1.  Man in His Time
2.  Outside
3.  Super-Toys Last All Summer
4.  The Saliva Tree
5. There is a Tide


One of the editors of this volume does not know that this
story is going into it. There has been collusion in high places.
The President of SFWA, Damon Knight, and the other editor
have overruled in advance any complaints that Brian W.
Aldiss might make. This story was one of three that tied for
the Best Short Story award and is, in its own right, a fine
piece of fiction. Here is art, in the interweaving of idea and
dialog, and here is something vital being  said about the
human condition. It has earned its place in this book.
H.H.

MAN IN HIS TIME

Brian W. Aldiss

His absence
Janet Westermark sat watching the three men in the office:
the administrator who was about to go out of her life, the
behaviourist who was about to come into it, and the husband
whose life ran parallel to but insulated from her own.
She was not the only one playing a watching game. The
behaviourist,  whose  name  was  Clement  Stackpole,  sat
hunched in his chair with his ugly strong hands clasped round
his knee, thrusting his intelligent and simian face forward, the
better to regard his new subject. Jack Westermark.
The administrator of the Mental Research Hospital spoke
in a lively and engaged way. Typically, it was only Jack
Westermark who seemed absent from the scene.
Your particular problem, restless
His hands upon his lap lay still, but he himself was restless,
though the restlessness seemed directed. It was as if he were
in another room with other people, Janet thought. She saw
that he caught her eye when in fact she was not entirely
looking at him, and by the time she returned the glance, he
was gone, withdrawn.
"Although Mr. Stackpole has not dealt before with your
particular problem," the administrator was saying, "he has
had plenty of field experience. I know"
"I'm sure we won't," Westermark said, folding his hands
and nodding his head slightly.
Smoothly, the administrator made a pencilled note of the
remark, scribbled the precise time beside it, and continued. "I
know Mr. Stackpole is too modest to say this, but he is a great
man for working in with people"
"If you feel it's necessary," Westermark said. "Though I've
seen enough of your equipment for a while."
The pencil moved, the smooth voice proceeded. "Good. A
great man for working in with people, and I'm sure you and
Mr. Westermark will soon find you are glad to have him
around. Remember, he's there to help both of you."
Janet smiled, and said from the island of her chair, trying
to smile at him and Stackpole, "I'm sure that everything will
work" She was interrupted by her husband, who rose to his
feet, letting his hands drop to his sides and saying, turning
slightly to address thin air, "Do you mind if I say good-bye to
Nurse Simmons?"

Her voice no longer wavered
"Everything will be all right, I'm sure," she said hastily.
And Stackpole nodded at her, conspiratorially agreeing to see
her point of view.
"We'll all get on fine, Janet," he said. She was in the swift
process of digesting that unexpected use of her Christian
name, and the administrator was also giving her the sort of
encouraging smile so many people had fed her since Wester-
mark was pulled out of the ocean off Casablanca, when her
husband, still having his lonely conversation with the air, said,
"Of course, I should have remembered."
His right hand went half way to his foreheador his heart
Janet wonderedand then dropped, as he added, "Perhap
she'll come round and see us some time." Now he turned an
was smiling faintly at another vacant space with just th
faintest nod of his head, as if slightly cajoling. "You'd lik
that, wouldn't you, Janet?"
She moved her head, instinctively trying to bring her eye
into his gaze as she replied vaguely, "Of course, darling." He
voice no longer wavered when she addressed his absen
attention.

There was sunlight through which they could see each other
"There was sunlight in one corner of the room, coming
through the windows of a bay angled towards the sun. For a
moment she caught, as she rose to her feet, her husband's
profile with the sunlight behind it. It was thin and withdrawn.
Intelligent: she had always thought him over-burdened with
his intelligence, but now there was a lost look there, and she
thought of the words of a psychiatrist who had been called in
on the case earlier: "You must understand that the waking
brain is perpetually lapped by the unconscious."

Lapped by the unconscious
Fighting the words away, she said, addressing the smile of
the administratorthat smile must have advanced his career
so much"You've helped me a lot. I couldn't have got
through these months without you. Now we'd better go."
She heard herself chopping her words, fearing Westermark
would talk across them, as he did: "Thank you for your help.
If you find anything . . ."
Stackpole walked modestly over to Janet as the administra-
tor rose and said. "Well, don't either of you forget us if you're
in any kind of trouble."
"I'm sure we won't."
"And, Jack, we'd like you to come back here to visit us
once a month for a personal check-up. Don't want to waste
all our expensive equipment, you know, and you are our star
er, patient." He smiled rather tightly as he said it, glancing
at the paper on his  desk to check Westermark's answer.
Westermark's back was already turned on him, Westermark
was already walking slowly to the door, Westermark had said
his good-byes, perched out on the lonely eminence of his
existence.
Janet looked helplessly, before she could guard against it, at
the administrator and Stackpole. She hated it that they were
too professional to take note of what seemed her husband's
breach of conduct. Stackpole looked kindly in a monkey way
and took her arm with one of his thick hands.
"Shall we be off then? My car's waiting outside."

Not saying anything, nodding, thinking, and consulting
watches
She nodded, not saying anything, thinking only, without the
need of the administrator's notes to think it, "Oh yes, this was
when he said, 'Do you mind if I say good-bye to Nurse'
who's-it?Simpson?" She was learning to follow her hus-
band's footprints across the broken path of conversation. He
was now out in the corridor, the door swinging to behind him,
and to empty air the administrator was saying, "It's her day
off today."
"You're good on your cues," she said, feeling the hand
tighten on her arm. She politely brushed his fingers away,
horrid Stackpole, trying to recall what had gone only four
minutes before. Jack had said something to her; she couldn't
remember, didn't speak, avoided eyes, put out her hand and
shook the administrator's firmly.
"Thanks," she said.
"Au revoir to both of you," he replied firmly, glancing
swiftly: watch, notes, her, the door. "Of course," he said. "If
we find anything at all. We are very hopeful. . . ."
He adjusted his tie, looking at the watch again.
"Your husband has gone now, Mrs. Westermark," he said,
his manner softening. He walked towards the door with her
and added, "You have been wonderfully brave, and I do
realisewe all realisethat you will have to go on being
wonderful. With time, it should be easier for you; doesn't
Shakespeare say in Hamlet that 'Use almost can change the
stamp of nature'? May I suggest that you follow Stackpole's
and my example and keep a little notebook and a strict check
on the time?"
They saw her tiny hesitation, stood about her, two men
round a personable woman, not entirely innocent of relish.
Stackpole cleared his throat, smiled, said, "He can so easily
feel cut off you know. It's essential that you of all people
answer his questions, or he will feel cut off."
Always a pace ahead
"The children?" she asked.
"Let's see you and Jack well settled in at home again, say
for a fortnight or so," the administrator said, "before we think
about having the children back to see him."
"That way's better for them and Jack and you, Janet,"
Stackpole said. 'Don't be glib,' she thought; 'consolation I
need, God knows, but that's too facile.' She turned her face
away, fearing it looked too vulnerable these days.
In the corridor, the administrator said, as valediction, "I'm
sure Grandma's spoiling them terribly, Mrs. Westermark, but
worrying won't mend it, as the old saw says."
She smiled at him and walked quickly away, a pace ahead
of Stackpole.
Westermark sat in the back of the car outside the adminis-
trative block. She climbed in beside him. As she did so, he
jerked violently back in his seat.
"Darling, what is it?" she asked. He said nothing.
Stackpole had not emerged from the building, evidently
having a last word with the administrator. Janet took the
moment to lean over and kiss her husband's cheek, aware as
she did so that a phantom wife had already,  from his
viewpoint, done so. His response was a phantom to her.
"The countryside looks green," he said. His eyes were
flickering over the grey concrete block opposite.
"Yes," she said.
Stackpole came bustling down the steps, apologising as he
opened the car door, settled in. He let the clutch back too fast
and they shot forward. Janet saw then the reason for Wester-
mark's jerking backwards a short while before. Now the
acceleration caught him again; his body was rolled helplessly
back. As they drove along, he set one hand fiercely on the
side grip, for his sway was not properly counterbalancing the
movement of the car.
Once outside the grounds of the institute, they were in the
country, still under a mid-August day.
His theories
Westermark, by concentrating, could bring himself to con-
form to some of the laws of the time continuum he had left.
When the car he was in climbed up his drive (familiar, yet
strange with the rhododendrons unclipped and no signs of
children) and stopped by the front door, he sat in his seat for
three and a half minutes before venturing to open his door.
Then he climbed out and stood on the gravel, frowning down
at it. Was it as real as ever, as material? Was there a slight
glaze on it?as if something shone through from the interior
of the earth, shone through all things? Or was it that there
was a screen between him and everything else? It was impor-
tant to decide between the two theories, for he had to live
under the discipline of one. What he hoped to prove was that
the permeation theory was correct; that way he was merely
one of the factors comprising the functioning universe, to-
gether with the rest of humanity. By the glaze theory, he was
isolated not only from the rest of humanity but from the
entire cosmos (except Mars?). It was early days yet; he had a
deal of thinking to do, and new ideas would undoubtedly
emerge after observation and cogitation. Emotion must not
decide the issue; he must be detached. Revolutionary theories
could well emerge from thissuffering.
He could see his wife by him, standing off in case they
happened embarrassingly or painfully to collide. He smiled
thinly at her through her glaze. He said, "I am, but I'd prefer
not to talk." He stepped towards the house, noting the
slippery feel of gravel that would not move under his tread
until the world caught up. He said, "I've every respect for
The Guardian, but I'd prefer not to talk at present."
Famous Astronaut Returns Home
As the party arrived, a man waited in the porch for them,
ambushing Westermark's return home with a deprecatory
smile. Hesitant but business-like, he came forward and looked
interrogatively at the three people who had emerged from the
car.
"Excuse me, you are Captain Jack Westermark, aren't
you?"
He stood aside as Westermark seemed to make straight for
him.
"I'm the psychology correspondent for The Guardian, if I
might intrude for a moment."
Westermark's mother had opened the front door and stood
there smiling welcome at him, one hand nervously up to her
grey hair. Her son walked past her. The newspaper man
stared after him.
Janet told him apologetically, "You'll have to excuse us.
My husband did reply to you, but he's really not prepared to
meet people yet."
"When did he reply, Mrs. Westermark? Before he heard
what I had to say?"
"Well, naturally notbut his life stream... . I'm sorry, I
can't explain."
"He really is living ahead of time, isn't he? Will you spare
me a minute to tell me how you feel now the first shock is
over?"
"You really must excuse me," Janet said, brushing past
him. As she followed her husband into the house, she heard
Stackpole say, "Actually, I read The Guardian, and perhaps I
could help you. The Institute has given me the job of
remaining with Captain Westermark. My name's Clement
Stackpoleyou may know my book. Persistent Human Rela-
tions, Methuen. But you must not say that Westermark is
living ahead of time. That's quite incorrect. What you can say
is that some of his psychological and physiological processes
have somehow been transposed forward"
"Ass!" she exclaimed to herself. She had paused by the
threshold to catch some of his words. Now she whisked in.

Talk hanging in the air among the long watches of supper
Supper that evening had its discomforts, although Janet
Westermark and her mother-in-law achieved an air of melan-
choly gaiety by bringing two Scandinavian candelabra, relics
of a Copenhagen holiday, onto the table and surprising the
two men with a gay-looking hors d'oeuvre. But the conversa-
tion was mainly like the hors d'oeuvre, Janet thought: little
tempting isolated bits of talk, not nourishing.
Mrs. Westermark senior had not yet got the hang of talking
to her son, and confined her remarks to Janet, though she
looked towards Jack often enough. "How are the children?"
he asked her. Flustered by the knowledge that he was waiting
a long while for her answer, she replied rather incoherently
and dropped her knife.
To relieve the tension, Janet was cooking up a remark on
the character of the administrator at the Mental Research
Hospital, when Westermark said, "Then he is at once thought-
ful and literate. Commendable and rare in men of his type. I
got the impression, as you evidently did, that he was as
interested in his job as in advancement. J suppose one might
say one even liked him. But you know him better, Stackpole;
what do you think of him?"
Crumbling bread to cover his ignorance of whom they were
supposed to be conversing, Stackpole said, "Oh, I don't know;
it's hard to say really," spinning out time, pretending not to
squint at his watch.
"The administrator was quite a charmer, didn't you think,
Jack?" Janet remarkedperhaps helping Stackpole as much
as Jack.
"He looks as if he might make a slow bowler," Westermark
 said, with an intonation that suggested he was agreeing with
something as yet unsaid.
"Oh, him"' Stackpole said. "Yes, he seems a satisfactory
sort of chap on the whole."
"He quoted Shakespeare to me and thoughtfully told me
where the quotation came from," Janet said.  
"No thank you, Mother," Westermark said.
"I don't have much to do with him," Stackpole continued.
"Though I have played cricket with him a time or two. He
makes quite a good slow bowler."
"Are you really?" Westermark exclaimed.
That stopped them. Jack's mother looked helplessly about,
caught her son's glazed eye, said, covering up, "Do have some
more sauce, Jack, dear," recalled she had already had her
answer, almost let her knife slide again, gave up trying to eat.
"I'm a batsman, myself," Stackpole said, as if bringing an
old pneumatic drill to the new silence. When no answer came,
he doggedly went on, expounding on the game, the pleasure
of it. Janet sat and watched, a shade perplexed that she was
admiring Stackpole's performance and wondering at her slight
perplexity; then she decided that she had made up her mind
to dislike Stackpole, and immediately dissolved the resolution.
Was he not on their side? And even the strong hairy hands
became a little more acceptable when you thought of them
gripping the rubber of a bat handle; and the broad shoulders
swinging.... She closed her eyes momentarily, and tried to
concentrate on what he was saying.

A batsman himself
Later, she met Stackpole on the upper landing. He had a
small cigar in his mouth, she had two pillows in her arms. He
stood in her way.
"Can I help at all, Janet?"
"I'm only making up a bed, Mr. Stackpole."
"Are you not sleeping in with your husband?"
"He would like to be on his own for a night or two, Mr.
Stackpole. I shall sleep in the children's room for the time
being."
"Then please permit me to carry the pillows for you. And
do please call me Clem. All my friends do."
Trying to be pleasanter, to unfreeze, to recall that Jack was
not moving her out of the bedroom permanently, she said,
"I'm sorry. It's just that we once had a terrier called Clem."
But it did not sound as she had wished it to do.
He put the pillows on Peter's blue bed, switched on the
bedside lamp, and sat on the edge of the bed, clutching his
cigar and puffing at it.
"This may be a bit embarrassing, but there's something I
feel I should say to you, Janet." He did not look at her. She
brought him an ashtray and stood by him.
"We feel your husband's mental health may be endangered,
although I hasten to assure you that he shows no signs of
losing his mental equilibrium beyond what we may call an
inordinate absorption in phemomenaand even there, we
cannot say, of course we can't, that his absorption is any
greater than one might expect. Except in the totally unprece-
dented circumstances, I mean. We must talk about this in the
next few days."
She waited for him to go on, not unamused by the play
with the cigar. Then he looked straight up at her and said,
"Frankly, Mrs. Westermark, we think it would help your
husband if you could have sexual relations with him."
A little taken aback, she said, "Can you imagine" Cor-
recting herself, she said, "That is for my husband to say. I am
not unapproachable."
She saw he had caught her slip. Playing a very straight bat,
he said,"l'm sure you're not, Mrs. Westermark."
With the light out, living, she lay in Peter's bed
She lay in Peter's bed with the light out. Certainly she
wanted him: pretty badly, now she allowed herself to dwell on
it. During the long months of the Mars expedition, while she
had stayed at home and he had got farther from home, while
he actually had existence on that other planet, she had been
chaste. She had looked after the children and driven round
the countryside and enjoyed writing those articles for wom-
en's magazines and being interviewed on TV when the ship
was reported to have left Mars on its homeward journey. She
had been, in part, dormant.
"Then came the news, kept from her at first, that there was
confusion in communicating with the returning ship. A sensa-
tional tabloid broke the secrecy by declaring that the nine-
man crew had all gone mad. And the ship had overshot its
landing area, crashing into the Atlantic. Her first reaction had
been a purely selfish oneno, not selfish, but from the self:
He'll never lie with me again. And infinite love and sorrow.
At his rescue, the only survivor, miraculously unmaimed,
her hope had revived. Since then, it had remained embalmed,
as he was embalmed in time. She tried to visualise love as it
would be now, with everything happening first to him, before
she had begun toWith his movement of pleasure even
before sheNo, it wasn't possible! But of course it was, if
they worked it out first intellectually; then if she just lay
flat.... But what she was trying to visualise, all she could
visualise, was not love-making, merely a formal prostration to
the exigencies of glands and time flow.
She sat up in bed, longing for movement, freedom. She
jumped out and opened the lower window; there was still a
tang of cigar smoke in the dark room.
// they worked it out intellectually
Within a couple of days, they had fallen into routine. It was
as if the calm weather, perpetuating mildness, aided them.
They had to be careful to move slowly through doors, keeping
to the left, so as not to bump into each othera tray of
drinks was dropped before they agreed on that. They devised
simple knocking systems before using the bathroom. They
conversed in bulletins that did not ask questions unless
questions were necessary. They walked slightly apart. In
short, they made detours round each other's lives.
"It's really  quite  easy  as  long  as  one  is  careful,"  Mrs.
Westermark senior said to Janet. "And dear Jack is so
patient!"
"I even get the feeling he likes the situation."
"Oh, my dear, how could he like such an unfortunate
predicament?"
"Mother, you realise how we all exist together, don't you?
No, it sounds too terrible1 daren't say it."
"Now don't you start getting silly ideas. You've been very
brave, and this is not the time for us to be getting upset, just
as things are going well. If you have any worries, you must
tell Clem. That's what he's here for."
"I know."
"Well then."
She saw Jack walk in the garden. As she looked, he glanced
up, smiled, said something to himself, stretched out a hand,
withdrew it, and went, still smiling, to sit on one end of the
seat on the lawn. Touched, Janet hurried over to the french
windows, to go and join him.
She paused. Already, she saw ahead, saw her sequence of
actions, for Jack had already sketched them into the future.
She would go onto the lawn, call his name, smile, and walk
over to him when he smiled back. Then they would stroll
together to the seat and sit down, one at each end.
The knowledge drained all spontaneity from her. She might
have been working a treadmill, for what she was about to do
had already been done as far as Jack was concerned, yddi his
head start in time. Then if she did not go, if she mutinied,
turned back to the discussion of the day's chores with her
mother-in-law. . . That left Jack mouthing like a fool on the
lawn, indulging in a fantasy there was no penetrating. Let him
do that, let Stackpole see; then they could drop this theory
about Jack's being ahead of time and would have to treat him
for a more normal sort of hallucinatory insanity. He would be
safe in Clem's hands.
But Jack's actions proved that she would go out there. It
was insane for her not to go out there. Insane? To disobey a
law of the universe was impossible, not insane. Jack was not
disobeyinghe had simply tumbled over a law that nobody
knew was there before the first expedition to Mars; certainly
they had discovered something more momentous than anyone
had expected, and more unforeseen. And she had lostNo,
she hadn't lost yet! She ran out onto the lawn, calling to him,
letting the action quell the confusion in her mind.
And in the repeated event there was concealed a little
freshness,  for  she  remembered  how  his  smile,  glimpsed
through the window, had held a special warmth, as if he
sought to reassure her. What had he said? That was lost. She
walked over to the seat and sat beside him.
He had been saving a remark for the statutory and unvary-
ing time lapse.
"Don't worry, Janet," he said. "It could be worse."
"How?" she asked, but he was already answering: "We
could be a day apart. 3.3077 minutes at least allows us a
measure of communication."
"It's wonderful how philosophical you are about it," she
said. She was alarmed at the sarcasm in her tone.
"Shall we have a talk together now?"
"Jack, I've been wanting to have a private talk with you for
some time."

"I?"
The tall beeches that sheltered the garden on the north side
were so still that she thought, "They will look exactly the
same for him as for me."
He delivered a bulletin, looking at his watch. His wrists
were thin. He appeared frailer than he had done when they
left hospital. "I am aware, my darling, how painful this mus<
be for you. We are both isolated from the other by this
amazing shift of temporal function, but at least I have the
consolation of experiencing the new phenomenon, whereas
you"
"I?"

Talking of interstellar distances
"I was going to say that you are stuck with the same old
world all of mankind has always known, but I suppose you
don't see it that way." Evidently a remark of hers had caught
up with him, for he added inconsequentially, "I've wanted a
private talk with you."
Janet bit off something she was going to say, for he raised a
finger irritably and said, "Please time your statements, so that
we do not talk at cross purposes. Confine what you have to
say to essentials. Really, darling. I'm surprised you don't do as
Clem suggests, and make notes of what is said at what time."
"That1 just wantedwe can't act as if we were a board
meeting. I want to know your feelings, how you are thinking,
so that I can help you, so that eventually you will be able to
live a normal life again."
He was timing it so that he answered almost at once, "I am
not suffering from any mental illness, and I have completely
recovered my physical health after the crash. There is no
reason to foresee that my perceptions will ever lapse back into
phase with yours. They have remained an unfluctuating
3.3077 minutes ahead of terrestrial time ever since our ship
left the surface of Mars "
He paused. She thought. It is now about 11.03 by my
watch, and there is so much I long to say. But it's 11.06 and a
bit by his time, and he already knows I can't say anything. It's
such an effort of endurance, talking across this three and a bit
minutes; we might just as well be talking across an interstellar
distance.'
Evidently he too had lost the thread of the exercise, for he
smiled and stretched out a hand, holding it in the air. Janet
looked round. Clem Stackpole was coming out towards them
with a tray full of drinks. He set it carefully down on the
lawn, and picked up a martini, the stem of which he slipped
between Jack's fingers.
"Cheers!" he said, smiling, and, "Here's your tipple," giving
Janet her gin and tonic. He had brought himself a bottle of
pale ale.
"Can you make my position clearer to Janet, Clem? She
does not seem to understand it yet."
Angrily, she turned to the behaviourist. "This was meant to
be a private talk, Mr. Stackpole, between my husband and
myself."
"Sorry you're not getting on too well, then. Perhaps I can
help sort you out a bit. It is difficult, I know."
3.3077
Powerfully, he wrenched the top off the beer bottle and
poured the liquid into the glass. Sipping, he said, "We have
always been used to the idea that everything moves forward in
time at the same rate. We speak of the course of time,
presuming it only has one rate of flow. We've assumed, too,
that anything living on another planet in any other part of our
universe might have the same rate of flow. In other words,
although we've long been accustomed to some oddities of
time, thanks to relativity theories, we have accustomed our-
selves, perhaps, to certain errors of thinking. Now we're going
to have to think differently. You follow me."
"Perfectly."
"The universe is by no means the simple box our predeces-
sors' imagined. It may be that each planet is encased in its own
time field, just as it is in its own gravitational field. From the
evidence, it seems that Mars's time field is 3.3077 minutes
ahead of ours on Earth. We deduce this from the fact that
your husband and the eight other men with him on Mars
experienced no sensation of temporal difference among them-
selves, and were unaware that anything was untoward until
they were away from Mars and attempted to get into com-
munication again with Earth, when the temporal discrepancy
at once showed up. Your husband is still living in Mars time.
Unfortunately, the other members of the crew did not survive
the crash; but we can be sure that if they did, they too would
suffer from the same effect. That's clear, isn't it?"
"Entirely. But I still cannot see why this effect, if it is as
you say'"
"It's not what / say, Janet, but the conclusion arrived at
by much cleverer men than 1." He smiled as he-said that,
adding parenthetically, "Not that we don't develop and even
alter our conclusions every day."
"Then why was a similar effect not noticed when the
Russians and Americans returned from the moon?"
"We don't know. There's so much we don't know. We
surmise that because the moon is a satellite of Earth's, and
thus within its gravitational field, there is no temporal discrep-
ancy. But until we have more data, until we can explore
further, we know so little, and can only speculate so much.
It's like trying to estimate the runs of an entire innings when
only one over has been bowled. After the expedition gets back
from Venus, we shall be in a much better position to start
theorising."
"What expedition to Venus?" she asked, shocked.
"It may not leave for a year yet, but they're speeding up
the programme. That will bring us really invaluable data."
Future time with its uses and abuses
She started to say, "But after this surely they won't be fool
enough" Then she stopped. She knew they would be fool
enough. She thought of Peter saying, "I'm going to be a
spaceman too. I want to be the first man on Saturn!"
The men were looking at their watches. Westermark trans-
ferred his gaze to the gravel to say, "This figure of 3.3077 is
surely not a universal constant. It may vary1 think it will
varyfrom planetary body to planetary body. My private
opinion is that it is bound to be connected with solar activity
in some way. If that is so, then we may find that the men
returning from Venus will be perceiving on a continuum
slightly in arrears of Earth time."
He stood up suddenly, looking dismayed, the absorption
gone from his face.
"That's a point that hadn't occurred to me," Stackpole said,
making a note. "If the expedition to Venus is primed with
these points beforehand, we should have no trouble about
organising their return. Ultimately, this confusion will be
sorted out, and I've no doubt that it will eventually vastly
enrich the culture of mankind. The possibilities are of such
enormity that . . ."
"It's awful! You're all crazy!" Janet exclaimed. She jumped
up and hurried off towards the house.

Or then again
Jack began to move after her towards the house. By his
watch, which showed Earth time, it was 11.18 and twelve
seconds; he thought, not the first time, that he would invest in
another watch, which would be strapped to his right wrist and
show Martian time. No, the one on his left wrist should show
Martian time, for that was the wrist he principally consulted
and the time by which he lived, even when going through the
business of communicating with the earth-bound human race.
He realised he was now moving ahead of Janet, by her
reckoning. It would be interesting to have someone ahead of
him in perception; then he would wish to converse, would
want to go to the labour of it. Although it would rob him of
the sensation that he was perpetually first in the universe, first
everywhere, with everything dewy in that strange light
Marslight! He'd call it that, till he had it classified, the
romantic vision preceding the scientific, with a touch of the
grand permissible before the steadying discipline closed in. Or
then again, suppose they were wrong in their theories, and the
perceptual effect was some freak of the long space journey
itself;  supposing  time  were  quantal....  Supposing  all  time
were quantal. After all, ageing was a matter of steps, not a
smooth progress, for much of the inorganic world as for the
organic.
Now he was standing quite still on the lawn. The glaze was
coming through the grass, making it look brittle, almost
tingeing each blade with a tiny spectrum of light. If his
perceptual time were further ahead than it was now, would
the Marslight be stronger, the Earth more translucent? How
beautiful it would look! After a longer star journey one would
return to a cobweb of a world, centuries behind one in
perceptual time, a mere embodiment of light, a prism. Hun-
grily, he visualised it. But they needed more knowledge.
Suddenly he thought, If I could get on the Venus expedi-
tioni If the Institute's right, I'd be perhaps six, say five and a
halfno, one can't saybut I'd be ahead of Venerean time. I
must go. I'd be valuable to them. I only have to volunteer,
surely.'
He did not notice Stackpole touch his arm in cordial
fashion and go past him into the house. He stood looking at
the ground and through it, to the stoney vales of Mars and the
unguessable landscapes of Venus.
The figures move
Janet had consented to ride into town with Stackpole. He
was collecting his cricket shoes, which had been restudded;
she thought she might buy a roll of film for her camera. The
children would like photos of her and Daddy together. Stand-
ing together.
As the car ran beside trees, their shadows flickered red and 
green before her vision. Stackpole held the wheel very capa-
bly, whistling under his breath. Strangely, she did not resent a
habit she would normally have found irksome, taking it as a
sign that he was not entirely at his ease.
"I have an awful feeling you now understand my husband
better than I do," she said.
He did not deny it. "Why do you feel that?"
"I believe he does not mind the terrible isolation he must be
experiencing."
"He's a brave man."
Westermark had been home a week now. Janet saw that
each day they were more removed from each other, as he
spoke less and stood frequently as still as a statue, gazing at
the ground raptly. She thought of something she had once
been afraid to utter aloud to her mother-in-law; but with
Clem Stackpole she was safer.
"You know why we manage to exist in comparative har-
mony," she said. He was slowing the car, half-looking at her.
"We only manage to exist by banishing all events from our
lives, all children,  all seasons.  Otherwise we'd be faced at
every moment with the knowledge of how much at odds we
really are."
Catching the note in her voice, Stackpole said soothingly,
"You are every bit as brave as he is, Janet."
"Damn being brave. What I can't bear isnothing!"  .
Seeing the sign by the side of the road, Stackpole glanced
into his driving mirror and changed gear. The road was
deserted in front as well as behind. He whistled through his
teeth again, and Janet felt compelled to go on talking.
"We've already interfered with time too muchall of us, I
mean. Time is a European invention. Goodness knows how
mixed up in it we are going to get ifwell, if this goes on."
She was irritated by the lack of her usual coherence.
As Stackpole spoke next, he was pulling the car into a
lay-by, stopping it by overhanging bushes. He turned to her
smiling tolerantly. "Time was God's invention, if you believe
in God, as I prefer to do. We observe it, tame it, exploit it
where possible."
"Exploit it!"
"You mustn't think of the future as if we were all wading
knee deep in treacle or something." He laughed briefly,
resting his hands on the steering wheel. "What lovely weather
it is! I was wonderingon Sunday I'm playing cricket over in
the village. Would you like to come and watch the match?
And perhaps we could have tea somewhere afterwards."
All events, all children, all seasons
She had a letter next morning from Jane, her five-year-old
daughter, and it made her think. All the letter said was: "Dear
Mummy, Thank you for the dollies. With love from Jane,"
but Janet knew the labour that had gone into the inch-high
letters. How long could she bear to leave the children away
from their home and her care?
As soon as the thought emerged, she recalled that during
the previous evening she had told herself nebulously that if
there was going to be 'anything' with Stackpole, it was as well
the children would be out of the waypurely, she now
realised, for her convenience and for Stackpole's. She had not
thought then about the children; she had thought about
Stackpole who, despite the unexpected delicacy he had shown,
was not a man she cared for.
'And another intolerably immoral thought,' she muttered
unhappily to the empty room, 'what alternative have I to
Stackpole?'
She knew Westermark was in his study. It was a cold day,
too cold and damp for him to make his daily parade round
the garden. She knew he was sinking deeper into isolation, she
longed to help, she feared to sacrifice herself to that isolation,
longed to stay outside it, in life. Dropping the letter, she held
her head in her hands, closing her eyes as in the curved bone
of her skull she heard all her possible courses of action jar
together, future lifelines that annihilated each other.
As Janet stood transfixed, Westermark's mother came into
the room.
"I was looking for you," she said. "You're so unhappy, my
dear, aren't you?"
"Mother, people always try and hide from others how they
suffer. Does everyone do it?"
"You don't have to hide it from mechiefly, I suppose,
because you can't."
"But I don't know how much you suffer, and it ought to
work both ways. Why do we do this awful covering up? What-
are we afraid ofpity or derision?"
"Help, perhaps."
"Help! Perhaps you're right.... That's a disconcerting
thought."
They stood there staring at each other, until the older
woman said, awkwardly, "We don't often talk like this,
Janet."
"No." She wanted to say more. To a stranger in a train,
perhaps she would have done; here, she could not deliver.
Seeing nothing more was to be said on that subject, Mrs.
Westermark said, "I was going to tell you, Janet, that I
thought perhaps it would be better if the children didn't come
back here while things are as they are. If you want to go and
see them and stay with them at your parents' house, I can
look after Jack and Mr. Stackpole for a week. I don't think
Jack wants to see them."
"That's very kind, Mother. I'll see. I promised Clemwell,
I told Mr. Stackpole that perhaps I'd go and watch him play
cricket tomorrow afternoon. It's not important, of course, but
I did sayanyhow, I might drive over and see the children on
Monday, if you could hold the fort."
"You've still plenty of time if you feel like going today. I'm
sure Mr. Stackpole will understand your maternal feelings."
"I'd prefer to leave it till Monday," Janet saida little
distantly,  for  she  suspected  now  the  motive  behind, her
mother-in-law's suggestion.

Where the Scientific American did not reach
Jack Westermark put down the Scientific American and
stared at the table top. With his right hand, he felt the beat of
his heart. In the magazine was an article about him, illus-
trated with photographs of him taken at the Research Hospi-
tal. This thoughtful article was far removed from the sensa-
tional pieces that had appeared elsewhere, the shallow things
that referred to him as The Man That Has Done More Than
Einstein To Wreck Our Cosmic Picture; and for that very
reason it was the more startling, and presented some aspects
of the matter that Westermark himself had not considered.
As he thought over its conclusions, he rested from the
effort of reading terrestrial books, and Stackpole sat by the
fire, smoking a cigar and waiting to take Westermark's dicta-
tion. Even reading a magazine represented a feat in space-
time,  a collaboration,  a conspiracy.  Stackpole turned the
pages at timed intervals, Westermark read when they lay flat.
He was unable to turn them when, in their own narrow
continuum, they were not being turned; to his fingers, they lay
under the jelly-like glaze, that visual hallucination that repre-
sented an unconquerable cosmic inertia.
The inertia gave a special shine to the surface of the table
as he  stared  into  it and  probed  into his  own  mind  to
determine the truths of the Scientific American article.
The writer of the article began by considering the facts and
observing that they tended to point towards the existence of
local times' throughout the universe; and that if this were so,
a new explanation might be forthcoming for the recession of
the galaxies and different estimates arrived at for the age of
the universe (and of course for its complexity). He then
proceeded to deal with the problem that vexed other writers
on the subject; namely, why, if Westermark lost Earth time
on Mars, he had not reciprocally lost Mars time back on
Earth. This, more than anything, pointed to the fact that
local times' were not purely mechanistic but to some extent at
least a psycho-biological function.
In the table top, Westermark saw himself being asked to
travel again to Mars, to take part in a second expedition to
those continents of russet sand where the fabric of space-time
was in some mysterious and insuperable fashion 3.3077 min-
utes ahead of Earth norm. Would his interior clock leap
forward again? What then of the sheen on things earthly?
And what would be the effect of gradually drawing away
from the iron laws under which, since its scampering pleisto-
cene infancy, humankind had lived?
Impatiently he thrust his mind forward to imagine the day
when Earth harboured many local times, gleaned from
voyages across the vacancies of space; those vacancies lay
across time, too, and that little-understood concept (McTag-
gart had denied its external reality, hadn't he?) would come to
lie within the grasp of man's understanding. Wasn't that the
ultimate secret, to be able to understand the flux in which
existence is staged, as a dream is staged in the primitive
reaches of the mind?
And But Would not that day bring the annihilation of
Earth's local time? That was what he had started. It could
only mean that local time' was not a product of planetary
elements; there the writer of the Scientific American article
had not dared to go far enough; local time was entirely a
product of the psyche. That dark innermost thing that could
keep accurate time even while a man lay unconscious was a
mere provincial; but it could be educated to be a citizen of the
universe.  He saw that he  was  the first of a new race,
unimaginable in the wildest mind a few months previously.
He was independent of the enemy that, more than Death,
menaced contemporary man: Time. Locked within him was
an entirety new potential. Superman had arrived.
Painfully, Superman stirred in his seat. He sat so wrapt for
so long that his limbs grew stiff and dead without his noticing
it.

Universal thoughts may occur if one times carefully enough
one's circumbendibus about a given table
"Dictation," he said, and waited impatiently until the com-
mand had penetrated backwards to the limbo by the fire
where Stackpole sat. What he had to say was so terribly
importantyet it had to wait on these people. . . .
As was his custom, he rose and began to walk round the
table, speaking in phrases quickly delivered. This was to be
the testament to the new way of life. . . .
"Consciousness is not expendable but concurrent. ... There
may have been many time nodes at the beginning of the
human race.... The mentally deranged often revert to
different time rates. For some, a day seems to stretch on for
ever.... We know by experience that for children time is
seen in the convex mirror of consciousness, enlarged and
distorted beyond its focal point...." He was momentarily
irritated by the scared face of his wife appearing outside the
study window, but he brushed it away and continued.
". . . its  focal  point. . . .  Yet  man  in  his  ignorance  has
persisted in pretending time was some sort of uni-directional
flow, and homogenous at that . . . despite the evidence to the
contrary. . . . Our conception of ourselvesno, this erroneous
conception has become a basic life assumption. . . ."
Daughters of daughters
Westermark's mother was not given to metaphysical specu-
lation, but as she was leaving the room, she turned and said to
her daughter-in-law, "You know what I sometimes think?
Jack is so strange, I wonder at nights if men and women
aren't getting more and more apart in thought and in their
ways with every generationyou know, almost like separate
species. My generation made a great attempt to bring the two
sexes together in equality and all the rest, but it seems to have
come to nothing."
"Jack will get better." Janet could hear the lack of
confidence in her own voice.
"I thought the same thingabout men and women getting
wider apart I meanwhen my husband was killed."
Suddenly ail Janet's sympathy was gone. She had recog-
nised a familiar topic drifting onto the scene, knew well the
careful tone that ironed away all self-pity as her mother-in-
law said, "Bob was dedicated to speed, you know. That was
what killed him really, not the fool backing into the road in
front of him."
"No blame was attached to your husband," Janet said.
"You should try not to let it worry you still."
"You see the connection though.... This progress thing.
Bob so crazy to get round the next bend first, and now
Jack. . . . Oh well, there's nothing a woman can do."
She closed the door behind her. Absently, Janet picked up
the message from the next generation of women: "Thank you
for the dollies."

The resolves and the sudden risks involved
He was their father. Perhaps Jane and Peter should come
back, despite the risks involved. Anxiously, Janet stood there,
moving herself with a sudden resolve to tackle Jack straight
away. He was so irritable, so unapproachable, but at least she
could observe how busy he was before interrupting him.
As she slipped into the side hall and made for the back
door, she heard her mother-in-law call her. "Just a minute!"
she answered.
The sun had broken through, sucking moisture from the
damp garden. It was now unmistakably autumn. She rounded
the corner of the house, stepped round the rose bed, and
looked into her husband's study.
Shaken, she saw he leaned half over the table. His hands
were over his face, blood ran between his fingers and dripped
onto an open magazine on the table top. She was aware of
Stackpole sitting indifferently beside the electric fire.
She gave a small cry and ran round the house again, to be
met at the back door by Mrs. Westermark.
"Oh, I was justJanet, what is it?"
"Jack, Mother! He's had a stroke or something terrible!"
"But how do you know?"
"Quick, we must phone the hospital1 must go to him."
Mrs. Westermark took Janet's arm. "Perhaps we'd better
leave it to Mr. Stackpole, hadn't we. I'm afraid"
"Mother, we must do what we can. I know we're amateurs.
Please let me go."
"No. Janet, we'reit's their world I'm frightened. They'll
come if they want us." She was gripping Janet in her fright.
Their wild eyes stared momentarily at each other as if seeing
something else, and then Janet snatched herself away. "I must
go to him," she said.
She hurried down the hall and pushed open the study door.
Her husband stood now at the far end of the room by the
window, while blood streamed from his nose.
"Jack!" she exclaimed. As she ran towards him, .a blow
from the empty air struck her on the forehead, so that she
staggered aside, falling against a bookcase. A shower of
smaller volumes from the upper shelf fell on her and round
her. Exclaiming, Stackpole dropped his notebook and ran
round the table to her. Even as he went to her aid, he noted
the time from his watch: 10.24.

Aid after 10.24 and the tidiness of bed
Westermark's mother appeared in the doorway.
"Stay where you are," Stackpole shouted, "or there will be
more trouble! Janet, you see what you've done. Get out of
here, will you? Jack, I'm right with youGod knows what
you've felt, isolated without aid for three and a third min-
utes!" Angrily, he went across and stood within arm's length
of his patient. He threw his handkerchief down onto the table.
"Mr. Stackpole" Westermark's mother said tentatively
from the door, an arm round Janet's waist.
He looked back over his shoulder only long enough to say,
"Get towels! Phone the Research Hospital for an ambulance
and tell them to be here right away."
By midday, Westermark was tidily in bed upstairs and the
ambulance staff, who had treated him for what after all was
only nosebleed, had left. Stackpole, as he turned from closing
the front door, eyed the two women.
"I feel it is my duty to warn you," he said heavily, "that
another incident such as this might well prove fatal. This time
we escaped very lightly. If anything else of this sort happens,
I shall feel obliged to recommend to the board that Mr.
Westermark is moved back to the hospital."  .
Current way to define accidents
"He wouldn't want to go," Janet said. "Besides, you are
being absurd; it was entirely an accident. Now I wish to go
upstairs and see how he is."
"Just before you go, may I point out that what happened
was not an accidentor not as we generally define accidents,
since you saw the results of your interference through the
study window before you entered. Where you were to
blame"
"But that's absurd" both women began at once. Janet
went on to say, "I never would have rushed into the room as I
did had. I not seen through the window that he was in
trouble."
"What you saw was the result on your husband of your
later interference."
In something like a wail, Westermark's mother said, "I
don't understand any of this. What did Janet bump into
when she ran in?"
"She ran, Mrs. Westermark, into the spot where her hus-
band had been standing 3.3077 minutes earlier. Surely by now
you have grasped this elementary business of time inertia?"
'  When they both started speaking at once, he stared at them
until they stopped and looked at him. Then he said, "We had
better go into the living room. Speaking for myself, I would
like a drink."
He helped himself, and not until his hand was round a glass
of whisky did he say, "Now, without wishing to lecture to you
ladies, J think it is high time you both realised that you are
not living in the old safe world of classical mechanics ruled
over by a god invented by eighteenth-century enlightenment.
All that has happened here is perfectly rational, but if you
are  going to  pretend it  is  beyond  your  female  under-
standings"
"Mr. Stackpole," Janet said sharply. "Can you please keep
to the point without being insulting? Will you tell me why
what happened was not an accident? I understand now that
when I looked through the study window I saw my husband
suffering from a collision that to him had happened three and
something minutes before and to me would not happen for
another three and something minutes, but at that moment I
was so startled that I forgot"
"No, no, your figures are wrong. The total time lapse is
only 3.3077 minutes. When you saw your husband, he had
been hit half that time1.65385 minutesago, and there was
another 1.65385 minutes to go before you completed the.
action by bursting into the room and striking him."
"But she didn't strike him!" the older woman cried.
Firmly, Stackpole diverted his attention long enough to
reply.  "She struck him  at  10.24  Earthtime,  which  equals
10.20 plus about 36 seconds Mars or his time, which equals
9.59 or whatever Neptune time, which equals 156 and. a half
Sinus time. It's a big universe, Mrs. Westermark! You will
remain confused as long as you continue to confuse event
with time. May I suggest you sit down and have a drink?"
"Leaving aside the figures," Janet said, returning to the
attackloathsome opportunist the man was"how can you
say that what happened was no accident? You are not
claiming I injured my husband deliberately, I hope? What you
say suggests that I was powerless from the moment I saw him
through the window."
" 'Leaving aside the figures . . .' " he quoted. "That's where
your responsibility lies. What you saw through the window
was the result of your act; it was by then inevitable that you
should complete it, for it had already been completed."

Through the window, draughts of time blow
"I can't understand!" she clutched her forehead, gratefully
accepting a cigarette from her mother-in-law, while shrugging
off her consolatory 'Don't try to understand, dear!' "Suppos-
ing when I had seen Jack's nose bleeding, I had looked at my
watch and thought. It's 10.20 or whenever it was, and he may
be suffering from my interference, so I'd better not go in,' and
I hadn't gone in? Would his nose then miraculously have
healed?"
"Of course not. You take such a mechanistic view of the
universe. Cultivate a mental approach, try and live in your
own century! You could not think what you suggest because
that is not in your nature: just as it is not in your nature to
consult your watch intelligently, just as you always leave
aside the figures,' as you say. No, I'm not being personal; it's
all very feminine and appealing in a way. What I'm saying is
that if before you looked into the window you had been a
person to think, 'However I see my husband now, I must
recall he has the additional experience of the next 3.3077
minutes,' then you could have looked in and seen him
unharmed, and you would not have come bursting in as you
did."
She drew on her cigarette, baffled and hurt. "You're saying
I'm a danger to my own husband."
"You're saying that."
"God, howl hate men!" she exclaimed. "You're so bloody
logical, so bloody smug!"
He finished his whisky and set the glass down on a table
beside her so that he leant close. "You're upset just now," he
said.
"Of course I'm upset! What do you think?" She fought a
desire to cry or slap his face. She turned to Jack's mother,
who gently took her wrist.
"Why don't you go off straight away and stay with the
children for the weekend, darling? Come back when you feel
like it. Jack will be all right and I can look after himas
much as he wants looking after."
She glanced about the room.
"I will. I'll pack right away. They'll be glad to see me." As
she passed Stackpole on the way out, she said bitterly, "At
least they won't be worrying about the local time on Sirius!"
"They may," said Stackpole, imperturbably from the mid-
dle of the room, "have to one day."
All events, all children, all seasons












                               Brian W.Aldiss

                                  OUTSIDE

     They never went out of the house. The man whose name was Harley  used
to get up first. Sometimes he would take a stroll through the building  in
his sleeping suit - the temperature remained always mild, day  after  day.
Then he would rouse Calvin, the handsome, broad man who looked  as  if  he
could command a dozen talents and never actually used one. He made as much
company as Harley needed.
     Dapple, the girl with killing grey eyes and black hair, was  a  light
sleeper. The sound of the two men talking would wake her. She would get up
and go to rouse May; together they would go down and prepare a meal. While
they were doing that, the other two members of the household,  Jagger  and
Pief, would be rousing.
     That was how every "day" began: not with the inkling of anything like
dawn, but just when the  six  of  them  had  slept  themselves  back  into
wakefulness. They never exerted themselves during  the  day,  but  somehow
when they climbed back into their beds they slept soundly enough.
     The only excitement of the day occured when  they  first  opened  the
store. The store was a small room between the kitchen and the  blue  room.
In the far wall was set a wide shelf, and upon this shelf their  existence
depended. Here, all the supplies "arrived". They would lock  the  door  of
the bare room last thing, and when they  returned  in  the  morning  their
needs - food, linen, a new washing machine - would be awaiting them on the
shelf. That was just an accepted feature of their  existence:  they  never
questioned it among themselves.
     On this morning, Dapple and May were ready with the meal  before  the
four men came down. Dapple even had to go to the foot of the  wide  stairs
and call before Pief appeared; so that the opening of the store had to  be
postponed till after they had eaten, for although the opening  had  in  no
way become a ceremony, the women were nervous of going in  alone.  It  was
one of those things...
     "I hope to get some tobacco," Harley said as he  unlocked  the  door.
"I'm nearly out of it."
     They walked in and looked at the shelf. It was all but empty.
     "No food," observed May, hands on her aproned waist. "We shall be  on
short rations today."
     It was not the first time this had happened. Once - how long ago now?
- they kept little track of time - no food had appeared for three days and
the shelf had remained empty. They had accepted the shortage placidly.
     "We shall eat you before we starve, May," Pief said, and they laughed
briefly to acknowledge the joke, although Pief had cracked  it  last  time
too. Pief was an unobtrusive little man: not the sort one would notice  in
a crowd. His small jokes were his most precious possession.
     Two packets only lay on the ledge. One was Harley's tobacco, one  was
a pack of cards. Harley pocketed the one with a grunt  and  displayed  the
other, slipping the pack from its wrapping  and  fanning  it  towards  the
others.
     "Anyone play?" he asked.
     "Poker," Jagger said.
     "Canasta."
     "Gin rummy."
     "We'll play later," Calvin said. "It'll pass the time in the evening.
" The cards would be a challenge to them; they would have to sit  together
to play, round a table, facing each other.
     Nothing was in operation to separate them, but there seemed no strong
force to keep them together, once the tiny business of opening  the  store
was over. Jagger worked the vacuum cleanser down the hall, past the  front
door that did not open, and rode it up  the  stairs  to  clean  the  upper
landings; not that the place was dirty, but cleaning was something you did
anyway in the morning. The women sat with Pief desultorily discussing  how
to manage the rationing, but after that they lost contact with each  other
and drifted away on their own. Calvin and Harley had already strolled  off
in different directions.
     The house was a rambling affair. It had  few  windows,  and  such  as
there were did not open, were unbreakable and admitted no light.  Darkness
lay everywhere; illumination from an invisible source followed one's entry
into a room - but the black had to be entered before it faded. Every  room
was furnished, but with odd pieces  that  bore  little  relation  to  each
other, as if there was  no  purpose  for  the  room.  Rooms  equipped  for
purposeless beings have that air about them.
     No plan was discernable on first or second floor or in the long empty
attics. Only familiarity could reduce the maze-like quality  of  room  and
corridor. At least there was ample time for familiarity.
     Harley spent a long while walking about, hands  in  pockets.  At  one
point he met Dapple:  she  was  drooping  gracefully  over  a  sketchbook,
amateurishly copying a picture that hung on one of the walls -  a  picture
fo the room in which she sat. They exchanged  a  few  words,  then  Harley
moved on.
     Something lurked in the edge of his mind like a spider in the  corner
of its web. He stepped into what they called the piano room  and  then  he
realized what was worrying him. Almost furtively, he glanced round as  the
darkness slipped away, and then he looked at the big piano.  Some  strange
things had arrived on the shelf from time to time and had been distributed
over the house: one of them stood on the top of the piano now.
     It was a model, heavy and about two feet high, squat,  almost  round,
with a sharp nose and four buttressed vanes. Harley knew what it  was.  It
was a ground-to-space ship, a model of the burly ferries that lumbered  up
to the spaceship proper.
     That had caused them more unsettlement than when the piano itself had
appeared in the store. Keeping  his  eyes  on  the  model,  Harley  seated
himself at the piano stool and sat tensely, trying to draw something  from
the rear of his mind ... something connected with spaceships.
     Whatever it was, it was unpleasant, and it dodged backwards  whenever
he thought he had laid a mental finger on it. So it always eluded him.  If
only he could discuss it with someone, it  might  be  teased  out  of  its
hiding place. Unpleasant: menacing, yet with a promise  entangled  in  the
menace.
     If he could get at it, meet it boldly face to face, he could  do  ...
something definite. And until he faced it, he could not even say what  the
something definite was he wanted to do.
     A footfall behind him. Without turning, Harley deftly pushed  up  the
piano lid and ran a finger along the keys. Only  then  did  he  look  back
carelessly over his  shoulder.  Calvin  stood  there,  hands  in  pockets,
looking solid and comfortable.
     "Saw the light in here," he said easily. "I thought I'd drop in as  I
was passing."
     "I was thinking I would play the piano awhile," Harley answered  with
a smile. The thing was not discussable, even with a near acquaintance like
Calvin because ... because of the nature of the thing ... because one  had
to behave like a normal, unworried human being. That at  least  was  sound
and clear and gave him comfort: behave like a normal human being.
     Reassured, he pulled a gentle tumble of music from the  keyboard.  He
played well. They all played well, Dapple, May, Pief ... as soon  as  they
had assembled the piano, they had all played well.  Was  that  -  natural?
Harley shot a  glance  at  Calvin.  The  stocky  man  leaned  against  the
instrument, back to that disconcerting model, not a  care  in  the  world.
Nothing showed on his face but an expression  of  bland  amiability.  They
were all amiable, never quarrelling together.
     The six of them gathered for a scanty lunch, their talk was trite and
cheerful, and the afternoon followed on the same pattern as  the  morning,
as all the other mornings: secure, comfortable, aimless.  Only  to  Harley
did the pattern seem slightly out of focus; he  now  had  a  clue  to  the
problem. It was small enough, but in the dead calm of their  days  it  was
large enough.
     May had dropped the clue. When she helped herself  to  jelly,  Jagger
laughingly accused her of taking more than her  fair  share.  Dapple,  who
always defended May, said: "She's taken less than you, Jagger."
     "No," May corrected, "I think I have more than anyone else. I took it
for an interior motive."
     It was the kind of pun anyone made at times. But  Harley  carried  it
away to consider. He paced  round  one  of  the  silent  rooms.  Interior,
ulterior motives... Did the others here feel the  disquiet  he  felt?  Had
they a reason for concealing that disquiet? And another question:
     Where was "here"?
     He shut that one down sharply.
     Deal with one thing at a time. Grope your way gently  to  the  abyss.
Categorize your knowledge.
     One: Earth was getting slightly the worst of a cold war with Nitity.
     Two: the Nititians possessed the alarming ability of  being  able  to
assume the identical appearance of their enemies.
     Three: by this means they could permeate human society.
     Four: Earth was unable to view the Nititian civilization from inside.
     Inside ... a wave of claustrophobia swept over Harley as he  realized
that these cardinal facts he knew bore no relation to  this  little  world
inside. They came, by what means he did not know, from outside,  the  vast
abstraction that one of them had ever seen. He had a mental picture  of  a
starry void in which men and monsters swam or battled,  and  then  swiftly
erased it. Such ideas did not conform with  the  quiet  behaviour  of  his
companions; if they never spoke about outside, did they think about it?
     Uneasily, Harley moved about the room; the parquet floor  echoed  the
indecision of his footsteps. He had walked into the billiards room. Now he
prodded the balls across the green cloth with one  finger,  preyed  on  by
conflicting intentions. The white spheres touched and rolled  apart.  That
was how the two halves of his mind worked. Irreconcilables: he should stay
here and conform; he should - not stay here (remembering no time  when  he
was not here, Harley could frame the second  idea  no  more  clearly  than
that). Another point of pain was that "here" and "not here" seemed  to  be
not two halves of a homogeneous whole, but two dissonances.
     The ivory slid wearily into a pocket. He decided. He would not  sleep
in his room tonight.
     They came from the various parts of the  house  to  share  a  bedtime
drink. By tacit consent the cards had  been  postponed  until  some  other
time: there was, after all, so much other time.
     They talked about the slight nothings that comprised their  day,  the
model of one of the rooms that Calvin was building and May furnishing, the
faulty light in the upper corridor which came on  too  slowly.  They  were
subdued. It was time once more to sleep, and in that sleep who  knew  what
dreams might come? But they WOULD sleep. Harley knew -  wondering  if  the
others also knew - that with the darkness which descended as they  climbed
into bed would come an undeniable command to sleep.
     He stood tensely just inside his bedroom door, intensely aware of the
unorthodoxy of his behaviour. His head hammered painfully and he pressed a
cold hand against his temple. He heard the others go one by one  to  their
separate rooms. Pief called good night to  him;  Harley  replied.  Silence
fell.
     Now!
     As he stepped nervously into the passage, the light came on. Yes,  it
was slow - reluctant. His heart pumped. He was committed. He did not  know
what he was going to do or what was going to happen, but he was committed.
The compulsion to sleep had been avoided. Now he had to hide, and wait.
     It is not easy to hide when a light signal follows wherever  you  go.
But by entering a recess which led to a disused  room,  opening  the  door
slightly and crouching in the doorway, Harley  found  the  faulty  landing
light dimmed off and left him in the dark.
     He was neither happy nor comfortable. His brain seethed in a conflict
he hardly understood. He was alarmed to think he had broken the rules  and
frightened of the creaking darkness about him. But the  suspense  did  not
last for long.
     The corridor light came back on.  Jagger  was  leaving  his  bedroom,
taking no precaution to be silent. The door swung loudly shut behind  him.
Harley caught a glimpse of his face before he  turned  and  made  for  the
stairs: he looked noncommittal but serene - like a man going off duty.  He
went downstairs in bouncy, jaunty fashion.
     Jagger should have been in bed asleep.  A  law  of  nature  had  been
defied.
     Unhesitatingly, Harley followed. He had been prepared  for  something
and something had  happened,  but  his  flesh  crawled  with  fright.  The
light-headed notion came to him that he might disintegrate with fear.  All
the same, he kept doggedly down the stairs, feet noiseless  on  the  heavy
carpet.
     Jagger had rounded a corner. He was whistling  quietly  as  he  went.
Harley heard him unlock a door. That would be the store - no  other  doors
were locked. The whistling faded.
     The store was open. No sound came  from  within.  Cautiously,  Harley
peered inside. The  far  wall  had  swung  open  about  a  central  pivot,
revealing a passage beyond. For minutes Harley  could  not  move,  staring
fixedly at this breach.
     Finally, and with a sense  of  suffocation,  he  entered  the  store.
Jagger had gone through there. Harley also went through. Somewhere he  did
not know, somewhere whose existence he had not guessed .... Somewhere that
wasn't the house.... The passage was short and had two doors, one  at  the
end rather like a cage door (Harley did not recognize a lift when  he  saw
one), one in the side, narrow and with a window.
     The window was transparent. Harley looked through it  and  then  fell
back choking. Dizziness swept in and shook him by the throat.
     Stars shone outside.
     With an effort, he mastered himself and made his way  back  upstairs,
lurching against the banisters. They had all been living under  a  ghastly
misapprehension....
     He barged into Calvin's room and the light lit. A faint, sweet  smell
was in the air, and Calvin lay on his broad back, fast asleep.
     "Calvin! Wake up!" Harley shouted.
     The sleeper never  moved.  Harley  was  suddenly  aware  of  his  own
loneliness and the eerie feel of the great house about him.  Bending  over
the bed, he shook Calvin violently by the shoulders and slapped his face.
     Calvin groaned and opened one eye.
     "Wake up, man," Harley said. "Something terrible's going on here."
     The other propped himself on one elbow, communicated fear rousing him
thoroughly.
     "Jagger's LEFT THE HOUSE," Harley told him. " There's a way  outside.
We're - we've got to  find  out  what  we  are."  His  voice  rose  to  an
hysterical pitch. He was shaking Calvin again. "We must  find  out  what's
wrong here. Either we are victims of some ghastly experiment  -  or  we're
all monsters!"
     And as he spoke, before  his  staring  eyes,  beneath  his  clutching
hands, Calvin began to wrinkle up and fold  and  blur,  his  eyes  running
together and his great  torso  contracting.  Something  else  -  something
lively and alive - was forming in his place.
     Harley only stopped yelling  when,  having  plunged  downstairs,  the
sight of the stars through the small window steadied him. He  had  to  get
out, wherever "out" was.
     He pulled the small door open and stood in fresh night air.
     Harley's eye was not accustomed to judging  distances.  It  took  him
some while to realize the nature of  his  surroundings,  to  realize  that
mountains stood distantly against the starlit sky,  and  that  he  himself
stood on a platform twelve feet above  the  ground.  Some  distance  away,
lights gleamed, throwing bright rectangles onto an expanse of tarmac.
     There was a steel ladder at the edge of the platform. Biting his lip,
Harley approached it and climbed clumsily down. He was  shaking  violently
with cold and fear. When his feet touched solid ground, he began  to  run.
Once he looked back: the house perched on its platform like a frog hunched
on top of a rat trap.
     He stopped abruptly then, in almost dark. Abhorrence jerked up inside
him like retching. The high, crackling stars and the pale serration of the
mountains began to  spin,  and  he  clenched  his  fists  to  hold  on  to
consciousness. That house, whatever it was, was the embodiment of all  the
coldness in his mind. Harley said to himself: "Whatever has been  done  to
me, I've been cheated. Someone has robbed me of something so thoroughly  I
don't even know what it is. It's been a cheat, a cheat...." And he  choked
on the idea of those years that had been pilfered from  him.  No  thought:
thought scorched the synapses and ran like acid through the brain.  Action
only! His leg muscles jerked into movement again.
     Buildings loomed about him. He simply ran for the nearest  light  and
burst into the nearest door. Then he pulled up sharp, panting and blinking
the harsh illumination out of his pupils.
     The walls of the room were covered with graphs  and  charts.  In  the
centre of the room was a wide desk with vision-screen and  loudspeaker  on
it. It was a business-like room with overloaded ashtrays and  a  state  of
ordered untidiness. A thin man sat alertly at the  desk;  he  had  a  thin
mouth.
     Four other men stood  in  the  room,  all  were  armed,  none  seemed
surprised to see him. The man at the desk wore a  neat  suit;  the  others
were in uniform.
     Harley leant on the door-jamb and sobbed. He could find no  words  to
say.
     "It has taken you four years to get out of there," the thin man said.
He had a thin voice.
     "Come and look at this," he said, indicating the screen  before  him.
With an effort, Harley complied; his legs worked like rickety crutches.
     On the screen, clear and real, was Calvin's bedroom. The  outer  wall
gaped, and through it two uniformed men were dragging a strange  creature,
a wiry, mechanical-looking being that had once been called Calvin.
     "Calvin was a Nititian," Harley observed dully. He was conscious of a
sort of stupid surprise at his own observation.
     The thin man nodded approvingly.
     "Enemy infiltrations constituted quite a threat," he  said.  "Nowhere
on Earth was safe from them: they can kill a man, dispose of him and  turn
into exact replicas of him. Makes things difficult.... We lost  a  lot  of
state secrets that way. But Nititian ships have to land here to  disembark
the Non-Men and to pick them up again after their work is  done.  That  is
the weak link in their chain.
     "We intercepted one such ship-load and bagged them singly after  they
had assumed humanoid form. We subjected them to artificial amnesia and put
small groups of them into different environments for study.  This  is  the
Army Institute for Investigation of Non-Men, by the way.  We've  learnt  a
lot ... quite enough to combat the menace.... Your group, of  course,  was
one such."
     Harley asked in a gritty voice: "Why did you put me in with them?"
     The thin man rattled a ruler between his teeth before answering.
     "Each group has to have a human observer in their very midst, despite
all the scanning devices that watch from outside. You see, a Nititian uses
a deal of energy maintaining a human form; once in that shape, he is  kept
in it by self-hypnosis which only breaks down  in  times  of  stress,  the
amount of stress bearable varying from one individual to another. A  human
on the spot can sense such stresses.... It's a tiring job for him; we  get
doubles always to work day on, day off -"
     "But I've always been there -"
     "Of your group," the thin man cut in, "the human was Jagger,  or  two
men alternating as Jagger. You caught one of them going off duty."
     "That doesn't make sense," Harley shouted. "You're trying to say that
I -"
     He choked on the words. They were no longer  pronounceable.  He  felt
his outer form flowing away like sand as from the other side of  the  desk
revolver barrels were levelled at him.
     "Your stress level is  remarkably  high,"  continued  the  thin  man,
turning his gaze away from the spectacle. "But where you fail is where you
all fail. Like Earth's insects which imitate vegetables,  your  cleverness
cripples you. You can only be carbon copies. Because Jagger did nothing in
the house, all the rest of you instinctively followed suit. You didn't get
bored - you didn't even try to make passes at Dapple  -  as  personable  a
Non-man as I ever saw. Even the  model  spaceship  jerked  no  appreciable
reaction out of you."
     Brushing his suit down, he rose before the skeletal being  which  now
cowered in a corner.
     "The inhumanity inside will always give you away,"  he  said  evenly.
"However human you are outside."













                                       Super-Toys Last All Summer Long

                                                       by Brian Aldiss

     -----------------------------------------------------------------
     Aldiss, in a January 1997 interview with Wired Magazine, says
     that in the early 90's he Stanley Kubrick made two collaborative
     attempts to turn his story "Supertoys..." into a script. "I can't
     tell you how many directions we went. My favorite was when David
     and Teddy got exiled to Tin City, a place where the old model
     robots, like old cars, were living out their days. Stanley
     definitely had the ambition to make another big science fiction
     movie, but in the end, we didn't get anywhere. Stanley called in
     Arthur Clarke and asked him to provide a scenario, but he didn't
     like that, either....

     "I have a feeling, having worked with him, that he hasn't got the
     dashing confidence of youth," says Aldiss. "But of course, with
     age, you acquire a different sort of confidence." The director's
     creative vision, meanwhile, is clearer than ever. "Stanley
     embraces android technology," Aldiss notes, "and thinks it might
     eventually take over -- and be an improvement over the human
     race."

     The original drafts made by Aldiss and Kubrick became the
     starting point for his as-yet unfinished project A.I. Following
     the departure of Aldiss, Kubrick subsequently worked with authors
     Ian Watson and Bob Shaw. The film is currently under
     pre-production in London; few further details are currently
     known.

     "Supertoys..." appeared first in Harper's Bazaar, and is ©1969
     Brian Aldiss, all rights reserved
     -----------------------------------------------------------------

     In Mrs. Swinton's garden, it was always summer. The lovely almond
     trees stood about it in perpetual leaf. Monica Swinton plucked a
     saffron-colored rose and showed it to David.

     "Isn't it lovely?" she said.

     David looked up at her and grinned without replying. Seizing the
     flower, he ran with it across the lawn and disappeared behind the
     kennel where the mowervator crouched, ready to cut or sweep or
     roll when the moment dictated. She stood alone on her impeccable
     plastic gravel path.

     She had tried to love him.

     When she made up her mind to follow the boy, she found him in the
     courtyard floating the rose in his paddling pool. He stood in the
     pool engrossed, still wearing his sandals.

     "David, darling, do you have to be so awful? Come in at once and
     change your shoes and socks."

     He went with her without protest into the house, his dark head
     bobbing at the level of her waist. At the age of three, he showed
     no fear of the ultrasonic dryer in the kitchen. But before his
     mother could reach for a pair of slippers, he wriggled away and
     was gone into the silence of the house.

     He would probably be looking for Teddy.

     Monica Swinton, twenty-nine, of graceful shape and lambent eye,
     went and sat in her living room, arranging her limbs with taste.
     She began by sitting and thinking; soon she was just sitting.
     Time waited on her shoulder with the maniac slowth it reserves
     for children, the insane, and wives whose husbands are away
     improving the world. Almost by reflex, she reached out and
     changed the wavelength of her windows. The garden faded; in its
     place, the city center rose by her left hand, full of crowding
     people, blowboats, and buildings (but she kept the sound down).
     She remained alone. An overcrowded world is the ideal place in
     which to be lonely.

                                     *

     The directors of Synthank were eating an enormous luncheon to
     celebrate the launching of their new product. Some of them wore
     the plastic face-masks popular at the time. All were elegantly
     slender, despite the rich food and drink they were putting away.
     Their wives were elegantly slender, despite the food and drink
     they too were putting away. An earlier and less sophisticated
     generation would have regarded them as beautiful people, apart
     from their eyes.

     Henry Swinton, Managing Director of Synthank, was about to make a
     speech.

     "I'm sorry your wife couldn't be with us to hear you," his
     neighbor said.

     "Monica prefers to stay at home thinking beautiful thoughts,"
     said Swinton, maintaining a smile.

     "One would expect such a beautiful woman to have beautiful
     thoughts," said the neighbor.

     Take your mind off my wife, you bastard, thought Swinton, still
     smiling.

     He rose to make his speech amid applause.

     After a couple of jokes, he said, "Today marks a real
     breakthrough for the company. It is now almost ten years since we
     put our first synthetic life-forms on the world market. You all
     know what a success they have been, particularly the miniature
     dinosaurs. But none of them had intelligence.

     "It seems like a paradox that in this day and age we can create
     life but not intelligence. Our first selling line, the Crosswell
     Tape, sells best of all, and is the most stupid of all." Everyone
     laughed.

     "Though three-quarters of the overcrowded world are starving, we
     are lucky here to have more than enough, thanks to population
     control. Obesity's our problem, not malnutrition. I guess there's
     nobody round this table who doesn't have a Crosswell working for
     him in the small intestine, a perfectly safe parasite tape-worm
     that enables its host to eat up to fifty percent more food and
     still keep his or her figure. Right?" General nods of agreement.

     "Our miniature dinosaurs are almost equally stupid. Today, we
     launch an intelligent synthetic life-form -- a full-size
     serving-man.

     "Not only does he have intelligence, he has a controlled amount
     of intelligence. We believe people would be afraid of a being
     with a human brain. Our serving-man has a small computer in his
     cranium.

     "There have been mechanicals on the market with mini-computers
     for brains -- plastic things without life, super-toys -- but we
     have at last found a way to link computer circuitry with
     synthetic flesh."

                                     *

     David sat by the long window of his nursery, wrestling with paper
     and pencil. Finally, he stopped writing and began to roll the
     pencil up and down the slope of the desk-lid.

     "Teddy!" he said.

     Teddy lay on the bed against the wall, under a book with moving
     pictures and a giant plastic soldier. The speech-pattern of his
     master's voice activated him and he sat up.

     "Teddy, I can't think what to say!"

     Climbing off the bed, the bear walked stiffly over to cling to
     the boy's leg. David lifted him and set him on the desk.

     "What have you said so far?"

     "I've said --" He picked up his letter and stared hard at it.
     "I've said, 'Dear Mummy, I hope you're well just now. I love
     you....'"

     There was a long silence, until the bear said, "That sounds fine.
     Go downstairs and give it to her."

     Another long silence.

     "It isn't quite right. She won't understand."

     Inside the bear, a small computer worked through its program of
     possibilities. "Why not do it again in crayon?"

     When David did not answer, the bear repeated his suggestion. "Why
     not do it again in crayon?"

     David was staring out of the window. "Teddy, you know what I was
     thinking? How do you tell what are real things from what aren't
     real things?"

     The bear shuffled its alternatives. "Real things are good."

     "I wonder if time is good. I don't think Mummy likes time very
     much. The other day, lots of days ago, she said that time went by
     her. Is time real, Teddy?"

     "Clocks tell the time. Clocks are real. Mummy has clocks so she
     must like them. She has a clock on her wrist next to her dial."

     David started to draw a jumbo jet on the back of his letter. "You
     and I are real, Teddy, aren't we?"

     The bear's eyes regarded the boy unflinchingly. "You and I are
     real David." It specialized in comfort.

                                     *

     Monica walked slowly about the house. It was almost time for the
     afternoon post to come over the wire. She punched the Post Office
     number on the dial on her wrist, but nothing came through. A few
     minutes more.

     She could take up her painting. Or she could dial her friends. Or
     she could wait till Henry came home. Or she could go up and play
     with David....

     She walked out into the hall and to the bottom of the stairs.

     "David!"

     No answer. She called again and a third time.

     "Teddy!" she called, in sharper tones.

     "Yes, Mummy!" After a moment's pause, Teddy's head of golden fur
     appeared at the top of the stairs.

     "Is David in his room,Teddy?"

     "David went into the garden, Mummy."

     "Come down here, Teddy!"

     She stood impassively, watching the little furry figure as it
     climbed down from step to step on its stubby limbs. When it
     reached the bottom, she picked it up and carried it into the
     living room. It lay unmoving in her arms, staring up at her. She
     could feel just the slightest vibration from its motor.

     "Stand there, Teddy. I want to talk to you." She set him down on
     a tabletop, and he stood as she requested, arms set forward and
     open in the eternal gesture of embrace.

     "Teddy, did David tell you to tell me he had gone into the
     garden?"

     The circuits of the bear's brain were too simple for artifice.
     "Yes, Mummy."

     "So you lied to me."

     "Yes. Mummy."

     "Stop calling me Mummy! Why is David avoiding me? He's not afraid
     of me, is he?"

     "No. He loves you."

     "Why can't we communicate?"

     "David's upstairs."

     The answer stopped her dead. Why waste time talking to this
     machine? Why not simply go upstairs and scoop David into her arms
     and talk to him, as a loving mother should to a loving son? She
     heard the sheer weight of silence in the house, with a different
     quality of silence pouring out of every room. On the upper
     landing, something was moving very silently -- David, trying to
     hide away from her....

                                     *

     He was nearing the end of his speech now. The guests were
     attentive; so was the Press, lining two walls of the banqueting
     chamber, recording Henry's words and occasionally photographing
     him.

     "Our serving-man will be, in many senses, a product of the
     computer. Without computers, we could never have worked through
     the sophisticated biochemics that go into synthetic flesh. The
     serving-man will also be an extension of the computer--for he
     will contain a computer in his own head, a microminiaturized
     computer capable of dealing with almost any situation he may
     encounter in the home. With reservations, of course." Laughter at
     this; many of those present knew the heated debate that had
     engulfed the Synthank boardroom before the decision had finally
     been taken to leave the serving-man neuter under his flawless
     uniform.

     "Amid all the triumphs of our civilization -- yes, and amid the
     crushing problems of overpopulation too -- it is sad to reflect
     how many millions of people suffer from increasing loneliness and
     isolation. Our serving-man will be a boon to them: he will always
     answer, and the most vapid conversation cannot bore him.

     "For the future, we plan more models, male and female--some of
     them without the limitations of this first one, I promise you! --
     of more advanced design, true bio-electronic beings.

     "Not only will they possess their own computer, capable of
     individual programming; they will be linked to the World Data
     Network. Thus everyone will be able to enjoy the equivalent of an
     Einstein in their own homes. Personal isolation will then be
     banished forever!"

     He sat down to enthusiastic applause. Even the synthetic
     serving-man, sitting at the table dressed in an unostentatious
     suit, applauded with gusto.

                                     *

     Dragging his satchel, David crept round the side of the house. He
     climbed on to the ornamental seat under the living-room window
     and peeped cautiously in.

     His mother stood in the middle of the room. Her face was blank,
     its lack of expression scared him. He watched fascinated. He did
     not move; she did not move. Time might have stopped, as it had
     stopped in the garden.

     At last she turned and left the room. After waiting a moment,
     David tapped on the window. Teddy looked round, saw him, tumbled
     off the table, and came over to the window. Fumbling with his
     paws, he eventually got it open.

     They looked at each other.

     "I'm no good, Teddy. Let's run away!"

     "You're a very good boy. Your Mummy loves you."

     Slowly, he shook his head. "If she loved me, then why can't I
     talk to her?"

     "You're being silly, David. Mummy's lonely. That's why she had
     you."

     "She's got Daddy. I've got nobody 'cept you, and I'm lonely."

     Teddy gave him a friendly cuff over the head. "If you feel so
     bad, you'd better go to the psychiatrist again."

     "I hate that old psychiatrist -- he makes me feel I'm not real."
     He started to run across the lawn. The bear toppled out of the
     window and followed as fast as its stubby legs would allow.

     Monica Swinton was up in the nursery. She called to her son once
     and then stood there, undecided. All was silent.

     Crayons lay on his desk. Obeying a sudden impulse, she went over
     to the desk and opened it. Dozens of pieces of paper lay inside.
     Many of them were written in crayon in David's clumsy writing,
     with each letter picked out in a color different from the letter
     preceding it. None of the messages was finished.

     "My dear Mummy, How are you really, do you love me as much --"

     "Dear Mummy, I love you and Daddy and the sun is shining --"

     "Dear dear Mummy, Teddy's helping me write to you. I love you and
     Teddy --"

     "Darling Mummy, I'm your one and only son and I love you so much
     that some times --"

     "Dear Mummy, you're really my Mummy and I hate Teddy --"

     "Darling Mummy, guess how much I love --"

     "Dear Mummy, I'm your little boy not Teddy and I love you but
     Teddy --"

     "Dear Mummy, this is a letter to you just to say how much how
     ever so much --"

     Monica dropped the pieces of paper and burst out crying. In their
     gay inaccurate colors, the letters fanned out and settled on the
     floor.

                                     *

     Henry Swinton caught the express home in high spirits, and
     occasionally said a word to the synthetic serving-man he was
     taking home with him. The serving-man answered politely and
     punctually, although his answers were not always entirely
     relevant by human standards.

     The Swintons lived in one of the ritziest city-blocks, half a
     kilometer above the ground. Embedded in other apartments, their
     apartment had no windows to the outside; nobody wanted to see the
     overcrowded external world. Henry unlocked the door with his
     retina pattern-scanner and walked in, followed by the
     serving-man.

     At once, Henry was surrounded by the friendly illusion of gardens
     set in eternal summer. It was amazing what Whologram could do to
     create huge mirages in small spaces. Behind its roses and
     wisteria stood their house; the deception was complete: a
     Georgian mansion appeared to welcome him.

     "How do you like it?" he asked the serving-man.

     "Roses occasionally suffer from black spot."

     "These roses are guaranteed free from any imperfections."

     "It is always advisable to purchase goods with guarantees, even
     if they cost slightly more."

     "Thanks for the information," Henry said dryly. Synthetic
     lifeforms were less than ten years old, the old android
     mechanicals less than sixteen; the faults of their systems were
     still being ironed out, year by year.

     He opened the door and called to Monica.

     She came out of the sitting-room immediately and flung her arms
     round him, kissing him ardently on cheek and lips. Henry was
     amazed.

     Pulling back to look at her face, he saw how she seemed to
     generate light and beauty. It was months since he had seen her so
     excited. Instinctively, he clasped her tighter.

     "Darling, what's happened?"

     "Henry, Henry -- oh, my darling, I was in despair ... but I've
     just dialed the afternoon post and -- you'll never believe it!
     Oh, it's wonderful!"

     "For heaven's sake, woman, what's wonderful?"

     He caught a glimpse of the heading on the photostat in her hand,
     still moist from the wall-receiver: Ministry of Population. He
     felt the color drain from his face in sudden shock and hope.

     "Monica ... oh ... Don't tell me our number's come up!"

     "Yes, my darling, yes, we've won this week's parenthood lottery!
     We can go ahead and conceive a child at once!"

     He let out a yell of joy. They danced round the room. Pressure of
     population was such that reproduction had to be strict,
     controlled. Childbirth required government permission. For this
     moment, they had waited four years. Incoherently they cried their
     delight.

     They paused at last, gasping and stood in the middle of the room
     to laugh at each other's happiness. When she had come down from
     the nursery, Monica had de-opaqued the windows so that they now
     revealed the vista of garden beyond. Artificial sunlight was
     growing long and golden across the lawn -- and David and Teddy
     were staring through the window at them.

     Seeing their faces, Henry and his wife grew serious.

     "What do we do about them?" Henry asked.

     "Teddy's no trouble. He works well."

     "Is David malfunctioning?"

     "His verbal communication center is still giving trouble. I think
     he'll have to go back to the factory again."

     "Okay. We'll see how he does before the baby's born. Which
     reminds me--I have a surprise for you: help just when help is
     needed! Come into the hall and see what I've got."

     As the two adults disappeared from the room, boy and bear sat
     down beneath the standard roses.

     "Teddy -- I suppose Mummy and Daddy are real, aren't they?"

     Teddy said, "You ask such silly questions, David. Nobody knows
     what real really means. Let's go indoors."

     "First I'm going to have another rose!" Plucking a bright pink
     flower, he carried it with him into the house. It could lie on
     the pillow as he went to sleep. Its beauty and softness reminded
     him of Mummy.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

 






Here is the story which fought Zelazny's "He Who Shapes" to a
standstill for the novella award. It is set not in the far future or
even in the familiar present, but in that curiously bright and
timeless late-Victorian world, glimpsed as if through the wrong
end of a telescope, in which the wonderful events of H. 0.
Wells' stories take place.
The author of this brilliant pastiche was born in the mid-
twenties into the East Anglia depicted as background to "The
Saliva Tree," where many farms still had their own little
electricity  generators.  He has  been Literary  Editor  of the
Oxford Mail for eight years. He made a happy second marriage
in  1965,  now  lives  in  a  beautiful old  sixteenth-century
thatched house in Oxfordshire, "seeing slightly crazy visions."

  Nebula Award, Best Novella 1965 (tied with "He Who Shapes," by Roger Zelazny)
THE SALIVA TREE

Brian W. Aldiss
There is neither speech nor language: but their voices are heard
among them. Psalm xix.
"You know, I'm really much exercised about the Fourth
Dimension," said the fair-haired young man, with a suitable
earnestness in his voice.
"Um," said his companion, staring up at the night sky.
"It seems very much in evidence these days. Do you not
think you catch a glimpse of it in the drawings of Aubrey
Beardsley?"
"Um," said his companion.
They stood together on a low rise to the east of the sleepy
East Anglian town of Cottersall, watching the stars, shivering a
little in the chill February air. They are both young men in their
early twenties. The one who is occupied with the Fourth
Dimension is called Bruce Fox; be is tall and fair, and works as
junior clerk in the Norwich firm of lawyers, Prendergast and
Tout. The other, who has so far vouchsafed us only an urn or
two, although he is to figure largely as the hero of our account,
is by name Gregory Rolles. He is tall and dark, with gray eyes
set in his handsome and intelligent face. He and Fox have
sworn to Think Large, thus distinguishing themselves, at least
in their own minds, from all the rest of the occupants of
Cottersall in these last years of the nineteenth century.
"There's another!" exclaimed Gregory, breaking at last from
the realm of monosyllables. He pointed a gloved finger up at
the constellation of Auriga the Charioteer. A meteor streaked
across the sky like a runaway flake of the Milky Way, and died
in mid-air.
"Beautiful!" they said together.
"It's funny," Fox said, prefacing his words with an oft-used
phrase, "the stars and men's minds are so linked together and
always have been, even in the centuries of ignorance before
Charles Darwin. They always seem to play an ill-defined role in
man's affairs. They help me think large too, don't they you,
Greg?"
"You know what I think1 think that some of those stars may
be occupied. By people, I mean." He breathed heavily,
overcome by what he was saying. "People whoperhaps they
are better than us, live in a just society, wonderful people . . ."
"I know, socialists to a man!" Fox exclaimed. This was one
point on which he did not share his friend's advanced thinking.
He had listened to Mr. Tout talking in the office, and thought he
knew better than his rich friend how these socialists, of which
one heard so much these days, were undermining society.
"Stars full of socialists!"
"Better than stars full of Christians! Why, if the stars were
full of Christians, no doubt they would already have sent
missionaries down here to preach their Gospel."
"I wonder if there ever will  be planetary journeys as
predicted by Nunsowe Greene and Monsieur Jules Verne"
Fox said, when the appearance of a fresh meteor stopped him
in mid-sentence.
Like the last, this meteor seemed to come from the general
direction of Auriga. It traveled slowly, and it glowed red, and it
sailed grandly towards them. They both exclaimed at once, arid
gripped each other by the arm. The magnificent spark burned
in the sky, larger now, so that its red aura appeared to encase a
brighter orange glow. It passed overhead (afterwards, they
argued whether it had not made a slight noise as it passed),
and disappeared below a clump of willow. They knew it had
been near. For an instant, the land had shone with its light.
Gregory was the first to speak.
"Bruce, Bruce, did you see that? That was no ordinary
fireball!"
"It was so big! What was it?"
"Perhaps our heavenly visitor has come at last!"
"Hey, Greg, it must have landed by your friend's farmthe
Grendon placemustn't it?"
"You're right! I must pay old Mr. Grendon a visit tomorrow
and see if he or his family saw anything of this."
They talked excitedly, stamping their feet as they exercised
their  lungs.  Their  conversation  was  the  conversation  of
optimistic young men, and included much speculative matter
that began "Wouldn't it be wonderful if" or "Just supposing"
Then they stopped and laughed at their own absurd beliefs.
Fox said slyly, "So you'll be seeing all the Grendon family
tomorrow?"
"It seems probable, unless that red-hot planetary ship has
already borne them off to a better world."
"Tell us true, Gregyou really go to see that pretty Nancy
Grendon, don't you?"
Gregory struck his friend playfully on the shoulder.
"No need for your jealousy, Bruce! I go to see the father, not
the  daughter.  Though  the  one  is  female,  the  other is
progressive, and that must interest me more just yet. Nancy has
beauty, true, but her fatherah, her father has electricity!"
Laughing, they cheerfully shook hands and parted for the
night.
On Grendon's farm, things were a deal less tranquil, as
Gregory was to discover.
Gregory Rolles rose before seven next morning as was his
custom. It was while he was lighting his gas mantle, and
wishing Mr. Fenn (the baker in whose house Gregory lodged)
would install electricity, that a swift train of thought led him to
reflect again on the phenomenal thing in the previous night's
sky. He let his mind wander luxuriously over all the possibilities
that the "meteor" illuminated. He decided that he would ride
out to see Mr. Grendon within the hour.
He was lucky in being able, at this stage in his life, to please
himself largely as to how his days were spent, for his father was
a person of some substance. Edward Rolles had had the
fortune, at the time of the Crimean War, to meet Escoffier, and
with some help from the great chef had brought onto the
market a baking powder, "Eugenol," that, being slightly more
palatable and less deleterious to the human system than its
rivals, had achieved great commercial success. As a result,
Gregory had attended one of the Cambridge colleges.
Now, having gained a degree, he was poised on the verge of
a career. But which career? He had acquiredmore as a result of
his intercourse with other students than with those officially
deputed to instruct himsome understanding of the sciences;
his essays had been praised and some of his poetry published,
so that he inclined toward literature; and an uneasy sense that
life for everyone outside the privileged classes contained too
large a proportion of misery led him to think seriously of a
political career. In Divinity, too, he was well-grounded; but at
least the idea of Holy Orders did not tempt him.
While he wrestled with his future, he undertook to live away
from home, since his relations with his father were never
smooth. By rusticating himself in the heart of East Anglia, he
hoped to gather material for a volume tentatively entitled
"Wanderings with a Socialist Naturalist," which would assuage
all sides of his ambitions. Nancy Grendon, who had a pretty
hand with a pencil, might even execute a little emblem for the
title page . . . Perhaps he might be permitted to dedicate it to
his author friend, Mr. Herbert George Wells. . .
He dressed himself warmly, for the morning was cold as well
as dull, and went down to the baker's stables. When he had
saddled his mare, Daisy, he swung himself up and set out along
a road that the horse knew well.
The land rose slightly towards the farm, the area about the
house forming something of a little island amid marshy ground
and irregular stretches of water that gave back to the sky its
own dun tone. The gate over the little bridge was, as always,
open wide; Daisy picked her way through the mud to the
stables, where Gregory left her to champ oats contentedly. Cuff
and her pup, Lardie, barked loudly about Gregory's heels as
usual, and he patted their heads on his way over to the house.
Nancy came hurrying out to meet him before he got to the
front door.
"We had some excitement last night, Gregory," she said. He
noted with pleasure she had at last brought herself to use .his
first name.
"Something bright and glaring!" she said. "I was retiring,
when this noise come and then this light, and I rush to look out
through the curtains, and there's this here great thing like an
egg sinking into our pond." In her speech, and particularly
when she was excited, she carried the lilting accent of Norfolk.
"The meteor!" Gregory exclaimed. "Bruce Fox and I were
out last night, as we were the night before, watching for the
lovely Aurigids that arrive every February, when we saw an
extra big one. I said then it was coming over very near here."
"Why, it almost landed on our house," Nancy said. She
looked very pleasing this morning, with her lips red, her cheeks
shining, and her chestnut curls all astray. As she spoke, her
mother appeared in apron and cap, with a wrap hurriedly
thrown over her shoulders.
"Nancy, you come in, standing freezing like that! You ent
daft, girl are you? Hello, Gregory, how be going on? I didn't
reckon as we'd see you today. Come in and warm yourself."
"Good-day to you, Mrs. Grendon. I'm hearing about your
wonderful meteor of last night."
"It was a falling star, according to Bert Neckland. I ent sure
what it was, but it certainly stirred up the animals, that I do
know."
"Can you see anything of it in the pond?" Gregory asked.
"Let me show you," Nancy said.
Mrs. Grendon returned indoors. She went slowly and
grandly, her back straight and an unaccustomed load before
her. Nancy was her only daughter; there was a younger son,
Archie, a stubborn lad who had fallen at odds .with his father
and now was apprenticed to a blacksmith in Norwich; and no
other children living. Three infants had not survived the
mixture of fogs alternating with bitter east winds that
comprised the typical Cottersall winter. But now the farmer's
wife was unexpectedly gravid again, and would bear her
husband another baby when the spring came in.
As Nancy led Gregory over to the pond, he saw Grendon
with his two laborers working in the West Field, but they did
not wave.
"Was your father not excited by the arrival last night?"
"That he waswhen it happened! He went out with his
shotgun, and Bert Neckland with him. But there was nothing to
see but bubbles in the pond and steam over it, and this morning
he wouldn't discuss it, and said that work must go on whatever
happen."
They stood beside the pond, a dark and extensive slab of
water with rushes on the farther bank and open country
beyond. As they looked at its ruffled surface, they stood with the
windmill black and bulky on their left hand. It was to this that
Nancy now pointed.
Mud had been splashed across the boards high up the sides
of the mill; some was to be seen even on the top of the nearest
white sail. Gregory surveyed it all with interest. Nancy,
however, was still pursuing her own line of thought.
"Don't you reckon Father works too hard, Gregory? When
he's not outside doing jobs, he's in reading his pamphlets and
his electricity manuals. He never rests but when he sleeps."
"Um. Whatever went into the pond went in with a great
smack! There's no sign of anything there now, is there? Not
that you can see an inch below the surface."
"You being a friend of his. Mum thought perhaps as you'd
say something to him. He don't go to bed till ever so
latesometimes it's near midnight, and then he's up again at
three and a half o'clock. Would you speak to him? You know
Mother dassent."
"Nancy, we ought to see whatever it was that went in the
pond. It can't have dissolved. How deep is the water? Is it very
deep?"
"Oh, you aren't listening, Gregory Rolles! Bother the old
meteor!"
"This is a matter of science, Nancy. Don't you see"
"Oh, rotten old science, is it? Then I don't want to hear. I'm
cold, standing out here. You can have a good look if you like but
I'm going in before I gets froze. It was only an old stone out of
the sky, because I heard Father and Bert Neckland agree to it."
"Fat lot Bert Neckland knows about such things!" he called
to her departing back.
He looked down at the dark water. Whatever it was that had
arrived last night, it was here, only a few feet from him. He
longed to discover what remained of it. Vivid pictures entered
his mind: his name in headlines in "The Morning Post," the
Royal Society making him an honorary member, his father
embracing him and pressing him to return home.
Thoughtfully, he walked over to the barn. Hens ran clucking
out of his way as he entered and stood looking up, waiting for
his eyes to adjust to the dim light. There, as he remembered it,
was a little rowing boat. Perhaps in his courting days old Mr.
Grendoii had taken his prospective wife out for excursions on
the Oast in it. Surely it had not been used in years. He dragged
the boat from the barn and launched it in the shallows of the
pond. It floated. The boards had dried, and water leaked
through a couple of seams, but not nearly enough to deter him,
Climbing delicately in among the straw and filth, he pushed off.
When he was over the approximate center of the pond, he
shipped his oars and peered over the side. There was an
agitation in the water, and nothing could be seen, although he
imagined much.
As he stared over the one side, the boat unexpectedly tipped
to the other. Gregory swung round. The boat listed heavily to
the left, so that the oars rolled over that way. He could see
nothing. Yethe heard something. It was a sound much like a
hound slowly panting. And whatever made it was about to
capsize the boat.
"What is it?" he said, as all the skin prickled up his back and
skull.
The boat lurched, for all the world as if someone invisible
were trying to get into it. Frightened, he grasped the oar, and,
without thinking, swept it over that side of the rowing boat.
It struck something solid where there was only air.
Dropping the oar in surprise, he put out his hand. It touched
something yielding. At the same time, his arm was violently
struck.
His actions were then entirely governed by instinct. Thought
did not enter the matter. He picked up the oar again and smote
the thin air with it. It hit something. There was a splash, and
the boat righted itself so suddenly he was almost pitched into
the water. Even while it still rocked, he was rowing frantically
for the shallows, dragging the boat from the water, and running
for the safety of the farmhouse.
Only at the door did he pause. His reason returned, his heart
began gradually to stop stammering its fright. He stood looking
at the seamed wood of the porch, trying to evaluate what he
had seen and what had actually happened. But what had
happened?
Forcing himself to go back to the pond, he stood by the boat
and looked across the sullen face of the water. It lay
undisturbed, except by surface ripples. He looked at the boat
A quantity of water lay in the bottom of it. He thought, all that
happened was that I nearly capsized, and I let my idiot fears
run away with me. Shaking his head, he pulled the boat back to
the barn.
Gregory, as he often did, stayed to eat lunch at the farm, but
he saw nothing of the farmer till milking time.
Joseph Grendon was in his late forties, and a few years older
than his wife. He bad a gaunt solemn face and a heavy beard
that made him look older than he was. For all his seriousness,
he greeted Gregory civilly enough. They stood together in the
gathering dusk as the cows swung behind them into their
regular stalls. Together they walked into the machine house
next door, and Grendon lit the oil burners that started the
steam engine into motion that would turn the generator that
would supply the vital spark.
"I smell the future in here," Gregory said, smiling. By now, he
had forgotten the shock of the morning.
"The future will have to get on without me. I shall be dead
by then." The farmer spoke as he walked, putting each word
reliably before the next.
"That is what you always say. You're wrongthe future is
rushing upon us."
"You ent far wrong there. Master Gregory, but I won't have
no part of it, I reckon. I'm an old man now. Here she come!"
The last exclamation was directed at a flicker of light in the
pilot bulb overhead.  They stood there contemplating with
satisfaction the wonderful machinery. As steam pressure rose,
the great leather belt turned faster and faster, and the flicker in
the pilot bulb grew stronger. Although Gregory was used to a
home lit by both gas and electricity, he never felt the
excitement of it as he did here, out in the wilds, where the
nearest incandescent bulb was probably in Norwich, a great
part of a day's journey away.
Now a pale flickering radiance illuminated the room. By
contrast, everything outside looked black. Grendon nodded in
satisfaction, made some adjustments to the burners, and they
went outside.
Free from the bustle of the steam engine, they could hear the
noise the cows were making. At milking time, the animals were
usually quiet; something had upset them. The farmer ran
quickly into the milking shed, with Gregory on his heels;
The new light, radiating from a bulb hanging above the
stalls, showed the beasts of restless demeanor and rolling eye.
Bert Neckland stood as far away from the door as possible,
grasping his stick and letting his mouth hang open.
"What in blazes are you staring at, bor?" Grendon asked.
Neckland slowly shut his mouth.
"We had a scare," he said. "Something come in here."
"Did you see what it was?" Gregory asked.
"No, there weren't nothing to see. It was a ghost, that's what
it was. It came right in here and touched the cows. It touched
me too. It was a ghost."
The farmer snorted. "A tramp more like. You couldn't see
because the light wasn't on."
His man shook his head emphatically. "Light weren't that
bad. I tell you, whatever it was, it come right up to me and
touched me." He stopped, and pointed to the edge of the stall.
"Look there! See, I weren't telling you no lie, master. It was a
ghost, and there's its wet hand-print."
They crowded round and examined the worn and chewed
timber at the corner of the partition between two stalls. An
indefinite patch of moisture darkened the wood. Gregory's
thoughts went back to his experience on the pond, and again he
felt the prickle of unease along his spine. But the farmer said
stoutly, "Nonsense, it's a bit of cowslime. Now you get on with
the milking, Bert, and let's have no more hossing about, because
I want my tea. Where's Cuff?"
Bert looked defiant.
"If you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe the bitch. She
saw whatever it was and went for it. It kicked her over, but she
ran it out of here."
"I'll see if I can see her," Gregory said.
He ran outside and began calling the bitch. By now it was
almost entirely dark. He could see nothing moving in the wide
space of the front yard, and so set off in the other direction,
down the path towards the pig sties and the fields, calling Cuff
as he went. He paused. Low and savage growls sounded ahead,
under the elm trees. It was Cuff. He went slowly forward. At
this  moment,  he cursed that electric light meant lack of
lanterns, and wished too that he had a weapon.
"Who's there?" he called.
The farmer came up by his side. "Let's charge 'em!"
They ran forward. The trunks of the four great elms were
clear against the western sky, with water glinting leadenly be-
hind them. The dog became visible. As Gregory saw Cuff, she
sailed into the air, whirled round, and flew at the farmer. He
flung up his arms and warded off the body. At the same time,
Gregory felt a rush of air as if someone unseen had run past
him, and a stale muddy smell filled his nostrils. Staggering, he
looked behind him. The wan light from the cowsheds spread
across the path between the outhouses and the farmhouse.
Beyond the light, more distantly, was the silent countryside
behind the grain store. Nothing untoward could be seen.
"They killed my old Cuff," said the farmer.
Gregory knelt down beside him to look at the bitch. There
was no mark of injury on her, but she was dead, her fine head
lying limp.
"She knew there was something there," Gregory said. "She
went to attack whatever it was and it got her first. What was it?
Whatever in the world was it?"
"They killed my old Cuff," said the farmer again, unhearing.
He picked the body up in his arms, turned, and carried it
towards the house. Gregory stood where he was, mind and
heart equally uneasy.
He jumped violently when a step sounded nearby. It was
Bert Neckland.
"What, did that there ghost kill the old bitch?" he asked.
"It killed the bitch certainly, but it was something more
terrible than a ghost."
"That's one of them ghosts, bor. I seen plenty in my time. I
ent afraid of ghosts, are you?"
"You looked fairly sick in the cowshed a minute ago."
The farmhand put his fists on his hips. He was no more than
a couple of years older than Gregory, a stocky young man with
a spotty complexion and a snub nose that gave him at once an
air of comedy and menace. "Is that so, Master Gregory? Well,
you looks pretty funky standing there now."
"I am scared. I don't mind admitting it. But only because we
have something here a lot nastier than any specter."
Neckland came a little closer.
"Then if you are so tilooming windy, perhaps you'll be
staying away from the farm in the future."  '
"Certainly not." He tried to edge back into the light, but the
laborer got in his way.
"If I was you, I, should stay away." He emphasized his point
by digging an elbow into Gregory's coat. "And just remember
that Nancy was interested in me long afore you come'along,
bor."
"Oh, that's it, is iti I think Nancy can decide for herself in
whom she is interested, don't you?"
"I'm telling you who she's interested in, see? And mind you
don't forget, see?" He emphasized the words with another
nudge. Gregory pushed his arm away angrily. Neckland
shrugged his shoulders and walked off. As he went, he said,
"You're going to get worse than ghosts if you keep hanging
round here."
Gregory was shaken. The suppressed violence in the man's
voice suggested that he had been harboring malice for some
time. Unsuspectingly, Gregory had always gone out of his way
to be cordial, had regarded the sullenness as mere slow-
wittedness and done his socialist best to overcome the barrier
between them. He thought of following Neckland and trying to
make it up with him; but that would look too feeble. Instead, he
followed the way the farmer had gone with his dead bitch, and
made for the house.
Gregory Rolles was too late back to Cottersall that night to
meet his friend Fox. The next night, the weather became
exceedingly chill and Gabriel Woodcock, the oldest inhabitant,
was prophesying snow before the winter was out (a not very
venturesome prophecy to be fulfilled within forty-eight hours,
thus impressing most of the inhabitants of the village, for they
took pleasure in being impressed and exclaiming and saying
"Well I never!" to each other). The two friends met in "The
Wayfarer," where the fires were bigger, though the ale was
weaker, than in "The Three Poachers" at the other end of the
village.
Seeing to it that nothing dramatic was missed from his
account, Gregory related the affairs of the previous day,
omitting any reference to Neckland's pugnacity. Fox listened
fascinated, neglecting both his pipe and his ale.
"So you see how it is, Bruce," Gregory concluded. "In that
deep pond by the mill lurks a vehicle of some sort, the very one
we saw in the sky, and in it lives an invisible being of evil intent.
You see how I fear for my friends there. Should I tell the police
about it, do you think?"
"I'm sure it would not help the Grendons to have old Farrish
bumping out there on his pennyfarthing," Fox said, referring to
the local representative of the law. He took a long draw first on
the pipe and then on the glass. "But I'm not sure you have your
conclusions quite right, Greg. Understand, I don't doubt the
facts, amazing though they are. I mean, we were more or less
expecting celestial visitants. The world's recent blossoming
with gas and electric lighting in its cities at night must have
been a signal to half the nations of space that we are now civ-
ilized down here. But have our visitants done any deliberate
harm to anyone?"
"They nearly drowned me and they killed poor Cuff. I don't
see what you're getting at. They haven't begun in a very
friendly fashion, have they now?"
"Think what the situation must seem like to them. Suppose
they come from Mars or the Moonwe know their world must
be absolutely different from Earth. They may be terrified. And
it can hardly be called an unfriendly act to try and get into your
rowing boat. The first unfriendly act was yours, when you
struck out with the oar."
Gregory bit his lip. His friend had a point. "I was scared."
"It may have been because they were scared that they killed
Cuff. The dog attacked them, after all, didn't she? I feel sorry
for these creatures, alone in an unfriendly world."
"You keep saying 'these!' As far as we know, there is only
one of them."
"My point is this, Greg. You have completely gone back on
your previous enlightened attitude. You are all for killing these
poor things instead of trying to speak to them. Remember what
you were saying about other worlds being full of socialists? Try
thinking of these chaps as invisible socialists and see if that
doesn't make them easier to deal with."
Gregory fell to stroking his chin. Inwardly, he acknowledged
that Bruce Fox's words made a great impression on him. He
had allowed panic to prejudice his judgment; as a result, he
had behaved as immoderately as a savage in some remote
corner of the Empire, confronted by his first steam locomotive.
"I'd better get back to the farm and sort things out as soon
as possible," he said. "If these things really do need help, I'll
help them."
"That's it. But try not to think of them as 'things.' Think of
them asas1 know, as The Aurigans."
"Aurigans it is. But don't be so smug, Bruce. If you'd been in
that boat-"
"I know, old friend. I'd have died of fright." To this
monument of tact, Fox added, "Do as you say, go back and sort
things out as soon as possible. I'm longing for the ne)rt install-
ment of this mystery. It's quite the joUiest thing since Sheriock
Holmes."
Gregory Rolles went back to the farm. But the sorting out of
which Bruce had spoken took longer than he expected. This
was chiefly because the Aurigans seemed to have settled
quietly into their new home after the initial day's troubles.
They came forth no more from the pond, as far as he could
discover; at least they caused no more disturbance. The young
graduate particularly regretted this since he had taken his
friend's words much to heart, and wanted to prove how
enlightened and benevolent he was towards this strange form
of life. After some days, he came to believe the Aurigans must
have left as unexpectedly as they arrived. Then a minor
incident convinced him otherwise; and that same night, in his
snug room over the baker's shop, he described it to his
correspondent in Worcester Park, Surrey.
Dear Mr. Wells,
I must apologize for my failure to write earlier, owing to lack
of news concerning the Grendon Farm affair.
Only today, the Aurigans showed themselves again!If in-
deed "showed" is the right word for invisible creatures.
Nancy Grendon and I were in the orchard feeding the hens.
There is still much snow lying about, and everywhere is very
white. As the poultry came running to Nancy's tub, I saw a
disturbance further down the orchardmerely some snow
dropping from an apple bough, but the movement caught my
eye, and then I saw a procession of falling snow proceed
towards us from tree to tree. The grass is long there, and I soon
noted the stalks being thrust aside by an unknown agency! I
directed Nancy's attention to the phenomenon. The motion in
the grass stopped only a few yards from us.
Nancy was startled, but I determined to acquit myself more
like a Briton than I had previously. Accordingly, I advanced
and said, "Who are you? What do you want? We are your
friends if you are friendly."
No answer came. I stepped forward again, and now the grass
again fell back, and I could see by the way it was pressed down
that the creature must have large feet. By the movement of the
grasses, I could see he was running. I cried to him and ran too.
He went round the side of the house, and then over the frozen
mud in the farmyard. I could see no further trace of him. But
instinct led me forward, past the barn to the pond.
Surely enough, I then saw the cold, muddy water rise and
heave, as if engulfing a body that slid quietly in. Shards of
broken ice were thrust aside, and by an outward motion, I
could see where the strange being went. In a flurry and a small
whirlpool, he was gone, and I have no doubt dived down to the
mysterious star vehicle.
These thingspeople1 know not what to call themmust be
aquatic; perhaps they live in the canals of the Red Planet. But
imagine, Siran invisible mankind! The idea is almost as
wonderful and fantastic as something from your novel, "The
Time Machine."
Pray give me your comment, and trust in my sanity and
accuracy as a reporter!
Yours in friendship,
Gregory Rolles.
What he did not tell was the way Nancy had clung to him
after, in the warmth of the parlor, and confessed her fear. And
he had scorned the idea that these beings could be hostile, and
had seen the admiration in her eyes, and had thought that she
was, after all, a dashed pretty girl, and perhaps worth braving
the wrath of those two very different people for: Edward
Rolles, his father, and Bert Neckland, the farm laborer.
It was at lunch a week later, when Gregory was again at the
farm, taking with him an article on electricity as a pretext for
his visit, that the subject of the stinking dew was first discussed.
Grubby was the first to mention it in Gregory's hearing.
Grubby, with Bert Neckland, formed the whole strength of
Joseph Grendon's labor force; but whereas Neckland was
considered couth enough to board in the farmhouse (he had a
gaunt room in the attic), Grubby was fit only to sleep in a little
flint-and-chalk hut well away from the farm buildings. His
"house," as he dignified the miserable hut, stood below the
orchard and near the sties, the occupants of which lulled
Grubby to sleep with their snorts.
"Reckon we ent ever had a dew like that before, Mr.
Grendon," he said, his manner suggesting to Gregory that he
had made this observation already this morning; Grubby never
ventured to say anything original.
"Heavy as an autumn dew," said the farmer firmly, as if there
had been an argument on the point.
Silence fell, broken only by a general munching and, from
Grubby, a particular guzzling, as they all made their way
through huge platefuls of stewed rabbit and dumplings.
"It weren't no ordinary dew, that I do know," Grubby said
after a while.
"It stank of toadstools," Neckland said. "Or rotten pond
water."
More munching.
"It may be something to do with the pond," Gregory said.
"Some sort of freak of evaporation."
Neckland snorted. From his position at the top of the table,
. the farmer halted his shovelling operations to point a fork at
Gregory.
"You may well be right there. Because I tell you what, that
there dew only come down on our land and property. A yard
the other side of the gate, the road was dry. Bone dry it was."
"Right you are there, master," Neckland agreed. "And while
the West Field was dripping with the stuff, I saw for myself
that the bracken over the hedge weren't wet at all. Ah, it's a
rum go!"
"Say what you like, we ent ever had dew like it," Grubby
said.  He  appeared  to be  summing up  the  feeling  of the
company.
The strange dew did not fall again. As a topic of conversa-
tion, it was limited, and even on the farm, where there was
little new to talk about, it was forgotten in a few days. The Feb-
ruary passed, being neither much worse nor much better than
most Februaries, and ended in heavy rainstorms. March came,
letting in a chilly spring over the land. The animals on the farm
began to bring forth their young.
They brought them forth in amazing numbers, as if to over-
turn all the farmer's beliefs in the unproductiveness of his land.
"I never seen anything like it!" Grendon said to Gregory.
Nor had Gregory seen the taciturn farmer so excited. He took
the young man by the arm and marched him into the barn.
There lay Trix, the nannie goat. Against her flank huddled
three little brown and white kids, while a fourth stood nearby,
wobbling on its spindly legs.
"Four on 'em! Have you ever heard of a goat throwing off
four kids? You better write to the papers in London about this.
Gregory! But just you come down to the pig sties."
The squealing from the sties was louder than usual. As they
marched down the path towards them, Gregory looked up at
the great elms, their outlines dusted in green, and thought he
detected something sinister in the noises, something hysterical
that was perhaps matched by an element in Grendon's own
bearing.
The Grendon pigs were mixed breeds, with a preponderance
of Large Blacks. They usually gave litters of something like ten
piglets. Now there was not a litter without fourteen in it; and
one enormous black sow had eighteen small pigs swarming
about her. The noise was tremendous and, standing looking
down on this swarming life, Gregory told himself that he was
foolish to imagine anything uncanny in it; he knew so little
about farm life. After he had eaten with Grendon and the men
Mrs. Grendon and Nancy had driven to town in the trap-
Gregory went by himself to look about the farm, still with
a deep and (he told himself) unreasoning sense of disturbance
inside him.
A pale sunshine filled the afternoon. It could not penetrate
far down into the water of the pond. But as Gregory stood by
the horse trough staring at the expanse of water, he saw that it
teemed with young tadpoles and frogs. He went closer. What
he had regarded as a sheet of rather stagnant water was alive
with small swimming things. As he looked, a great beetle
surged out of the depths and seized a tadpole. The tadpoles
were also providing food for two ducks that, with their young,
were swimming by the reeds on the far side of the pond. And
how many young did the ducks have? An armada of chicks was
there, parading in and out of the rushes.
For a minute, he stood uncertainly, then began to walk
slowly back the way he had come. Crossing the yard, Gregory
went over to the stable and saddled Daisy. He swung himself
up and rode away without bidding goodbye to anyone.
Riding into Cottersall, he went straight to the market place.
He saw the Grendon trap, with Nancy's little pony, Hetty,
between the shafts, standing outside the grocer's shop. Mrs.
Grendon and Nancy were just coming out. Jumping to the
ground, Gregory led Daisy over to them and bid them good
day.
"We are going to call on my friend Mrs. Edwards and her
daughters," Mrs. Grendon said.
"If you would be so kind, Mrs. Grendon, I would be very
obliged if I might speak privately with Nancy. My landlady,
Mrs. Fenn, has a little downstairs parlor at the back of the
shop, and I know she would let us speak there. It would be
quite respectable."
"Drat respectable! Let people think what they will, I say."
All the same, she stood for some time in meditation. Nancy
remained by her mother with her eyes on the ground. Gregory
looked at her and seemed to see her anew. Under her blue coat,
fur-trimmed, she wore her orange-and-brown squared gingham
dress; she had a bonnet on her head. Her complexion was pure
and blemishless, her skin as firm and delicate as a plum, and her
dark eyes were hidden under long lashes. Her lips were steady,
pale, and clearly defined, with appealing tucks at each corner.
He felt almost like a thief, stealing a sight of her beauty while
she was not regarding him.
"I'm going on to Mrs. Edwards," Marjorie Grendon declared
at last. "I don't care what you two do so long as you behavebut
I shall, mind, if you aren't with me in a half-hour, Nancy, do
you hear?"
"Yes, Mother."
The baker's shop was in the next street. Gregory and Nancy
walked there in silence. Gregory shut Daisy in the stable and
they went together into the parlor through the back door. At
this time of day, Mr. Fenn was resting upstairs and his wife
looking after the shop, so the little room was empty.
Nancy sat upright in a chair and said, "Well, Gregory, what's
all this about? Fancy dragging me off from my mother like that
in the middle of town!"
"Nancy, don't be cross. I had to see you."
She pouted. "You come out to the old farm often enough and
don't show any particular wish to see me there."
"That's nonsense. I always come to see youlately in
particular. Besides, you're more interested in Bert Neckland,
aren't you?"
"Bert Neckland, indeed! Why should I be interested in him?
Not that it's any of your business if I am."
"It is my business, Nancy. I love you, Nancy!"
He had not meant to blurt it out in quite that fashion, but
now it was out, it was out, and he pressed home bis
disadvantage by crossing the room, kneeling at her feet, and
taking her hands in his. "Nancy, darling Nancy, say that you
like me just a little. Encourage me somewhat."
"You are a very fine gentleman, Gregory, and I feel very
kind towards you, to be sure, but . . ."
"But?"
She gave him the benefit of her downcast eyes again.
"Your station in life is very different from mine, and
besideswell, you don't do anything."
He was shocked into silence. With the natural egotism of
youth, he had not seriously thought that she could have any
firm objection to him; but in her words he suddenly saw the
truth of his position, at least as it was revealed to her.
"Nancy1well, it's true I do not seem to you to be working
at present. But I do a lot of reading and studying here, and I
write to several important people in the world. And all the time
I am coming to a great decision about what my career will be. I
do assure you I am no loafer, if that's what you think."
"No. I don't think that. But Bert says you often spend a
convivial evening in that there 'Wayfarer.' "
"Oh, he does, does he? And what business is it of his if I
door of yours, come to that? What damned cheek!"
She stood up. "If you have nothing left to say but a lot of
swearing, I'll be off to join my mother, if you don't mind."
"Oh, by Jove, I'm making a mess of this!" He caught her
wrist. "Listen, my sweet thing. I ask you only this, that you try
and look on me favorably. And also that you let me say a
word about the farm. Some strange things are happening there,
and I seriously don't like to think of you being there at night.
All these young things being born, all these little pigsit's
uncanny!"
"I don't see what's uncanny no more than my father does. I
know how hard he works, and he's done a good job rearing his
animals, that's all. He's the best farmer round Cottersall by a
long chalk."
"Oh, certainly. He's a wonderful man. But he didn't put
seven or eight eggs into a hedge sparrow's nest, did he? He
didn't fill the pond with tadpoles and newts till it looks like a
broth, did he? Something strange is happening on your farm
this year, Nancy, and I want to protect you if I can."
The earnestness with which he spoke, coupled perhaps with
his proximity and the ardent way he pressed her hand, went a
good way towards mollifying Nancy.
"Dear Gregory, you don't know anything about farm life, I
don't reckon, for all your books. But you're very sweet to be
concerned."
"I shall always be concerned about you, Nancy, you
beautiful creature."
"You'll make me blush!"
"Please do, for then you look even lovelier than usual!" He
put an arm around her. When she looked up at him, he caught
her up close to his chest and kissed her fervently.
She gasped and broke away, but not with too great haste.
"Oh, Gregory! Oh, Gregory! I must go to Mother now!"
"Another kiss first! I can't let you go until I get another."
He took it, and stood by the door trembling with excitement
as she left. "Come and see us again soon," she whispered.
"With dearest pleasure," he said. But the next visit held more
dread than pleasure.
The big cart was standing in the yard full of squealing
piglets when Gregory arrived. The farmer and Neckland were
bustling about it. The former greeted Gregory cheerfully.
"I've a chance to make a good quick profit on these little
chaps. Old sows can't feed them, but sucking pig fetches its
price in Norwich, so Bert and me are going to drive over to
Heigham and put them on the train."
"They've grown since I last saw them!"
"Ah, they put on over two pounds a day. Bert, we'd better
get a net and spread over this lot, or they'll be diving out.
They're that lively!"
The two men made their way over to the barn, clomping
through the mud. Mud squelched behind Gregory. He turned.
In the muck between the stables and the cart, footprints ap-
peared, two parallel tracks. They seemed to imprint themselves
with no agency but their own. A cold flow of acute super-
natural terror overcame Gregory, so that he could not move.
The scene seemed to go gray and palsied as he watched the
tracks come towards him.
The carthorse neighed uneasily, the prints reached the cart,
the cart creaked, as if something had climbed aboard. The
piglets squealed with terror. One dived clear over the wooden
sides. Then aterrible silence fell.
Gregory still could not move. He heard an unaccountable
sucking noise in the cart, but his eyes remained rooted on the
muddy tracks. Those impressions were of something other than
a man: something with dragging feet that were in outline
something like a seal's flippers. Suddenly he found his voice.
"Mr. Grendon!" he cried.
Only as the farmer and Bert came running from the barn
with the net did Gregory dare look into the cart.
One last piglet, even as he looked, seemed to be deflating
rapidly, like a rubber balloon collapsing. It went limp and lay
silent a,mong the other little empty bags of pig skin. The cart
creaked. Something splashed heavily off across the farmyard in
the direction of the pond.
Grendon did not see. He had run to the cart and was staring
like Gregory in dismay at the deflated corpses. Neckland stared
too, and was the first to find his voice.
"Some sort of disease got 'em all, just like that! Must be one
of them there new diseases from the Continent of Europe!"
"It's no disease," Gregory said. He could hardly speak, for his
mind had just registered the fact that there were no bones left
in or amid the deflated pig bodies. "It's no diseaselook, the pig
that got away is still alive."
He pointed to the animal that had jumped from the cart. It
had injured its leg in the process, and now lay in the ditch some
feet away, panting. The farmer went over to it and lifted it out.
"It escaped the disease by jumping out," Neckland said.
"Master, we better go and see how the rest of them is down in
the sties."
"Ah, that we had," Grendon said. He handed the pig over to
Gregory, his face set. "No good taking one alone to market. 111
get Grubby to unharness the horse. Meanwhile, perhaps you'd
be good enough to take this little chap in to Marjorie. At least
we can all eat a bit of roast pig for dinner tomorrow."
"Mr. Grendon, this is no disease. Have the veterinarian over
from Heigham and let him examine these bodies."
"Don't you tell me how to run my farm, young man. I've got
trouble enough."
Despite this rebuff, Gregory could not keep away. He had to
see Nancy, and he had to see what occurred at the farm. The
morning after the horrible thing happened to the pigs, he
received a letter from his most admired correspondent, Mr. H.
G. Wells, one paragraph of which read: "At bottom, I think I
am neither optimist nor pessimist. I tend to believe both that
we stand on the threshold of an epoch of magnificent
progresscertainly such an epoch is within our graspand that
we may have reached the 'fin du globe' prophesied by our
gloomier fin de siecle prophets. I am not at all surprised to hear
that such a vast issue may be resolving itself on a remote farm
near Cottersall, Norfolkall unknown to anyone but the two of
us. Do not think that I am in other than a state of terror, even
when I cannot help exclaiming "What a lark!' "
Too preoccupied to be as excited over such a letter as he
would ordinarily have been, Gregory tucked it away in his
jacket pocket and went to saddle up Daisy.
Before lunch, he stole a kiss from Nancy, and planted
another on her over-heated left cheek as she stood by the vast
range in the kitchen. Apart from that, there was little pleasure
in the day. Grendon was reassured to find that none of the other
piglets had fallen ill of the strange shrinking disease, but he
remained alert against the possibility of it striking again.
Meanwhile, another miracle had occurred. In the lower
pasture, in a tumbledown shed, he had a cow that had given
birth to four calves during the night. He did not expect the
animal to live, but the calves were well enough, and being fed
from a bottle by Nancy.
The farmer's face was dull, for he had been up all night with
the laboring cow, and he sat down thankfully at the head of
the table as the roast pig arrived on its platter.
It proved uneatable. In no time, they were all flinging down
their implements in disgust.  The flesh had a bitter taste for
which Neckland was the first to account.
"It's diseased!" he growled. "This here animal had the dis-
ease all the time. We didn't ought to eat this here meat or we
may all be dead ourselves inside of a week."
They were forced to make a snack on cold salted beef and
cheese and pickled onions, none of which Mrs. Grendon could
face in her condition. She retreated upstairs in tears at the
thought of the failure of her carefully prepared dish, and Nancy
ran after her to comfort her.
After the dismal meal, Gregory spoke to Grendon.
"I have decided I must go to Norwich tomorrow for a few
days, Mr. Grendon," he said. "You are in trouble here, I believe.
Is there anything, any business I can transact for you in the
city? Can I find you a veterinary surgeon there?"
Grendon clapped his shoulder. "I know you mean well, and I
thank 'ee for it, but you don't seem to realize that vetinaries cost
a load of money and aren't always too helpful when they do
come."
"Then let me do something for you, Joseph, in return for all
your kindness to me. Let me bring a vet back from Norwich at
my own expense, just to have a look round, nothing more."
"Blow me if you aren't stubborn as they come. I'm telling
you, same as my dad used to say, if I finds any person on my
land -I didn't ask here. I'm getting that there shotgun of mine
down and I'm peppering him with buckshot, same as I did with
them two old tramps last year. Fair enough?"
"I suppose so."
"Then I must go and see to the cow. And stop worrying
about what you don't understand."
The visit to Norwich (an uncle had a house in that city) took
up the better part of Gregory's next week. Consequently,
apprehension stirred in him when he again approached the
Grendon farm along the rough road from Cottersall. He was
surprised to see how the countryside had altered since he was
last this way. New foliage gleamed everywhere, and even the
heath looked a happier place. But as he came up to the farm, he
saw how overgrown it was. Great ragged elder and towering
cow parsley had shol up, so that at first they hid all the
buildings. He fancied the farm had been spirited away until,
spurring Daisy on, he saw the black mill emerge from behind a
clump of nearby growth. The South Meadows were deep in
rank grass. Even the elms seemed much shaggier than before
and loomed threateningly over the house.
As he clattered over the flat wooden bridge and through the
open gate into the yard, Gregory noted huge hairy nettles
craning out of the adjoining ditches. Birds fluttered every-
where. Yet the impression he received was one of death rather
than of life. A great quiet lay over the place, as if it were under
a curse that eliminated noise and hope.
He realized this effect was partly because Lardie, the young
bitch collie who had taken the place of Cuff, was not running up
barking as she generally did with visitors. The yard was
deserted. Even the customary fowls had gone. As he led Daisy
into the stables, he saw a heavy piebald in the first stall and
recognized it as Dr. Crouchorn's. His anxieties took more
definite shape.
Since the stable was now full, he led his mare across to the
stone trough by the pond and hitched her there before walking
over to the house. The front door was open. Great ragged
dandelions grew against the porch. The creeper, hitherto
somewhat sparse, pressed into the lower windows. A movement
in the rank grass caught his eye and he looked down, drawing
back his riding boot. An enormous toad crouched under weed,
the head of a still writhing grass snake in its mouth. The toad
seemed to eye Gregory fixidly, as if trying to determine whether
the man envied it its gluttony. Shuddering in disgust, he
hurried into the house.
Muffled sounds came from upstairs. "The stairs curled round
the massive chimneypiece, and were shut from the lower rooms
by a latched door. Gregory had never been invited upstairs, but
he did .not hesitate. Throwing the door open, he started up the
stairwell, and almost at once ran into a body.
Its softness told him that this was Nancy; she stood in the
dark weeping. Even as he caught her and breathed her name,
she broke from his grasp and ran from him up the stairs. He
could bear noises more clearly now, and the sound of
cryingthough at the moment he was not listening. Nancy ran
to a door on the landing nearest to the top of the stairs, burst
into the room beyond, and closed it. When Gregory tried the
latch, he heard the bolt slide to on the other side.
"Nancy!" he called. "Don't hide from me! What is it?
What's happening?"
She made no answer. As he stood there baffled against the
door, the next door along the passage opened and Doctor
Crouchorn emerged, clutching his little black bag. He was a
tall, somber man, with deep lines on his face that inspired such
fear into his patients that a remarkable percentage of them did
as he bid and recovered. Even here, he wore the top hat that,
simply by remaining constantly in position, contributed to the
doctor's fame in the neighborhood.
"What's the trouble. Doctor Crouchorn?" Gregory asked, as
the medical man shut the door behind him and started down
the stairs. "Has the plague struck this house, or something
equally terrible?"
"Plague, young man, plague? No, it is something much more
unnatural than that."
He stared at Gregory unsmilingly, as if promising himself
inwardly not to move a muscle again until Gregory asked the
obvious.
"What did you call for. Doctor?"
"The hour of Mrs. Grendon's confinement struck during the
night," he said.
A wave of relief swept over Gregory. He had forgotten
Nancy's mother! "She had her baby? Was it a boy?"
The doctor nodded in slow motion. "She bore two boys,
young man." He hesitated, and then a muscle in his face
twitched and he said in a rush, "She also bore seven
daughters.  Nine  children!  And  they  allthey  all  live."
Gregory found Grendon round the corner of the house. The
farmer had a pitchfork full of hay, which he was carrying over
his shoulder into the cowsheds. Gregory stood in his way but he
pushed past.
"I want to speak to you, Joseph."
"There's work to be done. Pity you can't see that."
"I want to speak about your wife."
Grendon made no reply. He worked like a demon, tossing the
hay down, turning for more. In any case, it was difficult to talk.
The cows and calves, closely confined, seemed to set up a per-
petual uneasy noise of lowing and uncow-like grunts. Gregory
followed the farmer round to the hayrick, but the man walked
like one possessed. His eyes seemed sunk into his head, his
mouth was puckered until his lips were invisible. When
Gregory laid a hand on his arm, he shook it off. Stabbing up
another great load of hay, he swung back towards the sheds so
violently that Gregory had to jump out of his way.
Gregory lost his temper. Following Grendon back into the
cowshed, he swung the bottom of the two-part door shut, and
bolted it on the outside. When Grendon came back, he did not
budge.
"Joseph, what's got into you? Why are you suddenly so
heartless? Surely your wife needs you by her?"
His eyes had a curious blind look as he turned them at
Gregory. He held the pitchfork before him in both hands almost
like a weapon as he said, "I been with her all night, bor, while
she brought forth her increase."
"But now"
"She got a nursing woman from Dereham Cottages with her
now. I been with her all night. Now I got to see to the farm-
things keep growing, you know."
"They're growing too much, Joseph. Stop and think"
"I've no time for talking."  Dropping the pitchfork, he
elbowed Gregory out of the way, unbolted the door, and flung
it open. Grasping Gregory firmly by the biceps of one arm, he
began to propel him along to the vegetable beds down by the
South Meadows.
The early lettuce were gigantic here. Everything bristled out
of the ground. Recklessly, Grendon ran among the lines of new
green, pulling up fistfuls of young radishes, carrots, spring
onions, scattering them over his shoulder as fast as he plucked
them from the ground.
"See, Gregoryall bigger than you ever seen 'cm, and weeks
early! The harvest is going to be a bumper. Look at the fields!
Look at the orchard!" With wide gesture, he swept a hand
towards the lines of trees, buried in the mounds of snow-and-
pink of their blossom. "Whatever happens, we got to take
advantage of it. It may not happen another year. Whyit's like
a fairy story!"
He said no more. Turning, he seemed already to have
forgotten Gregory. Eyes down at the ground that had suddenly
achieved such abundance, he marched back towards the sheds.
Nancy was in the kitchen. Neckland had brought her in a
stoup of fresh milk, and she was supping it wearily from a
ladle.
"Oh, Greg, I'm sorry I ran from you. I was so upset." She
came to him, still holding the ladle but dangling her arms over
his shoulders in a familiar way she had not used before. "Poor
Mother, I fear her mind is unhinged withwith bearing so
many children. She's talking such strange stuff as I never heard
before, and I do believe she fancies as she's a child again."
"Is it to be wondered at?" he said, smoothing her hair with
his hand. "She'll be better once she's recovered from the shock."
They kissed each other, and after a minute she passed him a
ladleful of milk. He drank and then spat it out in disgust.
"Ugh! What's got into the milk? Is Neckland trying to
poison you or something? Have you tasted it? It's as bitter as
sloes!"
She pulled a puzzled face. "I thought it tasted rather strange,
but not unpleasant. Here, let me try again."
"No, it's too horrible. Some Sloane's Liniment must have got
mixed in it."
Despite his warning, she put her lips to the metal spoon and
sipped, then shook her head. "You're imagining things, Greg. It
does taste a bit different, 'tis true, but there's nothing wrong
with it. You'll stay to take a bite with us, I hope?"
"No, Nancy, I'm off now. I have a letter awaiting me that I
must answer; it arrived when I was in Norwich. Listen, my
lovely Nancy, this letter is from Dr. Hudson-Ward, an old
aquaintance of my father's. He is headmaster of a school in
Gloucester, and he wishes me to join the staff there as a teacher
on most favorable terms. So you see I may not be idle much
longer!"
Laughing, she clung to him. "That's wonderful, my darling!
What a handsome schoolmaster you will make. But Gloucester
that's over the other side of the country. I suppose we shan't
be seeing you again once you get there,"
"Nothing's settled yet, Nancy."
"You'll be gone in a week and we shan't never see you again.
Once you get to that there old school, you will never think of
your Nancy no more."
He cupped her face in his hands. "Are you my Nancy? Do
you care for me?"
Her eyelashes came over her dark eyes. "Greg, things are so
muddled here1 meanyes, I do care, I dread to think I'd not
see you again."
Recalling her saying that, he rode away a quarter of an hour
later very content  at heartand entirely neglectful of the
dangers to which he left her exposed.
Rain fell lightly as Gregory Rolles made his way that evening
to "The Wayfarer" inn. His friend Bruce Fox was already there,
ensconced in one of the snug seats of the inglenook.
On this occasion. Fox was more interested in purveying
details of his sister's forthcoming wedding than in listening to
what Gregory had to tell, and since some of his future brother-
in-law's friends soon arrived, and had to buy and be bought
libations, the evening became a merry and thoughtless one.
And in a short while, the ale having its good effect, Gregory also
forgot what he wanted to say and began whole-heartedly to
enjoy the company.
Next morning, he awoke with a heavy head and in a dismal
state of mind. The day was too wet for him to go out and take
exercise. He sat moodily in a chair by the window, delaying an
answer to Dr. Hudson-Ward, the headmaster. Lethargically, he
returned to a small leather-bound volume on serpents that he
had acquired in Norwich a few days earlier. After a while, a
passage caught his particular attention:
"Most serpents of the venomous variety, with the exception
of the opisthoglyphs, release their victims from their fangs after
striking. The victims die in some cases in but a few seconds,
while in other cases the onset of moribundity may be delayed by
hours or days. The saliva of some of the serpents contains not
only venom but a special digestive virtue. The deadly Coral
Snake of Brazil, though attaining no more than a foot in length,
has this virtue in abundance. Accordingly, when it bites an
animal or a human being, the victim not only dies in profound
agony in a matter of seconds, but his interiors parts are then
dissolved, so that even the bones become no more than jelly.
Then may the little serpent suck all of the victim out as a kind
of soup or broth from the original wound in its skin, which
latter alone remains intact."
For a long while, Gregory sat where he was in the window,
with the book open in his lap, thinking about the Grendon
farm, and about Nancy. He reproached himself for having done
so little for his friends there, and gradually resolved on a plan
of action the next time he rode out; but his visit was to be
delayed for some days: the wet weather had set in with more
determination than the end of April and the beginning of May
generally allowed.
Gregory tried to concentrate on a letter to the worthy Dr.
Hudson-Ward in the county of Gloucestershire. He knew he
should take the job, indeed he felt inclined to do so; but first
he knew he had to see Nancy safe. The indecisions he felt
caused him to delay answering the doctor until the next day,
when he feebly wrote that he would be glad to accept the post
offered at the price offered, but begged to have a week to think
about it. When he took the letter down to the post-woman in
"The Three Poachers," the rain still fell.
One morning, the rains were suddenly vanished, the blue
and wide East Anglian skies were back, and Gregory saddled
up Daisy and rode .out along the mirey track he had so often
taken. As he arrived at the farm. Grubby and Neckland were at
work in the ditch, unblocking it with shovels. He saluted them
and rode in. As he was about to put the mare into the stables, he
saw Grendon and Nancy standing on the patch of waste
ground under the windowless east side of the house. He went
slowly to join them, noting as he walked how dry the ground
was here, as if no rain had fallen in a fortnight. But this
observation was drowned in shock as he saw the nine little
crosses Grendon was sticking into nine freshly turned mounds
of earth.
Nancy stood weeping. They both looked up as Gregory
approached, but Grendon went stubbornly on with his task.
"Oh, Nancy, Joseph, I'm so sorry about this!" Gregory
exclaimed. "To think that they've allbut where's the parson?
Where's the parson, Joseph? Why are you burying them, with-
out a proper service or anything?"
"I told Father, but he took no heedl" Nancy exclaimed.
Grendon had reached the last grave. He seized the last crude
wooden cross, lifted it above his head, and stabbed it down into
the ground as if he would pierce the heart of what lay under it.
Only then did he straighten and speak.
"We don't need a parson here. I've got no time to waste with
parsons. I have work to do if you ent."
"But these are your children, Joseph! What has got into
you?"
"They are part of the farm now, as they always was." He
turned, rolling his shirt sleeves further up his brawny arms, and
strode off in the direction of the ditching activities.
Gregory took Nancy in his arms and looked at her tear-
stained face. "What a time you must have been having these
last few days!"
"I1 thought you'd gone to Gloucester, Greg! Why didn't
you come? Every day I waited for you to cornel"
"It was so wet and flooded."
"It's been lovely weather since you- were last here. Look how
everything has grown!"
"It poured with rain every single day in Cottersall."
"Well, I never! That explains why there is so much water
flowing in the Oast and in the ditches. But we've had only a few
light showers."
"Nancy, tell me, how did these poor little mites die?"
"I'd rather not say, if you don't mind."
"Why didn't your father get in Parson Landon? How could
he be so lacking in feeling?"
"Because he didn't want anyone from the outside world to
know. You seeoh, I must tell you, my dearit's Mother. She
has gone completely off her head, completely! It was the evening
before last, when she took her first turn outside the back door."
"You don't mean to say she"
"Ow, Greg, you're hurting my arms! Sheshe crept upstairs
when we weren't noticing and sheshe stifled each of the
babies in turn, Greg, under the best goose feather pillow."
He could feel the color leaving his cheeks. Solicitously, she
led him to the back of the house. They sat together on the
orchard railings while he digested the words in silence.
"How is your mother now, Nancy?"
"She's silent. Father had to bar her in her room for safety.
Last night she screamed a lot. But this morning she's quiet."
He looked dazedly about him. The appearance of everything
was speckled, as if the return of his blood to his head somehow
infected it with a rash. The blossom had gone almost entirely
from the fruit trees in the orchard and already the embryo
apples showed signs of swelling. Nearby, broad beafas bowed
under enormous pods. Seeing his glance, Nancy dipped into
her apron pocket and produced a bunch of shining crimson
radishes as big as tangerines.
"Have one of these. They're crisp and wet and hot, just as
they should be."
Indifferently, he accepted and bit the tempting globe. At once
he had to spit the portion out. There again was that vile bitter
flavor!
"Oh, but they're lovely!" Nancy protested.
"Not even 'rather strange' nowsimply lovely'? Nancy, don't
you see, something uncanny and awful is taking place here. I'm
sorry, but I can't see otherwise. You and your father should
leave here at once."
"Leave here, Greg? Just because you don't like the taste of
these lovely radishes? How can we leave here? Where should
we go? See this here house? My granddad died here, and his
father before him. It's our place. We can't just up and off, not
even after this bit of trouble. Try another radish."
"For heaven's sake, Nancy, they taste as if the flavor was
intended for creatures with a palate completely different from
ours . . . Oh . . ." He stared at her. "And perhaps they are.
Nancy, I tell you"
He broke off, sliding from the railing. Neckland had come up
from one side, still plastered in mud from his work in the ditch,
his collariess shirt flapping open. In his hand, he grasped an
ancient and military-looking pistol.
"I'll fire this if you come nearer," he said. "It goes okay,
never worry, and it's loaded. Master Gregory. Now you're a-
going to listen to me!"
"Bert, put that thing away!" Nancy exclaimed. She moved
forward to him, but Gregory pulled her back and stood before
her.
"Don't be a bloody idiot, Neckland. Put it away!"
"I'll shoot you, bor, I'll shoot you, I swear, if you mucks
about." His eyes were glaring, and the look on his dark face left
no doubt that he meant what he said. "You're going to swear to
me that you're going to clear off of this farm on that nag of yours
and never come back again."
"I'm going straight to tell my father, Bert," Nancy warned.
The pistol twitched.
"If you move, Nancy, I warn you I'll shoot this fine chap of
yours in the leg. Besides, your father don't care about Master
Gregory anymorehe's got better things to worry him."
"Like finding out what's happening here?" Gregory said.
"Listen, Neckland, we're all in trouble. This farm is being run
by a group of nasty little monsters. You can't see them because
they're invisible"
The gun exploded. As he spoke, Nancy had attempted to run
off.  Without  hesitating,  Neckland  fired  down  at  Gregory's
knees. Gregory felt the shot pluck his trouser leg and knew
himself unharmed. With knowledge came rage. He flung
himself at Neckland and hit him hard over the heart. Falling
back, Neckland dropped the pistol and swung his fist wildly.
Gregory struck him again. As he did so, the other grabbed him
and they began furiously hitting each other. When Gregory
broke free, Neckland grappled with him again. There was more
pummeling of ribs.
"Let me go, you swine!" Gregory shouted. He hooked his
foot behind Neckland's ankle, and they both rolled over onto
the grass. At this point, a sort of flood bank had been raised
long ago between the house and low-lying orchard. Down this
the two men rolled, fetching up sharply against the stone wall
of the kitchen. Neckland got the worst of it, catching his head
on the corner, and lay there stunned. Gregory found himself
looking at two feet encased in ludicrous stockings. Slowly, he
rose to his feet, and confronted Mrs. Grendon at less than a
yard's distance. She was smiling.
He stood there, and gradually straightened his back, looking
at her anxiously.
"So there you are, Jackie, my Jackalums," she said. The smile
was wider now and less like a smile. "I wanted to talk to you.
You are the one who knows about the things that walk on the
lines, aren't you?"
"I don't understand, Mrs. Grendon."
"Don't call me that there daft old name, sonnie. You know all
about the little gray things that aren't supposed to be there,
don't you?"
"Oh, those . . . Suppose I said I did know?"
"The other naughty children will pretend they don't know
what I mean, but you know, don't you? You know about the
little gray things."
The sweat stood out on his brow. She had moved nearer.
She stood close, staring into his eyes, not touching him; but he
was acutely conscious that she could touch him at any moment.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Neckland stir and crawl
away from the house, but there were other things to occupy
him.
"These little gray things," he said. "Did you save the nine
babies from them?"
"The gray things wanted to kiss them, you see, but I couldn't
let them. I was clever. I hid them under the good feather pillow
and now even / can't find them!" She began to laugh, making a
horrible low whirring sound in her throat.
"They're small and gray and wet, aren't they?" Gregory said
sharply. "They've got big feet, webbed like frogs, but they're
heavy and short, aren't they, and they have fangs like a snake,
haven't they?"
She looked doubtful. Then her eye seemed to catch a move-
ment. She looked fixedly to one side. "Here comes one now,
the female one," she said.
Gregory turned to look where she did. Nothing was visible.
His mouth was dry. "How many are there, Mrs. Grendon?"
Then he saw the short grass stir, flatten, and raise near at
hand, and let out a cry of alarm. Wrenching off his riding boot,
he swung it in an arc, low above the ground. It struck
something concealed in thin air. Almost at once, he received a
terrific kick in the thigh, and fell backwards. Despite the hurt,
fear made him jump up almost at once.
Mrs. Grendon was changing. Her mouth collapsed as if it
would run off one corner of her face. Her head sagged to one
side.  Her shoulders fell.  A deep crimson blush momentarily
suffused her features, then drained, and as it drained she
dwindled like a deflating rubber balloon. Gregory sank to his
knees, whimpering, buried his face in his hands, and pressed his
hands to the grass. Darkness overcame him.
His senses must have left him only for a moment. When he
pulled himself up again, the almost empty bag of women's
clothes was still settling slowly to the ground.
"Joseph! Joseph!" he yelled. Nancy had fled. In a distracted
mixture of panic and fury, he dragged his boot on again and
rushed round the house towards the cowsheds.
Neckland stood halfway between barn and mill, rubbing his
skull. In his rattled state, the sight of Gregory apparently in full
pursuit made him run away.
"Neckland!" Gregory shouted. He ran like mad for the other.
Neckland bolted for the mill, jumped inside, tried to pull the
door to, lost his nerve, and ran up the wooden stairs. Gregory
bellowed after him.
The pursuit took them right to the top of the mill. Neckland
had lost enough wit even to kick over the bolt of the trapdoor.
Gregory, burst it up and climbed out panting. Throughly
cowed, Neckland backed towards the opening until he was
almost out on the little platform above the sails.
"You'll  fall  out, you idiot,"  Gregory warned.  "Listen,
Neckland, you have no reason to fear me. I want no enmity
between us. There's a bigger enemy we must fight. Look!"
He came towards the low door and looked down at the dark
surface of the pond. Neckland grabbed the overhead pulley for
security and said nothing.
"Look down at the pond," Gregory said. "That's where the
-Aurigans live. My GodBert, look, there one goes!"
The urgency in his voice made the farmhand look down
where he pointed. Together, the two men watched as a
depression slid over the black water; an overlapping chain of
ripples swung back from it. At approximately the middle of the
pond, the depression became a commotion. A small whirlpool
formed and died, and the ripples began to settle.
"There's your ghost, Bert," Gregory gasped. "That must have
been the one that got poor Mrs. Grendon. Now do you be-
lieve?"
"I never heard of a ghost as lived under water," Neckland
gasped.
"A ghost never harmed anyonewe've already had a sample
of what these terrifying things can do. Come on, Bert, shake
hands, understand I bear you no hard feelings. Oh, come on,
man! I know how you feel about Nancy, but she must be free to
.make her own choice in life."
They shook hands and grinned rather foolishly at each other.
"We better go and tell the farmer what we seen," Neckland
said. "I reckon that thing done what happened to Lardie last
evening."
"Lardie? What's happened to her? I thought I hadn't seen her
today."
"Same as happened to the little pigs. I found her just inside
the barn. Just her coat was left, that's all. No insides! Like
she'd been sucked dry."
It took Gregory twenty minutes to summon the council of
war on which he had set his mind. The party gathered in the
farmhouse,, in the parlor. By this time, Nancy had somewhat
recovered from the shock of her mother's death, and sat in an
armchair with a shawl about her shoulders. Her father stood
nearby with his arms folded, looking impatient, while Bert
Neckland lounged by the door. Only Grubby was not present.
He had been told to get on with the ditching.
"I'm going to have another attempt to convince you all that
you are in very grave danger," Gregory said. "You won't see it
for yourselves. The situation is that we're all animals together at
present. Do you remember that strange meteor that fell out of
the sky last winter, Joseph? And do you remember that ill-
smelling dew early in the spring? They were not unconnected,
and they are connected with all that's happening now. That
meteor was a space machine of some sort, I firmly believe, and
it brought in it a kind of life thatthat is not so much hostile to
terrestrial life as indifferent to its quality. The creatures from
that machine1 call them Aurigansspread the dew over the
farm. It was a growth accelerator, a manure or fertilizer, that
speeds growth in plants and animals."
"So much better for us!" Grendon said.
"But it's not better. The things grow wildly, yes, but the taste
is altered to suit the palates of those things out there. You've
seen what happened. You can't sell anything. People won't
touch your eggs or milk or meatthey taste too foul."
"But that's a lot of nonsense. We'll sell in Norwich. Our
produce is better than it ever was. We eat it, don't we?"
"Yes, Joseph, you eat it. But anyone who eats at your table is
doomed. Don't you understandyou are all 'fertilized' just as
surely as the pigs and chickens. Your place has been turned into
a superfarm, and you are all meat to the Aurigans."
That set a silence in the room, until Nancy said in a small
voice, "You don't believe such a terrible thing."
"I  suppose  these  unseen  creatures  told you  all  this?"
Grendon said truculently.
"Judge by the evidence, as I do. Your wife1 must be brutal,
Josephyour wife was eaten, like the dog and the pigs. As
everything else will be in time. The Aurigans aren't even
cannibals. They aren't like us. They don't care whether we have
souls or intelligences, any more than we really care whether
bullocks have."
"No one's going to eat me," Neckland said, looking decidedly
white about the gills.
"How can you stop them? They're invisible, and I think they
can strike like snakes. They're aquatic and I think they may be
oftly two feet tall. How can you protect.yourself?" He turned to
the farmer. "Joseph, the danger is very great, and not only to us
here. At first, they may have offered us no harm while they got
the measure of usotherwise I'd have died in your rowing boat.
Now there's no longer doubt of their hostile intent. I beg you to
let me go to Heigham and telephone to the chief of police in
Norwich, or at least to the local militia, to get them to come and
help us."
The farmer shook his head slowly, and pointed a finger at
Gregory.
"You soon forgot them talks we had, bor, all about the
coming age of socialism and how the powers of the state was
going to wither away. Directly we get a bit of trouble, you want
to call in the authorities. There's no harm here a few savage
dogs like my old Cuff can't handle, and I don't say as I ent
going to get a couple of dogs, but you'm a fule if you reckon I'm
getting the authorities down here. Fine old socialist you turn
out to be!"
"You have no room to talk about that!" Gregory exclaimed.
"Why didn't you let Grubby come here? If you were a socialist,
you'd treat the men as you treat yourself. Instead, you leave him
out in the ditch. I wanted him to hear this discussion."
The farmer leant threateningly across the table at him.
"Oh, you did, did you? Since when was this your farm? And
Grubby can come and go as he likes when it's his, so put that in
your pipe and smoke it, bor! Who do you just think you are?" He
moved closer to Gregory, apparently happy to work off his fears
as anger. "You're trying to scare us all off this here little old bit
of ground, ent you? Well, the Grendons ent a scaring sort, see!
Now I'll tell you something. See that shotgun there on the wall?
That be loaded. And if you ent off this farm by midday, that
shotgun ont be on that wall no more. It'll be here, bor, right
here in my two hands, and I'll be letting you have it right where
you'll feel it most."
"You can't do that. Father," Nancy said. "You know Greg-
ory is a friend of ours."
"For God's sake, Joseph," Gregory said, "see where your
enemy lies. Bert, tell Mr. Grendon what we saw on the pond, go
on!"
Neckland was far from keen to be dragged into this
argument.  He scratched his head, drew a red-and-white
spotted kerchief from round his neck to wipe his face, and
muttered, "We saw a sort of ripple on the water, but I didn't see
nothing really, Master Gregory. I mean, it could have been the
wind, couldn't it?"
"Now you be warned, Gregory," the farmer repeated. "You
be off my land by noon by the sun, and that mare of yours, or I
ont answer for it." He marched out into the pale sunshine, and
Neckland followed.
Nancy and Gregory stood staring at each other. He took her
hands, and they were cold.
"You believe what I was saying, Nancy?"
"Is that why the food did at one point taste bad to us, and
then soon tasted well enough again?"
"It can only have been that at that time your systems were
not fully adjusted to the poison. Now they are. You're being fed
up, Nancy, just like the livestockI'm sure of it! I fear for you,
darling love, I fear so much. What are we to do? Come back to
Cottersall with me! Mrs. Fenn has another fine little drawing
room upstairs that I'm sure she would rent."
"Now you're talking nonsense, Greg! How can I? What
would people say? No, you go away for now and let the
tempest of Father's wrath abate, and if you could come back
tomorrow, you will find he will be milder for sure, because I
plan to wait on him tonight and talk to him about you. Why,
he's half daft with grief and doesn't know what he says."
"All right, my darling. But stay inside as much as you can.
The Aurigans have not come indoors yet, as far as we know,
and it may be safer here. And lock all the doors and put the
shutters over the windows before you go to bed. And get your
father to take that shotgun of his upstairs with him."
The evenings were lengthening with confidence towards
summer now, and Bruce Fox arrived home before sunset. As he
jumped from his bicycle this evening, he found his friend
Gregory impatiently awaiting him.
They went indoors together, and while Fox ate a large tea,
Gregory told him what had been happening at the farm that
day.
"You're in trouble," Fox said. "Look, tomorrow's Sunday. I'll
skip church and come out with you. You need help."
"Joseph may shoot me. He'll be certain to if I bring along a
stranger. You can help me tonight by telling me where I can
purchase a young dog straightaway to protect Nancy."
"Nonsense, I'm coming with you. I can't bear hearing all this
at secondhand anyhow. We'll pick up a pup in any eventthe
blacksmith has a litter to be rid of. Have you got any plan of
action?"
"Plan? No, not really."
"You must have a plan. Grendon doesn't scare too easily,
does he?"
"I imagine he's scared well enough. Nancy says he's scared.
He just isn't imaginative enough to see what he can do but
carry on working as hard as possible."
"Look, I know these farmers. They won't believe anything
till you rub their noses in it. What we must do is show him an
Aurigan."
"Oh, splendid, Bruce! And how do you catch one?"
"You trap one."
"Don't forget they're invisiblehey, Bruce, yes, by Jove,
you're right! I've the very idea! Look, we've nothing more to
worry about if we can trap one. We can trap the lot, however
many there are, and we can kill the little horrors when we have
trapped them."
Fox grinned over the top of a chunk of cherry cake. "We're
agreed, I suppose, that these Aurigans aren't socialist Utopians
any longer?"
~
It helped a  great deal,  Gregory thought,  to be  able to
visualize roughly what the alien life form looked like. The
volume on serpents had been a happy find, for not only did it
give an idea of how the Aurigans must be able to digest their
prey so rapidly"a kind of soup or broth"but presumably it
gave a clue to their appearance. To live in a space machine,
they would probably be fairly small, and they seemed to be
semi-aquatic. It all went to make up a picture of a strange
being: skin perhaps scaled like a fish, great flipper feet like a
frog, barrel-like diminutive stature, and a tiny he'ad with two
great fangs in the jaw. There was no doubt but that the
invisibility cloaked a really ugly-looking dwarf!
As the macabre image passed through his head, Gregory and
Bruce Fox were preparing their trap. Fortunately, Grendon
had offered no resistance to their entering the farm; Nancy had
evidently spoken to good effect. And he had suffered another
shock. Five fowls had been reduced to little but feathers and
skin that morning almost before his eyes, and he was as a result
sullen and indifferent of what went on. Now he was out in a
distant field working, and the two young men were allowed to
carry out their plans unmolestedthough not without an .oc-
casional anxious glance at the pondwhile a worried Nancy
looked on from the farmhouse window.
She had with her a sturdy young mongrel dog of eight
months, which Gregory and Bruce had brought along, called
Gyp. Grendon had obtained two ferocious hounds from a
distant neighbor. These wide-mouthed brutes were secured
on long running chains that enabled them to patrol from the
horse trough by the pond, down the west side of the house,
almost to the elms and the bridge leading over to West Field.
They barked stridently most of the time and seemed to cause a
general unease among the other animals, all of which gave
voice restlessly this forenoon.
The dogs would be a difficulty, Nancy had said, for they
refused to touch any of the food the farm could provide. It was
hoped they would take it when they became hungry enough.
Grendon had planted a great board by the farm gate and on
the board had painted a notice telling everyone to keep away.
Armed with pitchforks, the two young men carried flour
sacks out from the mill and placed them at strategic positions
across the yard as far as the gate. Gregory went to the cowsheds
and led out one of the calves there on a length of binder twine
under the very teeth of the barking dogshe only hoped they
would prove as hostile to the Aurigans as they seemed to be to
human life.
As he was pulling the calf across the yard. Grubby appeared.
"You'd better stay away from us. Grubby. We're trying to
trap one of the ghosts."
"Master, if I catch one, I shall strangle him, straight I will."
"A pitchfork is a better weapon. These ghosts are dangerous
little beasts at close quarters."
"I'm strong, bor, I tell 'ee! I'd strangle un!"
To prove his point, Grubby rolled his striped and tattered
sleeve even further up his arm and exposed to Gregory and Fox
his enormous biceps. At the same time, he wagged his great
heavy head and lolled his tongue out of his mouth, perhaps to
demonstrate some of the effects of strangulation.
"It's a very fine arm," Gregory agreed. "But, look. Grubby,
we have a better idea. We are going to do this ghost to death
with pitchforks. If you want to join in, you'd better get a spare
one from the stable."
Grubby looked at him with a sly-shy expression and stroked
his throat. "I'd be better at strangling, bor. I've always wanted
to strangle someone."
"Why should you want to do that, Grubby?"
The laborer lowered his voice. "I always wanted to see how
difficult it would be. I'm strong, you see. I got my strength up as
a lad by doing some of this here stranglingbut never men, you
know, just cattle."
Backing away a pace, Gregory said, "This time, Grubby, it's
pitchforks for us." To settle the issue, he went into the stables,
got a pitchfork, and returned to thrust it into Grubby's hand.
"Let's get on with it," Fox said.
They were all ready to start. Fox and Grubby crouched down
in the ditch on either side of the gate, weapons at the ready.
Gregory emptied one of the bags of flour over the yard in a
patch just before the gate, so that anyone leaving the farm
would have to walk through it. Then he led the calf towards the
pond.
The young animal set up an uneasy mooing, and most of the
beasts nearby seemed to answer.  The chickens and hens
scattered about the yard in the pale sunshine as if demented.
Gregory felt the sweat trickle down his back, although his skin
was cold with the chemistries of suspense. With a slap on its
rump, he forced the calf into the water of the pond. It stood
there unhappily, until he led it out again and slowly back across
the yard, past the mill and the grain store on his right, past Mrs.
Grendon's neglected flowerbed on his left, towards the gate
where his allies waited. And for all his determination not to do
so, he could not stop himself looking backwards at the leaden
surface of the pond to see if anything followed him. He led the
calf through the gate and stopped. No tracks but his and the
calf's showed in the strewn flour.
"Try it again," Fox advised. "Perhaps they are taking a nap
down there."
Gregory went through the routine again, and a third and
fourth time, on each occasion smoothing the flour after he had
been through it. Each time, he saw Nancy watching helplessly
from the house. Each time, he felt a little more sick with
tension.
Yet when it happened, it took him by surprise. He had got
the calf to the gate for a fifth time when Fox's shout joined the
chorus of animal noises. The pond had shown no special
ripple, so the Aurigan had come from some dark-purposed
prowl of the farmsuddenly, its finned footsteps were marking
the flour.
Veiling with excitement, Gregory dropped the rope that led
the calf and ducked to one side. Seizing up an opened bag of
flour by the gatepost, he flung its contents before the advancing
figure.
The bomb of flour exploded all over the Aurigan. Now it was
revealed in chalky outline. Despite himself, Gregory found
himself screaming in sheer fright as the ghastliness was
revealed in whirling white. It was especially the size that
frightened: this dread thing, remote from human form, was too
big  for  earthly  natureten  feet  high,  perhaps  twelve!
Invincible, and horribly quick, it came rushing at him with
unnumbered arms striking out towards him.
Next morning, Dr. Crouchorn and his silk hat appeared at
Gregory's bedside, thanked Mrs. Fenn for some hot water, and
dressed Gregory's leg wound.
"You got off lightly, considering," the old man said. "But if
you will take a piece of advice from me, Mr. Rolles, you will
cease to visit the Grendon farm. It's an evil place and you'll
come to no good there."
Gregory nodded. He had told the doctor nothing, except
that Grendon had run up and shot him in the leg; which was
true enough, but that it omitted most of the story.
"When will I be up again, doctor?"
"Oh,  young  flesh heals soon  enough, or undertakers
would be rich men and doctors paupers. A few days should see
you right as rain. But I'll be visiting you again tomorrow, until
then you are to stay flat on your back and keep that leg
motionless."
"I suppose I may write a letter, doctor?"
"I suppose you may, young man."
Directly Dr. Crouchorn had gone, Gregory took pen and
paper and addressed some urgent lines to Nancy. They told
her that he loved her very much and could not bear to think of
her remaining on the farm; that he could not get to see her for a
few days because of his leg wound; and that she must
immediately come away on Hetty with a bag full of her things
and stay at "The Wayfarer," where there was a capital room for
which he would pay. That if she thought anything of him, she
must put the simple plan into action this very day, and send
him word round from the inn when she was established there.
With some .satisfaction, Gregory read this through twice,
signe'd it, and added kisses, and summoned Mrs. Fenn with the
aid of a small bell she had provided for that purpose.
He told her that the delivery of the letter was a matter of
extreme urgency. He would entrust it to Tommy, the baker's
boy, to deliver when his morning round was over, and would
give him  a  shilling  for  his  efforts.  Mrs.  Fenn  was  not
enthusiastic about this, but with a little flattery was persuaded
to speak to Tommy; she left the bedroom clutching both letter
and shilling.
At once, Gregory began another letter, this one to
Mr. H. G. Wells. It was some while since he had last addressed
his correspondent, and so he had to make a somewhat lengthy
report; but eventually he came to the events of the previous
day.
So horrified was I by the sight of the Aurigan (he wrote),
that I stood where I was, unable to move, while the flour blew
about us. And how can I now convey to youwho are perhaps
the most interested person in this vital subject in all the British
Isleswhat the monster looked like, outlined in white? My
impressions were, of course, both brief and indefinite, but the
main handicap is that there is nothing on Earth to liken this
weird being to!
It appeared, I suppose, most like some horrendous goose, but
the  neck  must  be  imagined  as  almost  as  thick  as  the
bodyindeed, it was almost all body, or all neck, whichever
way you look at it. And on top of this neck was no head but a
terrible array of various sorts of arms, a nest of writhing cilia,
antennae, and whips, for all the world as if an octopus were
entangled with a Portuguese man-o'-war as big as itself, with a
few shrimp and starfish legs thrown in. Does this sound
ludicrous? I can only swear to you that as it bore down on me,
perhaps twice my own height or more, I found it something
almost too terrifying for human eyes to look onand yet I did
not see it, but merely the flour that adhered to it!
That repulsive sight would have been the last my eyes ever
dwelt on had it not been for Grubby, the simple farmhand I
have had occasion to mention before.
As I threw the flour. Grubby gave a great cry and rushed
forward, dropping the pitchfork. He jumped at the creature as
it turned on me. This put out our plan, which was that he and
Bruce Fox should pitchfork the creature to death. Instead, he
grasped it as high as he possibly might and commenced to
squeeze with full force of his mighty muscles. What a tetrifying
contest! What a fear-fraught combat!
Collecting his wits, Bruce charged forward and attacked with
his pitchfork. It was his battle cry that brought me back from
my paralysis into action. I ran and seized Grubby's pitchfork
and also charged. That thing had arms for us all! It struck out,
and I have no doubt that several arms held poisoned needle
teeth, for I saw one come towards me gaping like a snake's
mouth. Need I stress the dangerparticularly when you recall
that the effect of the flour cloud was only partial, and there
were still invisible arms flailing around us!
Our saving was that the Aurigan was cowardly. I saw Bruce
jab it hard, and a second later, I rammed my pitchfork right
through its foot. At once it had had enough. Grubby fell to the
ground as it retreated. It moved at amazing speed, back to-
wards the pool. We were in pursuit! And all the beasts of the
barnyard uttered their cries to it.
As it launched itself into the water, we both flung our
pitchforks at its form. But it swam out strongly and then dived
below the surface, leaving only ripples and a scummy trail of
flour.
We stood staring at the water for an instant, and then with
common accord ran back to Grubby. He was dead. He lay face
up and was no longer recognizable. The Aurigan must have
struck him with its poisoned fangs as soon as he attacked.
Grubby's skin was stretched tight and glistened oddly. He had
turned a dull crimson. No longer was he more than a caricature
of  human  shape.  All  his  internal  substance  had  been
transformed to liquid by the rapid-working venoms of the
Aurigan; he was like a sort of giant man-shaped rotten haggis.
There were wound marks across his neck and throat and
what had been his face, and from these wounds his substance
drained, so that he slowly deflated into his trampled bed of
flour and dust. Perhaps the sight of fabled Medusa's head, that
turned men to stone, was no worse than this, for we stood there
utterly paralyzed. It was a blast from Farmer Grendon's shot-
gun that brought us back to life.
He had threatened to shoot me. Now, seeing us despoiling
his flour sacks and apparently about to make off with a calf, he
fired at us. We had no choice but to run for it. Grendon was in
no explaining mood. Good Nancy came running out to stop
him, but Neckland was charging up too with the pair of savage
dogs' growling at the ends of their chains.  .
Bruce and I had ridden up on my Daisy. I had left her
saddled. Bringing her out of the stable at a trot, I heaved
Bruce up into the saddle and was about to climb on myself
when the gun went off again and I felt a burning pain in my leg.
Bruce dragged me into the saddle and we were off1 half
unconscious.
Here I lie now in bed, and should be about again in a couple
of days. Fortunately, the shot did not harm any bones.
So you see how the farm is now a place of the damned! Once,
I thought it might even become a new Eden, growing the food
of the gods for men like gods. Insteadalas! the first meeting
between humanity and beings from another world has proved
disastrous, and the Eden is become a battleground for a war of
worlds. How can our anticipations for the future be anything
other than gloomy?
Before I close this over-long account, I must answer a query
in your letter and pose another to you, more personal than
yours to me.
First, you question if the Aurigans are entirely invisible and
sayif I may quote your letter"Any alteration in the refrac-
tive index of the eye lenses would make vision impossible, but
without such alteration the eyes would be visible as glassy
globules. And for vision it is also necessary that there should be
visual purple behind the retina and an opaque cornea. How
then do your Aurigans manage for vision?" The answer must be
that they do without eyesight as we know it, for I think they
naturally maintain a complete invisibility. How they "see" I
know not, but whatever sense they use, it is effective. How they
communicate I know notour fellow made not the slightest
sound when I speared his foot!yet it is apparent they must
communicate effectively. Perhaps they tried originally to
communicate with us through a mysterious sense we do not
possess and, on receiving no answer, assumed us to be as dumb
as our dumb animals. If so, what a tragedy!
Now to my personal inquiry. I know, sir, that you must grow
more busy as you grow more famous; but I feel that what
transpires here in this remote corner of East Anglia is of
momentous import to the world and the future. Could you not
take it upon yourself to pay us a visit here? You would be
comfortable at one of our two inns, and the journey here by
railway is efficient if tediousyou can easily 'get a regular
wagon from Heigham station here, a distance of only eight
miles. You could then view Grendon's farm for yourself, and
perhaps one of these interstellar beings too. I feel you are as
much amused as concerned by the accounts you receive from
the undersigned, but I swear not one detail is exaggerated. Say
you can come!
If you need persuasion, reflect on how much delight it will
give to
Your sincere admirer,
Gregory Rolles.
Reading this long letter through, scratching out two
superfluous adjectives, Gregory lay back in some satisfaction.
He had the feeling he was still involved in the struggle
although temporarily out of action.
But the later afternoon brought him disquieting news.
Tommy, the baker's boy, had gone out as far as the Grendon
farm. Then the ugly legends circulating in the village about the
place had risen in his mind, and he had stood wondering
whether he should go on. An unnatural babble of animal noise
came from the farm, mixed with hammering, and when Tommy
crept forward and saw the farmer himself looking as black as a
puddle and building a great thing like a gibbet in the yard, he
had lost his nerve and rushed back the way he came, the letter
to Nancy undelivered.
Gregory lay on the bed worrying about Nancy until Mrs.
Fenn brought up supper on a tray. At least it was clear now
why the Aurigans had not entered the farmhouse; they were far
too large to do so. She was safe as long as she kept indoorsas
far as anyone on that doomed plot was safe.
He fell asleep early that night. In the early hours of the
morning, nightmare visited him. He was in a strange city where
all the buildings were new and the people wore shining clothes.
In one square grew a tree. The Gregory in the dream stood in a
special relationship to the tree: he fed it. It was a job to push
people who were passing by the tree against its surface. The
tree was a saliva tree. Down its smooth bark ran quantities of
saliva from red lips like leaves up in the boughs. It grew enor-
mous on the people on which it fed. As they were thrown
against it, they passed into the substance of the tree. Some of
the saliva splashed on to Gregory. But instead of dissolving
him, it caused everything he touched to be dissolved. He put
his arms about the girl he loved, and as his mouth went towards
hers, ter skin peeled away from her face.  .
He woke weeping desperately and fumbling blindly for the
ring of the gas mantle.
Dr. Crouchom came late next morning and told Gregory he
should have at least three more days complete rest for the
recovery of the muscles of his leg. Gregory lay there in a state of
acute dissatisfaction with himself. Recalling the vile dream, he
thought how negligent he had been towards Nancy, the girl he
loved. His letter to her still lay undelivered by his bedside.
After Mrs. Fenn had brought up his dinner, he determined that
he must see Nancy for himself. Leaving the food, he pulled
himself out of bed and dressed slowly.
The leg was more painful than he had expected, but he got
himself downstairs and out to the stable without too much
trouble. Daisy seemed pleased to see him. He rubbed her nose
and rested his head against her long cheek in sheer pleasure at
being with her again.
"This may be the last time you have to undertake this
particular journey, my girl," he said.
Saddling her was comparatively easy. Getting into the
saddle involved much bodily anguish. But eventually he was
comfortable and they turned along the familiar and desolate
road to the domain of the Aurigans. His leg was worse than he
had bargained for. More than once, he had to get the mare to
stop while he let the throbbing subside. He saw he was losing
blood plentifully.
As he approached the farm, he observed what the baker's
boy had meant by saying Grendon was building a gibbet. A
pole had been set up in the middle of the yard. A cable ran to
the top of it, and a light was rigged there, so that the expanse of
the yard could be illuminated by night.
Another change had taken place. A wooden fence had been
built behind the horse trough, cutting off the pond from the
farm. But at one point, ominously, a section of it had been
broken down and splintered and crushed, as if some monstrous
thing had walked through the barrier unheeding.
A ferocious dog was chained just inside the gate, and barking
its head off, to the consternation of the poultry. Gregory dared
not enter. As he stood wondering the best way to tackle this
fresh problem, the door of the farmhouse opened fractionally
and Nancy peeped out. He called and signalled frantically to
her.
Timidly, she ran across and let him in, dragging the dog
back. Gregory kissed her cheek, soothed by the feel of her
sturdy body in his arms.
"Where's your father?"
"My dearest, your leg, your poor leg! It's bleeding yet!"
"Never mind my leg. Where's your father?"
"He's down in South Meadow, I think."
"Good! I'm going to speak with him. Nancy, I want you to
go indoors and pack some belongings. I'm taking you away
with me."
"I can't leave Father!"
"You must. I'm going to tell him now." As he limped across
the yard, she called fearfully, "He has that there gun of his'n
with him all the timedo be careful!"
The two dogs on a running chain followed him all the way
down to- the side of the house, nearly choking in their efforts to
get at him, their teeth flashing uncomfortably close to his
ankles.  He  noticed  Neckland  below  Grubby's  little  hut,
busy sawing wood; the farmer was not with him. On impulse,
Gregory turned into the sties.
It was gloomy there.  In the gloom, Grendon worked. He
dropped his bucket when he saw Gregory there, and came
forward threateningly.
"You came back? Why don't you stay away? Can't you see
the notice by the gate? I don't want you here no more, bor. I
know you mean well, and I intend you no harm, but I'll kill 'ee,
understand, kill 'ee if you ever come here again. I've plenty of
worries without you to add to them. Now then, get you going!"
Gregory stood his ground.
"Mr. Grendon, are you as mad as your wife was before she
died? Do you understand that you may meet Grubby's fate at
any moment? Do you realize what you are harboring in your
pond?"
"I  ent a fule.  But  suppose them there  things  do  eat
everything, humans included? Suppose this is now their farm?
They still got to have someone to tend it. So I reckon they ent
going to harm me. So long as they sees me work hard, they ent
going to harm me."
"You're being fattened, do you understand? For all the hard
work you do, you must have put on a stone this last month.
Doesn't that scare you?"
Something of the farmer's pose broke for a moment. He cast a
wild look round. "I ent saying I ent scared. .I'm saying I'm doing
what I have to do. We don't own our lives. Now do me a favor
and get out of here."
Instinctively, Gregory's glance had followed Grendon's. For
the first time, he saw in the dimness the size of the pigs. Their
great broad black backs were visible over the top of the sties.
They were the size of young oxen.
"This is a farm of death," he said.
"Death's always the end of all of us, pig or cow or man alike."
"Right-ho, Mr. Grendon, you can think like that if you like.
It's not  my  way of thinking,  nor  am  I  going to  see  your
dependents suffer from your madness. Mr. Grendon, sir, I wish
to ask for your daughter's hand in marriage."
For the first three days that she was away from her home,
Nancy Grendon lay in her room in "The Wayfarer" near to
death. It seemed as if all ordinary food poisoned her. But
gradually under Doctor Crouchorn's ministrationterrified
perhaps by the rage she suspected he would vent upon her
should she fail to get bettershe recovered her strength.
"You look so much better today," Gregory said, clasping her
hand. "You'll soon be up and about again, once your system is
free of all the evil nourishment of the farm."
"Greg, dearest, promise me you will not go to the farm again.
You have no need to go now I'm not there."
He cast his eyes down and said, "Then you don't have to get
me to promise, do you?"
"I just want to be sure we neither of us go there again.
Father, I feel sure, bears a charmed life. It's as if I was now
coming to my senses againbut I don't want it to be as if you
was losing yours! Supposing those things followed us here to
Cottersall, those Aurigans?"
"You know, Nancy, I've wondered several times why' they
remain on the farm as' they do. You would think that once they
found they could so easily defeat human beings, they would
attack everyone, or send for more of their own kind and try to
invade us. Yet they seem perfectly content to remain in that
one small space."
She smiled. "I may not be very clever compared with you,
but I can tell 'ee the answer to that one. They ent interested in
going anywhere. I think there's just two of them, and they come
to our little old world for a holiday in their space machine,
same as we might go to Great Yarmouth for a couple of days
for our honeymoon. Perhaps they're on their honeymoon."
"On honeymoon! What a ghastly idea!"
"Well, on holiday then. That was Father's ideahe says as
there's just two of them, treating Earth as a quiet place to stay.
People like to eat well when they're on holiday, don't they?"
He stared at Nancy aghast.
"But that's horrible! You're trying to make the Aurigans out
to be pleasant!"
"Of course I ent, you silly ha'p'orth! But I expect they seem
pleasant to each other."
"Well, I prefer to think of them as menaces."
"All the more reason for you to keep away from them!"
But to be out of sight was not to be out of mind's reach.
Gregory received another letter from Dr. Hudson-Ward, a kind
and encouraging one, but he made no attempt to answer it. He
felt he could not bear to take up any work that would remove
him from the neighborhood, although the need to work, in
view of his matrimonial plans, was now pressing; the modest
allowance his father made him would not support two in any
comfort. Yet he could not bring his thoughts to grapple with
such practical problems. It was another letter he looked for,
and the horrors of the farm that obsessed him. And the next
night, he dreamed of the saliva tree again.
In the evening, he plucked up enough courage to tell Fox and
Nancy about it. They met in the little snug at the back of "The
Wayfarer's" public bar, a discreet and private place with red
plush on the seats. Nancy was her usual self again, and had
been out for a brief walk in the afternoon sunshine.
"People wanted to give themselves to the saliva tree. And
although I didn't see this for myself, I had the distinct feeling
that perhaps they weren't actually killed so much as changed
into something elsesomething less human maybe. And this
time, I saw the tree was made of metal of some kind and was
growing bigger and bigger by pumpsyou could see through
the saliva to big armatures and pistons, and out of the branches
steam was pouring."
Fox laughed, a little unsympathetically. "Sounds to me like
the shape of things to come, when even plants are grown by
machinery. Events are preying on your mind, Greg! Listen, my
sister is going to Norwich tomorrow, driving in her uncle's trap.
Why don't the two of you go with her? She's going to buy some
adornments for her bridal gown, so that should interest you,
Nancy-Then you could stay with Greg's uncle for a couple of
days. I assure you I will let you know immediately the Aurigans
invade Cottersall, so you won't miss anything."
Nancy seized Gregory's arm. "Can we please, Gregory,
can we? I ent been to Norwich for long enough and it's a fine
city."
"It would be a good idea," he said doubtfully.
Both of them pressed him until he was forced to yield. He
broke up the little party as soon as he decently could, kissed
Nancy good-night, and walked hurriedly back down the street
to the baker's. Of one thing he was certain: if he must leave the
district even for a short while, he had to have a look to see what
was happening at the farm before he went.
The farm looked in the summer's dusk as it had never done
before.  Massive wooden screens nine feet high had been
erected and hastily creosoted. They stood about in forlorn
fashion, intended to keep the public gaze from the farm, but
lending it unmeaning. They stood not only in the yard but at
irregular intervals along the boundaries of the land, inappro-
priately among fruit trees, desolately amid bracken, irrelevantly
in swamp. A sound of furious hammering, punctuated by the
unwearying animal noises, indicated that more screens were
still being built.
But what lent the place its unearthly look was the lighting.
The solitary pole supporting the electric light now had five
companions: one by the gate, one by the pond, one behind the
house, one outside the engine house, one down by the pig sties.
Their hideous yellow glare reduced the scene to the sort of
unlikely picture that might be found and puzzled over in the
eternal midnight of an Egyptian tomb.
Gregory was too wise to try and enter by the gate. He
hitched Daisy to the low branches of a thorn tree and set off
over waste land, entering Grendon's property by the South
Meadow. As he walked stealthily towards the distant out-
houses, he could see how the farm land differed from the
territory about it. The corn was already so high it seemed in the
dark almost to threaten by its ceaseless whisper of movement.
The fruits had ripened fast. In the strawberry beds were great
strawberries like pears. The marrows lay on their dunghill like
bloated bolsters, gleaming from a distant shaft of light. In the
orchard,  the  trees  creaked,  weighed  down  by  distorted
footballs that passed for apples; with a heavy autumnal thud
one fell over-ripe to the ground. Everywhere on the farm,, there
seemed to be slight movement and noise, so much so that
Gregory stopped to listen.
A wind was rising. The sails of the old mill shrieked like
a gull's cry as they began to turn. In the engine house, the
steam engine pumped out its double unfaltering note as it gen-
erated power. The dogs still raged, the animals added their un-
easy chorus. He recalled the saliva tree; here as in the dream,
it was as if agriculture had become industry, and the impulses
of nature swallowed by the new god of Science. In the bark of
the trees rose the dark steam of novel and unknown forces.
He talked himself into pressing forward again. He moved
carefully through the baffling slices of shadow and illumination
created by the screens and lights, and arrived near the back
door of the farmhouse. A lantern burnt in the kitchen window.
As Gregory hesitated, the crunch of broken glass came from
within.
Cautiously, he edged himself past the window and peered in
through the doorway. From the parlor, he heard the voice of
Grendon. It held a curious muffled tone, as if the man spoke to
himself.
"Lie there! You're no use to me. This is a trial of strength. Oh
God, preserve me, to let me prove myself! Thou has made my
land barren till nownow let me harvest it! I don't know what
You're doing. I didn't mean to presume, but this here farm is my
life. Curse 'em, curse 'em all! They're all enemies." There was
more of it; the man was muttering like one drunk. With horrid
fascination, Gregory was drawn forward till he had crossed the
kitchen flags and stood on the verge of the larger room. He
peered round the half open door until he could see the farmer,
standing obscurely in the middle of the room.
A candle stood in the neglected hearth, its flickering flame
glassily reflected in the cases of maladroit animals. Evidently
the house electricity had been cut off to give additional power
to the new lights outside.
Grendon's back was to Gregory. One gaunt and unshaven
cheek was lit by candle-light. His back seemed a little bent by
the weight of what he imagined his duties, yet looking at that
leather-clad back now Gregory experienced a sort of reverence
for the independence of the man, and for the mystery that lay
under his plainness. He watched as Grendon moved out
through the front door, leaving it hanging wide, and passed into
the yard, still muttering to himself. He walked round the side of
the house and was hidden from view as the sound of his tread
was lost amid the renewed barking of dogs.
The tumult did not drown a groan from near at hand.
Peering into the shadows, Gregory saw a body lying under the
table. It-rolled over, crunching broken glass as it did so, and
exclaimed in a dazed way. Without being able to see clearly,
Gregory knew it was Neckland. He climbed over to the man
and propped his head up, kicking away a stuffed fish as he did
so.
"Don't kill me, bor! I only want to get away from here."
"Bert? It's Greg here. Bert, are you badly hurt?"
He could see some wounds. The fellow's shirt had been
practically torn from his back, and the flesh on his side and
back was cut from where he had rolled in the glass. More
serious was a great weal over one shoulder, changing to a
deeper color as Gregory looked at it.
Wiping his face and speaking in a more rational voice,
Neckland said, "Gregory? I thought as you was down Cotter-
sail? What you doing here? He'll kill you proper if he finds
you here!"
"What happened to you, Bert? Can you get up?"
The laborer was again in possession of his faculties. He
grabbed Gregory's forearm and said imploringly, "Keep your
voice down, for Christ's sake, or he'll hear Us and come back
and settle my hash for once for all! He's gone clean off his head,
says as these pond things are having a holiday here. He nearly
knocked my head off my shoulder with that stick of his! Lucky
I got a thick head!"
"What was the quarrel about?"
"I tell you straight, bor, I have got the wind up proper about
this here farm. They things as live in the pond will eat me and
suck me up like they done Grubby if I stay here any more. So I
run off when Joe Grendon weren't looking, and I come in here
to gather up my traps and my bits and leave here at once. This
whole place i evil, a bed of evil, and it ought to be destroyed.
Hell can't be worse than this here farm!"
As he spoke, he pulled himself to his feet and stood, keeping
his balance with Gregory's aid. Grunting, he made his way over
to the staircase.
"Bert," Gregory said, "supposing we rush Grendon and lay
him out. We can then get him in the cart and all leave
together."
Neckland turned to stare at him, his face hidden in shadows,
nursing his shoulder with one hand.
"You try it!" he said, and then he turned and went steadily
up the stairs.
Gregory stood where he was, keeping one eye on the
window. He had come to the farm without any clear notion in
his head, but now that the idea had been formulated, he saw
that it was up to him to try and remove Grendon from his farm.
He felt obliged to do it; for although he had lost his former
regard for Grendon, a sort of fascination for the man held him,
and he was incapable of leaving any human being, however
perverse, to face alone the alien horrors of the farm. It occurred
to him that he might get help from the distant houses,
Dereham Cottages, if only the farmer were rendered in one way
or another unable to pepper the intruders with shot.
The machine house possessed only one high window, and
that was barred. It was built of brick and had a stout door
which could be barred and locked from the outside. Perhaps it
would be possible to lure Grendon into there; outside aid could
then be obtained.
Not without apprehension, Gregory went to the open door
and peered out into the confused dark. He stared anxiously at
the ground for sight of a footstep more sinister than the
farmer's, but there was no indication that the Aurigans were
active. He stepped into the yard.
He had not gone two yards before a woman's screams rang
out. The sound seemed to clamp an icy grip about Gregory's
ribs, and into his mind came a picture of poor mad Mrs.
Grendon. Then he recognized the voice, in its few shouted
words, as Nancy's. Even before the sound cut off, he began to
pelt down the dark side of the house as fast as he could run.
Only later did he realize how he seemed to be running
against a great army of animal cries. Loudest was the babel of
the pigs; every swine seemed to have some message deep and
nervous and indecipherable to deliver to an unknown source;
and it was to the sties that Gregory ran, swerving past the giant
screens under the high and sickly light.
The noise in the sties was deafening. Every animal was
attacking its pen with its sharp hooves. One light swung over
the middle pen. With its help, Gregory saw immediately how
terrible was the change that had come over the farm since his
last visit. The sows had swollen enormously and their great ears
clattered against their cheeks like boards. Their hirsute backs
curved almost to the rafters of their prison.
Grendon was at the far entrance. In his arms he held the
unconscious form of his daughter. A sack of pig feed lay
scattered by his feet. He had one pen gate half open and was
trying to thrust his way in against the flank of a pig whose
mighty shoulder came almost level with his. He turned and
stared at Gregory with a face whose blankness was more
terrifying than any expression of rage.
There was another presence in the place. A pen gate near
Gregory swung open. The two sows wedged in the narrow sty
gave out a terrible falsetto squealing, clearly scenting the
presence of an unappeasable hunger. They kicked out blindly,
and all the other animals plunged with a sympathetic fear.
Struggle was useless. An Aurigan was there; the figure of Death
itself, with its unwearying scythe and unaltering smile of bone,
was as easily avoided as this poisoned and unseen presence. A
rosy flush spread over the back of one of the sows. Almost at
once, her great bulk began to collapse; in a moment, her
substance had been ingested.
Gregory did not stay to watch the sickening action. He was
running forward, for the farmer was again on the move. And
now it was clear what he was going to do. He pushed into the
end sty and dropped his daughter down into the metal food
trough. At once, the sows turned with smacking jaws to deal
with this new fodder. His hands free, Grendon moved to a
bracket set in the wall. There lay his gun.
Now the uproar in the sties had reached its loudest. The sow
whose companion had been so rapidly ingested broke free, and
burst into the central aisle. For a moment she stoodmercifully,
for otherwise Gregory would have been trampledas if dazed
by the possibility of liberty. The place shook and the other
swine fought to get to her. Brick crumbled, pen gates buckled.
Gregory jumped aside as the second pig lumbered free, and
next moment the place was full of grotesque fighting bodies,
fighting their way to liberty.
He had reached Grendon, but the stampede caught them
even as they confronted each other. A hoof stabbed down on
Grendon's instep. Groaning, he bent forward, and was at once
swept underfoot by his creatures. Gregory barely had time to
vault into the nearest pen before they thundered by. Nancy was
trying pitifully to climb out of the trough as the two beasts to
which she had been offered fought to kick their way free. With
a ferocious strengthwithout reasonalmost without con-
sciousnessGregory hauled her up, jumped until 'he swung
up on one of the overhead beams, wrapped a leg round the
beam, hung down till he grasped Nancy, pulled her up with
him.
They were safe, but the safety was not permanent. Through
the din and dust, they could see that the gigantic beasts were
wedged tightly in both entrances. In the middle was a sort of
battlefield, where the animals fought to reach the opposite end
of the building; they were gradually tearing each other to
piecesbut the sties too were threatened with demolition.
"I had to follow you," Nancy gasped. "But Father1 don't
think he even recognized me!"
At least, Gregory thought, she had not seen her father
trampled underfoot. Involuntarily glancing in that direction, he
saw the shotgun that Grendon had never managed to reach still
lying across a bracket on the wall. By crawling along a traverse
beam, he could reach it easily. Bidding Nancy sit where she
was, he wriggled along the beam, only a foot or two above the
heaving backs of the swine. At least the gun should afford them
some protection: the Aurigan, despite all its ghastly differences
from humanity, would hardly be immune to lead.
As he grasped the old-fashioned weapon and pulled it up,
Gregory was suddenly filled with an intense desire to kill one of
the invisible monsters. In that instant, he recalled an earlier
hope he had had of them: that they might be superior beings,
beings of wisdom and enlightened power, coming from a
better society where higher moral codes directed the activities
of its citizens. He had thought that only to such a civilization
would the divine gift of traveling through interplanetary
space be granted. But perhaps the opposite held true: per-
haps such a great objective could be gained only by species
ruthless enough to disregard more humane ends. As soon as
he thought it, his mind was overpowered with a vast diseased
vision of the universe, where such races as dealt in love
and kindness and intellect cowered forever on their little
globes, while all about them went the slayers of the universe,
sailing where they would to satisfy their cruelties and their
endless appetites.
He heaved his way back to Nancy above the bloody porcine
fray.
She pointed mutely. At the far end, the entrance had
crumbled away, and the sows were bursting forth into the
night. But one sow fell and turned crimson as it fell, sagging
over the floor like a shapeless bag. Another, passing the same
spot, suffered the same fate.
Was the Aurigan moved by anger? Had the pigs, in their
blind charging, injured it? Gregory raised the gun and aimed.
As he did so, he saw a giant hallucinatory column in the air;
enough dirt and mud and blood had been thrown up to spot the
Aurigan and render him partly visible. Gregory fired.
The recoil nearly knocked him off his perch. He shut his eyes,
dazed by the noise, and was dimly aware of Nancy clinging to
him, shouting, "Oh, you marvellous man, you marvellous man]
You hit that old bor right smack on target!"
He opened his eyes and peered through the smoke and dust.
The shade that represented the Aurigan was tottering. It fell. It
fell among the distorted shapes of the two sows it had killed,
and corrupt fluids splattered over the paving. Then it rose
again. They saw its progress to the broken door, and then it had
gone.
For a minute, they sat there, staring at each other, triumph
and speculation mingling on both their faces. Apart from one
badly injured beast, the building was clear of pigs now.
Gregory climbed to the floor and helped Nancy down beside
him. They skirted the loathsome messes as best they could and
staggered into the fresh air.
Up beyond the orchard, strange lights showed in the rear
windows of the farmhouse.
"It's on fire! Oh, Greg, our poor home is afire! Quick, we
must gather what we can! All Father's lovely cases"
He held her fiercely, bent so that he spoke straight into her
face. "Bert Neckland did this! He did it! He told me the place
ought to be destroyed and that's what he did."
"Let's go, then"
"No, no, Nancy, we must let it burn! Listen! There's a
wounded Aurigan loose here somewhere. We didn't kill him. If
those things feel rage, anger, spite, they'll be set to kill us now
don't forget there's more than one of *em! We aren't going
that way if we want to live. Daisy's just across the meadow
here, and she'll bear us both safe home."
"Greg, dearest, this is my home!" she cried in her despair.
The flames were leaping higher. The kitchen windows broke
in a shower of glass. He was running with her in the opposite
direction, shouting wildly, "I'm your home now! I'm your home
now!"
Now she was running with him, no longer protesting, and
they plunged together through the high rank grass.  
When they gained the track and the restive mare, they
paused to take breath and look back.
The house was well ablaze now. Clearly nothing could save
it. Sparks had carried to the windmill, and one of the sails was
ablaze. About the scene, the electric lights shone spectral and
pale on the tops of their poles. An occasional running figure of a
gigantic animal dived about its own purposes. Suddenly, there
was a flash of lightning and all the electric lights went out.
One of the stampeding animals had knocked down a pole;
crashing into the pond, it short-circuited the system.
"Let's get away," Gregory said, and he helped Nancy on to
the mare. As he climbed up behind her, a roaring sound
developed, grew in volume, and altered in pitch. Abruptly it
died again. A thick cloud of steam billowed above the pond.
From it rose the space machine, rising, rising, rising, suddenly a
sight to take the heart in awe. It moved up into the soft night
sky, was lost for a moment, began dully to glow, was seen to be
already tremendously far away.
Desperately, Gregory looked for it, but it had gone, already
beyond the frail confines of the terrestrial atmosphere. An
awful desolation settled on him, the more awful for being
irrational, and then he thought, and cried his thought aloud,
"Perhaps they were only holiday-makers here! Perhaps they
enjoyed themselves here, and will tell their friends of this little
globe! Perhaps Earth has a future only as a resort for millions of
the Aurigan kind!"
The church clock was striking midnight as they passed the
first cottages of Cottersall.
"We'll go first to the inn," Gregory said. "I can't well disturb
Mrs. Fenn at this late hour, but your landlord will fetch us food
and hot water and see that your cuts are bandaged."
"I'm right as rain, love, but I'd be glad of your company."
"I warn you, you shall have too much of it from now on!"
The door of the inn was locked, but a light burned inside,
and in a moment the landlord himself opened to them, all eager
to hear a bit of gossip he could pass on to his custom.
"So happens as there's a gentleman up in Number Three
wishes to speak with you in the morning," he told Gregory.
"Very nice gentleman come on the night train, only got in here
an hour past, off the wagon."
Gregory made a wry face.
"My father, no doubt."
"Oh, no, sir. His name is a Mr. Wills or Wells or Wallshis
signature was a mite difficult to make out."
"Wells! Mr. Wells! So he's come!" He caught Nancy's hands,
shaking them in his excitement. "Nancy, one of the greatest
men in England is here! There's no one more profitable for such
a tale as ours! I'm going up to speak with him right away."
Kissing her lightly on the cheek, he hurried up the stairs and
knocked on the door of Number Three.














THERE IS A TIDE
by Brian W. Aldiss

How SOOTHING to the heart it was to be home. I began that
evening with nothing but peace in me: and the evening itself
jellied down over Africa with a mild mother's touch: so that
even now I must refuse myself the luxury of claiming any pre-
monition of the disaster for which the scene was already set.
My half-brother, K-Jubal (we had the same father), was
in a talkative mood. As we sat at the table on the veranda
of his house, his was the major part of the conversation: and
this was unusual, for I am a poet, and poets are generally
articulate enough.
"... because the new dam is now complete," he was say-
ing, "and I shall take my days more easily. I am going to
write my life story, Rog. G-Williams on the World Weekly
has been pressing me for it for some time; it'll be serialized,
and then turned into audibook form. I should make a lot of
money, eh?"
He smiled as he asked this; in my company he always
enjoyed playing the heavy materialist. Generally I encouraged
him; this time I said: "Jubal, no man in Congo States, no
man in the world possibly, has done more for people than
you. I am the idle singer of an idle day, but youwhy, your
good works lie about you."
I swept my hand out over the still bright land.
Mokulgu is a rising town on the western fringes of Lake
Tanganyika's nothem end. Before Jubal and his engineers
came here, it was a sleepy market town, and its natives lived
in the indolent fashion of their countless forefathers. In ten
years, that ancient pattern was awry; in fifteen, shattered
completely. If you lived in Mokulgu now, you slept in a bed
in a towering nest of flats, you ate food unfouled by flies,
and you moved to the sound of whistles and machinery. You
had at your black fingertips, in fact, the benefits of what
we persist in calling "Western civilization". If you were more
hygienic and healthyso ran the theoryyou were happier.
But I begin to sound sceptical. That is my error. I happen
to have little love for my fellow men; the thought of the
Massacre is always with me, even after all this time. I could
not deny that the trend of things at Mokulgu and elsewhere,
the constant urbanization, was almost unavoidable. But as
a man of sensibility, I regretted that human advance should
always be over the corpse of Nature.
From where we sat over our southern wines, both lake
and town were partially visible, the forests in the immediate
area having been demolished long ago. The town was already
blazing with light, the lake looked already dark, a thing
preparing for night. And to our left, standing out with a
clarity which suggested yet more rain to come, stretched the
rolling jungles of the Congo tributaries.
For at least three hundred miles in that direction, man had
not invaded: there lived the pygmies, flourishing without
despoiling. That area, the Congo Source land, would be the
next to go; Jubal, indeed, was the spearhead of the attack.
But for my generation at least that vast tract of primitive
beauty would stand, and I was selfishly glad of it. I always
gained more pleasure from trees than population increase
statistics.
Jubal caught something of the expression on my face.
"The power we are releasing here will last for ever," he
said. "It's already changingimprovingthe entire economy
of the area. At last, at long last, Africa is realizing her
potentialities."
His voice held almost a tremor, and I thought that this
passion for Progress was the secret of his strength.
"You cling too much to the past, Rog," he added.
"Why all this digging and tunnelling and wrenching up of
riverbeds?" I asked. "Would not atomics haye been a cheaper
and easier answer?"
"No," he said decisively. "This system puts to use idle
water; once in operation, everything is entirely self-servicing.
Besides, uranium is none too plentiful, water is. Venus has
no radioactive materials, I believe?"
This sounded to me like an invitation to change the sub-
ject. I accepted it.
"They've found none yet," I assented. "But I can speak
with no authority. I went purely as a touristand a glorious
trip it was."
"It must be wonderful to be so many million miles nearer
the sun," he said. It was the sort of plain remark I had
often heard him make. On others' lips it might have sounded
platitudinous; in his quiet tones I caught a note of sublimity.
"I shall never get to Venus," he said. "There's too much
work to be done here. You must have seen some marvels
there, Rog!"
"Yes . . . Yet nothing so strange as an elephant."
"And they'll have a breathable atmosphere in a decade,
I hear?"
"So they say. They are certainly doing wonders . . . You
know, Jubal, I shall have to go back then. You see, there's
a feeling, ersomething, a sort of expectancy. No, not quite
that; it's hard to explain" I don't converse well. I ramble
and mumble when I have something real to say. I could
say it to a woman, or I could write it on paper; but
Jubal is a man of action, and when I did say it, I deliber-
ately omitted emotional overtones and lost interest in what
I said. "It's like courting a woman in armour with the visor
closed, on Venus now. You can see it, but you can't touch
or smell or breathe it. Always an airtight dome er a space
suit between you and actuality. But in ten years' time, you'll
be able to run your bare fingers through the sand, feel the
breezes on your cheek... Well, you know what I mean, er
sort of feel her undressed."
He was thinking1 saw it in his eyes"Rog's going to go
all poetic  on me."  He  said:  "And  you  approve  of that-
the change-over of atmospheres?"
"Yes."
"Yet you don't approve of what we're doing here, which
is just the same sort of thing?"
He had a point. "You're upsetting a delicate balance here,"
I said gingerly. "A thousand ecological factors are swept by
the board just so that you can grind these waters through your
turbines. And the same thing's happened at Owen Falls
over on Lake Victoria... But on Venus there's no such
balance. It's just a clean page waiting for man to write what
he will on it. Under that CO blanket, there's been no spark
of life: the mountains are bare of moss, the valleys lie in-
nocent of grass; in the geological strata, no fossils sleep;
no arncebae move in the sea. But what you're doing here. . ."
"People!" he exclaimed. "I've got people to consider. Babies
need to be born, mouths must be fed. A man must live.
Your sort of feelings are all very wellthey make good
poemsbut I consider the people. I love the people. For
them I work. . ."
He waved his hands, overcome by his own grandiose visions.
If the passion for Progress was his strength, the fallacy in-
herent in the idea was his secret weakness. I began to grow
warm.
"You get good conditions for these people, they procreate
forthwith. Next generation, another benefactor will have to
step forward and get good conditions for the children. That's
Progress, eh?" I asked maliciously.
"I see you so rarely, Rog; don't let's quarrel," he said
meekly. "I just do what I can. I'm only an engineer."
That was how he always won an altercation. Before meek-
ness I have no defence. But hostility ran like a sewer below
the level of our conversation.
The sun had finished another day. With the sudden dark-
ness came chill. Jubal pressed a button, and glass slid round
the veranda, enclosing us. Like Venus, I thought; but here
you could still smell that spicy, bosomy scent which is the
breath of dear Africa herself. On Venus, the smells are
imported.
We poured some more wine and talked of family matters.
In a short while his wife, Sloe, joined us. I began to feel
at home. The feeling was only partly psychological; my glands
were now beginning to readjust fully to normal conditions
after their long days in space travel.
J-Casta also appeared. Him I was less pleased to see.
He was the boss type, the strong-arm man: as Jubal's under-
ling, he pandered wretchedly to him and bullied everyone else
on the project. He (and there were many others like him,
unfortunately)  thought of the Massacre as man's greatest
achievement. This evening, in the presence of his superiors,
after a preliminary burst of showing off, he was quiet enough.
When they pressed me to, I talked of Venus. As I spoke,
back rushed that humblingbut intoxicatingsense of awe
to think I had actually lived to stand in full possession of my
many faculties on that startling planet. The same feeling had
often possessed me on Mars. And (as justifiably) on Earth.
The vision chimed, and an amber light biinked drowsily
off and on in Jubal's tank. Even then, no premonition of ca-
tastrophe; since then, I can never see that amber heartbeat
without anxiety.
Jubal answered it, and a man's face swam up in the tank
to greet him. They talked; I could catch no words, but the
sudden tension was apparent. Sloe went over and put her
arm round Jubal's shoulder.
"Something up," J-Casta commented.
"Yes," I said.
"That's Chief M-Shawn on the visionfrom Owenstown,
over on Lake Victoria."
Then Jubal flashed off and came slowly back to where we
were sitting.
"That was M-Shawn," he said. "The level of Lake Victoria
has just dropped three inches." He lit a cheroot with clumsy
fingers, his eyes staring in mystification far beyond the flame.
"Dam okay, boss?" J-Casta asked.
"Perfectly. They're going to phone us if they find any-
thing ..."
"Has this happened before?" I asked, not quite able to
understand their worried looks.
"Of course not," my half-brother said scornfully. "Surely
you must see the implications of it? Something highly un-
precedented has occurred."
"But surely a mere three inches of water. . ."
At that he laughed briefly. Even J-Casta permitted himself a
snort.
"Lake Victoria is an inland sea," Jubal said grimly. "It's
as big as Tasmania. Three inches all over that area means
many thousands of tons of water. Casta, I think we'll get
down to Mokulgu; it won't do any harm to alert the first aid
services, just in case they're needed. Got your tracer?"
"Yes, boss. I'm coming."
Jubal patted Sloe's arm, nodded to me and left without
relaxing his worried look. He and J-Casta shortly appeared
outside. They bundled into a float, soared .dangerously close
to a giant walnut tree and vanished into the night.
Nervously, Sloe put down her cheroot and did not resume
it. She fingered a dial and the windows  opaqued.
"There's an ominous waiting quality out there I don't
like," she said, to explain our sudden privacy.
"Should I be feeling alarmed?" I asked.
She flashed me a smile. "Quite honestly, yes. You don't
live in our world, Rog, or you would guess at once what was
happening at Lake Victoria. They've just finished raising the
level again; for a long time they've been on about more pres-
sure, and the recent heavy rains gave them their chance to
build it up. It seems to have been the last straw."
"And what does this three-inch drop mean? Is there a
breach in the dam somewhere?"
"No. They'd have found that. I'm afraid it means the bed
of the lake has collapsed somewhere. The water's pouring into
subterranean reservoirs."
The extreme seriousness of the matter was now obvious
even to me. Lake Victoria is the source of the White Nile; if
it  ceased  to  feed  the  river,  millions  of  people  in  Uganda
and the Sudan would die of drought. And not only people:
birds, beasts, fish, insects, plants.
We both grew restless. We took a turn outside in the cool
night air, and then decided we too would go down to the
town.
All the way there a picture filled my head; the image of
that great dark lake emptying like a wash-basin. Did it drain
in sinister silence, or did it gargle as it went? Men of action
forget to tell you vital details like that.
That night was an anticlimax, apart from the sight of the
full  moon  sailing  over  Mount  Kangosi.  We  joined  Jubal
and his henchman and hung about uneasily until midnight.
As if an unknown god had been propitiated by the sacrifice
of an hour's sleep, we then felt easier and retired to bed.
The news was bad the next morning. By the time
I was dressed Jubal was already back in town; Sloe and I
breakfasted alone together. She told me they had been in-
formed that Victoria had now dropped thirteen and a half
inches; the rate of fall seemed to be increasing.
I flew into Mokulgu and found Jubal without difficulty. He
was just embarking on one of the Dam Authority's survey
floats with J-Casta.
"You'd better come, too, Rog," he shouted. "You'll probably
enjoy the flight more than we shall."
I did enjoy the flight, despite the circumstances. A disturb-
ance on Lake Tanganyika's eastern fringes had been observed
on an earlier survey and we were going to investigate it.
"You're not afraid the bed will collapse here, too, are
you?" I asked.
"It's not that," Jubal said. "The two hundred miles between
us and Victoria is a faulty region, geologically speaking. I'll
show you a map of the strata when we get back. It's more than
likely that all that runaway subterranean water may be head-
ing in our direction; that's what I'm afraid of. The possibility
has been known for a long while."
"And no precautions taken?"
"What could we do but cross our fingers? The possibility
exists that the Moon will spiral to Earth, but we don't all live
in shelters because of it."
"Justifying yourself, Jubal?"
"Possibly," he replied, looking away. Again that stupid an-
tagonism.
We flew through a heavy rain shower, which dappled the
grey surface of the lake. Then we were over the reported dis-
turbance. A dull brown stain, a blot on a bright new garment,
spread over the water, from the steep eastern shore to about
half a mile out.
"Put us down, pilot," Jubal ordered.
We sank, and kissed the lake. Several hundred yards away
rose the base of Mount Kangosi. I looked with admiration up
the slope; great slabs of rock stood out from the verdure;
crouching at the bottom of this colossus was a village, part of
it forced by the steepness of the incline to stand out on piles
into the lake.
"Leave everything to me, boss," J-Casta said, grabbing a
hand asdic from the port locker and climbing out on to the
float. We followed. It seemed likely that the disturbance was
due to a slight subsidence in the side of the lake basin. Such
subsidences, Jubal said, were not uncommon, but in this case
it might provide a link with Lake Victoria. If they could pin-
point the position of the new fault, frogmen would be sent
down to investigate.
"We're going to have company," Jubal remarked to me,
waving a hand over the water.
A dozen or so dugouts lay between us and the shore. Each
bore two er three shining-skinned fishermen. The two canoes
nearest us had swung round and were now being paddled
towards our float.
I watched them with more interest than I gave to the asdic
sweep. Men like these sturdy fishermen had existed here for
countless generations, unchanged:  before white men had
known of them, before Rome's legions had destroyed the vine-
yards of Carthage, beforewho knows if not before the heady
uprush of civilization elsewhere?such men had fished quietly
in this great lake. They seemed not to have advanced at all,
so rapidly does the world move; but perhaps when all other
races have fallen away, burnt out and exhausted, these steady
villagers will come into a kingdom of their own. I would elect
to live in that realm.
A man in the leading canoe stood up, raising his hand in
greeting. I replied, glancing over his shoulder at the curtain of
green behind him. Something caught my eye.
Above some yards of bare rock, a hundred feet up the
slope of the mountain, two magnificent MvulesAfrican
teak treesgrew. A china-blue bird dipped suddenly from
one of the trees and sped far and fast away over the water,
fighting to outpace its reflection. And the tree itself began
to cant slowly from the vertical into a horizontal position.
Jubal had binoculars round his neck. My curiosity aroused,
I reached to borrow them. Even as I did so, I saw a spring of
water start from the base of the Mvules. A rock was dis-
lodged. I saw it hurtle down into the bush below, starting in
turn a trail of earth and stones which fell down almost on to
the thatched roofs of the village. The spring began to spurt
more freely now. It gleamed in the sun: it looked beautiful
but I was alarmed.
"Look!" I pointed.
Both Jubal and the fisherman followed the line of my out-
stretched arm. J-Casta continued to bend over his metal box.
Even as I pointed, the cliff shuddered. The other Mvule went
down. Like an envelope being torn, the rock split horizon-
tally and a tongue of water burst from it. The split widened,
the water became a wall, pouring out and down.
The sound of the splitting came clear and hard to our startled
ears. Then came the roar of the water, bursting down the hill-
side. It washed everything before it. I saw trees, bushes and
boulders hurried down in it. I saw the original fissure lengthen
and lengthen like a cruel smile, cutting through the ground as
fast as fire. Other cracks started, running uphill and across:
every one of them began to spout water.
The fishermen stood up, shouting as their homes were swept
away by the first fury of the flood.
And then the entire lower mountainside began to slip. With
a cumulative roar, mud, water and rock rolled down into the
lake. Where they had been, a solid torrent cascaded out, one
mighty wall of angry water. The escaping 'flow from Lake
Victoria had found its outlet!
Next moment, our calm surface was a furious sea. Jubal
slipped and fell on to one knee. I grabbed him, and almost
went overboard myself. A series of giant waves plunged out-
wards from the shore. "The first one rocked us, the second one
overturned our flimsy craft completely.
I came to the surface coughing and snorting. J-Casta rose at
my side. We were just in time to see the float slip completely
under; it sank in no time, carrying the pilot with it. I had
not even seen his face, poor fellow.
Jubal came up by the fisherman, who had also overturned.
But dugouts do not sink. We owed our lives to those hollowed
tree trunks. They were righted, and Jubal and his henchman
climbed into one, while I climbed into the other. The waves
were still fierce, but had attained a sort of regularity which
allowed us to cope with them.
The breakthrough was now a quarter of a mile long. Water
poured from it with unabated force, a mighty waterfall where
land had been before. We skirted it painfully, making a land-
ing as near to it as we dared.
The rest of that day, under its blinding arch of sky, passed
in various stages of confusion and fear.
It was two and a half hours before we were taken off the
strip of shore. We were not idle in that time, although every
few minutes Jubal paused to curse the fact that he was strand-
ed and powerless. Miraculous as it seems, there were some
survivors from the obliterated village, women mostly; we
helped to get them ashore and built fires for them.
Meanwhile, Dam Authority planes began to circle the
area. We managed to attract the attention of one, which
landed by our party. Jubal's manner changed at once; now
that he had a machine and men who, unlike the villagers, were
in his command, he worked with a silent purpose allowing of
no question.
Over the vision, he ordered the rest of the floats to attend
to the villagers' needs. We sped back to Mokulgu.
On the way, Jubal spoke to Owenstown. They took his
news almost without comment. They reported that Victoria
was still sinking, although the rate had now steadied. A
twenty-four-hour a day airlift was about to go into operation,
dropping solid blocks of marble on to the lake bed. "There,
a fault about three miles square had been located; four frog-
men had been lost, drowned.
"It's like tossing pennies  into the  ocean,"  Jubal said.
I was thinking of the frogmen, sucked irresistibly down the
fault. They would be swept through underground waterways,
battered and pulped, to be spat out eventually into our lake.
Vision from Mokulgu, coming on just before we landed
there, reported a breach in the lake banks, some twenty
miles north of the town. At a word from Jubal, we switched
plans and veered north at once to see just how extensive the
damage was.
The break was at a tiny cluster of huts, dignified by the
name of Ulatuama, growing like a wart on the edge of Lake
Tanganyika. Several men, the crew of a Dam Authority patrol
boat, were working furiously at a widening gap. The damage
had been caused by the very waves which had swamped
us, and I learnt that a small, disused lock had stood here,
relic of an earlier irrigation scheme; so the weakness had been
of man's making. Beyond the lock had been a dried-up chan-
nel some twenty yards wide; this was now a swollen, plung-
ing river.
"Is this serious?" I asked Jubal. "Isn't there a good way
of getting rid of surplus water?"
He gave me a withering look. "Where are we if we lose
control?" he demanded. "If this thing here runs away with us,
the combined waters of Victoria and Tanganyika will flood
down into the Congo."
Even as he spoke, the bank to the south of the escaping
waters crumbled; several yards were swept away, their places
instantly taken by the current.
We flew back to Mokulgu. Jubal visioned the mayor and
got permission to broadcast to the city. I did not hear him
speak; reaction had set in, and I had to go and sit quietly at
home with Sloe fussing daintily round me. Although you
"know" from a child that Earth is a planet, it is only when
you drift towards it from space, seeing it hang round and finite
ahead, that you can realize the fact. And so, although I had
always "known" man was puny, it was the sight of that vast
collapsing slab of mountain which had driven the fact into my
marrow.
To guess the sort of sentiments Jubal broadcast to the city
was easy. He would talk of "rallying round in this our time
of crisis". He would speak of the need for "all hands uniting
against our ancient enemy, Nature". He would come over big
on the tanks; he would be big, his fists clenched, his eyes
ablaze. He was in touch with the people. And they would do
what he said, for Jubal carried conviction. Perhaps I envied
my half-brother.
Labour and supplies began to pour north to mend the
damaged bank. Jubal, meanwhile, thought up a typically
flamboyant scheme. Tilly, one of the lake steamers, was
pressed into service and loaded full of rock and clay by steam
shovel. With Jubal standing on the bridge, it was mance-
vered into the centre of the danger area and scuttled. Half in
and half out of the rushing water, it now former a base from
which a new dam could be built to stem the flood. Watched
by a cheering crowd, Jubal and crew skimmed to safety in a
motor boat.
"We shall conquer if we have to dam the water with our
bodies," he cried. A thousand cheering throats told him how
much they liked this idea.
The pitch of crisis which had then been engendered was
maintained all through the next two days. For most of that
time it rained, and men fought to erect their barrier on
clinging mud. Jubal's popularityand consequently his in-
fluenceunderwent a rapid diminution. The reason for this
was two-fold. He quarrelled with J-Casta, whose suggestion to
throw open the new dam to relieve pressure elsewhere was
refused,  and  he  ran  into stiff  opposition from Mokulgu
Town Council.
This august body, composed of the avariciously successful
and the successfully avaricious, was annoyed about Tilly. Tilly
belonged to the local government, and Jubal had, in effect,
stolen it. The men from the factories who had downed tools
to fight the water were summoned back to work; the Dam
Authority must tend its own affairs.
Jubal merely sneered at this dangerous pique and visioned
LeopoldviUe. In the briefest possible time, be had the army
helping him.
It was at dawn on the morning of the third day that he
visioned me to go down and see him. I said adieu to Sloe
and took a float over to Ulatuama.
Jubal stood alone by the water's edge. The sun was still
swathed in mist, and he looked cold and pinched. Behind
him, dimly outlined figures moved to and fro, like allegorical
figures on a frieze. He surveyed me curiously before speaking.
"The work's nearly done, Rog," he said. He looked as if he
needed sleep, but he added energetically, pointing across the
lake: "Then we tackle the main job of plugging that waterfall."
I looked across the silent lake. The far shore was invisible,
but out of the layers of mist rose Mount Kangosi. Even at
this distance, in the early morning hush, came the faint roar
of the new waterfall. And there was another sound, intermit-
tent but persistent: beyond the mountain, they were bombing
fault lines. That way they hoped to cause a collapse which
would plug Victoria's escape routes. So far, they had had no
success, but the bombing went on, making abattfefield of
what had once been glorious country.
"Sorry I haven't seen anything of you and Sloe," Jubal said.
suppose?"
"You've been busy. Sloe called vou on the vision."
"Oh that. Come on into my hut, Rog."
We walked over to a temporary structure; the grass was
overloaded with dew. In Jubal's hut, J-Casta was dressing,
smoking a cheroot as he dexterously pulled on a shirt. He gave
me a surly greeting, whose antagonism I sensed was directed
through me at Jubal.
As soon as the latter closed the door, he said: "Rog, prom-
ise me something."
"Tell me what."
"If anything happens to me, I want you to marry Sloe. She's
your sort."
Concealing my irritation, I said: "That's hardly a reason-
able request."
"You and she get on well together, don't you?"
"Certainly. But you see my outlook on life is. . . well, for
one thing I like to stay detached. An observer, you know,
observing. I just want to sample the landscapes and the food
and the women of the solar system. I don't want to marry,
just move on at the right time. Sloe's very nice but"
My ghastly inability to express the pressure of inner feeling
was upon me. In women I like flamboyance, wit, and a high
spirit, but I tire quickly of them and then have to seek their
manifestation elsewhere. Besides, Sloe frankly had had her
sensibilities blunted from living with Jubal. He now chose to
misunderstand my hesitations.
"Are you standing there trying to tell me that you've al-
ready tired of whatever you've been doing behind my back?"
he demanded. "Youyou" He called me a dirty name;
I forgot to make allowances for the strain he had been
undergoing, and lost my temper.
"Oh, calm down," I snapped. "You're overtired and over-
wrought, and probably over-sexed too. I've not touched your
little woman1 like to drink from pure streams. So you can
put the entire notion out of your head."
Trouble came to us as suddenly as it had done to the
lake, although nobody afterwards could have said there had
been no warning.
He rushed at me with his shoulders hunched and fists swing-
ing. It was an embarrassing moment. I am against violence,
and believe in the power of words, but I did the only possible
thing: spring to one side and catch him a heavy blow over
the heart.
Poor Jubal! No doubt, in his frustration against the forces of
nature, he was using me only as a safety valve. But with
shame, I will now confess what savage pleasure that blow
gave me; I was filled with lust to strike him again. I can per-
ceive dimly how atrocities such as the Massacre came about.
As Jubal turned on me, I flung myself at him, breaking down
his defences, piling blows into his chest. It was, I suppose, a
form of self-expression.
J-Casta stopped it, breaking in between us and thrusting
his ugly face into mine, his hand like a clamp round my wrist.
"Pack it up," he said. "I'd gladly do the job myself, but
this is not the time."
As he spoke, the hut trembled. We were hard pressed to
keep our feet, staggering together like drunken men.
"Now what" Jubal said, and flung ppen the door. I
caught a rectangular view of trees and mist, men running, and
the emergency dam sailing away on a smooth black slide of
escaping water. The banks were collapsing!
Glimpsing the scene, Jubal instantly attempted to slam the
door shut again. The wave struck us, battering the cabin
off its flimsy foundations. Jubal cried sharply as he was tossed
against a wall. Next moment we were floundering in a hell of
flying furniture and water.
Swept along on a giant sluice, the cabin turned over and
over like a dice. That I was preserved was the merest acci-
dent. Through a maze of foam, I saw a heavy bunk crashing
towards me, and managed to flounder aside in time. It missed
me by a finger's width and broke through the boarding wall. I
was swept helplessly after it.
When I surfaced, the cabin was out of sight and I was be-
ing borne along at a great rate; and the ugly scene in the
cabin was something fruitless that happened a million years
ago. Nearly wrenching my arm off in the process, I seized a
tree which was still standing, and clung on. Once I had re-
covered my breath, I was able to climb out of the water entire-
ly, wedge myself between two branches and regain my breath.
The scene was one of awesome desolation. I had what in
less calamitous circumstances might have been called "a good
view" of it all.
A lake spread all round me, its surface moving smartly
and with apparent purpose. Its forward line, already far
away, was marked by a high yellow cascade. In its wake
stretched a miscellany of objects, of which only the trees
stood out clearly. Most of the trees were eucalyptus: this area
had probably been reclaimed marsh.
To the north, the old shore-line of the lake still stood. The
ground was higher there and solid rock jutted stolidly into
the flood. To the south, the shore-line was being joyously
chewed away. Mokulgu had about half an hour left before it
was swamped and obliterated. I wondered how the Mokulgu
Town Council were coping with the situation.
Overhead, the sun now was shining clear, bars of pink,
wispy cloud flecked the blue sky. The pink and the blue
were of the exact vulgar tints found in two-colour prints of
the early twentieth century A.D.that is, a hundred years
before the Massacre. I was almost happy to see this lack of
taste in the sky matching the lack of stability elsewhere. I
was almost happy: but I was weeping.
"They visioned me that one of the floats had picked you
upand not Jubal. Is there any hope for him, Rog, or is
that a foolish question?"
"I can't give you a sensible answer. He was a strong swim-
mer, don't forget. They may find him yet."
I spoke to Sloe over the heads of a crowd of people. Mokul-
gu, surely enough, had been washed away. The survivors,
homeless and bereaved, crowded on to high ground. Sloe
had generously thrown open most of her house as a sort
of rest-camp-cum-soup-kitchen. She superintended everything
with a cool authority which suitably concealed her personal
feelings. For that I was grateful:  Sloe's feelings must be
no affair of mine.
She smiled at me before turning to address someone behind
her. Already the light was taking on the intensity of early
evening. Above the babble of voices round me came the
deep song of speeding water. It would continue for months
yet: Africa was ruptured at her very heart, beyond man's
mending.
Instead of flowing northward, fertilizing its old valley, Vic-
toria crashed into our lake, adding its burden to the weight of
water rolling west. While twenty-one million people perished
of drought in Egypt, as many perished of flood and typhoid
in the Congo.
I seemed to know what was coming as I stood in the crowd-
ed room, knowing Jubal dead, knowing the nation of Africa to
be bleeding to death. We were dying of our own wounds.
The ten years to follow would be as terrible as the ten years
of the Massacre, when every member of the white race had
been slain.
Now we Negroes, in our turn, stood at the bar of history.