd have been sure she was studying me.

She did not answer at once. It was an uncertainty which did not seem to
suit the rest of her. I went on waiting for her to speak. A lump got
into my throat somehow. You see, she was young, and she was beautiful.
There should have been all lde, maybe a wonderful life before her  ... 
And isn't there something a little sad about youth and beauty in any
circumstances ...  ?

"You're going to go away from here ?" she said. It was half question,
half statement, in a quiet voice, a little unsteadily.

"I've never said that," I countered.

"No," she admitted, 'but that's what the others are saying and they're
right, aren't they ?" I did not say anything to that. She went on:
"You can't. You can't leave them like this. They need you."

"I'm
doing no good here," I told her."All the hopes are false.

"But suppose they turned out not to be false ?"

"They can't - not now.
We'd have known by this time."

"But if they did, after all- and you
had simply walked out- ?"

"Do you think I haven't thought of that ?

I'm not doing any good, I tell you. I've been like the drugs they
inject to keep the patient going a little longer no curative value;
just putting it off." She did not reply for some seconds. Then she
said, unsteadily: "Life is very precious even like this." Her control
almost cracked.

I could not say anything. She recovered herself.

"You can keep us going. There's always a chance just a chance that
something may happen, even now." I had already said what I thought
about that. I did not repeat it.

"It's so dirtier," she said, as though to herself."If I could only
see you ... But then, of course, if I could ...  Are you young ?

You sound young."

"I'm under thirty," I told her."And very
ordinary."

"I'm eighteen. It was my birthday the day the comet came."

I could not think of anything to say to
that that would not seem cruel. The pause drew out. I saw that she
was clenching her hands together. Then she dropped them to her sides,
the knuckles quite white. She made as if to speak, but did not.

"What is it ?" I asked,
"What can I do except prolong this a little ?" She bit her lip, then:
"They,- they said perhaps you were lonely," she said."I thought
perhaps if' - her voice faltered, and her knuckles went a little whiter
still 'perhaps if you had somebody ...  I mean, somebody here. you you
might not want to leave us.

Perhaps you'd stay with us ?"

"Oh, God," I said, softly.

I looked at her, standing quite straight, her lips trembling slightly.
There should have been suitors clamouxing for her lightest smile. She
should have been happy and uncaring for a while then happy in caring.
Life should have been enchanting to her, and love very sweet  ... 
"You'd be kind to me, wouldn't you ?" she said."You see I haven't
"Stop it I Stop it I' I told her."You mustn't say these things to me.
Please go away now." But she did not go. She stood staring at me from
eyes that could not see me.

"Go awayl' I repeated.

I could not stand the reproach of her. She was not simply herself she was thousands upon thousands of young lives destroyed ... She came
closer.

"Why, I believe you're cryingl" she said.

"Go away. For God's sake, go away? I told her.

She hesitated, then she turned and felt her way back to the door.

As she went out: "You can tell them I'll be staying," I said.

The first thing I was aware of the next morning was the
smell.

There had been whiffs of it here and there before, but luckily the
weather had been cool. Now I found that I had slept late into what was
already a warmer day. I'm not going into details about the smell;
those who knew it will never forget it, for the rest of it is
indescribable. It rose from every city and town for weeks, and
travelled on every wind that blew. When I woke to it that morning it
convinced me beyond doubt that the end had come. Death is just the
shocking end of animation: it is dissolution that is final.

I lay for some minutes thinking. The only thing to do now would be to
load my party into lorries and take them in relays into the country.
And all the supplies we had collected ? They would have to be loaded
and taken, too and I the only one able to drive ... It would take days
if we had days ... Upon that, I wondered what was happening in the
building now. The place was oddly quiet. When I listened I could hear
a voice groaning in another room, beyond that nothing. I got out of
bed and hurried into my clothes with a feeling of alarm.

Out on the landing, I listened again. There was no sound of feet about
the house. I had a sudden nasty feeling as if history were repeating
itself and I were back in the hospital again.

"Hey! Anybody here ?" I called.

Several voices answered. I opened a nearby door. There was a man in
there. He looked very bad, and he was delirious.

There was nothing I could do. I closed the door again.

My footsteps sounded loud on the wooden stairs. On the next floor a
woman's voice called: "Bill Biui' She was in bed in a small room there,
the girl who had come to see me the night before. She turned her head
as I came in. I saw that she had it, too.

"Don't come near," she said."It is you, Bill ?" `yes."

"I thought
it must be. You can still walk: they have to creep.

I'm glad, Bill. I told them you'd not go like that but they said you
had. Now they've all gone, all of them that could."

"I was asleep," I said."What happened?"

"More and more of us like
this. They were frightened." I said
helplessly: "What can I do for you ? Is there anything I can get
you?" Her face contorted, she clutched her arms round her, and writhed.
The spasm passed, and left her with sweat trickling down her
forehead.

"Pleas Bill. I'm not very brave. Could you get me something to finish
it ?"

"Yes," I said."I can do that for you." I was back from the
chemist's in ten minutes. I gave her a glass of water, and put the
stuff in her other hand. She held it there ahtde. Then: "So futile
and it might all have been so different," she said.

"Good-bye, Bill and thank you for trying." I looked down at her lying
there. There was a thing that made it still more futile I wondered how
many would have said,
"Take me with you," where she had said,
"Stay with us." And I never even knew her name..

EVACUATION
It was the memory of the red-headed young man who had fired on us that
conditioned my choice of a route to Westminster.

Since I was sixteen my interest in weapons has decreased, but in an
environment reverting to savagery it seemed that one must be prepared
to behave more or less as a savage, or possibly cease to behave at all
before long. In St James's Street there used to be several shops which
would sell you any form of lethal ness from a rook-title to an
elephant-gun with the greatest urbanity.

I left there with a mixed feeling of support and banditry.

Once more I had a useful hunting-knife. There was a pistol with the
precise workmanship of a scientific instrument in my pocket. On the
seat beside me rested a loaded twelve-bore and boxes of cartridges.

I had chosen a shot-gun in preference to a rifle the bang is no less
convincing, and it decapitates a triffid with a neatness which a bullet
seldom achieves. And there were triffids to be seen right in London
now. They still appeared to avoid the streets when they could, but I
had noticed several lumbering across Hyde Park, and there were others
in Green Park. Very likely they were ornamental, safely docked
specimens on the other hand, maybe they weren't. And so I came to
Westminster.

The deadness, the fir fish of it all, was italicized there. The usual
scatter of abandoned vehicles lay about the streets. Very few people
were in sight. I saw only three who were moving.

Two were tapping their way down the gutters of Whitehall, the third was
in Parliament Square. He was sitting close to Lincoln's statue, and
clutching to him his dearest possession a side of bacon from which he
was hacking a ragged slice with a blunt knife.

Above it all rose the Houses of Parliament, with the hands of the clock
stopped at three minutes past six. It was difficult to believe that
all that meant nothing any more, that now it was just a pretentious
confection in uncertain stone which could decay in peace.

Let it shower its crumbling pinnacles on to the terrace as it would
there would be no more indignant members complaining of the risk to
their valuable lives. Into those which had in their day set world
echoes to good intentions and sad expediencies, the roofs could in due
course fall; there would be none to stop them, and none to care.

Alongside, the Thames flowed imperturbably on. So it would flow until
the day the Embankments crumbled and the water spread out and
Westminster became once more an island in a marsh.

Marvellously clear-fretted in the un smoked air, the Abbey rose,
silver-grey. It stood detached by the serenity of age from the
ephemeral growths around it. It was solid on a foundation of
centuries, destined, perhaps, for centuries yet to preserve within it
the monuments to those whose work was now all destroyed.

I did not loiter there. In years to come I expect some will go to look
at the old Abbey with romantic melancholy. But romance of that kind is
an alloy of tragedy with retrospect. I was too close.

Moreover, I was beginning to experience something new the fear of being
alone. I had not been alone since I walked from the hospital' along
Piccadilly, and then there had been bewildering novelty in all I saw.
Now, for the first time I began to feel the horror that real loneliness
holds for a species that is by nature gregarious. I felt naked,
exposed to all the fears that prowled ... I made myself drive on up
Victoria Street. The sound of the car itself alarmed me with its
echoes. My impulse was to leave it and sneak silently on foot,
seeking safety in cunning, like a beast in the jungle. It needed all
my will power to keep myself steady and hold to my plan. For I knew
what I should have done had I ehunced to be allocated to this district
should have sought supplies in its biggest department-store.

Somebody had stripped the provision department of the Army and Navy
Stores, all right, but there was no one there OW.

I came out by a side door. A cat on the pavement was engaged in
sniffing at something which might have been a bundle of rags, but was
not. I clapped my hands at it. It glared at me, and then slunk off.

A man came round a corner. He had a gloating expression on his face,
and was perseveringly rolling a large cheese along the middle of the
road. When he heard my step he halted his cheese, and sat on it,
brandishing his stick fiercely. I went back to my car in the main
street.

The probability was that Josella, too, would have chosen a hotel as a
convenient headquarters. I remembered that there were several around
Victoria Station, so I drove on there, it turned out that there were
vastly more of them than I had thought. After I had looked into a
score or more without finding any evidence of organized squatting, it
began to seem pretty hopeless.

I looked for somone to ask. There seemed a chance that anyone still
alive here might owe it to her. I had seen only half a dozen capable
of moving since I arrived in the district.

Now there seemed to be none. But at last, near the corner of
Buckingham Palace Road, I came across an old woman sitting huddled on a
doorstep.

She was tearing at a tin, with broken finger-nails, and alternately
cursing and whimpering over it. I went to a small shop nearby and
found half a dozen tins of beans overlooked on a high shelf.

I discovered a tin-opener, too, and went back to her. She was still
futilely scrabbling away at her tin.

"You'd better throw that away. It's coffee," I told her.

I put the opener into her hand, and gave her a tin of beans.

"Listen to me," I said."Do you know anything of a girl round here a
girl that can see ? She'd be in charge of a party, most likely."

I was not very hopeful, but something must have
helped the old woman to keep going longer than most. It seemed almost
too good to be true when she nodded.

"Yes," she said, as she started the opener.

"You do! Where is she ?" I demanded. Somehow it never occurred to me
that it could be anyone but Joseila. But she shook her head.

"I don'tknow. I was with her lot for a bit, but I lost 'em.

An old woman like me can't keep up with the young ones, so I lost 'em.
They'd not wait for a poor old woman, and I couldn't never find 'em
again." She went on cutting intently round the tim
"Where is she living ?" I asked.

"We was all in a 'otel. Dunno where it is, or I'd're found 'em again."

"Don't you know the name of the hotel ?"

"Not me."Tain't no good
knowing the nimes of places when you can't see to read 'em, nor nobody
else can't, neither."

"But you must remember something about it."

"No,
I don't." She lifted the can, and sniffed cautiously at the
contents.

"Look here," I said, coldly."You want to keep those tins, don't you
?" She made a movement with one arm to gather them all to her.

"Well, then, you'd better tell me all you can about that hotel," I went
on."You must know, for instance, whether it was large or small' She
considered, one arm still protectively about the tins.

"Downstairs it sounded sort of hollow like it might be biggish.

Likely it was smart, too what I mean, it 'ad them quiet carpets, an'
good beds, an' good sheets."

"Nothing else about it ?"

"No, not as I
Yes, there was, though. It 'ad two small steps outside, an' you went
in through one of them round-and round doors."

"That's better," I said."You're quite sure of that?
If I can't find it, I can find you again, you know."

"S Gawd's truth,
mister.

Two small steps, an' a round-and round door." She rummaged in a
battered bag beside her, brought out a dirty spoon, and began to taste
the beans as if they were one of the jams of paradise.

There were, I found, still more hotels round there than I had thought,
and a surprising number of them had round-and round doors. But I kept
on. There was no mistaking it when I did find it. The traces and the
smell were all too familiar.

"Anybody here ?" I called, in the echoing lounge.

I was about to go further in when a groan came from one corner.

Over in a semi-dark recess a man was lying on a set tee
Even in the dimness it was possible to see that he was far gone.

I did not go too close. His eyes opened. For a moment I thought that
he could see.

"You there ?" he said.

"Yes, I want to
"Water," he said."Fer Christ's sake gimme some water
I went across to the dining-room, and found the service room beyond.
The taps were dry. I squirted a couple of syphons into a big jug, and
took it back with a cup. I put them down where he could reach them.

"Thanks, mate," he said."I can manage. You keep clear o' file?

He dipped the cup into the jug, and then drained it.

"Gawd," he said."Did I need that!' And he repeated the action.

"Wotcher doin', mate ? "Tain't 'ealthy round 'ere, you know."

"I'm
looking for a girl a girl who can see. Her haree's Josella. Is she
here?"

"She was here. But you're too late, chum." A sudden suspicion
struck me like a physical stab.

"You don't mean ?"

"No. Ease off, mate. She ain't got what I got. No, she's just gone
same as all the rest what could."

"Where did
she go, do you know ?"

"Can't tell you that, mate."

"I see," I said,
heavily.

"You'd best be going', too, chum."Ang around 'ere long, an' you'll be
stayin' for keeps, like me." He was right. I stood looking down at
him.

"Anything else I can get you ?"

"No. This'll last me. I reckon it
won't be much longer I'll need anything." He paused. Then he added: '
"Bye, mate, 'n' thanks a lot. An' if you do finder, look after 'er
proper she's a good girl." While I was making a meal off tinned ham
and bottled beer a little later, it occurred to me that I had not asked
the man when Josella had left, but I decided that in his state he would
be unlikely to have any clear idea of time.

The one place I could think of to go to was the University Building. I
reckoned Josella would think the same and there was a hope that some
others of our dispersed party might have drifted back there in an
effort to reunite. It was not a very strong hope, for common sense
should have caused them to leave the town days ago.

Two flags still hung above the tower, limp in the warm air of the early
evening. Of the two dozen or so lorries that had been accumulated in
the forecourt, four still stood there, apparently untouched. I parked
the car beside them, and went into the building.

My footsteps clattered in the silence.

"Hullo I Hullo, there? I called."Is there anyone here?" My voice
echoed away down corridors and up wells, diminishing to the parody of a
whisper and then to silence. I went to the doors of the other wing and
called again. Once more the echoes died away unbroken, settling softly
as dust.

Only then as I turned back did I notice that an inscription had been
chalked on the wall inside the outer door. In large letters it gave
simply an address: TYNSHAM MANOR.

TYNSHAM
That was something, at least.

I looked at it, and thought. In another hour or less it would be dusk.
Devizes I guessed at a hundred miles distant, probably more. I went
outside again and examined the lorries. One of them was the last that
I had driven in the one in which I had stowed my despised anti-triffid
gear. I recalled that the rest of its load was a useful assortment of
food and supplies. It would be much better to arrive with that, than
empty-handed in a car. Nevertheless, if there were no urgent reason
for it, I did not fancy driving anything, much less a large, heavily
loaded lorry, by night along roads which might reasonably be expected
to produce a number of hazards. If I were to pile it up, and the odds
were that I should, I would lose a lot more time in finding another and
transferring the load than I would by spending the night here. An
early start in the morning offered much better prospects. I moved my
boxes of cartridges from the car to the cab of the lorry in readiness.
The gun I kept with me.

I found the room from which I had rushed to the fake fire alarm exactly
as I had left it; my clothes on a chair, even the cigarette-case and
lighter where I had placed them beside my improvised bed.

It was still too early to think of sleep. I lit a cigarette, put the
case in my pocket, and decided to go out.

Before I went into the Russell Square garden I looked it over
carefully. I had already begun to be suspicious of open spaces.

Sure enough I spotted one triffid. It was in the north-west corner,
standing perfectly still, but considerably taller than the bushes that
surrounded it. I went closer, and blew the top of it to bits with a
single shot. The noise in the silent Square could scarcely have been
more alarming if I had let off a howitzer. When I was sure that there
were no others lurking I
went into the garden and sat with my back against a tree.

I stayed there perhaps twenty minutes. The sun was low, and half the
square was thrown into shadow. Soon I would have to go in. While
there was light I could sustain myself; in the dark, things could steal
quietly upon me. Already I was on my way back to the primitive.

Before long, perhaps, I should be spending the hours of darkness in
fear as my remote anrestors must have done, watching, ever
distrustfully, the night outside their cave. I delayed to take one
more look around the Square as if it were a page of history I would
learn before it was turned. And as I stood there, I heard the gritting
of footsteps on the road a slight sound, but as loud in the silence as
a grinding millstone.

I turned, with my gun ready. Crusoe was no more startled at the sight
of a footprint than I at the sound of a footfall, for it had not the
hesitancy of a blind man's. I caught a glimpse in the dim light of the
moving fire. As it left the road and entered the garden I saw that it
was a man. Evidently he had seen me before I heard him, for he was
coming straight towards me.

"You don't need to shoot," he said, holding empty hands wide apart.

I did not know him until he came within a few yards.

Simultaneously he recognized me.

"Oh, it's you, is it ?" he said.

I kept the gun raised.

"Hullo, Coker. What are you after? Wanting me to go on another of
your little parties ?" I asked him.

"No. You can put that thing down. Makes too much noise, anyway.

That's how I found you. No," he repeated,
"I've had enough. I'm getting to hell out of here."

"So am I," I
said, and lowered the gun.

"What happened to your bunch ?" he asked.

I told him. He nodded.

"Same with mine. Same with the rest, I expect. Still, we tried  ... 
"The wrong way," I said.

He nodded again.

"Yes," he admitted."I reckon your lot did have the right idea from
the start only it didn't look right, and it didn't sound right a week
ago."

"Six days ago," I corrected him.

"A week," said he.

"No, I'm sure oh, well, what the hell's it matter, anyway ?" I said.
"In the circumstances," I went on, 'what do you say to declaring an
amnesty, and starting over again ?" He agreed.

"I'd got it wrong," he repeated."I thought I was the one who was
taking it seriously but I wasn't taking it seriously enough. I
couldn't believe that it would last, or that some kind of help wouldn't
show up. But now look at it I And it must be like this everywhere.

Europe, Asia, America think of America smitten like this I But they
must be. If they weren't, they'd have been over here, helping out and
getting the place straight that's the way it'd take them. No, I reckon
your lot understood it better from the start." We ruminated for some
moments, then I asked: "This disease, plague -what do you reckon it is
?"

"Search me, chum. I thought it must be typhoid, but someone said
typhoid takes longer to develop so I'd not know. I don't know why I've
not caught it myself- except that I've been able to keep away from
those that have, and to see that what I was eating was clean. I've
been keeping to tins I've opened myself, and I've drunk only bottled
beer. Anyway, though I've been lucky so far, I don't fancy hanging
around here much longer. Where do you go now ?" I told him of the
address chalked on the wall. He had not yet seen it. He had been on
his way to the University Building when the sound of my shot had caused
him to scout round with some caution.

"It' I began, and then stopped abruptly. From one of the streets west
of us came the sound of a car starting. It ran up its gears quickly,
and then diminished into the distance.

"Well, at least there's somebody else left," said Coker."And whoever
wrote up that address. Have you any idea who that would be ?"

I shrugged my shoulders. It was a justifiable assumption that it was a
returned member of the group that Coker had raided or possibly some
sighted person that his party had failed to catch. There was no
telling how long it had been there, He thought it over,
"It'll be better if there's two of us. I'll tag along with you and see
what's doing. Okay ?"

"Okay," I agreed."I'm for turning in now, and
an early start tomorrow." He was still asleep when I awoke. I dressed
myself much more comfortably in the ski-suit and heavy shoes than in
the garments I had been wearing since his party had provided them for
me. By the time I returned with aing of assorted packets and tins, he
was up and dressed, too. Over breakfast we decided to improve our
welcome at Tynsham by taking a loaded lorry each rather than travel
together in one..

"And see that the cab window closes," I suggested."There are quite a
lot of triffid nurseries around London, particularly to the west."

"Uh-huh. I've seen a few of the ugly brutes about," he said,
offhandedly
"I've seen them about-and in action," I told him.

At the first garage we came to we broke open a pump and filled up.

Then, sounding in the silent streets like a convoy of tanks, we set off
westwards with my three-former in the lead.

The going was wearisome. Every few dozen yards one had to weave round
some derelict vehicle. Occasionally two or three together would block
the road entirely so that it was necessary to go dead slow and nudge
one of them out of the way. Very few of them were wrecked. The
blindness seemed to have come upon the drivers swiftly, but not too
suddenly for them to keep control. Usually they had
been able to draw into the side of the road before they stopped. Had
the catastrophe occurred by day, the main roads would have been quite
impassable, and to work our way clear from the centre by side-streets
might have taken days spent mostly in reversing before impenetrable
thickets of vehicles and trying to find another way round. As it was I
found that our over-all progress was less slow than it seemed in
detail, and when after a few miles I noticed an overturned car beside
the road I realized that we were by this time on a route which others
had followed and partially cleared ahead of us.

On the further outskirts of Staines we could begin to feel that London
was behind us at last. I stopped, and went back to Coker. As he
switched off, the silence closed, thick and unnatural, with only the
click of cooling metal to break it. I realized suddenly that I had not
seen a single living creature other than a few sparrows since we had
started. Coker climbed out of his cab. He stood in the middle of the
road, listening and looking around him.

"And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity ...  he
murmured.

I looked hard at him. His grave, reflective expression turned suddenly
to a grin.

"Or do you prefer Shelley ?" he asked: "My name is Oz3mandias, king of
kings, Look on my works, ye mighty, and despairl Come on, let's find
some food."

"Coker," I said, as we completed the meal sitting on a
store counter and spreading marmalade on biscuits, 'you beat me.

What are you ? The first time I meet you I find you ranting if you
will forgive the appropriate word in a kind of dock-side lingo. Now
you quote Well to me. It doesn't make
sense." He grinned."It never did to me, either," he said."It comes
of being a hybrid you never really know what you are. My mother never
really knew what I was, either at least, she never could prove it, and
she always held it against me that on account of that she could not get
an allowance for me. It made me kind of sour about things when I was a
kid; and when I left school Lused to go to meetings more or less any
kind of meetings as long as they were protesting against something.

And that led to me getting mixed up with the lot that used to come to
them. I suppose they found me kind of amusing. Anyway, they used to
take me along to arty-political sorts of parties. After a bit I got
tired of being amusing and seeing them give a kind of double laugh,
half with me and half at me, whenever I said what I thought. I
reckoned I needed some of the background knowledge they had, and then
I'd be able to laugh at them a bit, maybe, so I started going to
evening classes, and I practised talking the way they did, for use when
necessary. There's a whole lot of people don't seem to understand that
you have to talk to a man in his own language before he'll take you
seriously. If you talk tough and quote Shelley they think you're cute,
like a performing monkey or something, but they don't pay any attention
to what you say. You have to talk the kind of lingo they're accustomed
to taking seriously. And it works the other way, too. Half the
political intelligentsia who talk to a working audience don't get the
value of their stuff across not so much because they're over their
audience's heads, as because most of the chaps are listening to the
voice and not to the words, so they knock a big discount off what they
do hear because it's all a bit fancy, and not like ordinary normal
talk. So I reckoned the thing to do was to make myself bilingual, and
use the right one in the right place and occasionally the wrong one in
the wrong place, unexpectedly.

Surprising how that jolts 'em. Wonderful thing, that English caste
system. Since then I've made out quite nicely in the orating business.
Not what you'd call a steady job, but full of
interest and variety. Wilfred Coker. Meetings addressed.

Subject no object. That's me."

"How do you mean subject no object?" I
inquired.

"Well, I kind of supply the spoken word just like a printer supplies
the printed word. He doesn't have to believe everything he prints." I
left that for the moment."How's it happen you're not like the rest ?"

I asked."You weren't in hospital, were you ?" The? No.

It just so happened that I was addressing a meeting that was protesting
over police partiality in a little matter of a strike. We began about
six o'clock, and about half past the police themselves arrived to break
it up. I found a handy trapdoor, and went down into the cellar. They
came down, too, to have a look, but they didn't find me where I had
gone to earth in a pile of shavings. They went on tramping around up
above for a bit, then it was quiet. But I stayed put. I wasn't
walking out into any nice little trap. It was quite comfortable there,
so I went to sleep. In the morning when I took a careful nose around,
I found all this had happened." He paused thoughtfully.

"Well, that racket's finished, it certainly doesn't look as if there's
going to be much call for my particular gifts from now on," he added.

I did not dispute it. We finished our meal. He slid himself off the
counter.

"Come on. We'd better be shifting."Tomorrow to fresh fields and
pastures new" - if you'd care for a really hackneyed quotation this
time."

"It's more than that, it's inaccurate," I said."It's "woods",
not "fields". He frowned, and thought.

"Well, -- me, mate, so it is," he admitted.

, I began to feel the lightening of spirit that Coker was already
showing. The sight of the open country gave one hope of a sort. It
was true that the young green crops would never be harvested when they
had ripened, nor the fruit from the trees gathered; that the
countryside might never again look as trim and neat as it did that day,
but for all that it would go on, after its own fashion. It was not
like the towns, sterile, stopped for ever. It was a place one could
work and tend, and still find a future. It made my existence of the
previous week seem like that of a rat living on crumbs and ferreting in
garbage Leaps As I looked out over the fields I felt my spur its
expanding.

Places on our route, towns like Reading or Newbury, brought back the
London mood for a while, but they were no more than dips in a graph of
revival There is an inability to sustain the mgic mood, a phoenix
quality of the mind. It may be helpful or harmful, it is just a part
of the will to survive yet, also, it has made it possible for us to
engage in one weakening war after another. But it is a necessary part
of our mechanism that we should be able to cry only for a time over
even an ocean of spilt milk the spectacular must soon become the
commonplace if life is to be supportable. Under a blue sky where a few
clouds sailed like celestial icebergs the cities became a less
oppressive memory, and the sense of living freshened us again like a
clean wind. It does not, perhaps, excuse, but it does at least explain
why from time to time I was surprised to find myself singing as I
drove.

At Hunger ford we stopped for more food and fuel. The feeling of
release continued to mount as we passed through miles of untouched
country. It did not seem lonely yet, only sleeping and friendly. Even
the sight of occasional little groups of triffids swaying across a
field, or of others resting with their roots dug into the soil held no
hostility to spoil my mood.

They were, once again, the simple objects of my suspended professional
interest.

Short of Devizes we pulled up once more to consult the map. A little
further on we turned down a side-road to the right, and drove into the
village of Tynshum.

There was little likelihood of anyone missing the Manor.

Beyond the few cottages which constituted the Village of Tynsham the
high wall of an estate ran beside the road. We followed it until we
came to massive wrought-iron gates.

Behind them stood a young woman on whose face the sober seriousness of
responsibility had suppressed all human expression. She was equipped
with a shotgun which she clasped in inappropriate places.

I signalled to Coker to stop, and called to her as I drew up. Her
mouth moved, but not a word penetrated the din of the engine. I
switched off."This is Tynsham Manor ?" I asked.

She was not giving that or anything else away.

"Where are you from? And how many of you?" she countered.

I could have wished that she did not fiddle about with her gun in just
the way she did. Briefly, and keeping an eye on her uneasy fingers, I
explained who we were, why we came, roughly what we carried, and
guaranteed that there were no more of us hidden in the trucks. I
doubted whether she was taking it in. Her eyes were fixed on mine with
a mournfully speculative expression more common in bloodhounds, but not
reassuring even there. My words did little to disperse that random
suspicion which makes the highly conscientious so wearing. As she
emerged to glance into the backs of the lorries and verify my
statements, I hoped for her sake that she would not chance to encounter
a party of whom her suspicions were justified. Admission that she was
satisfied would have weakened her role of reliability, but she did
eventually consent, still with reserve, to allow us in.

"Take the right fork," she called up to me as I passed, and turned back
at once to attend to the security of the gates.

Beyond a short avenue of elms by a park hndscaped in the manner of the
late eighteenth century and dotted with trees which had had space to
expand into full magnificence. The house, when it came into view, was
not a stately home in the architectural sense, but there was a lot of
it. It rambled over a considerable ground area and through a variety
of building styles as though none of its previous owners had been able
to resist the temptation to leave his personal mark upon it.

Each, while respecting the work of his forefathers, had apparently felt
it incumbent upon him to express the spirit of his own age.

A confident disregard of previous levels had resulted in a sturdy
waywardness. It was inescapably a funny house, yet friendly, and
reliable-looking.

The right fork led us to a wide courtyard where several vehicles stood
already. Coach-houses and stables extended around it, seemingly over
seeing the acres. Coker drew up alongside me, and climbed down.

There was no one in sight.

We made our way through the open rear door of the main building, and
down a long corridor. At the end of it was a kitchen of baronial
capacity where the warmth and smell of cooking lingered. From beyond a
door on the far side came a murmur of voices and a clatter of plates,
but we had to negotiate a further dark passage and another door before
we reached them.

The place we entered had, I imagine, been the servants' hall in the
days when staffs were sufficiently large for the term to be no
misnomer. It was spacious enough to seat a hundred or more at tables
without crowding. The present occupants, seated on benches at two long
trestles, I guessed to number between fifty and sixty, and it was clear
at a glance that they were blind. While they sat patiently a few
sighted persons were very busy. Over at a side-table three girls were
industriously carving chickens. I went up to one of them.

"We've just come," I said."What do we do?"

She paused, still clutching her fork, and pushed back a lock of hair
with the crook of her wrist.

"It'll help if one of you takes charge of the veg. and the other helps
with the plates," she said.

I took command of two large tubs of potato and cabbage.

In the intervals of doling them out I looked over the occupants of the
hall. Josella was not amongst them not could I see any of the more
notable characters among the group that had put forward its proposals
at the University Building though I fancied I had seen the faces of
some of the women before.

The proportion of men was far higher than in the former group, and they
were curiously assorted. A few of them might have been Londoners, or
at least town-dwellers, but the majority wore a countryman's working
clothes. An exception to either kind was a middle-aged clergyman, but
what every one of the men had in common was blindness.

The women were more diversified. Some were in town clothes quite
unsuited to their surroundings, others were probably local. Among the
latter group only one girl was sighted, but the former group comprised
half a dozen or so who could see, and a numb ear who, though blind,
were not clumsy.

Coker, too, had been taking stock of the place.

"Rum sort of set-up, this," he remarked, sotto vocci to me.

"Have you seen her yet ?" I shook my head, desolately aware that I had
pinned more on the expectation of finding Josella there than I had
admitted to myself.

"Funny thing," he went on, 'there's practically none of the lot I took
along with you except that girl that's carving up at the end there."

"Has she recognized you ?" I asked.

"I think so. I got a sort of dirty look from her." When the carving
and serving had been completed we took our own plates, and found places
at the table. There was nothing to complain of in the cooking or the
food, and living Out of cold cans for a week
sharpens the appreciation, anyway.

At the end of the meal there was a knocking on the table. The
clergyman rose; he waited for silence before he spoke: "My friends, it
is fitting that at the end of another day we should renew our thanks to
God for His great mercy in preserving us in the midst of such
disaster.

I will ask you all to pray that He may look with compassion upon those
who still wandeg alone in darkness, and that it may please Him to guide
their feet hither that we may succour them. Let us all beseech Him
that we may survive the trials and tribulations that lie and in order
that in His time and with His aid we may succeed ha playing our part in
the rebuilding of a better world to His greater glory." He bowed his
head.

"Almighty and most merciful God ... After the 'amen' he led a hymn.
When that was finished the gathering sorted itself out into parties,
each keeping touch with his neighbour, and four of the sighted girls
led them out.

I lit a cigarette. Coker took one from me absentmindedly, without
making any comment. A girl came across to us.

"Will you help to clear up ?" she asked."Miss Durrant will be back
soon, I expect."

"Miss Durrant ?" I repeated.

"She does the organizing," she explained."You'll be able to fix
things up with her." It was an hour later and almost dark when we
heard that Miss Durrant had returned. We found her in a small, study
like room lit only by two candles on the desk. I recognized her at
once as the dark, thin-lipped woman who had spoken for the opposition
at the meeting. For the moment, all her attention was concentrated on
Coker.

Her expression was no more amiable than upon the former occasion.

"I am told," she said coldly, regarding Coker as though he were some
kind of silt,
"I am told that you are the man who organized the raid on the
University Building ?" Coker agreed, and waited.

"Then I may as well tell you, once and for all, that in our community
here we have no use for brutal methods, and no intention of tolerating
them." Coker smiled slightly. He answered her in his best middle
class speech: "It is a matter of viewpoint. Who is to judge who were
the more brutal ? - those who saw an immediate responsibility and
stayed, or those who saw a further responsibility and cleared out ?"

She continued to look hard at him. Her expression remained unchanged,
but she was evidently forming a different judgement of the type of man
she had to deal with. Neither his reply nor its manner had been quite
what she had expected. She shelved that aspect for a time, and turned
to me."Were you in that, too ?" she asked.

I explained my somewhat negative part ha the affair, and put my own
question: "What happened to Michael Beadley, the Colonel, and the rest
?" It was not well received.

"They have gone elsewhere," she said, sharply."This is a clean,
decent community with standards Christian standards and we intend to
uphold them. We have no place here for people of loose views.

Decadence, immorality, and lack of faith were responsible for most of
the world's ills. It is the duty of those of us who have been spared
to see that we build a society where that does not happen again. The
cynical and the clever clever will find they are not wanted here, no
matter what brilliant theories they may put forward to disguise their
licentiousness and their materialism. We are a Christian community,
and we intend to remain so." She looked at me challengingly.

"So you split, did you ?" I said."Where did they go ?" She replied,
stonily: "They moved on, and we stayed here. That is what matters.

So long as they keep their influence away from here they may work out
their own damnation as they please. And since they choose to consider
themselves superior to both the laws of God and civilized custom, I
have no doubt that they will." She ended this declaration with a snap
of the jaw which suggested that I should be wasting my time if I tried
to question further, and turned back to Coker."What can you do ?"
she inquired.

"A number of things," he said calmly. `i suggest that I make myself
generally useful until I see where I am needed most." She hesitated, a
little taken aback. It had clearly been her intention to make the
decision and issue the instructions, but she changed her mind.

"All right. Look round, and come and talk it over tomorrow evening,"
she said.

But Coker was not to be dismissed quite so easily. He wanted
particulars of the size of the estate, the number of persons at present
in the house, the proportion of sighted to blind, along with a number
of other matters, and he got them.

Before we left, I put in a question about Josella. Miss Durrant
frowned.

"i seem to know that name. Now where ? Olh did she stand in the
Conservative interest in the last election ?"

"I don't think so.

She r - did write a book once," I admitted.

"She 'she began. Then I saw recollection dawn."Oh, oh that! Well,
really, Mr Masen, I can scarcely think she would be the sort of person
to care for the kind of community we are building here." In the corridor
outside Coker turned to me. There was just enough of the twilight left
for me to see his grin.

"A somewhat oppressive orthodoxy around these parts," he remarked.

The grin disappeared as he added: "Rum type, you know. Pride and
prejudice. She's wanting help. She knows she needs it badly, but
nothing's going to make her admit it." He paused opposite an open
door.

It was almost too dark now to make out anything in the room, but when
we had
passed it before, there had been enough light to
reveal it as a men's dormitory.

"I'm going in to have a word with these chaps. See you later." I
watching him stroll into the room and greet it collectively with a
cheerful
"Wotcher, mates l
"Ow's it going ?" and then made my own way back to the dining-hall.

The only light there came from three candles set close together on one
table. Close beside them a girl peered exasperatedly at some
mending.

"Hullo," she said."Awful, isn't it ? How on earth did they manage to
do anything after dark in the old days ?"

"Not such old days, either,"
I told her."This is the future as well as the past provided there's
somebody to show us how to make candles."

"I suppose so." She raised
her head, and regarded me."You came from London today ?"

"Yes," I
admitted.

"It's bad there now ?"

"It's finished I said.

"You must have seen some horrible sights there ?" she suggested.

"I did," I said, briefly."How long have you been here ?" She gave me
the geueal pict rue of things without more encouragement.

Coker's raid on the University Building had netted all but half a dozen
of the sighted. She and Miss Durrant had been two of those overlooked.
During the following day Miss Durrant had taken somewhat ineffective
charge. There had been no question of them leaving right away, since
only one among them had ever attempted to drive a lorry.

During that day and most of the next they had been in almost the same
relationship to their party as I was to mine away in Hampstead. But
during the later part of the second day, Michael Beadley and two others
returned, and during the night a few more had straggled back. By noon
the day after that they had
drivers for a dozen vehicles They had decided that it was more prudent
to leave forthwith than to wait on the chance that others would come.

Tynsham Manor had been chosen as a tentative destination for little
better reason than that it was known to the Colonel as a place which
could offer the compact seclusion which was one of the qualities they
sought.

It had been an ill-assorted party, with its leaders well aware of the
fact. The day after their arrival there had been a meeting smaller,
but otherwise not un similar to that held earlier in the University
Building. Michael and his section had announced that there was much to
be done, and that it was not their intention to waste their energies in
pacifying a group which was shot through with petty prejudice and
squabbles.

The whole business was too big for that, and time too pressing.

Florence Durrant agreed. What had happened to the world was worning
enough. How anyone could be so blindly ungrateful for the miracle that
had preserved them as even to contemplate the perpetuation of the
subversive theories which had been undermining the Christian faith for
a century, she was unable to understand. For her part, she had no wish
to live in a community where one section would be continually striving
to pervert the simple faith of those who were not ashamed to show their
gratitude to God by keeping His laws.

She was no less able to see that the situation was serious. The proper
course was to pay full heed to the warning God had given, and turn at
once to His teaching.

The division of parties, though clear, left them very uneven.

Miss Durrant had found her supporters to consist of five sighted girls,
a dozen or so blind girls, a few middle-aged men and women, also blind,
and no sighted males whatever. In the circumstances there could be no
doubt whatever that the section which would have to move must be
Michael Beadley's.

With the lorries still loaded, there was little to delay them, and in
the early afternoon they had driven away, leaving Miss Durrant and her
followers to sink or swim by their principles.

Not until then had there been an opportunity to survey the
potentialities of the Manor and its neighbour hood The main part of the
house had been closed, but in the servants' quarters they found traces
of recent occupation. Investigation of the kitchen garden later gave a
pretty clear picture of what had happened to those who had been looking
after the place. The bodies of a man, a woman, and a girl lay close
together there in a scatter of spilled fruit. Nearby a couple of
trififids waited patiently with their roots dug in. Close to the model
farm at the far end of the estate was a similar state of affairs.

Whether the trifffids had found their way into the park through some
open gate, or some undocked specimens already there had broken free,
was not clear, but they were a menace to be dealt with quickly before
they could do more damage. Miss Durrant had sent off one sighted girl
to make a circuit of the wall, closing every door or gate, and herself
had broken into the gun-room. Despite inexperience, she and another
young woman had succeeded in blowing the top off every triffid they
could find, to the number of twenty-six. No more had been seen within
the enclosure, and it was hoped that no more existed there.

The following day's investigation of the village had shown triffids
about in considerable numbers. The surviving inhabitants were either
those who had shut themselves into their houses to exist for as long as
they could on what stores they had there, or those who had been lucky
enough to encounter no triffids when they made brief foraging sorties.
All who could be found had been collected and brought back to the
Manor. They were healthy, and most of them were strong, but for the
present at any rate, they were more of a burden than a help, for there
was not one of them that could see.

Four more young women had arrived in the course of the day. Two had
come driving a loaded lorry by turns, and bringing a blind girl with
them. The other had been alone in a car.

After a brief look round she had announced that she found the set-up
lacking in appeal, and driven on. Of the several who
continued to arrive over the next few days only two had stayed. All
but two of the arrivals had ben women. Most of the men, it seemed, had
been more forthright and ruthless in extricating themselves from
Coker's group formations, and most of them had returned in time to join
the original party.

Of Josella the girl could tell me nothing. Clearly she had never heard
the name before, and my attempts at description roused no
recollections.

While we were still talking, the electric lights in the room suddenly
went on. The girl looked up at them with the awed expression of one
receiving a revelation. She blew out the candles, and as she went on
with her mending she looked up at the bulbs occasionally as if to make
certain they were still there.

A few minutes later Coker strolled in.

"That was you, I suppose ?" I said, nodding at the lights.

"Yes," he admitted."They've got their own plant here. We might as
well use up the petrol as let it evaporate."

"Do you mean to say we
could have had lights all the time we've been here ?" asked the girl
"If you had just taken the trouble to start the engine," Coker said,
looking at her."If you wanted light, why didn't you try to start it
?" `i didn't know it was there, besides, I don't know anything about
engines or electricity." Coker went on looking at her, thoughtfully.

"So you just went on sitting in the dark," he remarked."And how long
do you think you are likely to survive if you just go on sitting in the
dark when things need doing ?" She was stung by his tone.

"It's not my fault if I'm not any good at things like that."

"I'll
differ there," Coker told her."It's not only your fault it's a
self-created fault. Moreover, it's an affectation to consider yourself
too spiritual to understand anything mechanical.

It is a petty, and a very silly form of vanity. Everyone starts by
knowing nothing about anything, but God gives him and even
her brains to find out with. Failure to use them is not a virtue to
be praised: even in women it is a gap to be deplored." She looked
understandably annoyed. Coker himself had been looking annoyed from
the time he came in. She said: "That's all very well, but different
people's minds work on different lines. Men understand how machines
and electricity work. Women just aren't much interested in that kind
of thing as a rule."

"Don't hand me a mess of myth and affectation;
I'm not taking it," said Coker."You know perfectly well that women
can and do or rather did handle the most complicated and delicate
machines when they took the trouble to understand them. What generally
happens is that they're too lazy to take the trouble unless they have
to. Why should they bother when the tradition of appealing
helplessness can be rationalized as a womanly virtue and the job just
shoved off on to somebody else? Ordinarily it's a pose that it's not
worth anyone's while to debunk. In fact, it has been fostered. Men
have played up to it by stoutly repairing the poor darling's vacuum
cleaner, and capably replacing the blown fuse. The whole charade has
been acceptable to both parties. Tough practicality complements
spiritual delicacy and charming dependence and he is the mug who gets
his hands dirty." He lunged on, well started now: "Hitherto we have
been able to afford to amuse ourselves with that kind of mental
laziness and parasitism. In spite of generations of talk about the
equality of the sexes there has been much too great a vested interest
in dependence for women to dream of dropping it. They have made a
minimum of necessary modifications to changing conditions, but they
have always been minimum and grudged, at that." He paused.

"You doubt that? Well, consider the fact that both the pert chit and
the intellectual woman worked the higher-sensibility gag in their
different ways but when a war came and brought with it a social
obligation and sanction both could be trained into competent engineers
"They weren't good engineers," she remarked.
"Everybody says that."

"Ah, the defensive mechanism in action. Let me
point out that it was in nearly everybody's interest to say so. All
the same," he admitted, 'to some extent that was true. And why?

Because nearly all of them not only had to learn hurriedly and without
proper groundwork, but they had also to unlearn the habits carefully
fostered for years of thinking such interests alien to them, and too
gross for their delicate natures."

"I don't see why you have to come
and pitch on me with all this," she said."I'm not the only one who
didn't start the wretched engine." Coker grinned.

"You're quite right. It's unfair. It was simply finding the engine
there ready to work and nobody doing a thing about it that started me
off. Dumb futility gets me that way."

"Then I think you might have
said all that to Miss Durrant instead of to me."

"Don't worry, I
shall. But it isn't just her affair. It's yours and everyone else's.
I expect that, you know. Times have changed rather radically.

You can't any longer say: "Oh, dear, I don't understand this kind of
thing," and leave it to someone else to do for you. Nobody is going to
be muddle-headed enough to confuse ignorance with innocence now it's
too important. Nor is ignorance going to be cute or funny any more.

It is going to be dangerous, very dangerous. Unless all of us get
around as soon as we can to understanding a lot of things in which we
had no previous interest, neither we nor those who depend on us are
going to get through this lot."

"I don't see why you need to pour all
your contempt for women on to me just because of one dirty old engine,"
she said, peevishly.

Coker raised his eyes.

"Great GOD! And here have I been explaining that women have all the
capabilities if they only take the trouble to use them."

"You said we were parasites. That wasn't at all a nice thing to say."

"I'm not trying to say nice things. And what I did say was that in the
world that has vanished women had a vested interest in acting the part
of parasites." "And all that just because I don't happen to know
anything about a smelly, noisy engine."

"Helll' said Coker."Just
drop that engine a minute, will you."

"Then why- ?"

"The engine just
happened to be a symbol. The point is we'll all have to learn not
simply what we like, but as much as we can about running a community
and supporting it. The men can't just fill in a voting paper and hand
the job to someone else. And it will no longer be considered that a
woman has fulfilled all her social obligations when she has prevailed
upon some man to support her and provide her with a niche where she can
irresponsibly produce babies for somebody else to educate."

"Well, I
don't see what that has to do with engines ..."Listen," said Coker,
patiently."If you have a baby, do you want him to grow up to be a
savage, or a civilized man ?"

"A civilized man, of course."

"Well,
then, you have to see to it that he has civilized surroundings to do it
in. The standards he'll learn, he'll learn from us. We've all got to
understand as much as we can, and live as intelligently as we can in
order to give him the most we can. It's going to mean hard work and
more thinking for all of us. Changed conditions must mean changed
outlooks." The girl gathered up her mending. She regarded Coker
critically for a few moments.

"With views like yours I should think you'd find Mr Beadley's party
more congenial," she said."Here we have no intention of changing our
outlook or of giving up our principles. That's why we separated from
the other party. So if the ways of decent respectable people are not
good enough for you, I should think you'd better go somewhere else."

And with a sound very like a sniff, she walked away.

Coker watched her leave. When the door closed he expressed his
feelings with a fish-porter's fluency. I laughed.

"What did you expect ?" I said."You prance in and address the girl
as if she were a public meeting of delinquents and responsible for the
whole western social system, as well And then you are surprised when
she's huffed."

"You'd expect her to see reason," he muttered.

"I don't see why. Most of us don't - we see habit. She'll oppose any
modification, reasonable or not, that conflicts with her previously
trained feelings of what is right and polite and be quite honestly
convinced that she's showing steadfast strength of character. You're
in too much of a hurry. Show a man the Elysian Fields when he's just
lost his home, and he'll think mighty little of them: leave him there a
bit, and he'll begin to think home was like them, only cosier. She'll
adapt in time as she has to and continue to deny with conviction that
she's done so."

"In other words, just improvise as necessary. Don't
try to plan anything. That won't take us far."

"That's where
leadership comes in. The leader does the planning, but he's wise
enough not to say so. As the changes become necessary, he slips them
in as a concession temporary, of course to circumstances, but if he's
good, he's slipping in the right bits for the ultimate shape.

There are always overwhelming objections to any plan, but concessions
have to be made to emergencies."

"Sounds Machiavellian to me. I like
to see what I'm aiming at, and go straight for it."

"Most people
don't, even though they'd protest that they do. They prefer to be
coaxed or wheedled, or even driven.

That way they never make a mistake: if there is one it's always due to
something or somebody else. This going headlong for things is a
mechanistic view, and people in general aren't machines. They have
minds of their own mostly peasant minds, at their easiest
when they are in the familiar furrow."

"It doesn't sound as if you'd
bet much on Beadley's chance of making a go of it. He's all plan."

"He'll have his troubles. But his party did choose. This lot is
negative," I pointed out."It is simply here on account of its
resistance to any kind of plan." I paused. Then I added: "That girl
was right about one thing, you know. You would be better off with his
lot. Her reaction is a sample of what you'd get all round if you were
to try to handle this lot your way.

You can't drive a flock of sheep to market in a dead straight line, but
there are ways of getting 'em there."

"You're being unusually cynical,
as well as metaphorical this evening," Coker observed. I objected to
that.

"It isn't cynical to have noticed how a shepherd handles his sheep."

"To regard human beings as sheep might be thought so by some.

' "But less cynical and much more rewarding than regarding them as a
lot of chassis fitted for remote thought control."

"H'm," said Coker,
I'll have to consider the implications of that."

AND FURTHER ON
MY next morning was desultory. I looked around, I
lent a hand here and there, and asked a lot of questions.

It had been a wretched night. Until I lay down, I had not fully
realized the extent to which I had counted on finding Josella at
Tynsham. Weary though I was after the day's journey, I could not
sleep; I lay awake in the darkness feeling stranded and plan less So
confidently had I assumed that she and the Beadley party would be there
that there had been no reason to consider any scheme beyond joining
them. It now came home to me for the first time that even if I did
succeed in catching up with them I still might not find her. As she
had only left Westminster district a short time before I arrived there
in search of her, she must in any case have been well behind the main
party. Obviously the thing to do was to make detailed inquiries
regarding everyone who had arrived at Tynsham during the previous two
days.

For the present I must assume that she had come this way.

It was my only lead. And that meant assuming also that she had gone
back to the University and had found the chalked address whereas, it
was quite on the cards that she had not gone there at all, but,
sickened by the whole thing, had taken the quickest route out of the
reeking place that London had become.

The thing I had to fight hardest against admitting was that she might
have caught the disease, whatever it was, that had dissolved both our
groups. I would not consider the possibility of that until I had to.

In the sleepless clarity of the small hours I made one discovery it was
that my desire to join the Beadley party was very secondary indeed to
my wish to find Josella. If, when I .. did find
them, she was not with them. well, the next idea would have to wait
upon the moment, but it would not be resignation ... Coker's bed was
already empty when I awoke, and I decided to devote my morning chiefly
to inquiries. One of the troubles was that it did not seem to have
occurred to anyone to take note of the names of those who had found
Tynsham uninviting, and had passed on. Josella's name meant nothing to
anyone save those few who recollected it with disapproval.

My description of her raised no memories that would stand detailed
examination. Certainly there had been no girl in a navy-blue ski-suit
- that I established, but then, I could by no means be certain that she
would still be dressed in that way. My inquiries ended by making
everyone very tired of me and increasing my frustration. There was a
faint possibility that a girl who had come and gone a day before our
arrival might have been she, but I could not feel it likely that
Josella could have left so slight an impression on anyone's mind even
allowing for prejudice ... Coker reappeared again at the midday meal.
He had been engaged on an extensive survey of the premises. He had
taken a tally of the livestock and the number of blind among it.

Inspected the farm equipment and machinery. Found out about the source
of pure water supplies. Looked into the stores of feed, both human and
stock. Discovered how many of the blind girls had been afflicted
before the catastrophe, and arranged classes of the others for them to
train as best they could.

He had found most of the men plunged in gloom by a well meant assurance
from the vicar that there would be plenty of useful things for them to
do such aser- basket-making, and er - weaving, and he had done his best
to dispel it with more hopeful prospects. Encountering Miss Durrant,
he had told her that unless it could somehow be contrived that the
blind women should take part of the work off the shoulders of the
sighted the whole thing would break down within ten days,
and also, that if the vicar's prayer for more blind people
to join them should happen to be granted the place would become
entirely unworkable. He was embarking upon further observations,
including the necessity for starting immediately to build up food
reserves, and to begin the construction of devices which would enable
blind men to do useful work, when she cut him short. He could see that
she was a great deal more worried, than she would admit, but the
determination which had led her to sever relations with the other party
caused her to blaze back at him un thankfully She ended by letting him
know that on her information neither he nor his views were likely to
harmonize with the community.

"The trouble about that woman is that she means to be boss," he said.
"It's constitutional quite apart from the lofty principles."

"Slanderous," I said."What you mean is that her principles are so
impeccable that everything is her responsibility and so it becomes her
duty to guide others."

"Much the same thing," he said.

"But it sounds a lot better," I pointed out.

He was thoughtful for a moment.

"She's going to run this place into one hell of a mess unless she gets
right down to the job of organizing it pretty quickly.

Have you looked the outfit over ?" I shook my head. I told him how my
morning had been spent
"You don't seem to have got much change for it. So what ?" he said.

"I'm going on after the Michael Beadley crowd," I told him.

"And if she's not with them ?"

"At present I'm just hoping she is.

She must be. Where else would she be?" He started to say something,
and stopped. Then he went on: I reckon I'll come along with you. It's
likely that crowd won't be any more glad to see me than this one,
considering everything but I can live that down, I've watched one lot
fall to bits, and I can see this one's going to
do the same more slowly, and, maybe, more nastily. It's queer, isn't
it ? Decent intentions seem to be the most dangerous things around
just now. It's a damned shame because this place could be managed, in
spite of the proportion of blind. Everything it needs is lying about
for the taking, and will be for a while yet. It's only organizing
that's wanted."

"And willingness to be organized," I suggested.

"That, too," he agreed."You know, the trouble is that in spite of all
that's happened this thing hasn't got home to these people yet.

They don't want to turn to that'd be making it too final. At the back
of their minds they're all camping out, hanging on, and waiting for
something or other."

"True but scarcely surprising," I admitted.

"It took plenty to convince us, and they've not seen what we have.

And, somehow, it does seem less final and less less immediate out here
in the country."

"Well they've got to start realizing it soon if
they're going to get through," Coker said, looking round the hall
again.

"There's no miracle coming to save them."

"Give 'em time.

They'll come to it, as we did. You're always in such a hurry. Time's
no longer money, you know."

"Money isn't important any longer, but
time is. They ought to be thinking about the harvest, rigging a mill
to grind flour, seeing about winter feed for the stock." I shook my
head.

"It's not as urgent as all that, Coker. There must be huge stocks of
flour in the towns, and, by the look of things, mighty few of us to use
it. We can live on capital for a long while yet. Surely the immediate
job is to teach the blind how to work before they really have to get
down to it."

"All the same, unless something is done, the sighted ones
here are going to crack up. It only needs that to happen to one or two
of them, and the place'll be in a proper mess." I had to concede
that:.

Later in the afternoon I managed to find
Miss Durrant. No one else seemed to know or care where Michael Beadley
and his lot had gone, but I could not believe that they had not left
behind some indications for those who might follow. Miss Durrant was
not pleased. At first I thought she was going to refuse to tell me. It
was not due solely to my implied preference for other company.

The loss of even an uncongenial able bodied man was serious in the
circumstances. Nevertheless, she preferred not to show the weakness of
asking me to stay.

In the end she said curtly: "They were intending to make for somewhere
near amin in Dorset. I can tell you no more than that." I went back
and told Coker. He looked around him. Then he shook his head, though
with a touch of regret.

"Okay," he said."We'll check out of this dump tomorrow."

"Spoken
like a pioneer," I told him." - At least, more like a pioneer than an
Englishman." Nine o'clock the next morning saw us already twelve miles
or so on our road, and travelling as before in our two lorries.

There had been a question whether we should not take a handier vehicle
and leave the trucks for the benefit of the Tynsham people, but I was
reluctant to abandon mine. I had personally collected the contents,
and knew what was in it. Apart from the case of anti-triffid gear
which Michael Beadley had so disapproved, I had given myself slightly
wider scope on the last load, and there was a selection of things made
with consideration of what might be difficult to find outside a large
town; such things as a small lighting set, some pumps, cases of good
tools. All these things would be available later for the taking, but
there was going to be an interlude when it would be advisable to keep
away from towns of any size. The Tynsham people had the means to fetch
supplies from towns where there was no sign yet of the disease. A
couple of loads would not make a great deal of
difference to them either way, so, in the end, we went as we had
come.

The weather still held good. On the higher ground there was still
little taint in the fresh air, though most villages had become
unpleasant. Rarely we saw a still figure lying in a field or by the
roadside, but just as in London, the main instinct seemed to have been
to hide away in shelter of some kind.

Most of the villages showed empty streets, and the countryside around
them was as deserted as if the whole human race and most of its animals
had been spirited away. Until we came to Steeple Honey.

From our road we had a view of the whole of Steeple Honey as we
descended the hill. It clustered at the further end of a stone bridge
which arched across a small, sparkling river.

It was a quiet little place cent red round a sleepy-looking church, and
stippled off at its edges with white-washed cottages. It did not look
as if anything had occurred in a century or more to disturb the quiet
life under its thatched roofs. But like other villages it was now
without stir or smoke. And then, when we were half-way down the hill,
a movement caught my eye.

On the left, at the far end of the bridge one house stood slightly
aslant from the road so that it faced obliquely towards us. An inn
sign hung from a bracket on its wall, and from the window immediately
above that something white was being waved. As we came closer I could
see the man who was leaning out and frantically flagging us with a
towel. I judged that he must be blind, otherwise he would have come
out into the road to intercept us. He was waving too vigorously for a
sick man.

I signalled back to Coker, and pulled up as we cleared the bridge.

The man at the window dropped his towel. He shouted something which I
could not hear above the noise of the engines, and disappeared. We
both switched off. It was so quiet that we could hear the clumping of
the man's feet on the wooden stairs inside the house. The door opened,
and he stepped out, holding both hands before him. Like lightning something
whipped out of the hedge on his left, and struck him. He gave a
single, high-pitched shout, and dropped where he stood.

I picked up my shotgun, and climbed out of the cab. I circled a little
until I could make out the triffid skulking in the shadows of a bush.
Then I blew the top off it.

Coker was out of his truck, too, and standing close beside me. He
looked at the man on the ground, and then at the shorn triffid.

"It was no, damn it, it can't have been waiting for him ?" he said.
"It must just have happened ... It couldn't have known he'd come
out of that door ... I mean, it couldn't - could it?"

"Or could it?
It was a remarkably neat piece of work," I said.

Coker turned uneasy eyes on me.

"Too damn neat. You don't really believe ...  ?"

"There's a kind of
conspiracy not to believe things about triffids," I said, and added:
"There might be more around here." We looked the adjacent cover over
carefully, and drew blank.

"I could do with a drink," suggested Coker.

But for the dust on the counter, the small bar of the inn looked
normal. We poured a whisky each. Coker downed his in one. He turned
a worried look on me.

"I didn't like that. Not at all, I didn't. You ought to know a lot
more about these bloody things than most people, Bill. It wasn't - I
mean, it must just have happted to be there, musm't it ?"

"I think ' I
began. Then I stopped, listening to the staccato drumming outside.

I walked over and opened the window. I let the already trimmed triffid
have the other barrel, too; this time just above the hole. The
drumming stopped.

"The trouble about triffids," I said, as we poured another drink, 'is
chiefly the things we don't know about them." I told him one or two of
Walter's theories. He started
"you don't seriously suggest that they're "talking" when they make that
rattling noise?"

"I've never made up my mind," I admitted."I'll go
so far as to say I'm sure it's a signal of some sort. But Walter
considered it to be real "talk" - and he did know more about them than
anyone else that I know." I ejected the two spent cartridge cases, and
reloaded.

"And he actually mentioned their advantage over a blind man ?"

"A
number of years ago, that was," I pointed out.

"Still it's a funny coincidence."

"Impulsive as ever," I said.

"Pretty nearly any stroke of fate can be made to look like a funny
coincidence if you try hard enough and wait long enough." We drank up,
and turned to go. Coker glanced out of the window. Then he caught my
arm, and pointed. Two triffids had swayed round the corner, and were
making for the hedge which had been the hiding-place of the first. I
waited until they paused, and then decapitated both of them. We left
by the window, which was out of range of any triffid cover, and looked
about us carefully as we approached the lorries.

"Another coincidence? Or were they coming to see what had happened to
their pal ?" asked Coker.

We cleared the v'dlage, running on along small, crosscountry roads.
There seemed to me to be more triffids about now than we had seen on
our previous journey or was it that I had been made more conscious of
them ? It might have been that in travelling hitherto chiefly by main
roads we had encountered fewer. I knew from experience that they
tended to avoid a hard surface, and thought that it perhaps caused them
some discomfort in their limb-like roots. Now I began to be convinced
that we were seeing more of them, and I started to get an idea that they
were not entirely indifferent to us though it was not possible to be
sure whether those that we saw approaching across fields from time to
time just happened to be coming in our direction.

A more decisive incident occurred when one slashed at me from the
hedgerow as I passed. Luckily it was inexpert in its aim at a moving
vehicle. It let fly a moment too soon, and left its print in little
dots of poison across the windscreen. I was past before it could
strike again. But thenceforward, in spite of the warmth, I drove with
the near side window closed.

During the past week or more I had given thought to the triffids only
when I encountered them. Those I had seen at Josella's home had
worried me as had the others that had attacked our group near Hampstead
Heath, but most of the time there had been more immediate things to
worry about.

But, looking back now over our trip, the state of things at Tynsham
before Miss Durrant had taken steps to clear it up with shotguns, and
the condition of the villages we had passed through, I began to wonder
just how big a part the triffids might have been playing in the
disappearance of the inhabitants.

In the next village I drove slowly, and looked carefully. In several
of the front gardens I could see bodies lying as they had evidently
lain for some days and almost always there was a triffid discernible
close by. It looked as if the triffids only ambushed in places where
there was soft earth for them to dig their roots into while they
waited. One seldom saw a body, and never a triffid in those parts
where the house-doors opened straight into the street.

At a guess I would say that what had happened in most of the villages
was that the inhabitants emerging for food moved in comparative safety
while they were in paved areas, but the moment they left them, or even
passed close to a garden wall or fence, they stood in danger of the
stings slashing out at them. Some would cry out as they were struck,
and when they did not come back those who remained would grow more
afraid. Now and then another would be driven out by hunger.

A few might be lucky enough to get back, but most would lose themselves
and wander on until they dropped, or came within range of a triffid.
Those who were left might, perhaps, guess what was happening.

Where there was a garden they might have heard
the swish of the sting, and known that they faced the alternatives of
starvation in the house or the same fate that had overtaken the others
who had left it. Many would remain there, living on what food they had
while they waited for help that was never going to come. Something
like that must have been the predicament of the man in the inn at
Steeple Honey.

The likelihood that in the other villages we were passing through there
might still be houses in which isolated groups had managed to keep
going was not a pleasant thought. It raised again the same kind of
question that we had faced in London -the feeling that one should, by
all civilized standards, try to find them and do something for them;
and the frustrating knowledge of the frittering decline which would
overtake any such attempt as it had before.

The same old question. What could one do, with the best will in the
world, but prolong the anguish ? Placate one's conscience for a while
again, just to see the result of the effort wasted once more.

It was not, I had to tell myself firmly, any good at all going into an
earthquake area while the buildings were still falling the rescue and
the salvage had to be done when the tremors had stopped.

But reason did not make it easy. The old doctor had been only too
right when he stressed the difficulties of mental adaptation ...  The
triffids were a complication on an unexpected scale. There were, of
course, very many nurseries besides our own company's plantations. They
raised them for us, for private buyers, or for sale to a number of
lesser trades where their derivatives were used, and the majority of
them were, for climatic reasons, situated in the south.

Nevertheless, if what we had already seen was a fair sample of the way
they had broken loose and distributed themselves they must have been
far more numerous than I had supposed. The prospect of more of them
reaching maturity every day and of the docked
specimens steadily regrowing their stings was far from reassuring  ...
With only two more stops, one for food and the other for fuel, we made
good time, and ran into Beaminster about half past four in the
afternoon. We had come right into the centre of the town without
having seen a sign to suggest the presence of the Beadley party.

At firsthmpse the place was as void of life as any other we had seen
that day. The main shopping street we entered it was bare and empty
save for a couple of lorries drawn up on one side. I had led the way
down it for perhaps twenty yard when a man stepped out from behind one
of the lorries, and levelled a rifle. He fixed deliberately over my
head, and then lowered his aim.

That's the kind of warning I don't debate about. I pulled
up.

The man was large and fair-haired. He'handled his rifle with
familiarity. Without taking it out of the aim, he jerked his head
twice sideways. I accepted that as a sign to climb down.

When I had done so, I displayed my empty hands. Another man,
accompanied by a girl, emerged from behind the stationary lorry as I
approached it. Coker's voice called from behind me: "Better put up
that rifle, chum. You're all in the open." The fair man's eyes left
mine to search for Coker. I could have jumped him then if I'd wanted
to, but I said: "He's right. Anyway, we're peaceful." The man lowered
his rifle, not quite convinced. Coker emerged from the cover of my
lorry which had hidden his exit from his own.

"What's the big idea ? Dog eat dog ?" he inquired.

"Only two of you ?" the second man asked.

Coker looked at him.

"What would you be expecting? A convention? Yes, just two of us." The
trio visibly relaxed. The fair man explained: "We thought you might be
a gang from a city. We've been expecting them here raiding for food."

"Oh," said Coker."From which we assume that you've not taken a look
at any city lately. If that's your only worry, you might as well
forget it. What gangs there are, are more likely to be working the
other way round at present. In fact, doingifi may say so -just what
you are."

"You don't think they'll come?"

"I'm darned sure they won't." He regarded the three."Do you belong
to Beadley's lot ?" he asked.

The response was convincingly blank.

"Pity," said Coker."That'd have been our first real stroke of luck in
quite a time."

"What is or are Beadley's lot ?" inquired the fair
man.

I was feeling stiff and tired after some hours in the driving cab
with the sun on it. I suggested that we might remove discussion from
the middle of the street to some more congenial spot. We passed round
their vans through a familiar litter of cases of biscuits, chests of
tea, sides of bacon, sacks of sugar, blocks of salt, and all the rest
of it to a small bar-parlour next door. Over pint pots Coker and I
gave them a short rsum of what we'd done and what we -knew. Then it
was their turn.

They were, it seemed, the more active half of a party of six the other
two women and a man being stationed at the house they had taken over
for a base.

Around the noon of Tuesday, 7 May, the fair-haired man sild the girl
with him had been travelling westwards in his car.

They had been on their way to spend a two weeks' holiday in Cornwall,
and making pretty good time until a double-decker bus emerged from a
turning somewhere near Crewkerne. The car had made contact with it in
a decisive way, and the last thing the fair-haired young man remembered
was a horrified glimpse of the bus looking as tall as a cliff, and
heeling over right above them.

He had wakened up in bed to find, much as I had, a mysterious silence
all about him. Apart from soreness, a few cuts, and a thumping head,
there didn't appear to be a lot wrong with him. When, as he said,
nobody kept on coming, he had investigated the place, and found it to
be a small cottage-hospital.

In one ward he had found the girl and two other women, one of whom was
conscious, but incapacitated by a leg and an arm in plaster. In
another were two men one of them his present companion, the other
suffering from a broken leg, also in plaster. Altogether there had
been eleven people in the place) eight of whom were
sighted. Of the blind, two were bedridden and seriously ill. Of the
staff there was no sign at all. His experience had been, to begin with,
more baffling than mine. They had stayed in the little hospital, doing
what they could for the helpless, wondering what went on, and hoping
that someone would show up to help. They had no idea what was wrong
with the two blind patients nor how to treat them They could do nothing
but feed and try to ease them. Both had died the next day. One man
disappeared, and no one had seen him go. Those who were there for
injuries suffered when the bus had overturned were local people. Once
they were sufficiently recovered, they set out to find relatives. The
party had dwindled down to six, two of whom had broken limbs.

By now they had realized that the breakdown was big enough to mean that
they must fend for themselves for a tim at least, but they were still
far from grasping its full extent.

They decided to leave the hospital and find some more convenient place,
for they imagined that many more sighted people would exist in the
cities and that the disorganization would have brought mob rule.

Daily they were expecting the arrival of these mobs when the food
stores in the towns should be finished, and had pictured them moving
like a locust army across the countryside. Their chief concern,
therefore, had been to gather supplies in preparation for a siege.

With our assurances that that was the least likely thing to happen,
they looked at one another a little bleakly.

They were an oddly assorted trio. The fair-haired man turned out to be
a member of the Stock Exchange by the name of Stephen Brennell.

His companion was a good-looking, well built girl with an occasional
superficial petulance, but no real surprise over whatever life might
hand her next. She had led one of those fringe careers modelling
dresses, selling them, putting in movie-extra work, missing
opportunities of going to Hollywood, hostes sing for obscure clubs, and
helping out these activities by such other means as offered themselves
- the intended holiday in Cornwall being apparently one such. She
had an utterly unshakeable conviction that nothing serious could have
happened to America, and that it was only a matter of holding out for a
while until the Americans arrived to put everything in order.

She was quite the least troubled person I had encountered since the
catastrophe took place, Though just occasionally she pined a little for
the bright lights which she hoped the Americans would hurry up and
restore.

The third member, the dark young man, nursed a grudge.

He had worked hard and saved hard in order to start his small radio
store, and he had ambitions."Look at Ford," he told us, and look at
Lord Nuffieid - he started with a bike shop no bigger than my radio
store, and see where he got to! That's the kind of thing I was going
to do. And now look at the damned mess things are inl It ain't fair!'
Fate, as he saw it, didn't want any more Fords or Nuffields - but he
didn't intend to take that lying down. This was only an interval sent
to try him one day would see him back in his radio store with his foot
set firmly on the first rung to millionairedom.

The most disappointing thing about them was to find that they knew
nothing of the Michael Beadley party. Indeed, the only group they had
encountered was in a village just over the Devon border where a couple
of men with shotguns had lvised them not to come that way again. Those
men, they said, were obviously local. Coker suggested that that meant
a small group.

"If they had belonged to a large one they'd have shown less nervousness
and more curiosity," he maintained."But if the Beadley lot are round
here, we ought to be able to find them somehow." He put it to the fair
man: "Look here, suppose we come along with you ? We can do our whack,
and when we do find them it will make things easier for all of us." The
three of them looked questioningly at one another, and then nodded.

"All right. Give us a hand with the loading, and we'll be getting
along," the man agreed.

DEAD END
By the look of Charcott Old House it had once been a
fortified manor. Refortification was now under way. At some tahoe m
the past the encircling moat had been drained. Stephen, however, was
of the opinion that he had successfully ruined the drainage system so
that it would fill up again by degrees. It was his plan to blow up
such parts as had been filled in, and thus complete the
re-encirclement. Our news, suggesting that this might not be
necessary, induced a slight wistfulness in him, and a look of
disappointment The stone walls of the house were thick. At least three
of the windows in the front displayed machine guns, and he pointed out
two more mounted on the roof. Inside the main door was stacked a small
arsenal of mortars and bombs, and, as he proudly showed us, several
flame-throwers.

"We found an arms depot," he explained, 'and spent a day getting this
lot together." As I looked over the stuffi realized for the first time
that the catastrophe by its very thoroughness had been more merciful
than the things that would have followed a slightly lesser disaster.
Had ten or fifteen per cent of the population remained unharmed it was
very likely that little communities like this would indeed have found
themselves fighting off starving gangs in order to preserve their own
lives. As things were, however, Stephen had probably made his warlike
preparations in vain. But there was one appliance that could be put to
good use. I pointed to the flame-throwers.

"Those might be handy for triffids," I said.

He grinned.

"You're right. Very effective. The one thing we've used them for. And
incidentally the one thing I know that really makes a triffid beat it.
You can go on firing at them until they're shot to bits, and they don't
budge. I suppose they don't know where the destruction's coming from.
But one warm lick from this, and they're plunging off fit to bust
themselves."

"Have you had a lot of trouble with them ?" I asked.

It seemed that they had not. From time to time one, perhaps two or
three would approach, and be scorched away. On their expeditions they
had had several lucky escapes, but usually they were out of their
vehicles only in built-up areas where there was little likelihood of
prowling triffids.

That night' after dark we all went up to the roof. It was too early
for the moon. We looked out upon an utterly black landscape.

Search it as we would, not one of us was able to discover the least
pinpoint of a tell-tale light. Nor could any of the party recall ever
having seen a trace of smoke by day. I was feeling depressed when we
descended again to the lamp lit living-room.

"There's only one thing for it, then," Coker said."We'll have to
divide the district up into areas, and search them." But he did not
say it with conviction. I suspected that he was thinking it likely, as
I was, that the Beadley party would continue to show a deliberate light
by night, and some other sign probably a smoke column- by day.

However, no one had any better suggestion to make, so we got down to
the business of dividing the map up into sections, doing our best to
contrive that each should include some high ground to give an extensive
view beyond it.

The following day we went into the town in a lorry, and from there
dispersed in smaller cars for the search.

That was, without a doubt, the most melancholy day I had spent since I
had wandered about Westminster searching for traces of Josella there.

Just at first it wasn't too bad. There was The open road in the
sunlight, the fresh green of early summer. There were signposts which
pointed to
"Exeter and The West', and other places as if they still pursued their
habitual lives. There were sometimes, though rarely, birds to be seen.
And there were wild flowers beside the lanes, looking as they had
always looked.

But the other side of the picture was not so good. There
were fields in which cattle lay dead or wandered blindly, and untended
cows lowed in pain; where sheep in their easy discouragement had stood
resignedly to die rather than pull themselves free from bramble or
barbed wire, and other sheep grazed erratically, or starved with looks
of reproach in their blind eyes.

Farms were becoming unpleasant places to pass closely. For safety's
sake I was giving myself only an inch of ventilation at the top of the
window, but I closed even that whenever I saw a farm beside the road
ahead.

Triffids were at large. Sometimes I saw them crossing fields or
noticed them inactive against hedges. In more than one farmyard they
had found the middens to their liking and enthroned themselves there
while they waited for the dead stock to attain the right stage of
putrescence. I saw them now with a disgust that they had never roused
in me before. Horrible alien things which some of us had somehow
created and which the rest of us in our careless greed had cultured all
over the world. One could not even blame nature for them. Somehow
they had been bred just as we bred ourselves beautiful flowers, or
grotesque parodies of dogs ... I began to loathe them now for more
than their ear don-eating habits they, more than anything else, seemed
able to profit and flourish on our disaster ... As the day went on, my
sense of loneliness grew. On any hill or rise I stopped to examine the
country as far as field glasses would show me. Once I saw smoke and
went to the source to find a small railway train burnt out on the line
I still do not know how that could be, for there was no one near it.
Another time a flag upon a staff sent me hurrying to a house to find it
silent though not empty. Yet another time a white flutter of movement
on a distant hillside caught my eye, but when I turned the glasses on
it I found it to be half a dozen sheep milling in panic while a triffid
struck continually and ineffectively across their woolly backs. Nowhere
could I see a sign of living human beings.

When I stopped for food I did not linger
longer then I needed. I ate it quickly, listening to a silence that
was beginning to get on my nerves, and anxious to be on my way again
with at least the sound of the car for company.

One began to fancy things. Once I saw an ann waving from a window, but
when I got there it was only a branch swaying in front of the window. I
saw a man stop in the middle of a field and turn to watch me go by; but
the glasses showed me that he couldn't have stopped or turned: he was a
scarecrow.

I heard voices calling to me, just discernible above the engine noise; I
stopped and switched off. There were no voices, nothing; but far, far
away, the complaint of an un milked cow.

It came to me that here and there, dotted about the country, there must
be men and women who were believing themselves to be utterly alone,
sole survivors. I felt as sorry for them as for anyone else in the
disaster.

During the afternoon, with lowered spirits and little hope, I kept
doggedly on quartering my section of the map because I dared not risk
failing to make my inner certainty sure. At last, however, I satisfied
myself that if any sizeable party did exist in the area I had been
allotted it was deliberately hiding.

It had not been possible for me to cover every lane and by-road, but I
was willing to swear that the sound of my by no means feeble horn had
been heard in every acre of my sector. I finished up, and drove back
to the place where we had parked the lorry, in the gloomiest mood I had
yet known. I found that none of the others had shown up yet, so to
pass the time, and because I needed it to keep out the spiritual cold,
I turned into the nearby pub and poured myself a good brandy.

Stephen was the next. The expedition seemed to have affected him much
as it had me, for he shook his head in answer to my questioning look,
and made straight for the bottle I had opened. Ten minutes later the
sad io-ambifionist joined us. He brought with him a dishevelled,
wild-eyed young man who appeared not to have washed or shaved for
several weeks. This person had been on the mad; it
seemed, his only profession. One evening, he could not say for
certain of what day, he had found a fine comfortable barn in which to
spend the night. Having done somewhat more than his usual quota of
miles that day he had fallen asleep almost as soon as he lay down. The
next morning he had awakened in a nightmare, and he still seemed a
little uncertain whether it was the world or himself that was crazy.

We reckoned he was, a little, anyway, but he still retained a clear
knowledge of the use of beer.

Another half hour or so passed, and then Coker arrived. He was
accompanied by an Alsatian puppy and an unbelievable old lady. She was
dressed in what was obviously her best. Her cleanliness and precision
were as notable as were the lack of them in our other recruit. She
paused with a genteel hesitation on the threshold of the bar-parlour.

Coker performed the introduction.

"This is Mrs. Forcett, sole proprietor of Forcett's Universal Stores, in
a collection of about ten cottages, two pubs, and a church, known as
Chippington Dumey - and Mrs. Forcett can cook. Boy, can she cookl' Mrs.
Forcett acknowledged us with dignity, advanced with confidence, seated
herself with circumspection, and consented to be pressed to a glass of
port, followed by another glass of port.

In answer to our questions she confessed to sleeping with unusual
soundness during the fatal evening and the night that followed. Into
the precise cause of this she did not e, and we did not inquire.

She had continued to sleep, since nothing had occurred to awaken her,
through half the following day.

When she awoke she was feeling unwell, ad so did not attempt to get up
until mid-afternoon. It had seemed to her curious but providential
that no one had required her in the shop. When she did get up and go
to the door she had seen 'one of them horrid triffid things' standing
in her garden, and a man lying on the path just outside her gate at
least, she could see his legs. She had been about to go out to him
when she had seen the triffid stix, and she had slammed the door to
just in time. it had clearly been a nasty moment for her, and the
recollection of it agitated her into pouring herself a third glass of
port.

After that, she had settled down to wait until someone should come to
remove both the triffid and the man. They seemed a strangely long time
in coming, but she had been able to live comfortably enough upon the
contents of her shop. She had still been waiting, she explained as she
poured herself a fourth glass of port with a nice absent mindedness
when Coker, interested by the smoke from her fire, had shot the top off
the triffid, and investigated.

She had given Coker a meal, and he in return had given her advice.

It had not been easy to make her understand the true state of things.

In the end he had suggested that she should take a look up the village,
keeping a wary eye for trifffids, and that he would be back at five
o'clock to see how she felt about it. He had returned to find her
dressed up, her things packed, and herself quite ready to leave.

Back in Charcott Old House that evening we gathered again around the
map. Coker started to mark out new areas of search.

We watched him without enthusiasm. It was Stephen who said what all of
us, including, I think, Coker himself, were thinking: "Look here, we've
been over all the ground for a distance of some fifteen miles between us.
It's clear they aren't in the immediate neighbour hood
Either your information is wrong, or they decided not to stop here, and
went on. In my view it would be a waste of time to go on searching the
way we did today." Coker laid down the compasses he was using.

"Then what do you suggest ?"

"Well, it seems to me we could cover a
lot of the district pretty quickly from the air, and well enough.

You can bet your life that anyone who hears an aircraft engine is going
to turn out and make a sign of some kind."

Coker shook his head."Now, why didn't we think of that
before.

It ought to be a helicopter, of course but where do we get one, and
who's going to fly it ?"

"Oh, I can make one of them things go all
right," said the radio man, confidently.

There was something in his tone.

"Have you ever flown one ?" asked Coker.

"No," admitted the radio man, 'but I reckon there'd not be a lot to it,
once you got the knack."

"H'm," said Coker, looking at him with
reserve.

Stephen recalled the locations of two R.A.F. stations not far away, and
that there had been an air-taxi business operating from Yeovil.

:8 In spite of our doubts the radio man was as good as his word.

He seemed to have complete confidence that his instinct for mechanism
would not let him down. After practising for half an hour he took the
helicopter off, and flew it back to Charcott.

For four days the machine hovered around in widening circles. On two of
them Coker observed, on the other two I replaced him. In all, we
discovered ten little groups of people.

None of them knew anything of the Beadley party, and none of them
contained Josella. As we found each lot we landed.

Usually they were in twos and threes. The largest was seven.

They would greet us in hopeful excitement, but soon, when they found that
we represented only a group similar to their own, and were not the
spearhead of a rescue party on the grand scale their interest would
lapse. We could offer them little that they had not got already. Some
of them became irrationally abusive and threatening in their
disappointment, but most simply dropped back into despondency. As a
rule they showed little wish to join up with other parties, and were
inclined rather to lay hands on what they could, building themselves
into refugees as comfortably as possible while they waited for the
arrival of the Americans who were bound to find a way.

There seemed to be a widespread and fixed idea
about this.

Our suggestions that any surviving Americans would be likely to have
their hands more than full at home was received as so much
wet-blanketry. The Americans, they assured us, would never have
allowed such a thing to happen in their country.

Nevertheless, and in spite of this Micawber fixation on American fairy
godmothers, we left each party with a map showing them the approximate
positions of groups we had already discovered in case they should
change their minds, and think about getting together for self-help.

As a task, the flights were far from enjoyable, but at least they were
to be preferred to lonely scouting on the ground.

However, at the end of the fruitless fourth day it was decided to
abandon the search.

At least, that was what the rest of them decided. I did not feel the
same way about it. My quest was personal, theirs was not. Whoever
they found, now or eventually, would be strangers to them. I was
searching for Beadley's party as a means, not an end in itself. If I
should find them and discover that Josella was not with them, then I
should go on searching.

But I could not expect the rest to devote any more time to searching
purely on my behalf.

Curiously I realized that in all this I had met no other person who was
searching for someone else. Every one of them had been, save for the
accident of Stephen and his girl friend, snapped clean away from
friends or relatives to link him with the past, and was beginning a new
life with people who were strangers. Only I, as far as I could see,
had promptly formed a new link and that so briefly that I had scarcely
been aware how important it was to me at the time ... Once the
decision to abandon the search had been taken, Coker said: "All right.
Then that brings us to thinking about what we are going to do for
ourselves."

"Which means laying in stores against the winter, and just
going on as we are. What else should we do ?" asked Stephen.

"I've been thinking about that," Coker told him."Maybe
it'd be all right for a while but what happens afterwards ?"

"Lfwe do
run short of stocks, well, there's plenty more lying around," said the
radio man.

"The Americans will be here before Christmas," said Stephen's girl
friend.

"Listen," Coker told her patiently."Just put the Americans in the
jam-tomorrow-pie-in-the-sky department awhile, will you. Try to
imagine a world in which there aren't any Americans -can you do that
?"

The girl stared at him.

"But there must be," she said.

Coker sighed sadly. He turned his attention to the radio man.

"There won't always be those stores. The way I see it, we've been
given a flying start in a new kind of world. We're endowed with a
capital of enough of everything to begin with, but that isn't going to
last for ever. We couldn't eat up all the stuff that's there for the
taking, not in generations if it would keep. But it isn't going to
keep. A lot of it is going to go bad pretty rapidly. And not only
food. Everything is going, more slowly, but quite surely, to drop in
pieces. If we want fresh Stuff to eat next year we shall have to grow
it ourselves, and it may seem a long way off now, but there's going to
come a time when we shall have to grow everything ourselves. There'll
come a time, too, when all the tractors are worn out or rusted, and
there's no more petrol to run them, anyway when we'll come right down
to nature and bless horses if we've got 'em.

"This is a pause just a heaven-sent pause while we get over the first
shock and start to collect ourselves, but it's no more than a pause.
Later, we'll have to plough, still later we'll have to learn how to
make plough-shares, later than that we'll have to learn how to smelt iron
to make the shares. What we are on now is a road that will take us
back and back and back until we can- if we can make good all that we
wear out. Not until then shall we be able to stop ourselves on the
trail that's leading down to savagery. But once we can do that, then
maybe we'll begin to crawl slowly up again." He looked round the
circle to see if we were following him.

"We can do that if we will. The most valuable part of our flying start
is knowledge. That's the short cut to save us starting where our
ancestors did. We've got it all there in the books if we take the
trouble to find out about it." The rest were looking at Coker
curiously. It was the first time they had heard him in one of his
oratorical moods.

"Now," he went on, 'from my reading of history, the thing you have to
have to use knowledge is leisure. Where everybody has to work hard
just to get a living and there is no leisure to think, knowledge
stagnates, and people with it. The thinking has to be done largely by
people who are not directly productive by people who appear to be
living almost entirely on the work of others, but are, in fact, a
long-term investment.

Learning grew up in the cities and in great institutions it was the
labour of the countryside that supported them. Do you agree with that
?" Stephen knitted his brows.

"More or less but I don't see what you're getting at."

"It's this the
economic size. A community of our present size cannot hope to do more
than exist and decline. If we stay here as we are, just ten of us now,
the end is, quite inevitably, a gradual and useless fade-out. If there
are children we shall be able to spare only enough time from our labour
to give them just a rudimentary education; one generation further, and
we shall have savages or clods. To hold our own, to make any use at
all of the knowledge in the libraries we must have the teacher, the
doctor, and the leader, and we must be able to support them while they
help us."

"Well ?" said Stephen, after a pause.

"I've been thinking of that place Bill and I saw at Timsham.

We've told you about it. The woman who is trying to run it wanted
help, and she wanted it badly. She has about fifty, or sixty people on
her hands, and a dozen or so of them able to DBAD END zo see. That way
she can't do it. She knows she can't - but she wasn't going to admit
it to us. She wasn't going to put herself in our debt by asking us to
stay. But she'd be very glad if we were to go back there after all,
and ask to be admitted."

"Good Lord," I said.

"You don't think she deliberately put us on the wrong track ?"

"I
don't know. I may be doing her an injustice, but it is an odd thing
that we've not seen or heard a single sign of Beadley and Co isn't
it?

Anyhow, whether she meant it or not, that's the way it works, because
I've decided to go back there. If you want my reasons, here they are
the two main ones. First, unless that place is taken in hand it's
going to crash, which would be a waste and a shame for all those people
there. The other is that it is much better situated than this. It has
a farm which should not take a lot of putting in order; it is
practically Self-contained, but could be extended if necessary. This
place would cost a lot more labour to start and to work.

"More important, it is big enough to afford time for teaching -teaching
both the present blind there, and the sighted children they'll have
later on. I believe it can be done, and I'll do my best to do it and
if the haughty Miss Durrant can't take it, she can go jump in the
river.

"Now the point is this. I think I could do it as it stands but I know
that if the lot of us were to go we could get the place reorganized and
running in a few weeks. Then we'd be living in a community that's
going to grow and make a damned good attempt to hold its own. The
alternative is to stay in a small party which is going to decline and
get more desperately lonely as time goes on. So, how about it ?" There
was some debate and inquiry for details, but not much doubt. Those of
us who had been out on the search had a glimpse of the awful loneliness
that might come. No one was attached to the present house. It had been
chosen for its defensible qualities, and had little more to commend it.

Most of them could feel the oppression of isolation growing round them
already. The thought of wider and more varied company was in itself
attractive. The end of an hour found the discussion dealing with
questions of transport and details of the removal, and the decision to
adopt Coker's suggestion had more or less made itself. Only Stephen's
girl friend was doubtful.

"This place Tynsham - it's pretty much off the map ?" she asked,
uneasily.

"Don't you worry," Coker reassured her."It's marked on all the
bestiamerican maps." It was some time in the early hours of the
following morning that I knew I was not going to Tynsham with the
rest.

Later, perhaps I would, but not yet ...  My first inclination had been
to accompany them if only for the purpose of choking the truth out of
Miss Durrant regarding the Beadley party's destination. But then I
had to make again the disturbing admission that I did not know that
Josella was with them and, indeed, that all the information I had been
able to collect so far suggested that she was not. She had pretty
certainly not passed through Tynsham.

But if she had not gone in search of them, then where had she gone ?

It was scarcely likely that there had been a second direction in the
University Building, one that I had missed ... And then, as if it had
been a flash of light, I recalled the discussion we had had in our
commandeered flat. I could see her sitting there in her blue party
frock, with the light of the candles catching the diamonds as we talked
 ...  "What about the Sussex Downs ?

- I know a lovely old farmhouse on the north side ... And then I knew
what I must do ... I told Coker about it in the morning. He was
sympathetic, but obviously anxious not to raise my hopes too much.

"Okay. You do as you think best," he agreed."I hope well, anyway,
you'll know where we are, and you can both come on to Tynsham and help
to put that woman through the hoop until she sees sense."

That morning the weather broke. The rain was falling in
sheets as I climbed once more into the familiar lorry. Yet I was
feeling elated and hopeful; it could have rained ten times harder
without depressing me or altering my plan. Coker came out to see me
off. I knew why he made a point of it, for I was aware without his
telling me that the memory of his first rash plan and its consequences
troubled him. He stood beside the cab with his hair flattened and the
water trickling down his neck, and held up his hand.

"Take it easy, Bill. There aren't any ambulances these days, and
she'll prefer you to arrive all in one piece. Good luck and my
apologies for everything to the lady when you find her." The word was
'when', but the tone was 'if'.

I wished them well at Tynsham. Then I let in the clutch and splashed
away down the muddy drive.

I3 JOURNEY IN HOPE
THE morning was infected with minor mishaps. First it was water in the
carburettor. Then I contrived to travel a dozen miles north under the
impression I was going east, and before I had that fully rectified I
was in trouble with the ignition system on a bleak upland road miles
from anywhere. Either these delays or a natural reaction did a lot to
spoil the hopeful mood in which I had started. By the time I had the
trouble straightened out it was one o'clock, and the day had cleared
up.

The sun came out. Everything looked bright and refreshed, but even
that, and the fact that for the next twenty, miles all went smoothly,
did not shift the mood of depression that was closing over me again.
Now I was really on my own I could not shut out the sense of
loneliness. It came upon me again as it had on that day when we had
split up to search for Michael Beadley - only with double the force
 ...  Until then I had always thought of loneliness as something
negative and absence of company, and, of course, something temporary
 ...  That day I had learned that it was much more. It was something
which could press and oppress, could distort the ordinary, and play
tricks with the mind. Something which lurked irdmically all around,
stretching the nerves and t-anging them with alarms, never letting one
forget that there was no one to help, no one to care. It showed one as
an atom adrift in vastness, and it waited all the time its chance to
frighten and frighten horribly that was what loneliness was really
trying to do; and that was what one must never let it do ... To
deprive a gregarious creature of companionship is to maim it, to
outrage its nature. The prisoner and the cenobite are aware that the
herd exists beyond their exile; they are an aspect of it. But when the
herd no longer exists there is, for the herd
creature, no longer entity. He is a part of no whole; a freak without
a place. If he cannot hold on to his reason, then he is lost indeed;
most utterly, most fearfully lost, so that he becomes no more than the
twitch in the limb of a corpse.

It needed far more resistance now that it had before. Only the
strength of my hope that I would find companionship at my journey's end
kept me from turning back to find relief from the strain in the
presence of Coker and the others.

The sights which I saw by the way had little or nothing to do with it.
Horrible though some of them were, I was hardened to such things by
now. The horror had left them just as the horror which broods over
great battlefields fades into history.

Nor did I any longer see these things as part of a vast, impressive
tragedy. My struggle was all a personal conflict with the instincts of
my kind. A continual defensive action, with no victory possible. I
knew in my very heart that I would not be able to sustain myself for
long alone.

To give myself occupation I drove faster than I should. In some small
town with a forgotten name I rounded a corner and ran straight into a
van which blocked the whole street.

Luckily my own tough lorry suffered no more than scratches, but the two
vehicles managed to hitch themselves together with diabolical ingenuity
so that it was an awkward business singlehanded, and in a confined
space, to separate them. It was a problem which took me a full hour to
solve, and did me good by turning my mind to practical matters.

After that I kept to a more cautious pace except for a few minutes soon
after I entered the New Forest. The cause of that was a glimpse
through the trees of a helicopter cruising at no great height. It was
set to cross my course some way ahead.

By ill luck the trees there grew close to the sides of the road, and
must have hidden it almost completely from the air. I put on a spurt,
but by the time I reached more open ground the machine was no more than
a speck floating away in the distance to the north.

Nevertheless, even the sight of it seemed to give me some support.

A few miles further on I ran through a small village which was disposed
neatly about a triangular green. At first sight it was as charming in
its mixture of thatched and red-tiled cottages with their flowering
gardens as something out of a picture-book. But I did not look too
closely into the gardens as I passed; too many of them showed the alien
shape of a triffid towering incongruously among the flowers.

I was almost clear of the place when a small figure bounded out of one
of the last garden gates and came running up the road towards me,
waving both arms. I pulled up, looking around for triffids in a way
that was becoming instinctive, picked up my gun, and climbed down.

The child was dressed in a blue cotton frock, white socks, and sandals.
She looked about nine or ten years old. A pretty little girl - I could
see that even though her dark brown curls were now un cared for, and
her face dirtied with smeared tears.

She pulled at my sleeve.

"Please, please," she said, urgently, 'please come and see what's
happened to Tommy." I stood staring down at her. The awful loneliness
of the day lifted. My mind seemed to break out of the case I had made
for it. I wanted to pick her up and hold her to me. I could feel
tears close behind my eyes. I held out my hand to her, and she took
it. Together we walked back to the gate through which she had gone.

"Tommy's there," she said, pointing.

A little boy about four years of age lay on the diminutive patch of
lawn between the flower-beds. It was quite obvious at a glance why he
was there.

"The thing hit him," she said."It hit him and he fell down.

And it wanted to hit me when I tried to help him. Horrible thing!" I
looked up and saw the top of a triffid rising above the fence that
bordered the garden.

"Put your hands over your ears. I'm going to make a bang," I said.

She did so, and I blasted the top off the
triffid.

"Horrible thing," she repeated."Is it dead now ?" I was about to
assure her that it was when it began to rattle the little sticks
against its stem, just as the one at Steeple Honey had done. As then,
I gave it the other barrel to shut it up.

"Yes," I said."It's dead now." We walked across to the little boy.
The scarlet slash of the sting was vivid on his pale cheek. It must
have happened some hours before. She knelt beside him.

"It isn't any good," I told her, gently.

She looked up, fresh tears in her eyes.

"Is Tommy dead, too ?" I squatted down beside her, and shook my
head.

"I'm afraid he is." After a while she said: "Poor Tommy. Will we bury
him like the puppies ?"

"Yes," I told her.

In all the overwhelming disaster that was the only grave I dug and it
was a very small one. She gathered a little bunch of flowers, and laid
them on top of it. Then we drove away.

Susan was her name. A long time ago, as it seemed to her, something
had happened to her father and mother so that they could not see. Her
father had gone out to try to get some help, and he had not come back.
Her mother went out later, giving the children strict instructions not
to leave the house. She had come back crying. The next day she went
out again: this time she did not come back. The children had eaten
what they could find, and then began to grow hungry.

At last Susan was hungry enough to disobey instructions and seek help
from Mrs. Walton at the shop. The shop itself was open, but Mrs. Walton
was not there. No one came when Susan called, so she had decided to
take some cakes and biscuits and sweets, and tell Mrs. Walton about it
later.

She had seen some of the things about as she came back. One of them
had struck at her, but it had misjudged her height, and the sting had
passed over her head. It frightened her, and she ran the rest of the
way home. After that she had been very careful about the things, and
on further expeditions had taught Tommy to be careful about them, too.
But Tommy had been so little, he had not been able to see the one that
was hiding in the net garden when he went out to play that morning.

Susan had tried half a dozen times to get to him, but each time,
however careful she was, she had seen the top of the triffid tremble
and stir slightly ... An hour or so later I decided it was time to
stop for the night.

I left her in the truck while I prospected a cottage or two until I
found one that was fit, and then we set about getting a meal
together.

I did not know much of small girls, but this one seemed to be able to
dispose of an astonishing quantity of the result, confessing while she
did so that a diet consisting almost entirely of biscuits, cake, and
sweets had proved less completely satisfying than she had expected.

After we had dressed her up a bit, and I, under instruction, had wielded
her hairbrush, I began to feel rather pleased with the results. She,
for her part, seemed able for a time to forget all that had happened in
her pleasure at having someone to talk to.

I could understand that. I was feeling exactly the same way myself.

But not long after I had seen her to bed and come downstairs again I
heard the sound of sobbing. I went back to her.

"It's all right, Susan," I said."It's all right. It didn't really
hurt poor Tommy, you know- it was so quick." I sat down on the bed
beside her, and took her hand. She stopped crying.

"It wasn't just Tommy," she said."It was after Tommy when there was
nobody, nobody at all. I was so frightened ...  "I know," I told her.
"I do know. I was frightened, too." She looked up at me.

"But you aren't frightened now?"

"No. And you
aren't, either. So you see we'll just have to keep together to stop
one another being frightened."

"Yes," she agreed, with serious
consideration."I think that'll be all right ... So we went on to
discuss a number of things until she fell asleep.

"Where are we going ?" Susan asked, as we started off again the
following morning.

I said that we were looking for a lady.

"Where is she ?" asked Susan.

I wasn't sure of that.

"When shall we find her ?" asked Susan.

I was pretty unsatisfactory about that, too.

"Is she a pretty lady ?" asked Susan.

"Yes," I said, glad to be more clef mite this time.

It seemed, for some reason, to give Susan satisfaction.

"Good," she remarked, approvingly, and we passed to other subjects.

Because of her I tried to skirt the larger towns, but it was impossible
to avoid many unpleasant sights in the country.

After a while I gave up pretending that they did not exist.

Susan regarded them with the same detached interest as she gave to the
normal scenery. They did not alarm her, though they puzzled her, and
prompted questions. Reflecting that the world in which she was going
to grow up would have little use for the over-niceties and euphemisms
that I had learnt as a child, I did my best to treat the various
horrors and curiosities in the same objective fashion. That was really
very good for me, too.

By midday the clouds had gathered, and the rain began once more.

When, at five o'clock, we pulled up on the road just short of
Pulborough it was still pouring hard."Where do we go now ?" inquired
Susan.

"That," I acknowledged, 'is just the trouble. It's somewhere
over there." I waved my arm towards the misty line of the Downs, to
the south.

I had been trying hard to recall just what else Josella had said of the
place, but I could remember no more than that the house stood on the
north side of the hills, and I had the impression that it faced across
the low, marshy country that separated them from Pulborough.

Now that I had come so far, it seemeda pretty vague instruction: the
Downs stretched away for miles to the east and to the west.

"Maybe the first thing to do is to see ffwe can find any smoke across
there," I suggested.

"It's awfully difficult to see anything at all in the rain," Susan
said, practically, and quite rightly.

Half an hour later the rain obligingly held off for a while.

We left the lorry and sat on a wall side by side. We studied the lower
slopes of the hills carefully for some time, but neither Susan's sharp
eyes nor my field-glasses could discover any trace of smoke or signs of
activity. Then it started to rain again.

"I'm hungry," said Susan.

Food was a matter of trifling interest to me just then. Now that I was
so near, my anxiety to know whether my guess had been right overcame
everything else. While Susan was still eating I took the lorry a
little way up the hill behind us to get a more extensive view.

In between showers, and in a worsening light, we scanned the other side
of the valley again without result. There was no life or movement in
the whole valley save for a few cattle and sheep, and an occasional
triffid lurching across the field below.

An idea came to me, and I decided to go down to the village.

I was reluctant to take Susan, for I knew the place would be
unpleasant, but I could not leave her where she was. When we got there
I found that the sights affected her less than they did me; children
have a different convention of the fearful until they have been taught
the proper things to be shocked at. The depression was all mine.

Susan found more to interest than to disgust her. Any sombreness was
quite offset by her delight in a scarlet silk
mackintosh with which she equipped herself in spite of its being
several sizes too large. My search, too, was rewarding. I returned to
the lorry laden with a headlamp like a minor searchlight which we had
found upon an illustrious looking Rolls-Royce.

I rigged the thing up on a kind of pivot beside the cab window, and
made it ready to plug in. When that was fixed there was nothing to do
but wait for darkness, and hope that the rain would let up.

By the time it was fully dark the raindrops had become a mere spatter.
I switched on, and sent a magnificent beam piercing the night. Slowly
I turned the lamp from side to side, keeping its ray levelled towards
the opposite hills, while I anxiously tried to watch the whole line of
them simultaneously for an answering light. A dozen times or more I
traversed it steadily, switching off for a few seconds at the end of
each sweep while we sought the least flicker in the darkness. But each
time the night over the hills remained pitchy black. Then the rain
came on more heavily again. I set the beam full ahead, and sat
waiting, listening to the drumming of the drops on the roof of the cab
while Susan fell asleep leaning against my arm.

An hour passed before the drumming dwindled to a patter, and ceased.
Susan woke up as I started the beam raking across again. I had
completed the sixth travel when she called out: "Look, Bill! There it
is! There's a light!" She was pointing a few degrees left of our
front. I switched off the lamp, and followed the line of her finger.

It was difficult to be sure. If it were not a trick of our eyes, it
was something as dim as a distant glow-worm. And even as we were
looking at it, the rain came down on us again in sheets. By the time I
had my glasses in my hand there was no view at all.

I hesitated to move. It might be that the light, if it had been a
light, would not be visible from lower ground. Once more I trained our
light forward, and settled down to wait with as much patience as I
could manage. Almost another hour passed before the rain cleared
again. The moment it did, I switched off our lamp.

"It is!" Susan cried, excitedly."Look! Look!" It was. And bright
enough now to banish any doubts, though the glasses showed me no
duils.

I switched on again, and gave the V-sign in Morse it is the only Morse
I know except SOS so it had to do. While we watched the other light it
blinked, and then began a series of deliberate longs and shorts which
unfortunately meant nothing to me. I gave a couple more V's for good
measure, drew the approximate line of the far light on our map, and
switched on the driving lights.

"Is that the lady ?" asked Susan.

"It's got to be," I said."It's got to be." That was a poorish trip. To
cross the low manhland it was necessary to take a road a little to the
west of us and then work back to the east along the foot of the hills.
Before we had gone more than a mile something cut off the sight of the
light from us altogether, and to add to the difficulty of finding our
way in the dark lanes the rain began again in earnest.

With no one to cage for the drainage sluices some fields were already
flooded, and the water was over the road in places. I had to drive
with a tedious care when all my urge was to put my foot flat down.

Once we reached the further side of the valley we were free of flood
water, but we made little better speed, for the lanes were full of
primitive wanderings and impbable turns. I had to give the wheel all
my attention while the child peered up at the hills beside us, watching
for the reappearance of the light. We reached the Point where the line
on my map intersected with what appeared to be our present road without
seeing a sign of it. I tried the next uphill turning. It took about
half an hour to get back to the again fir ore the chalk pit into which
it led us.

We ran on further along the lower road. Then Susan caught a glimmer
between the branches to our right. The next turning
was luckier, hid took us back at a slant up the side of the hill
until we were able to see a small, brightly lit square of window
halfa mile or more along the slope.

Even then, and with the map to help, it was not easy to find the lane
that led to it. We lurched along, still climbing in low gear, but each
time we caught sight of the window again it was a little closer.

The lane had not been designed for ponderous lorries. In the narrower
parts we had to push our way along it between bushes and brambles which
scrabbled along the sides as though they were trying to pull us back.

But at last there was a lantern waving in the road ahead. It moved on,
swinging to show us the turn through a gate. Then it was set
stationary on the ground. I drove to within a yard or two of it, and
stopped. As I opened the door a flashlight shone suddenly into my
eyes. I had a glimpse of a figure behind it in a raincoat shining with
wetness.

A slight break touched the intended calm of the voice that spoke.

"Hullo, Bill. You've been a long time." I jumped down.

"Oh, Bill. I can't - Oh, my dear, I've been hoping so much ..

Oh, Bill ..." said Josella.

I had forgotten all about Susan until a voice came from above.

"You are getting wet, you silly. Why don't you kiss her indoors ?" it
asked.

14 SHIRNING
THE sense with which I arrived at Shirrting Farm the one that told me
that most of my troubles were now over is interesting only in showing
how wide of the mark a sense can be. The sweeping of Josella into my
arms went off pretty well, but its corollary of carrying her away
forthwith to join the others at Tynsham did not, for several reasons.

Ever since her possible location had occurred to me I had pictured her
in, I must admit, a rather cinematic way, as battling bravely against
all the forces of nature, etc etc. In a fashion I suppose she was, but
the set-up was a lot different from my imaginings. My simple plan of
saying: "Jump aboard.

We're off to join Coker and his little gang," had to go by the board.
One might have known that things would not turn out so simply on the
other hand it is surprising how often the better thing is disguised as
the worse ... Not that I didn't from the start prefer Shirning to the
thought of Tynsham - but to join a larger group was obviously a sounder
move. But Shirrting was charming. The word 'farm' had become a
courtesy title for the place. It had been a farm until some
twenty-five years before, and it still looked like a farm, but in
reality it had become a country house. Sussex and the neighbouring
counties were well dotted with such houses and cottages which tired
Londoners had found adaptable to their needs. Internally the house had
been modernized and reconstructed to a point where it was doubtful
whether its previous tenants would be able to recognize a single
room.

Outside it had become spick. The yards and sheds had a suburban rather
than a rural tidiness and had for years known no form of animal life
rougher than a few riding horses and ponies. The farmyard showed no
utilitarian sights and gave SHIRNING Z19 forth no rustic smells; it had
been laid over with close green turf like a bowling green. The fields
across which the windows of the house gazed from beneath weathered red
tiles had long been worked by the occupiers of other and more earthly
farmhouses. But the sheds and barns remained in good condition.

It had been the ambition of Josella's friends, the present owners, to
restore the place one day to work on a limited scale, and to this end
they had continually refused tempting offers for it in the hope that at
some time, and in some manner not clearly perceived, they would acquire
enough money to start buying back the land rightfully belonging to
it.

With its own well and its own power plant, the place had plenty to
recommend it but as I looked it over I understood Coker's wisdom in
speaking of cooperative effort. I knew nothing of farming, but I could
feel that if we had intended to stay there it would take a lot of work
to feed six of us.

The other three had been there already when Josella had arrived.

They were Dennis and Mary Brent, and Joyce Taylor.

Dennis was the owner of the house. Joyce had been there on an
indefinite visit, at first to keep Mary company, and then to keep the
house running when lvlary's expected baby should be born.

On the night of the green flashes of the comet you would say if you
were one who still believes in that comet there had been two other
guests, Joan and Ted Danton, spending a week's holiday there.

All five of them had gone out into the garden to watch the display. In
the morning all five awoke to a world that was perpetually dark. First
they had tried to telephone, when they found that impossible they
waited hopefully for the arrival of the daily help. She, too, failing
them, Ted had volunteered to try to find out what had happened.

Dennis would have accomprtied him but for his wife's almost hysterical
state. Ted, therefore, had set out alone. He did not come back. At
some time later in the day, and without saying a word to anyone, Joan
had slipped off, presumably to try to find her husband.

She, too, disappeared completely.

Dennis had kept track of time by touching the hands of the clock.

By late afternoon it was impossible to sit any longer doing nothing.

He wanted to try to get down to the village. Both the women had
objected to that. Because of Mary's state he had yielded, and Joyce
determined to try. She went to the door, and began to feel her way
with a stick outstretched before her.

She was barely over the threshold when something fell with a swish
acrtss her left hand, burning like a hot wire. She jumped back with a
cry, and collapsed in the hall where Dennis had found her. Luckily she
was conscious, and able to moan of the pain in her hand. Dennis,
feeling the raised weal, had guessed it for what it was. In spite of
their blindness, he and Mary had somehow contrived to apply hot
fomentations, she heating the kettle while he put on a tourniquet and
did his best to suck out the poison. After that they had had to carry
her up to bed where she stayed for several days while the effect of the
poison wore off.

Meanwhile Dennis had made tests, first at the front and then at the
back of the house. Wifia the door slightly open, he cautiously thrust
out a broom at head level. Each time there was the whistle of a sting,
and he felt the broom handle tremble slightly in his grip. At one of
the garden windows the same thing happened: the others seemed to be
clear. He would have tried to leave by one of them but for Mary's
distress. She was sure that if there were triffids close round the
house there must be others about, and would not let him take the
risk.

Luckily they had food enough to last them some time, though it was
difficult to prepare it; also Joyce, in spite of a high temperature,
appeared to be holding her own against the triffid poison, so that the
situation was less urgent than it might have been. Most of the next
day Dennis devoted to contriving a kind of helmet for himself. He had
wire net only of large mesh so that he had to construct it of several
layers overlapped and tied together. It took him some time, but)
equipped with this and a pair of heavy gauntlet gloves, he was able to
start out for the village late in the day. A triffid had
struck at him before he was three paces away from the house.

He groped for it until he found it, and twisted its stem for it.

A minute or two later another sting thudded across his helmet.

He could not find that triffid to grapple with it, though it made haitr
a dozen slashes before it gave up. He found his way to the tool shed
and thence across to the lane, encumbered now with three large balls of
gardening twine which he paid out as he went to guide him back.

Several times in the lane more stings whipped at him. It took an
immensely long time for him to cover the mile or so to the village,
and, before he reached it, his supply of twine had given out. And all
the time he had walked and stumbled through a silence so complete that
it frightened him. Now and then he would stop and call, but no one
answered. More than once he was afraid that he had lost his way, but
when his feet discovered a better laid road surface he knew where he
was, and was able to confirm it by locating a signpost. He groped his
way further on.

After a seemingly vast distance he had become aware that his footsteps
were sounding differently; they had a faint echo.

Making to one side he found a footpath, and then a wall. A little
further along he discovered a post-box let into the brickwork, and knew
that he must be actually in the village at last.

He called out once more. A voice, a woman's voice called back, but it
was some distance ahead, and the words were indistinguishable.

He called again, and began to move towards it.

Its reply was suddenly cut off by a scream. After that there was
silence again. Only then, and still half-incredulously, did he realize
that the village was in no better plight than his own household. He
sat down on the grassed verge of the path to think out what he should
do.

By the feeling in the air he thought that night must have come.

He must have been away fully four hours and there was nothing to do but
go back. All the same, there was no reason why he should go back
empty-handed ... With his stick he rapped his way long the wall until
it rang on one of the tin plate
advertisements which adorned the village shop.

Three times in the last fifty or sixty yards stings had slapped on his
helmet. Another struck as he opened the gate, and he tripped over a
body lying on the path. A man's body, quite cold.

He had the impression that there had been others in the shop before
him. Nevertheless, he found a sizeable piece of bacon.

He dropped it, along with packets of butter or margarine, biscuits, and
sugar into a sack, and added an assortment of tins which came from a
shelf that, to the best of his recollection, was devoted to food the
sardine tins, at any rate, were unmistakable. Then he sought for, and
found, a dozen or more balls of string, shouldered his sack, and set
off for home.

He had missed his way once, and it had been hard to keep down panic
while he retraced his steps and reorientated himself. But at last he
knew that he was again in the familiar lane.

By groping right across it he managed to locate the twine of his
outward journey, and join it to the string. From there the rest of the
journey back had been comparatively easy.

Twice more in the week that followed he had made the journey to the
village shop again, and each time the triffids round the house and on
the way had seemed more numerous.

There had been nothing for the isolated trio to do but wait in hope.
And then, like a miracle, Josella had arrived.

, It was clear at once, then, that the notion of an immediate move to
Tynsham was out. For one thing, Joyce Taylor was still in an extremely
weak state when I looked at her I was surprised that she was alive at
all. Dennis's promptness had saved her life, but their inability to
give her the proper restoratives or even suitable food during the
following week had slowed down her recovery. It would be folly to try
to move her a long distance for a week or two yet. And then, too,
Mary's confinement was close enough to make the journey inadvisable for
her, so that the only course seemed to be for us to
remain where we were until these crises should have passed.

Once more it became my task to scrounge and forage. This time I had to
work on a more elaborate scale to include not merely food, but petrol
for the lighting system, hens that were laying, two cows that had
recently calved (and still survived though their ribs were sticking
out), medical necessities for Mary, and a surprising list of
sundries.

The area was more beset with triffids than any other I had yet seen.
Almost every morning revealed one or two new ones lurking close to the
house, and the first task of the day was to shoot the tops off them,
until I had constructed a netting fence to keep them out of the garden.
Even then they would come right up and loiter suggestively against it
until something was done about them.

I opened some of the cases of gear, and taught young Susan how to use a
triffid-gun. She quite rapidly became an expert at disarming the
things as she continued to call them. It becme her department to work
daily vengeance on them.

From Josella I learnt what had happened to her after the fire alarm at
the University Building.

She had been shipped off with her party much as I with mine, but her
manner of dealing with the two women to whom she was attached had been
summary. She had issued a flat ultimatum: either she became free of
all restraints, in which case she would help them as far as she was
able; or, if they continued to coerce her, there would be likely to
come a time when they would find themselves drinking prussic acid or
eating cyanide of potassium on her recommendation. They could take
their choice. They had chosen sensibly.

There was little difference in what we had to tell one another about
the days that had followed. When her group had in the end dissolved,
she had reasoned much as I did. She took a car, and went up to
Hampstead to look for me. She had not encountered any survivors from
my group, nor run across that led by the quick-triggered, red-headed
man. She had kept on there until almost
sunset, and then decided to make for the University Building. Not
knowing what to expect, she had cautiously stopped the car a couple of
streets away, and approached on foot. When she was still some distance
from the gates she heard a shot. Wondering what that might indicate,
she had taken cover in the garden that had sheltered us before.

From there she had observed Coker also making a circumspect advance.
"Without knowing that I had fired at the triffid in the Square, and
that the sound of the shot was the cause of Coker's caution, she
suspected some kind of trap. Determined not to fall into one a second
time, she had returned to the car. She had no idea where the rest had
gone if they had gone at all.

The only place of refuge she could think of that would be known to
anyone at all was the one she had mentioned almost casually to me. She
had decided to make for it in the hope that I, if I well: still in
existence, would remember, and try to find it.

"I curled up and slept in the back of the car once I was clear of
London," she said."It was still quite early when I got here the next
morning. The sound of the car brought Dennis to an upstairs window
warning me to look out for triffids. Then I saw that there were half a
dozen or more of them close around the house for all the world as if
they were waiting for someone to come out of it. Dennis and I shouted
back and forth.

The triffids stirred and one of them began to move towards me, so I
nipped back into the car for safety. When it kept on coming, I started
up the car, and deliberately ran it down. But there were still the
others, and I had no kind of weapon but my knife. It was Dennis who
solved that difficulty.

'"If you have a can of petrol to spare, throw some of it their way, and
follow it up with a bit of burning rag," he suggested."That ought to
shift 'em."

"It did. Since then I've been using a garden syringe. The wonder is
that I've not set the place on fire." With the aid of a cook-book
Josella had managed to produce meals of a kind, and had set about
putting the place more or
less to rights. Working, learning, and improvising had kept her too
busy to worry about a future which lay beyond the next few weeks.

She had seen no one else at all during those days, but, certain that
there must be others somewhere, she had scanned the whole valley for
signs of smoke by day or lights by night. She had seen no smoke, and
in all the miles within her view there had not been a gleam of light
until the evening came.

In a way, the worst affected of the original trio was Dennis.

Joyce was still weak and in a semi4nvalid state. Mary held herself
withdrawn and seemed capable of finding endless mental occupation and
compensation in the contemplation of prospective motherhood. But
Dennis was like an animal in a trap. He did not curse in the futile
way I had heard so many others do, he resented it with a vicious
bitterness as if it had forced him into a cage where he did not intend
to stay. Already, before I arrived, he had prevailed upon Josella to
find the Braille system in the encyclopedia and make an indented copy
of the alphabet for him to learn. He spent dogged hours each day
making notes in it, and attempting to read them back.

Most of the rest of the time he fretted over his own uselessness,
though he scarcely mentioned it. He would keep on trying to do this or
that with a grim persistence that was painful to watch, and it required
all my self-control to stop me offering him help one experience of the
bitterness which unasked help could arouse in him was quite enough.

I began to be astonished at the things he was painfully teaching
himself to do, though still the most impressive to me was his
construction of an efficient mesh helmet on only the second day of his
blindness.

It took him out of himself to accompany me on some of my foraging
expeditions, and it pleased him that he could be useful in helping to
move the heavier cases. He was anxious for books in Braille, but
these, we decided, would have to wait until there was less risk of
contamination in towns large enough to be likely sources.

The days began to pass quickly, certainly for the three of us who could
see. Josella was kept busy, mostly in the house, and Susan was
learning to help her. There were plenty of jobs, too, waiting to be
done by me. Joyce recovered sufficiently to make a shaky first
appearance, and then began to pick up more rapidly. Soon after that
Mary's pains began.

That was a bad night for everyone. Worst, perhaps, for Dennis in'
knowing that everything depended on the care of two willing, but
inexperienced girls. His self-control aroused my helpless
admiration.

In the early hours of the morning Josella came down to us, looking very
tired: "It's a girl. They're both all right," she said, and led Dennis
up.

She returned a few moments later, and took the drink I had ready for
her.

"It was quite simple, thank heaven," she said."Poor Mary was horribly
afraid it might be blind, too, but of course it's not. Now she's
crying quite dreadfully because she can't see it." We drank.

"It's queer," I said, 'the way things go on, I mean. Like a seed - it
looks all shrivelled and finished, you'd think it was dead, but it
isn't. And now a new life starting, coming into all this ... Josella
put her face in her hands.

"Oh, God! Bill. Does it have to go on being like this ? On and on
and on ?" And she, too, collapsed in tears.

Three weeks later I went over to Tynsham to see Coker and make
arrangements for our move. I took an ordinary car in order to do the
double journey in a day. When I got back Josella met me in the hall.

She gave one look at my face.

"What's the matter ?" she said.

"Just that we shan't be going there after all," I told her.

"Tynsham is finished." She stared back at me.

"What happened ?"

"I'm not sure. It looks as if the plague got
there." I described the state of affairs briefly. It had not needed
much investigation. The gates were open when I arrived, and the sight
of triffids loose in the park half-warned me what to expect.

The smell when I got out of the car confirmed it. I made myself go
into the house. By the look of it, it had been deserted two weeks or
more before. I put my head into two of the rooms. They were enough
for me. I called, and my voice ran right away through the hollowness
of the house. I went no further.

There had been a notice of some kind pinned to the front door, but only
one blank corner remained. I spent a long time searching for the rest
of the sheet that must have blown away.

I did not find it. The yard at the back was empty of lorries and cars,
and most of the stores had gone with them, but where to I could not
tell. There was nothing to be done but get into my car again, and come
back.

"And so what?" asked Josella, when I had finished
"And so, my dear, we stay here. We learn how to support ourselves And
we go on supporting ourselves unless help comes.

There may be an organization somewhere ... Josella shook her head.

"I think we'd better forget all about help. Millions and millions of
people have been waiting and hoping for help that hasn't come."

"There'll be something," I said."There must be thousands of little
groups like this dotted all over Europe all over the world. Some of
them will get together. They'll begin to rebuild."

"In how long?"

said Josella."Generations ? Perhaps not until after our time. No
the world's gone, and we're left ... We must make our own lives.

We'll have to plan them as though
help will never come.. . She paused. There was an odd, blank look on
her face that I had never seen before. It puckered.

"Darling ..." I said.

"Oh, Bill, Bill, I wasn't meant for this kind of life. If you weren't
here I'd ..."Hush, my sweet," I said, gently."Hush," I stroked her
hair.

A few moments later she recovered herself.

"I'm sorry, Bill. Self-pity ...  revolting. Never again." She patted
her eyes with her handkerchief, and sniffed a little.

"So I'm to be a farmer's wife. Anyway, I like being married to you,
Bill even if it isn't a very proper, authentic kind of marriage."

Suddenly she gave the smiling chuckle that I had not heard for some
time.

"What is it ?"

"I was only thinking how much I used to dread my
wedding."

"That was very maidenly and proper of you if a little
unexpected," I told her.

"Well, it wasn't exactly that. It was my publishers, and the
newspapers, and the film people. What fun they would have had with
it.

There'd have been a new edition of my silly book probably a new release
of the film and pictures in all the papers. I don't think you'd have
liked that much."

"I can think of another thing I'd not have liked
much," I told her."Do you remember that night in the moonlight you
made a condition ?" She looked at me.

"Well, maybe some things haven't fallen out so badly," she said.

WORLD NARROWING
FROM then on I kept a journal. It is a mixture of
diary, stock list and commonplace-book. In it there are notes of the
places to which my expeditions took me, particulars of the supplies
collected, estimates of quantities available, observations on the status
of the premises, with memos on which should be cleared first to avoid
deterioration. Foodstuffs, fuel, and seed were constant objects of
search, but by no means the only ones.

There are entries detailing loads of clothing, tools, household linen,
harness, kitchenware, loads of stakes, and wire, wire, and more wire,
also books.

I can see there that within a week of my return from Tynsham I had
started on the work of erecting a wire fence to keep the triffids
out.

Already we had barriers to hold them away from the garden and the
immediate neighbour hood of the house. Now I began a more ambitious
plan of making some hundred acres or so free from them. It involved a
stout wire fence which took advantage of the natural features and
standing barriers, and inside it a lighter fence to prevent either the
stock or ourselves from coming inadvertently within sting range of
the main fence. It was a heavy, tedious job which took me a number of
months to complete.

At the same time I was endeavouring to learn the a-b-c's of farming.

It is not the kind of thing that is easily learnt from books. For one
thing, it had never occurred to any writer on the subject that any
potential farmer could be starting from absolute zero. I found,
therefore, that all works began, as it were, in the middle, taking for
granted both a basis and a vocabulary that I did not have. My
specialized biological knowledge was all but useless to me in the face
of practical problems. Much of the theory called for materials and sub
stances which were either unavailable to me, or unrecognizable by me if
I could find them. I began to see quite soon that by the time I had
dismissed the things that would shortly be unprocurable such as
chemical fertilizers, imported feeding stuffs and all but the simpler
kinds of machinery there was going to be much expenditure of sweat for
problematical returns.

Nor is %ook-ms tilled knowledge of horse-management, dairy-work, or
slaughterhouse procedure by any means an adequate groundwork for these
arts. There are so many points where one cannot break off to consult
the relative chapter.

Moreover, the realities persistently present baffling dissimilarities
from the simplicities of print.

Luckily there was plenty of time to make mistakes and to learn from
them. The knowledge that several years could pass before we should be
thrown anywhere near on our own resources saved us from desperation
over our disappointments.

There was the reassuring thought, too, that by living on preserved
stores we were really being quite provident in preventing them from
being wasted.

For safety's sake I let a whole year pass before I went to London
again. It was the most profitable area for my forays, but it was the
most depressing. The place still contrived to give the impression that
a touch of a magic wand would bring it to life again, though many of
the vehicles in the streets were beginning to turn rusty. A year later
the change was more noticeable. Large patches of plaster detached from
house fronts had begun to litter the pavements. Dislodged tiles and
chimney-pots could be found in the streets. Grass and weeds had a good
hold in the gutters and were choking the drains.

Leaves had blocked down spoutings so that more grass, and even small
bushes, grew in cracks and in the silt in the roof gutterings.

Almost every building was beginning to wear a green wig beneath which
its roofs would damply rot. Through many a window one had glimpses of
fallen ceilings, curves of peeling paper, and walls glistening with
damp. The gardens of the Parks and Squares were
wildernesses creeping out across the bordering streets. Growing things
seemed, indeed, to press out everywhere, rooting in the crevices
between the paving stones, springing from cracks in concrete, finding
lodgements even in the seats of the abandoned cars. On all sides they
were encroaching to repossess themselves of the arid spaces that man
had created. And curiously, as the living things took charge
increasingly, the effect of the place became less oppressive. As it
passed beyond the scope of any magic wand, most of the ghosts were
going with it, withdrawing slowly into history.

Once not that year, nor the next, but later on I stood in Piccadilly
Circus again, looking round at the desolation, and trying to recreate
in my mind's eye the crowds that once swarmed there. I could no longer
do it. Even in my memory they lacked reality. There was no tincture
of them now. They had become as much a back cloth of history as the
audiences in the Roman Colosseum or the army of the Assyrians, and
somehow, just as far removed. The nostalgia that crept over me
sometimes in the quiet hours was able to move me to more regret than
the crumbling scene itself. When I was by myself in the country I
could recall the pleasantness of the former life: among the scabrous,
slowly perishing buildings I seemed able to recall only the muddle, the
frustration, the unaimed drive, the all-pervading clangour of empty
vessels, and I became uncertain how much we had lost ... My first
tentative trip there I took alone, returning with cases of
triffid-bolts, paper, engine parts, the Braille books and writing
machine that Dennis so much desired, the luxuries of drinks, sweets,
records, and yet more books for the rest of us.

A week later Josella came with me on a more practical search for
clothing, not only, or even chiefly for the adults of the party, so
much as for Mary's baby and the one she herself was now expecting. It
upset her, and it remained the only visit she made.

I continued to go there from time to time in search of some
scarce necessity, and used to seize the opportunity of a few little
luxuries at the same time. Never once did I see any moving thing there
save a few sparrows and an occasional triffid. Cats, and dogs, growing
wilder at each generation, could be found in the country, but not
there. Sometimes, however, I would find evidence that others besides
myself were still in the habit of quarrying supplies there, but I never
saw them. It was at the end of the fourth year that I made my last
trip, and found that there were now risks which I was not justified in
taking. The first intimation of that was a thunderous crash behind me
somewhere in the inner suburbs. I stopped the truck and looked back to
see the dust rising from a heap of rubble which lay across the road.
Evidently my rumbling passage had given the last shake to a tottering
house front I brought no more buildings down that day, but I spent it
in apprehension of a descending torrent of bricks and mortar.

Thereafter I confined my attention to smaller towns, and usually went
about them on foot Brighton, which should have been our largest
convenient source of supplies, I let alone. By the time I had thought
it fit for a visit, others were in charge there. Who or how many they
were I did not know. I simply found a rough wall of stones piled
across the road, and painted with the instruction:

KEEP OUT!

The advice was backed up by the crack of a rifle and a spurt of dust
just in front of me. There was no one in sight to argue with besides,
it wasn't an arguing kind of gambit I turned the lorry round, and drove
away thoughtfully, I wondered if a time would come when the man
Stephen's preparations for defence might turn out to be not so
misplaced after all. Just to be on the safe side I laid in several
machine guns and mortars from the source which had already provided us
with the flame-throwers we used against the triffids.

In the November of that second year Josella's first baby was born.

We called him David. My pleasure in him was at times alloyed with
misgivings over the state of things we had created him to face. But
that worried Josella much less than it did me.

She adored him. He seemed to be a compensation to her for much that
she had lost, and, paradoxically, she started to worry less over the
condition of the bridges ahead than she had before. Anyway, he had a
lustiness which argued well for his future capacity to take care of
himself, so I repressed my misgivings and increased the work I was
putting into that land which would one day have to support all of us.

It must have been not so very long after that that Josella turned my
attention more closely to the triffids. I had for years been so used
to taking precautions against them in my work that their becoming a
regular part of the landscape was far less noticeable to me than it was
to the others. I had been accustomed, too, to wearing meshed masks and
gloves when I dealt with them, so that there was little novelty for me
in donning these things whenever I drove out. I had, in fact, got into
the habit of paying little more attention to them than one would to
mosquitoes in a known malarial area. Josella mentioned it as we lay in
bed one night when almost the only sound was the intermittent, distant
rattling of their hard little sticks against their stems.

"They're doing a lot more of that lately," she said.

I did not grasp at first what she was talking about. It was a sound
that had been a usual background to the places where I had lived and
worked for so long, that unless I deliberately listened for it I could
not say whether it was going on or not.

I listened now.

"It doesn't sound any different to me," I said.

"It's not different. It's just that there's a lot more of it because
there are a lot more of them than there used to be."

`i hadn't noticed," I said, indifferently.

Once I had the fence fixed up, my interest had lain in the ground
within it, and I had not bothered what went on beyond it. My
impression on my expeditions was that the incidence of triffids in most
parts was much the same as before. I recalled that their numbers
locally had caught my attention when I had first arrived, and that I
had supposed that there must have been several large triffid nurseries
in the district.

"There certainly are. You take a look at them tomorrow," she said.

I remembered in the morning, and looked out of the window as I was
dressing. I saw that Josella was right. One could count over a
hundred of them behind the quite small stretch of fence visible from
the window. I mentioned it at breakfast. Susan looked surprised.

"But they've been getting more all the time," she said.

"Haven't you noticed ?"

"I've got plenty of other things to bother
about," I said, a little irritated by her tone."They don't matter
outside the fence, anyway. As long as we take care to pull up all the
seeds that root in here, they can do what they like outside."

"All the
same," Josella remarked, with a trace of uneasiness, 'is there any
particular reason why they should come to just this part in such
numbers ? I'm sure they do and I'd like to know just why it is."

Susan's face took on its irritating expression of surprise again.

"Why, Bill brings them," she said.

"Don't point," Josella told her, automatically."What do you mean ?
I'm sure Bill doesn't bring them."

"But he does. He makes all the
noises, and they just come."

"Look here," I said."What are you
talking about? Am I supposed to be whistling them here in my sleep, or
something ?" Susan looked huffy.

"All right. If you don't believe me, I'll show you after
breakfast," she announced, and withdrew into an offended
silence.

When we had finished she slipped from the table, returning with my
twelve-bore and field-glasses. We went out on to the lawn. She
scoured the view until she found a triffid on the move well beyond our
fences, and then handed the glasses to me. I watched the thing
lurching slowly across a field. It was more than a mile away from us,
and heading east.

"Now keep on watching it," she said.

She fired the gun into the air.

A few seconds later the triffid perceptibly altered course towards the
south.

"See ?" she inquired, rubbing her shoulder.

"Well, it did look Are you sure. ? Try again." I suggested.

She shook her head.

"It wouldn't be any good. All the triffids that heard it are coming
this way now. In about ten minutes they'll stop and listen. If
they're near enough then to hear the ones by the fence clattering,
they'll come on. Or if they're too far away for that, but we make
another noise, then they'll come. But if they can't hear anything at
all, they'll wait a bit, and then just go on wherever they were going
before." I admit that I was somewhat taken aback by this revelation.

"Weller," I said."You must have been watching them very closely,
Susan ?"

"I always watch them. I hate them," she said, as if that were
explanation enough.

Dennis had joined us as we stood there.

"I'm with you, Susan," he said."I don't like it. I've not liked it
for some time. Those damn things have the drop on us."

"Oh, come' I
began.

`i tell you there's more to them than we think. How did they know?
They started to break loose the moment there was no one to stop them.
They were around this house the very next day. Can you account for
that ?"

"That's not new for them," I said."In jungle country they
used to hang around near the tracks. Quite
often they would surround a small village and invade it if they weren't
beaten off.

They were a dangerous kind of pest in quite a lot of places."

"But not
here that's my point. They couldn't do that here until conditions made
it possible. They didn't even try. But when they could, they did it as
on almost as if they knew they could."

"Come now, be reasonable,
Dennis. Just think what you're implying," I told him.

"I'm quite aware of what I'm implying some of it, at any rate.

I'm making no definite theory, but I do say this: they took advantage
of our disadvantages with remarkable speed. I also say that there is
something perceptibly like method going on among them right now.

You've been so wrapped up in your jobs that you've not noticed how
they've been massing up, and waiting out there beyond the fence, but
Susan has I've heard her talking about it. And just what do you think
they're waiting for ?" I did not try to answer that just then. I
said: "You think I'd better lay off using the twelve-bore which
attracts them, and use a triffid gun instead ?"

"It's not just the
gun, it's all noises," said Susan."The tractor's the worst because it
is a loud noise, and it keeps on, so that they can easily find where it
comes from. But they can hear the lighting-plant engine quite a long
way, too. I've seen them turn this way when it starts up."

"I wish,"
I told her, irritably, 'you'd not keep on saying "they hear", as if
they were animals. They're not. They don't "hear". They're just
plants."

"All the same, they do hear, somehow," Susan said stubbornly.

"Well- anyway, we'll do something about them," I promised.

We did. The first trap was a crude kind of
windmill which produced a hearty hammering noise. We fixed it up about
half a mile away. It worked. It drew them away from our fence, and
from elsewhere. When there were several hundreds of them clustered
about it, Susan and I drove over there and turned the flame-throwers on
them. It worked fairly well a second time, too but after that only a
very few of them paid any attention to it. Our next move was to build
a kind of stout bay inwards from the fence, and then remove part of the
main fence itself, replacing it by a gate. We had chosen a point
within earshot of the Lighting engine, and we left the gate open.

After a couple of days we dropped the gate, and destroyed the couple of
hundred or so that had come into the pen. That, too, was fairly
successful to begin with, but not if we tried it twice in the same
place, and even in other places the numbers we netted dropped
steadily.

A tour of the boundaries every few days with a flame-thrower could have
kept the numbers down effectively, but it would have taken a lot of
time and soon have run us out of fuel. A tlame-thrower's consumption
is high, and the stocks held for it in the arms depots were not large.
Once we finished it, our valuable flame-throwers would become little
better than junk, for I knew neither the formula for an efficient fuel
nor the method of producing it.

On the two or three occasions we tried mortar-bombs on concentrations
of triffids' the results were disappointing.

Triffids share with trees the ability to take a lot of damage without
lethal harm.

As time went on the numbers collected along the fence continued to
increase in spite of our traps and occasional holocausts. They didn't
try anything or do anything there.

They simply settled down, wriggled their roots into the soil, and
remained. At a distance they looked as inactive as any other hedge,
and but for the pattering that some few of them were sure to be making,
they might have been no more remarkable. But if one doubted their
alertness it was only necessary to take a car
down the lane, To do so was to run a gauntlet of such viciously
slashing stings that it was necessary to stop the car at the main road
and wipe the windscreen clear of poison.

Now and then one of us would have a new idea for their discouragement
such as spraying the ground beyond the fence with a strong arsenical
solution, but the retreats we caused were temporary.

We'd been trying out a variety of such dodges for a year or more before
the day when Susan came running into our room early one morning to tell
us that the things had broken in, and were all round the house.

She had got up early to do the milking, as usual. The sky outside her
bedroom window was grey, but when she went downstairs she found
everything there in complete darkness. She realized that should not be
so, and turned on the light. The moment she saw leathery gren leaves
pressed against the windows, she guessed what had happened.

I crossed the bedroom on tiptoe, and pulled the window shut sharply.
Even as it closed a sting whipped up from below and smacked against the
glass. We looked down on a thicket of triffids standing ten or twelve
deep against the wall of the house. The flame-throwers were in one of
the outhouses. I took no risks when I went to fetch them. In thick
dot hang and gloves, with a leather helmet and goggles beneath the mesh
mask I hacked a way through the throng of triffids with the largest
carving knife I could find. The stings whipped and slapped at the wire
mesh so frequently that they wet it, and the poison began to come
through in a fine spray. It misted the goggles, and the first thing I
did in the outhouse was to wash it off my face. I dare not use more
than a brief, low aimed jet from one of the throwers to clear my way
back for fear of setting the door and window frames alight, but it
moved and agitated them enough for me to get back unmolested.

Joselh and Susan stood by with fire-extinguishers while I, still
looking like a cross between a deep-sea diver and a man
from Mars, leant from the upper windows on each side of the house in
turn and played the thrower over the besieging mob of the brutes. It
did not take very long to incinerate a number of them and get the rest
on the move. Susan, now dressed for the job, took the second thrower
and started on the, to her, highly congenial task of hunting them down
while I set off across the fields to find the source of the trouble.

That was not difficult. From the first rise I was able to see the spot
where triffids were still lurching into our enclosure in a stream of
tossing stems and waving leaves. They fanned out a little on the
nearer side, but all of them were bound in the direction of the
house.

It was simple to head them off. A jet in front stopped them; one to
either side started them back on the way they had come. An occasional
spurt over them and dripping among them hurried them up, and turned
back later-comers.

Twenty yards or so away a part of the fence was lying flat, with the
posts snapped off. I rigged it up temporarily there and then, and
played the thrower back and forth, giving the things enough of a
scorching to prevent more trouble for a few hours at least.

Josella, Susan, and I spent most of the day repairing the breach.

Two more days passed before Susan and I could be sure that we had
searched every corner of the enclosure and accounted for the very last
of the intruders. We followed that up with an inspection of the whole
length of the fence and a reinforcement of all doubtful sections. Four
months later they broke in again ... This time a number of broken
triffids lay in the gap. Our impression was that they had been crushed
in the pressure that had been built up against the fence before it gave
way, and that, falling with it, they had been trampled by the rest.

It was clear that we should have to take new defensive measures.

No part of our fence was any stronger than that which had given way.

Electrification seemed the most likely means of keeping them at a
distance. To power it I found an army generator mounted on a trailer,
and towed it home. Susan and I set to work on the wiring. Before we
had completed it the brutes were through again in another place.

I believe that system would have been completely effective if we could
have kept it in action all the time or even most of the time.

But against that there was the fuel consumption.

Petrol was one of the most valuable of our stores. Food of some kind
we could always hope to grow, but when petrol and diesel oil were no
longer available, much more than our mere convenience would be gone
with them. There would be no more expeditions, and consequently no
more replenishments of supplies. The primitive life would start in
earnest.

So, from motives of conservation, the harrier wire was only charged for
some minutes two or three times a day. It caused the triffids to
recoil a few yards, and thereby stopped them building up pressure
against the fence. As an additional guard we ran an alarm wire on the
inner fence to enable us to deal with any breaks before they became
serious.

The weakness lay in the triffids' apparent ability to learn, in at
least a limited way, from experience. We found, for instance, that
they grew accustomed to our practice of charging the wire for a while
night and morning. We began to notice that they were usually clear of
the wire at our customary time for starting the engine, and they
began to close in again soon after it had stopped. Whether they
actually associated the charged condition of the wire with the sound of
the engine was impossible to say then, but later we had little doubt
that they did.

It was easy enough to make our running times erratic, but Susan, for
whom they were continually a source of inimical study, soon began to
maintain that the period for which the shock kept them clear was
growing steadily shorter. Nevertheless the electrified wire and
occasional attacks upon them in the sections where they were densest
kept us free of incursions for over a year, mad of those that occurred
later we had warning enough to stop them being more than a minor
nuisance.

Within the safety of our compound we continued to learn about
agriculture, and life settled gradually into a routine.

On a day in the summer of our sixth year Josella and I went down to
the coast together, travelling there in the half tracked vehicle that I
customarily used now that the roads were growing so bad. It was a
holiday for her. Months had passed since she had been outside the
fence. The care of the place and the babies had kept her far too tied
to make more than a few necessary trips, but now we had reached the
stage where we felt that Susan could safely be left in charge
sometimes, and we had a feeling of release as we climbed up and ran
over the tops of the hills. On the lower southern slopes we stopped
the car for a while, and sat there.

It was a perfect June day with only a few light clouds flecking a pure
blue sky. The sun shone down on the beaches and the sea beyond just as
brightly as it had in the days when those same beaches had been crowded
with bathers, and the sea dotted with little boats. We looked down on
it in silence for some minutes. Josella said: "Don't you still feel
sometimes that if you were to close your eyes for a bit you might open
them again to find it all as it was, Bill ? - I do."

"Not often now,"
I told her."But I've had to see so much more of it than you have. All
the same, sometimes ..."And look at the gulls just as they used to
be."

"There are many more birds this year," I agreed.

"I'm glad of that." Viewed impressionistic ally from a distance the
little town was still the same jumble of small red-roofed houses and
bungalows populated mostly by a comfortably retired middle class but
it was an impression that could not last more than a few minutes.

Though the tiles still showed, the walls were barely visible. The tidy
gardens had vanished under an unchecked growth of green, patched in
colour here and there by the descendants of
carefully-cultivated flowers. Even the roads looked like strips of
green carpet from this distance. When we reached them we should find
that the effect of soft verdure was illusory; they would be maned with
coarse, tough weeds.

"Only so few years ago," Josella said reflectively, 'people were
wailing about the way those bungalows were destroying the
countryside.

Now look at them."

"The countryside is having its revenge, all
right," I said.

"Nature seemed about finished then-"who would have thought the old man
had so much blood in him" ?"

"It rather frightens me. It's as if
everything were breaking out. Rejoicing that we're finished, and that
it's free to go its own way. I wonder ...  ? Have we been just fooling
ourselves since it happened? Do you think we really are finished with,
Bill ?" I'd had plenty more time when I was out on my foragings to
wonder about that than she had.

"If you weren't you, darling, I might make an answer out of the right
heroic mould the kind of wishful thinking that so often passes for
faith and resolution."

"But as I am me ?"

"I'll give you the honest
answer not quite. And while there's life, there's hope." We looked on
the scene before us for some seconds in silence.

"I think," I amplified, 'only think, mind you, that we have a narrow
chance so narrow that it is going to take a long long time to get back.
If it weren't for the triffids, I'd say there was a very good chance
indeed though still taking a longish time. But the triffids are a real
factor. They are something that no rising civilization has had to
fight before. Are they going to take the world off us, or are we going
to be able to stop them?

"The real problem is to find some simple way of dealing with them.

We aren't so badly off- we can hold them away. But our grandchildren
what are they going to do about them?

Are they going to have to spend all their lives in
human reservations only kept free of triffids by unending toil ?

"I'm quite sure there is a simple way. The trouble is that simple ways
come out of such complicated research. And we haven't the resources."

"Surely we have all the resources there ever were, just for the
taking," Josella put in.

"Material, yes. But mental, no. What we need is a team, a team of
experts really out to deal with the triffids for good and ,".

Something could be done. I'm sure. Something along the lines of a
selective killer, perhaps. If we could produce the right hormones to
create a state of imbalance in triffids, but not enough in other things
 ...  It must be possible if you have enough brain power turned on to
the job  ... ."If you think that, why don't you try ?" she asked.

"Too many reasons. First, I'm not up to it. I'm a very mediocre biochemist,
and there's only one of me. There'd have to be a lab. and equipment.
More than that, there'd have to be time, and there are too many things
which I have to do as it is. But even if I had the ability, then there
would have to be the means of producing synthetic hormones in huge
quantities. It would be a job for a regular factory.

But before that there must be the research team."

"People could be
trained."

"Yes when enough of them can be spared from the mere
business of keeping alive. I've collected a mass of biochemical books
in the hope that perhaps some time there will be people who can make
use of them I shall teach David all I can, and he must hand it on.

But unless there is leisure for work on it some time, I can see nothing
ahead but the reservations." Josella frowned down on a group of four
triffids ambling across a field below us.

"They used to say that man's really serious rivals were the insects. It
seems to me that the triffids have something in common with some kinds
of insects. Oh, I know that biologically they're plants. What I mean
is they don't bother
about their individuals, and the individuals don't bother about
themselves. Separately they have something which looks slightly like
intelligence; collectively it looks a great deal more like it. They
sort of work together for a purpose the way ants or bees do yet you
could say that not one of them is aware of any purpose or scheme
although he's part of it. It's all very queer probably impossible for
us to understand, anyway.

They're so different. It seems to me to go against all our ideas of
inheritable characteristics. Is there something in a bee or a triffid
which is a gene of social organization, or does an ant have a gene of
architecture ? And if they have these things why haven't we in all
this time developed a gene for language, or cooking ? Anyway, whatever
it is, the triffids do seem to have something like it. It may be that
no single individual knows why it keeps hanging around our fence, but
the whole lot together knows that it's purpose is to get us - and that
sooner or later it will."

"There are still things that can happen to
stop that," I said.

"I didn't mean to make you feel quite despondent about it all."

"I
don't - except sometimes when I'm tired. Usually I'm much too busy to
worry over what may happen years ahead.

No, as a rule I don't go much beyond getting a little sad the sort of
gentle melancholy that the eighteenth century thought so estimable. I
go sentimental when you play records there is something rather
frightening about a great orchestra which has passed away still playing
on to a little group of people hemmed in and gradually growing more
primitive. It takes me back, and I begin to feel sad with thinking of
all the things we can never do again however things go now. Don't you
sometimes feel like that ?

"H'm," I admitted."But I find that I accept the present more easily
as it goes on. I suppose that if there were wishes that could be
granted, I would wish the old world back but there'd be a condition.
You see, in spite of everything, I'm happier inside me than I ever was
before. You know that, don't you, Josie?"

She put her hand on mine.

"I feel that too. No, what saddens me is not so much the things we've
lost, as the things the babies will never have the chance to know."

"It's going to be a problem to bring them up with hopes and ambitions,"
I acknowledged."We can't help being orientated backwards.

But they mustn't look back all the time. A tradition of a vanished
golden age and ancestors who were magicians would be a most damning
thing. Whole races have had that sort of inferiority complex which has
sunk into lassitude on the tradition of a glorious past. But how are
we going to stop that kind of thing from happening ?"

"If I were a
child now," she said, reflectively,
"I think I should want a reason of some kind Unless I was given itthat is, if I were allowed to think that I had been born into a world
which had been quite pointlessly destroyed, I should find living quite
pointless, too. That does make it awfully difficult because it seems
to be just what has happened ... ' She paused, pondering, then she
added: "Do you think we could do you think we should be justified in
starting a myth to help them ? A story of a world that was wonderfully
clever, but so wicked that it had to be destroyed or destroyed itself
by accident ? Something like the Flood again. That wouldn't crush
them with inferiority it could give the incentive to build, and this
time to build something better."

"Yes ..." I said, considering it."Yes. It's often a good idea to
tell children the truth. Kind of makes things easier for them later on
only why pretend it's a myth ?" Josella demurred at that.

"How do you mean ? The triffids were well, they were somebody's fault,
or mistake, I admit. But the rest ...  ?"

"I don't think we can blame
anyone too much for the triffids.

The extracts they give were very valuable in the circumstances.

Nobody can ever see what a major discovery is going to lead to whether
it is a new kind of engine or a triffid, and we
coped with them all right in normal conditions. We benefited quite a
lot from them, as long as the conditions were to their disadvantage."

"Well, it wasn't our fault the conditions changed. It was just one of
those things: like earthquakes or hurricanes what an insurance company
would call an Act of God. Maybe that's just what it was a judgement.
Certainly we never brought that comet."

"Didn't we, Josella ? Are you
quite sure of that ?" She turned to look at me.

"What do you mean, Bill ? How could we iv
"What I mean, my dear is was it a comet at all? You see, there's an
old superstitious distrust of comets pretty well grained in. I know we
were modern enough not to kneel down in the streets to pray to them but
all the same, it's a phobia with centuries of standing. They've been
portents and symbols of heavenly wrath and warnings that the end is at
hand, and used in any amount of stories and prophecies. So, when you
get an astonishing celestial phenomenon, what more natural than to
attribute it straight off to a comet ? A denial would take time to get
around and time was just what there was not.

And when utter disaster follows, it just confirms it for everyone that
it must have been a comet." Josella was looking at me very hard.

"Bill, are you trying to tell me that you don't think it was a comet
at all?"

"Just exactly that," I agreed.

"But I don't understand. It must- What else could it have been?"

I opened a vacuum-packed tin of cigarettes, and lit one for each of
us.

"You remember what Michael Beadley said about the tightpe we'd all
been walking on for years ?"

"Yes, but
"Well, I think that what
happened was that we came off it and that a few of us just managed to
survive the crash."

I drew on my cigarette, looking out at the sea and at the infinite blue
sky above it.

"Up there," I went on, 'up there, there were and maybe there still are
unknown numbers of satellite weapons circling round and round the
Earth. Just a lot of dormant menaces, touring around, waiting for
someone, or something, to set them off. What was in them?

You don't know; I don't know. Top-secret stuff. All we've heard is
guesses fissile materials, radio-active dusts, bacteria, viruses  ...
Now suppose that one type happened to have been constructed especially
to emit radiations that our eyes would not stand something that would
burn out, or at least damage, the optic nerve ...  ?" Josella gripped my
hand.

"Oh, no, Billl No, they couldn't ... That'd be diabolical.

.. Oh, I can't believe ... Oh, no, Bill?

"My sweet, all the things up there were diabolical ... Then suppose
there were a mistake, or perhaps an accident maybe such an accident as
actually encountering a shower of comet debris, if you like - which
starts some of these things popping ..."Somebody stars talking about
comets. It might not be politic to deny that and there turned out to
be so little time, anyway.

"Well, naturally these things would have been intended to operate close
to the ground where the effect would be spread over a definitely
calculable area. But they start going off out there in space, or maybe
when they hit the atmosphere either way they're operating so far up
that people all round the world can receive direct radiations from them
 ...  "Just what did happen is anyone's guess now. But one thing I'm
quite certain of- that somehow or other we brought this lot down on
ourselves. And there was that plague, too: it wasn't typhoid, you know
 ...  "I find that it's just the wrong side of coincidence for me to
believe that out of all the thousands of years in which a destructive
comet could arrive, it happens to do so just
a few years after we have succeeded in establishing satellite weapons
don't you ? No, I think that we kept on that tight-rope quite a while,
considering the things that might have happened but sooner or later the
foot had to slip."

"Well, when you put it that way' murmured
Josella.

She broke off, and was lost in silence for quite a while. Then she
said: "I suppose in a way that should be more horrible than the idea of
nature, striking blindly at us. And yet I don't think it is.

It makes me feel less hopeless about things because it makes them at
least comprehensible. If it was like that, then it is at least a thing
that can be prevented from happening again just one more of the
mistakes our very great-grandchildren are going to have to avoid. And,
oh dear, there were so many, many mistakes But we can warn them."

"H'm - well I said."Anyway, once they've beaten the triffids and
pulled themselves out of this mess they'll have plenty of scope for
making brand-new mistakes of their very own."

"Poor little things," she said, as if she were gazing down rows of
increasingly great-grandchildren, 'it's not much that we're offering
them, is it ?"

"People used to say: "life is what you make it."

"That, my dear Bill,
outside very narrow limits is just a load of- well, I don't want to be
rude. But I believe my Uncle Ted used to say that until somebody
dropped a bomb which took both his legs off. It changed his mind. And
nothing that I personally did caused me to be living at all now." She
threw away the remains of her cigarette."Bill, what have we done to
be the lucky ones in all this ? Every now and then- when I stop
feeling overworked and selfish, that is I think how lucky we really
have been, and I want to give thanks to something or other. But then I
find I feel if there were anybody or anything to give thanks to they'd
have chosen such a much more deserving case than me. It's all very
confusing to a simple girl."

"And I," I said, "feel that if there were anybody or anything at all in
the driving-seat quite a lot of the things in history could not have
happened. But I don't let it worry me a lot.

We've had luck, my sweet. If it changes tomorrow, well, it changes.
Whatever it does, it can't take away the time we've had together.
That's been more than I ever deserved, and more than most men get in a
lifetime." We sat there a little longer, looking at the empty sea, and
then drove down to the little town.

After a search which produced most of the things on our wants list we
went down to picnic on the shore in the suns shine - with a good stretch
of shingle behind us over which no triffid could approach unheard.

"We must do more of this while we can," Josella said."Now that
Susan's growing up I needn't be nearly so tied."

"If anybody ever
earned the right to let up a bit, you have," I agreed.

I said it with a feeling that I would like us to go together and say a
last farewell to places and things we had known while it was still
possible. Every year now the prospect of imprisonment would grow
closer. Already to get northward from Shirning it was necessary to
make a detour of many miles to pass the country that had reverted to
marshland. All the roads were rapidly becoming worse with the erosion
by rain and streams, and the roots that broke up the surfaces. The
time in which one would still be able to get an oil-tanker back to the
house was already becoming measurable. One day one of them would fail
to make its way along the lane, and very likely block it for good. A
half-track would continue to run over ground that was dry enough, but
as time went on it would be increasingly difficult to find a route open
enough even for that.

"And we must have one real last fling," I said."You shall dress up
again, and we'll go to
"Sh-sh!" interrupted Josella, holding up one
finger, and turning her ear to the wind.

I held my breath, and strained my ears. There was a feeling rather
than a sound of throbbing in the air. It was faint, but gradually
swelling.

"It is it's a plane!' Josella said.

We looked to the west, shading our eyes with our hands.

The humming was still little more than the buzzing of an insect.

The sound increased so slowly that it could come from nothing but a
helicopter, any other kind of craft would have passed over us or out of
hearing in the time it was taking.

Josella saw it first. A dot, a little out from the coast, and
apparently coming our way, parallel with the shore. We stood up, and
started to wave. As the dot grew larger, we waved more wildly, and,
not very sensibly, shouted at the tops of our voices. The pilot could
not have failed to see us there on the open beach had he come on, but
that was what he did not do.

A few miles short of us he turned abruptly north to pass inland.

We went on waving madly, hoping that he might yet catch sight of us.

But there was no indecision in the machine's course, no variation of
the engine note. Deliberately and imperturbably it droned away towards
the hills.

We lowered our arms, and looked at one another.

"If it can come once, it can come again," said Josella sturdily, but
not very convincingly.

But the sight of the machine had changed our day for us. It destroyed
quite a lot of resignation we had carefully built up. We had been
saying to ourselves that there must be other groups, but they wouldn't
be in any better position than we were, more likely in a worse. But
when a helicopter could come sailing in like a sight and sound from the
past, it raised more than memories: it suggested that someone somewhere
was managing to make out better than we were. - Was there a tinge of
jealousy there? - And it also made us aware that lucky as we had been,
we were still gregarious creatures by nature.

The restless feeling that the machine left behind destroyed our mood
and the lines along which our thoughts had been
running. In unspoken argument we began to pack up our belongings, and,
each occupied with our thoughts, we made our way back to the
haft-track, and started for home.

CONTACT
WE had covered perhaps half the distance back to Shirning
when Josella noticed the smoke. At first sight it might have been a
cloud, but as we neared the top of the hill we could see the grey
column beneath the more diffused upper layer. She pointed to it, and
looked at me without a word. The only fires we had seen in years had
been a few spontaneous outbreaks in later summer. We both knew at once
that the plume ahead was rising from the neighbour hood of Shirning.

I forced the half-track along at a greater speed than it had ever done
on the deteriorated roads. We were thrown about inside it, and yet
still seemed to be crawling. Josella sat silent all the time, her lips
pressed together and her eyes fixed on the smoke. I knew that she was
searching for some indication that the source was nearer or further
away, anywhere but at Shirning itself. But the closer we came, the
less room there was for doubt. We tore up the final lane quite
oblivious of the stings whipping at the vehicle as it passed. Then, at
the turn, we were able to see that it was not the house itself, but the
wood-pile that was ablaze.

At the sound of the horn Susan came running out to pull on the rope
which opened the gate from a safe distance. She shouted something
which was drowned in the rattle of our driving in. Her free hand was
pointing, not to the fire, but towards the front of the house. As we
ran further into the yard we could see the reason. Skilfully landed in
the middle of our lawn stood the helicopter.

By the time we were out of the half-track a man in a leather jacket and
breeches had come out of the house. He was tall, fair, and sunburned.
At the first glance I had a feeling I had seen him somewhere before. He
waved and grinned cheerfully as we hurried across.

"Mr Bill Masen, I presume. My name is Simpson Ivan Simpson."

"I
remember," said Josella."You brought in a helicopter that night at
the University Buildings."

"That's right. Clever of you to
remember.

But just to show you you're not the only one with a memory: you are
Josella Playton, author of-' "You're quite wrong," she interrupted him,
firmly."I'm Josella Masen, author of' David Masen"."

"Ah, yes. I've
just been looking at the original edition, and a very creditable bit of
craftsmanship too, if I may say so."

"Hold on a bit," I said."That
fire- ?" fit's safe enough. Blowing away from the house. Though I'm
afraid most of your stock of wood has gone up."

"What happened ?"

"That was Susan. She didn't mean me to miss the place When she heard
my engine she grabbed a flame-thrower, and bounded out to start a
signal as quickly as she could. The wood-pile was handiest no one
could have missed what she did to that." We went inside, and joined
the others.

"By the way," Simpson said to me,
"Michael told me I was to be sure to start off with his apologies."

"To
me ?" I said, wondering.

"You were the only one who saw any danger in the triffids, and he
didn't believe you."

"But do you mean to say you knew I was here ?"

"We found out very roughly your probable location a few days ago from a
fellow we all have cause to remember: one Coker."

"So Coker came
through, too," I said."After the shambles I saw at Tynsham I'd an
idea the plague had got him." Later on, when we had had a meal and
produced our best brandy, we got the story out of him.

When Michael Beadley and his party had gone on, leaving Tynsham to the
mercies and principles of Miss Durrant, they had not made for
Beaminster, nor anywhere near it. They had gone north-east, into
Oxfordshire. Miss Durrant's misdirection to us must have been
deliberate, for Beaminster had never been mentioned.

They had found there an estate which seemed at first to offer the group
all it required, and no doubt they could have entrenched themselves
there as we had entrenched ourselves at Shirning, but as the menace of
the triffids increased, the disadvantages of the place became more
obvious. In a year, both Michael and the Colonel were highly
dissatisfied with the longer-term prospects there. A great deal of
work had already been put into the place, but by the end of the second
summer there was general agreement that it would be better to cut their
losses. To build a community they had to think in terms of years a
considerable number of years. They also had to bear in mind that the
longer they delayed, the more difiqcult any move would be.

What they needed was a place where they would have room to expand and
develop; an area with natural fences which, once it had been denuded
of triffids', could economically be kept clear of them. Where they
now were a high proportion of their labour was occupied with
maintaining fences. And as their numbers increased, the length of
fence line would have to be increased. Clearly, the best
self-maintaining defence line would be water. To that end they had
held a discussion on the relative merits of various islands. It had
been chiefly climate that had decided them in favour of the Isle of
Wight, despite some misgivings over the area that would have to be
cleared. Accordingly, in the following March they had packed up again,
and moved on.

"When we got there," Ivan said, 'the triffids seemed even thicker than
where we'd left. No sooner had we begun to settle ourselves into a big
country house near Godshill than they started collecting along the
walls in thousands. We let 'em come for a couple of weeks or so, then
we went for 'em with the flame-throwers.

"After we'd wiped that lot out, we let them accumulate again, and then
we blitzed 'em once more and so on \% could afford to do it properly
there, because once we were clear of them, we'd not need to use the
throwers any more.

There could only be a limited number in the island, and the more of
them that came round us to be wiped out, the better we liked it
"We had to do it a dozen times before there was any appreciable effect
All round the walls we had a belt of charred stumps before they began
to get shy. There were a devil of a lot more of them than we had
expected."

"There used to be at least half a dozen nurseries breeding
high quality plants in the island not to mention the private and park
ones," I said.

"That doesn't surprise me. There might have been a hundred nurseries
by the look of it Before all this began I'd have said there were only a
few thousand of the things in the whole country, if anyone had asked
me, but there must have been hundreds of thousands."

"There were," I
said."They'll grow practically anywhere, and they were pretty
profitable. There didn't seem to be so many when they were penned up
in farms and nurseries. All the same, judging from the amount round
here, there must be whole tracts of country practically free of them
now."

"That's so," he agreed."But go and Live there and they'll
start collecting in a few days. You can see that from the air.

I'd have known there was someone here without Susan's fire. They make
a dark border round any inhabited place.

"Still, we managed to thin down the crowd round our walls after a bit.
Maybe they got to find it unhealthy, or maybe they didn't care a lot
for walking about on the charred remains of their relatives and, of
course, there were fewer of them. So then we started going out to hunt
them instead of just letting them come to us. It was our main job for
months. Between us we covered every inch of the island or thought we
did.

By the time we were through, we reckoned we'd put paid to every one in
the place, big and small. Even so, some managed
to appear the next year, and the year after that. Now we have
an intensive search every spring on account of seeds blowing over from
the mainland, and settle with them right away.

"While that was going on, we were getting organized. There were some
fifty or sixty of us to begin with. I took flips in the helicopter,
and when I saw signs of a group anywhere, I'd go down and issue a
general invitation to come along. Some did but a surprising number
simply weren't interested: they'd escaped from being governed, and in
spite of all their troubles they didn't want any more of it.

There are some lots in South Wales that have made sorts of tribal
communities, and resent the idea of any organization except the minimum
they've set up for themselves. You'll find similar lots near the other
coal fields too. Usually the leaders are the men who happened to be on
the shift below ground so that they never saw the green stars though
God knows how they ever got up the shafts again.

"Some of them so definitely don't want to be interfered with that they
shoot at the aircraft there's one lot of that sort at Brighton - ' "I
know," I said, 'they warned me off, too."

"Recently there are more
like that. There's one at Maidstone, another at Guildford, and other
places. They're the real reason why we hadn't spotted you hidden away
here before. The district didn't seem too healthy when one got close
to it. I don't know what they think they're doing- probably got some
good food dumps and are scared of anyone else wanting some of it.

Anyway, there's no sense in taking risks, so I just let 'em stew.

"Still, quite a lot did come along. In a year we'd gone up to three
hundred or so not all sighted, of course.

"It wasn't until about a month ago that I came across Coker and his lot
and one of the first things he asked, by the way, was whether you'd
shown up. They had a bad time, particularly at first.

"A few days after he got back to Tynsham, a couple of women
came along from London, and brought the plague with them. Coker
quarantined them at the first symptoms, but it was too late. He
decided on a quick move. Miss Durrant wouldn't budge. She elected to
stay and look after the sick, and follow later if she could. She never
did.

"They took the infection with them. There were three more hurried
moves before they succeeded in shaking free of it. By then they had
gone as far west as Devonshire, and they were all right for a bit
there. But then they began to find the same difficulties as we had and
you have. Coker stuck it out there for nearly three years, and then
reasoned along much the same lines as we did. Only he didn't think of
an island. Instead, he decided on a river boundary and a fence to cut
off the toe of Cornwall. When they got there they spent the first
months building their barrier, then they went for the triffids inside,
much as we did on the island. They had much more difficult country to
work with, though, and they never did succeed in clearing them out
completely. The fence was fairly successful to begin with, but they
never could trust it as we could the sea, and too much of their
manpower had to be wasted on patrols.

"Coker thinks they might have made out all right once the children had
grown old enough to work, but it would have been tough going all the
time. When I did find them, they hadn't much hesitation about coming
along. They set about loading up their fishing boats right away, and
they were all on the island in a couple of weeks. When Coker found you
weren't with us, he suggested you might still be somewhere in these
parts."

"You can tell him that wipes out any hard feelings about him,"
said Josella.

"He's going to be a very useful man," Ivan said."And from what he
tells us, you could be, too," he added, looking at me.

"You're a biochemist, aren't you ?"

"A biologist," I said, 'with a
little biochemistry."

"Well you can hold on to your fine
distinctions.

The point is, Michael has tried to get some research going into a
method of knocking off triffids scientifically. That has to be found if we
are going to get anywhere at all. But the trouble so far is that the
only people we have to work on it are a few who have forgotten most of
the biology they learned at school. What do you think like to turn
professor ? It'd be a worth while job."

"I can't think of one that
would be more worth while' I told him:"

"Does this mean you're inviting
us all to your island haven ?" Dennis asked.

"Well, to come on mutual approval, at least," Ivan replied.

"Bill and Josella will probably remember the broad principles laid down
that night at the University. They still stand. We aren't out to
reconstruct we want to build something new and better. Some people
don't take to that. If they don't they're no use to us. We just
aren't interested in having an opposition party that's trying to
perpetuate a lot of the old bad features.

We'd rather that people who want that went elsewhere."

"Elsewhere
sounds a pretty poor offer, in the circumstances," remarked Dennis.

"Oh, I don't mean ee throw them back to the triffids. But there were a
number of them, and there had to be some place for them to go, so a
party went across to the Channel Isles, and started cleaning up there
on the same lines as we'd denned up the Isle of Wight. About a hundred
of them moved over.

They're doing all right there, too."

"So now we have the mutual
approval system. Newcomers spend six months with us, then there's a
Council heating. If they don't like our ways, they say so; and if we
don't think they'll fit, we say so. If they fit, they stay; if not, we
see that they get to the Channel Isles or back to the mainland, if
they're odd enough to prefer that."

"Sounds to have a touch of the
dictatorial how's Council of yours formed ?" Dennis wanted to know.

Ivan shook his head.

"It'd take too long to go into constitutional questions now.

The best way to learn about us is to come and find out If
you like us, you'll stay but even if you don't, I think you'll find the
Channel Isles a better spot than this is likely to be a few years from
now." In the evening, after Ivan had taken off, and vanished away to
the south-west, I went and sat on my favourite bench in a corner of the
garden.

I looked across the valley, remembering the well-drained and tended
meadows that had been there. Now it was far on the way back to the
wild. The neglected fields were dotted with thickets, beds of reeds,
and stagnant pools. The bigger trees were slowly drowning in the
sodden soil.

I thought of Coker and his talk of the leader, the teacher, and the
doctor and of all the work that would be needed to support us on our
few acres. Of how it would affect each of us if we were to be
imprisoned here. Of the three blind ones, still feeling useless and
frustrated as they grew older. Of Susan who should have the chance of
a husband and babies. Of David, and Mary's little girl, and any other
children there might be who would have to become labourers as soon as
they were strong enough. Of Josella and myself having to work still
harder as we became older because there would be more to feed and more
work that must be done by hand ... Then there were the triffids
patiently waiting. I could see hundreds of them in a dark green hedge
beyond the fence.

There must be research some natural enemy, some poison, a de balancer
of some kind, something must be found to deal with them; there must be
relief from other work for that and soon. Time was on the triffids'
side. They had only to go on waiting while we used up our resources.
First the fuel, then no more wire to mend the fences.

And they or their descendants would still be waiting there when the
wire rusted through ...  And yet Shirning had become our home. I
sighed.

There was a light step on the grass. Josella came and sat down beside
me. I put an arm round her shoulders."What do they think about it ?"

I asked her.

"They're badly upset, poor things. It must be hard for them to
understand how the triffids' wait like that when they can't see them.

And then, they can find their way about here, you see. It must be
dreadful to have to contemplate going to an entirely strange place when
you're blind. They only know what we tell them. I don't think they
properly understand how impossible it will become here. If it were not
for the children, I believe they'd say
"No," flatly. It's their place, you see, all they have left. They
feel that very much." She paused, then she added: "They think that
but, of course, it's not really their place at all; it's ours, isn't it?
We've worked hard for it." She put her hand on mine."You've made it
and kept it for us, Bill. What do you think ? Shall we stay a year or
two longer?"

"No," I said."I worked because everything seemed to
depend on me. Now it seems rather futile."

"Oh, darling, don't! A
knight-errant isn't futile.

You've fought for all of us, and kept the dragons away."

"It's mostly
the children," I said.

"Yes the children," she agreed.

"And all the time, you know, I've been hunted by Coker the first
generation, labourers; the next, savages ... I think we had better
admit defeat before it comes, and go now." She pressed my hand.

"Not defeat, Bill dear, just a - what's the phrase? - a strategic
withdrawal. We withdraw to work and plan for the day when we can come
back. One day we will. You'll show us how to wipe out every one of
these foul triffids, and get our land back from them for us."

"You've
a lot of faith, darling."

"And why not ?"

"Well, at least I'll be
fighting them. But first, we go when ?"

"Do you think we could have
the summer out here? It could be a sort of holiday for all
of us with no preparations to make for the winter. We deserve a
holiday, too."

"I should think we could do that," I agreed.

We sat, watching the valley dissolve in the dusk. Josella said: "It's
queer, Bill. Now I can go, I don't really want to. Sometimes it's
seemed like prison but now it seems like treachery to leave it.

You see, I - I've been happier here than ever in my life before, in
spite of everything."

"As for me, my sweet, I wasn't even alive
before.

But we'll have better times yeti promise you."

"It's silly, but I
shall cry when we do go. I shall cry buckets.

You mustn't mind," she said.

But, as things fell out, we were all of us much too busy to
THERE was, as Josella had implied, no need for hurry. While we saw the
summer out at Shirrting I could prospect a new home for us on the
island, and make several journeys there to transport the most useful
part of the stores and gear that we had collected. But, meanwhile, the
wood-pile had been destroyed.

We needed no more fuel than would keep the kitchen going for a few
weeks, so the next morning Susan and I set off to fetch coal.

The half-track wasn't suitable for that job, so we took a four-wheel
drive lorry. Although the nearest rail coal depot was only ten miles
away, the roundabout route due to the blockage of some roads, and the
bad condition of others, meant that it took us nearly the whole day.
There were no major mishaps, but it was drawing on to evening when we
returned.

As we turned the last corner of the lane, with the triffids slashing at
the truck as indefatigably as ever from the banks, we stared in
astonishment. Beyond our gate, parked in our yard, stood a
monstrous-looking vchide. The sight so dumbfounded us that we sat
gaping at it for some moments before Susan put on her helmet and gloves
and climbed down to open the gate.

After I had driven in we went over together to look at the vehicle. The
chassis, we saw, was supported on metal tracks which suggested a
military origin. The general effect was somewhere between a
cabin-cruiser, and an amateur-built caravan. Susan and I looked at it,
and then looked at one another, with raised eyebrows. We went indoors
to find out more about it.

In the living-room we found, in addition to the household, four men
clad in grey-green ski-suits. Two of them wore pistols holstered to
the right hip: the other two had parked their sub-machine guns on the
floor beside their chairs.

As we came in, josella turned a completely expressionless face towards
us.

"Here is my husband. Bill, this is Mr Torrence. He tells us he is an
official of some kind. He has proposals to make to us." I had never
heard her voice colder.

For a second I failed to respond. The man she indicated did not
recognize me, but I recalled him all right. Features that have faced
you along sights get sort of set in your mind.

Besides, there was that distinctive red hair. I remembered well the
way that efficient young man had turned back my party in Hampstead.

I nodded to him. Looking at me, he said: `i understand you are in
charge here, Mr Masen ?"

"The place belongs to Mr Brent here," I
replied.

`i mean that you are the organizer of this group ?"

"In the
circumstances, yes," I said.

"Good." He had a now-we-are-going-to-get-somewhere air.

"I am Commander, South-East Region," he added.

He spoke as if that should convey something important to me. It did
not. I said so.

"It means," he amplified, 'that I am the Chief Executive Officer of the
Emergency Council for the South-Eastern Region of Britain. As such, it
happens to be one of my duties to supervise the distribution and
allocation of personnel."

"Indeed," I said `i have never heard of
this-er Council."

"Possibly. We were equally ignorant of the existence
of your group here until we saw your fire yesterday." I waited for him
to go on.

"When such a group is discovered," he said, 'it is my job to
investigate it and assess it and make the necessary adjustments.

So you may take it that I am here officially."

"On behalf of an
official Council or does it happen to be a self-elected Council?"

Dennis inquired.

"There has to be law and order," the man
said, stiffly. Then with a change of tone, he went on: "This is a
well-found place you have here, Mr. Masem' Brent has," I corrected.

"We will leave Mr Brent out. He is only here because you made it
possible for him to stay here." I looked across at Dennis. His face
was set.

"Nevertheless, it is his property," I said.

"It was, I understand. But the state of society which gave sanction to
his ownership no longer exists. Titles to property have therefore
ceased to be valid. Furthermore, Mr. Brent is not sighted, so that he
cannot in any case be considered competent to hold authority."

"Indeed," I said again.

I had had a distaste for this young man and his decisive ways at our
first meeting. Further acquaintance was doing nothing to mellow it. He
went on: "This is a matter of survival. Sentiment cannot be allowed to
interfere with the necessary practical measures. Now, Mrs. Masen has
told me that you number eight altogether. Five adults, this girl, and
two small children. All of you are sighted except these three." He
indicated Dennis, Mary, and Joyce.

"That is so," I admitted.

"H'm. That's quite disproportionate, you know. There'll have to be
some changes here, I'm afraid. We have to be realistic in times like
this." Josella's eye caught mine. I saw a warning in it. But in any
case, I had no intention of breaking out just then. I had seen the
red-headed man's direct methods in action, and I wanted to know more of
what I was up against. Apparently he realized that I would.

"I'd better put you in the picture," he said."Briefly it is this.

Regional Headquarters is at Brighton. London soon became too bad for
us. But in Brighton we were able to clear and quarantine a part of the
town, and we ran it. Brighton's a big place. When the sickness had
passed and we could get about more, there were
plenty of stores to begin with. More recently we have been running in
convoys from other places. But that's folding up now. The roads are
getting too bad for lorries, and they are having to go too far. It had
to come, of course. We'd reckoned that we could last out there several
years longer still, there it is. It's possible we undertook to look
after too many from the start. Anyway, now we are having to
disperse.

The only way to keep going will be to live off the land. To do that
we've got to break up into smaller units. The standard unit has been
fixed at one sighted person to ten blind, plus any children.

"You have a good place here, fully capable of supporting two units. We
shall allocate to you seventeen blind persons, making twenty with the
three already here again, of course, plus any children they may have."

I stared at him in amazement.

"You're seriously suggesting that twenty people and their children can
live off this land," I said."Why, it's utterly impossible. We've
been wondering whether we shall be able to support ourselves on it." He
shook his head, confidently.

"It is perfectly possible. And what I am offering you is the command
of the double unit we shall install here. Frankly, if you do not care
to take it, we shall put in someone else who will. We can't afford
waste in these times."

"But just look at the place," I repeated.

"It simply can't do it." `i assure you that it can, Mr Masen. Of
course, you'll have to lower your standards a bit we all shall for the
next few years, but when the children grow up a bit you'll begin to
have labour to expand with. For six or seven years it's going to mean
personal hard work for you, I admit that can't be helped. From then
on, however, you'll gradually be able to relax until you are simply
supervising. Surely that's going to make a good return for just a few
years of the tougher going ?

"Placed as you are now, what sort of future would you have ?

Nothing but hard work until you die in your tracks and your children
faced with working in the same way, just to keep going, not more than
that. Where are the future leaders and administrators to come from in
that kind of set-up ? Your way, you'd be worn out and still in harness
in another twenty years and all your children would be yokels. Our
way, you'll be the head of a clan that's working for you, and you'll
have an inheritance to hand on to your sons." Comprehension began to
come to me. I said, wonderingly: "Am I to understand that you are
offering me a kind of feudal seigneury ?"

"Ah," he said."I see you do begin to understand. It is, of course,
the obvious and quite natural social and economic form for that state
of things we are having to face now." There was no doubt whatever that
the man was putting this forward as a perfectly serious plan. I evaded
a comment On it by repeating myself: "But the place just can't support
that many."

"For a few years undoubtedly you'll have to feed them
mostly on mashed triffids - there won't be any shortage of that raw
material by the look of it."

"Catfie food I' I said.

"But sustaining rich in the important vitamins, I'm told.

And beggars particularly blind beggars can't be choosers."

"You're seriously suggesting that I should take on all these people,
and keep them on cattle fodder ?"

"Listen, Mr Masen. If it were not
for us, none of these blind people would be alive at all now nor would
their children.

It's up to them to do what we tell them, take what we give them, and be
thankful for whatever they get. If they like to refuse what we offer
well, that's their own funeral." I decided it would be unwise to say
what I felt about his philosophy at the moment. I turned to another
angle: "I don't see Tell me, just where do you and your Council stand
in all this ?"

"Supreme authority and legislative power is vested in
the Council. It will rule. It will also control the armed forces."

"Armed forces?" I repeated, blankly.

"Certainly. The forces will be raised as and when necessary by levies
on what you called the seigneuries. In return, you will have the right
to call on the Council in cases of attack from outside or unrest
within." I was beginning to feel a bit winded.

"An army I Surely a small mobile squad of police ?"

"I see you haven't
grasped the wider aspect of the situation, Mr Masen. This affliction
we have had was not confined to these islands, you know. It was world
wide. Everywhere there is the same sort of chaos that must be so, or
we should have heard differently by now and in every country there are
probably a few survivors. Now, it stands to reason, doesn't it, that
the first country to get on its feet again and put itself in order is
also going to be the country to have the chance of bringing order
elsewhere? Do you suggest that we should leave it to some other
country to do this, and let it become the new dominant power in Europe
and possibly further afield ?

Obviously not. Clearly it is our national duty to get ourselves back
on our feet as soon as possible and assume the dominant status so that
we can prevent dangerous opposition from organizing against us.

Therefore, the sooner we can raise a force adequate to discourage any
likely aggressors, the better." For some moments silence lay on the
room. Then Dennis laughed, unnaturally: "Great God almightyl We've
lived through all this and now the man proposes to start a war?"

Torence said, shortly: "I don't seem to have made myself clear. The
word "war" is an unjustifiable exaggeration. It will be simply a
matter of pacifying and administering tribes that have reverted to
primitive lawlessness."

"Unless, of course, the same benevolent idea
happens to have occurred to them," Dennis suggested.

I became aware that both Josella and Susan were looking at me very
hard. Josella pointed at Susan, and I perceived the reason.

"Let me get this straight," I said."You expect the three of us who
can see to be entirely responsible here for twenty blind adults and an
unspecified number of children. It seems to me- "Blind people aren't
quite incapable. They can do a lot, including' for their own children
in general, and helping to prepare their own food. Properly arranged,
a great deal can be reduced to supervision and direction.

But it will be two of you, Mr Masen - yourself and your wife, not
three." I looked at Susa sitting up very straight in her blue boiler
suit, with a red ribbon in her hair. There was an anxious appeal in
her eyes as she looked from me to Josella."Three," I said.

"I'm sorry, Mr Masen. The allocation is ten per unit. The girl can come
to headquarters. We can find useful work for her there until she is
old enough to take charge of a unit herself."

"My wife and I regard
Susan as our own daughter," I told him shortly.

"I repeat, I am sorry. But those are the regulations." I regarded him
for some moments. He looked steadily back at me. At last: "We should,
of course, require guarantees and undertakings regarding her if this
had to happen," I said.

I was aware of several quickly drawn breaths. Torrence's manner
relaxed slightly.

"Naturally we shall give you all practicable assurances," he said.

I nodded."I must have time to think it all over. It's quite new to
me, and rather startling. Some points come to my mind at once.

Equipment here is wearing out. It is difficult to find more that has
not deteriorated. I can see that before long I am going to need good
strong working horses."

"Horses are difficult. There's very little
stock at present.

You'll probably have to use man-power teams for a time."

"Then," I
said, 'there's accommodation. The outbuildings are too small for our
needs now and I can't put up even prefabricated quarters singlehanded."

"There we shall be able to help you, I think." We went on discussing
details for twenty minutes or more.

By the end of it I had him showing something like affability, then I
got rid of him by sending him off on a tour of the place with Susan as
his sulky guide.

"Bill, what on earth ?" Josella began, as the door closed behind him
and his companions.

I told her what I knew of Torence and his method of dealing with
trouble by shooting it early.

"That doesn't surprise me at all," remarked Dennis."But, you know,
what is surprising me now is that I'm suddenly feeling quite kindly
towards the triffids. Without their intervention I suppose there would
have been a whole lot more of this kind of thing by now.

If they are the one factor that can stop serfdom coming back, then good
luck to 'em."

"The whole thing's clearly preposterous," I said."It
doesn't have a chance. How could Josella and I look after a crowd like
that and keep the triffids out? But I added, 'we're scarcely in a
position to give a flat
"No" to a proposition put up by four armed men."

"Then you're not ?"

"Darling," I said, 'do you really see me in the position of a seigneur,
driving my serfs and ville ins before me with a whip ? - even if the
tri lids haven't overrun me first ?"

"But you said
"Listen," I said.
"It's getting dark. Too late for them to leave now. They'll have to
stay the night. I imagine that tomorrow the idea will be to take Susan
away with them she'd make quite a good hostage for our behaviour, you
see. And they might leave one or two of the others to keep an eye on
us.

Well, I don't think we're taking that, are we ?"

"No, but '

"Well, I hope I've convinced him now that I'm coming round to his idea.
Tonight we'll have the sort of supper that might be taken to imply
accord. Make it a good one. Everybody's to eat plenty. Give the kids
plenty, too. Lay on our best drinks. See that Torence and his chaps
have plenty, but the rest of us go very easy. Towards the end of the
meal I shall disappear for a bit. You keep the party going to cover
up. Play rowdy records at them or something. And everybody help to
whoop it up.

Another thing nobody must mention Michael Beadley and his lot.

Torence must know about the Isle of Wight set-up, but he doesn't
think we do. Now what I'll be wanting is a sack of sugar."

"Sugar?"

said Josella, blankly.

"No ? Well, a big can of honey, them I should think that would do as
well."


Everyone played up very creditably at supper. The party not only
thawed, it actually began to warm up. Josella brought out some of her
own potent mead to supplement the more orthodox drinks, and it went
down well. The visitors were in a state of happily comfortable
relaxation when I made my unobtrusive exit.

I caught up a bundle of blankets and clothes and a parcel of food that
I had laid ready, and hurried with them across the yard to the shed
where we kept the half-track. With a hose from the tanker which held
our main petrol supply I filled the half-track's tanks to overflowing.
Then I turned my attention to Torrence's strange vehicle.

With the help of a hand dynamo torch I managed to locate the
filler-cap, and poured a quart or more of honey into the tank. The
rest of the large can of honey I disposed of into the tanker itself.

I could hear the party singing, and seemingly, still going well.

After I had added some anti-triffid gear and miscellaneous
afterthoughts to the stuff already in the half-track, I went back and
joined it until it finully broke up in an atmosphere which
even a close observer might have mistaken for almost
maud:n goodwill.

We gave them two hours to get well asleep.

The moon had risen, and the yard was bathed in white light. I had
forgotten to oil the shed doors, and gave them a curse for every
creak.

The rest came in procession towards me.

The Brents and Joyce were familiar enough with the place not to need a
guiding hand. Behind them followed Josella and Susan, carrying the
children. David's sleepy voice rose once, and was stopped quickly by
Josella's hand over his mouth.

She got into the front, still holding him. I saw the others into the
back and closed it. Then I climbed into the driving seat, kissed
Josella, and took a deep breath.

Across the yard the triffids were clustering closer to the gate as they
always did when they had been undisturbed for some hours.

By the grace of heaven the half-track's engine started at once. I
slammed into low gear, swerved to avoid Torrence's vehicle, and drove
straight at the gate. The heavy fender took it with a crash. We
plunged forward in a festoon of wire netting and broken timbers,
knocking down a dozen triffids while the rest slashed furiously at us
as we passed. Then we were on our way.

Where a turn in the climbing track let us look down on Shiruing, we
paused and cut the engine. Lights were on behind some of the windows,
and as we watched, those on the outside blazed out, floodlighting the
house. A starter began to grind. I had a twinge of uneasiness as the
engine fired, though I knew we had several times the speed of that
lumbering contraption. The machine began to jerk round on its tracks
to face the gate. Before it completed the turn, the engine sputtered
and stopped. The starter began to whirr again. It went on whirring,
irritably, and without result.

The triffids had discovered that the gate was down. By a blend of
moonlight and reflected headlights we could see their tall, slender
forms already swaying in ungainly procession into the yard while others
came lurching down the banks of the lane to follow them ... I looked at
Josella. She was not crying buckets: not crying at all. She looked
from me down to David asleep in her arms.

"I've all I really need," she said, 'and some day you're going to bring
us back to the rest, Bill."

"Wifely confidence is a very nice trait,
darling, but No, damn it, no buts I am going to bring you back," I
said.

I got out to clear the debris from the front of the half-track, and
wipe the poison from the windscreen so that I should be able to see to
drive on and away across the tops of the hills towards the
south-west.

And there my personal story joins up with the rest. You will find it
in Elspeth Cary's excellent history of the colony.

Our hopes all centre here now. It seems unlikely that anything will
come of Torence's rico-feudal plan, though a number of his seigneuries
do still exist with their inhabitants leading, so we hear, a life of
squalid wretchedness behind their stockades. But there are not so many
of them as there were.

Every now and then Ivan reports that another has been overrun, and that
the triffids which surrounded it have dispersed to join other sieges.

So we must regard the task ahead as ours alone. We think now that we
can see the way, but there is still a lot of work and research to be
done before the day when we, or our children, or their children, will
cross the narrow straits on the great crusade to drive the triffids
back and back with ceaseless destruction until we have wiped the last
one of them from the face of the land that they have usurped.

The End ...  ... 

