ISKENDAR

The clock struck, not the hour but three short strokes,
and the people sitting in the almost empty hall, looked up at
the sound. It was precisely a quarter to six. Then the watch-
man refilled his minute watering can, and went on sprinkling
the parrot tulips planted round the fountain, a girl opened
and shut her handbag for no apparent reason, while the grey-
haired man pressed his shoulders back against the green
cushions of the wicker armchair, and yawned. He had already
been waiting half an hour.

"The railway men come out at eight, Mr. Kevern," the watchman said, snipping off a tulip that had dared to wilt among its regal companions, "I heard it on the radio while I was at lunch."

"Oh, the rush we shall have again to-night!" the girl grumbled, smoothing out her scarf, a fantastic square of blue cornflowers and red poppies that dangled limply across her knees. They both turned to look at Kevern as if, because he was a deputy controller, he must have access to some secret source of news. Actually Kevern had been thinking that his companions knew more about this absurd strike than he did. There had been so much extra work because of

colleagues being on vacation that he had had no time even
to listen to the radio headlines, and although he was at
the Ministry of Transport, he was in its foreign division.
"It would happen just as I am due to go on holiday," he said
pleasantly, as if to indicate that they were all in the same
mess together.

"It's mobilisation, that's what it is," the watchman
continued. He was a thin, wiry fellow with a slight limp
that came, as he was careful to tell his neighbours, from a
bullet and not from rheumatism. "But, there, I've said ever
since this Conference started, we have no leaders."

"I doubt it, Jeff," Kevern yawned again, the May sultriness made him sleepy, "it is purely propaganda. If the Easterners can stir up trouble, it increases their bargaining power, but they don't want a fighting war, any more than we do."

"You will never get our generation to take up arms,"
the girl said aggressively.

"We fought for our homes, Miss Thresher," the watchman
retorted, he did not like the girl, nobody could call her
attractive and with her hair falling over her face she was
not even neat, besides she walked about the Ministry as if
she owned it, usually with some foreigner from Room eighty one.

"Homes! You fought for your personal possessions."

"No, Miss Thresher," Kevern broke in firmly, thinking that the schools these days made a poor job of preparing their pupils for life, "people fought for what they loved. It might have been only a pot of geraniums, but that pot symbolised a belief."

"In what?"

"In freedom. Something you cannot understand because you have never had it." He suspected that in addition to having been brought up in an era of rationing and restriction, Mary Thresher's home was both fussy and narrow.

Let him wait, Mary thought, once her Party came to power, deputies like Kevern would be promptly dismissed. She was not a communist, she accepted that a citizen had the right to his opinions, provided that these were neither flimsy nor selfish, but nothing must be allowed to stop the working out of the Plan. Then each worker would be assigned a room near to his factory or office, and nobody would own a house. She looked up in time to catch an amused gleam in Kevern's eyes, and wondered if he had made the outrageous statement simply to tease her? Oh dear, if Mr. Robinson really wanted her for dictation, why must he keep her waiting in the hall? It was not only irritating, but embarrassing. Suppose some thoughtless visitor

noticed her sitting in apparent idleness and wrote to the
papers about redundant secretaries in government employment?
Besides, this was the most important evening of her life.
Egon had asked her to go to the cinema with him, and on to
a party afterwards. Oh, if only the bell would ring!
Then she could leave at once. Otherwise Robinson might keep
her for an hour. "No grumbling," how often she had listened
to his sharp voice, "here's your voucher, you'll be glad of
the extra pay on Friday." It wasn't money that she wanted
but leisure. Her mother took whatever she earned and doled
her lunch money in exchange, and her father would not let
her go out in the evenings, particularly with a boy whom he
called "a lousy foreigner", (she shivered with horror at the
phrase,) but just this week his firm had sent him to inspect
a boiler that had broken down up north, and she had persuaded
her mother that it was merely an office party. Her conscience
pricked her because she had inferred, though not actually
stated, that Miss Woods, their supervisor, would be with them.
Her parents would not realise that she was eighteen and a
half, and that her youth was slipping away just as swiftly
as the bubbles from Jeff's watering can were dissolving in
the fountain.

"How's the garden coming along?" Kevern asked. He did

not particularly want to hear a chronicle of peas and
marrows just at this moment, but the Thresher girl's rude-
ness got on his nerves.

"Everything is at sixes and sevens, sir. I know you
gentlemen say it's impossible, but I can't help thinking
that the atoms have something to do with it. I never re-
member rain like this when I was a boy. The ground is
absolutely sodden."

"Oh, I'm not a scientist," Kevern answered mildly,
"we've had no spring, and I've lived in my mackintosh since
Christmas. Some people say that the Arctic is getting
warmer, but if so, it doesn't help us."

"The first beans I put in rotted, and this year I
doubt if I get a dish of strawberries. Last year the wife
made ten pounds of jam. It may be the petrol fumes, we are
too near the city."

Doors began to open and shut, as a trickle of people
moved guiltily towards the entrance. They were afraid of
being stranded if the buses stopped running. Mary stared
at the clock in an agony of apprehension, they were sure
to be a minute late ringing the bell, and there would be
such a crush at the cloakroom anyhow that it would take her
ages to find her coat. If Robinson called now, she would

have to tell him that she couldn't stay, that her mother
was ill, no, she couldn't do that because it would be a lie,
but she would have to stand upon her rights, and leave. If
his letters were so important, why had he left her waiting
so long? Miss Woods said that he spent his evenings reading
his reports. All that she had were a few short hours.

Jeff straightened himself, and looked lovingly down
at his tulips, "are you still waiting?" he asked politely,
and when Kevern nodded, he shook the last drops out of the
watering can and slipped it into a recess behind the door.
"It takes me an hour to get home," he explained, "so I'm off.
Good night."

"Good night." Kevern opened his brief case and started
hunting again for Robinson's letter. There was the envelope
with his holiday tickets, which if the strike persisted he
would be unable to use, his identity card, Ernest Kevern,
with both his Ministry number and his private address, where
was the envelope, oh there, yes, it had slipped between two
other papers. The appointment had been fixed for five-fifteen
and Robinson was usually punctual to the minute. Could it
be possible that after the, what was it, million and a quarter
words of argument, and the five weeks that the Conference
had lasted, something positive was to happen at last?

The bell clanged. At one minute to six. Mary jumped
up and ran to the staircase. Only a few of the higher offi-
cials passed through the hall, most clerks used the side en-
trance that was nearer to the bus stop. In a moment the
courtyard was black with people. They hung there, waiting
for transportation, or merely for a chance to cross the road,
like a curtain of flies among sticky, summer leaves.

Kevern moved his chair a few paces forward; it was
pleasant not to have to join the rush, but to sit quietly in
the now empty space beside the fountain. The doors were open,
and as the terrace cleared, he could see dwarf trees in red
earthenware pots along its edge. What was the real cause of
Mary's arrogance, he wondered, and why did Jeff dislike for-
eigners so intensely? He had heard him often enough on the
subject of Room eighty-one, though perhaps these irrational
hatreds were not surprising, while the eternal conflict between
the city and the land was still unresolved? How few understood
that field and street were each good in its own way, and each,
at different times, necessary to mankind. The building above
him towered into the sky, it swayed in the wind at the time
of the spring gales, but its foundations were just as deep in
earth as any oak. The water in the basin was a clear, metallic
blue, a lighter, more fluid shade than the glass blocks at the

entrance. Their color reminded him of sea ice, although
he had only seen this once, on a holiday during his boyhood.
Even the tulips, with their ragged shell-like colors, might
have come from an aquarium rather than a border, but
they fitted the flagstones and the water, nothing else would
have suited the place so well. It was a city-dweller's
garden, color was more important than it would have been
in a valley, but though the pattern was different, it was
not less beautiful, nor necessarily less "good". The lonely
and suspicious villager was seldom as helpful in a time of
crisis as his fellow citizen in the towns.

It had been so hot that Kevern had longed to take off
his coat, but a whip of cold air suddenly struck the room.
He shivered, and looked at the clock. Could he have made a
mistake in his appointment after all? The cold passed as
suddenly as it had come, he could almost feel the heat steal-
ing into the building again, it must have been a gust of wind,
even his own thoughts. According to law, he would have to
retire in another year, and become what his colleagues called
"a useless mouth". Yes, it did not matter how hard a man
had worked, once he lost that magic square of pasteboard,
his employment card, all that remained to him was a minute
pension, the right to vote, and the right to starve. Kevern

had hoped for months past that he might die before this
happened, but although it tolerated hunger if a man were
old, the State considered euthanasia sinful. How illogical
it was! It was just like the present East-West Conference.
Nobody listened to the lawyers and their dictaphones. Words
that had once been great and free, because seldom used, had
turned into the endless repetitions of a late Babylonian
hymn. When the two worlds were ready for war, the more ag-
gressive would strike without warning. Meanwhile people
hoped, or shut their eyes, and thought, like Jeff, about
their freshly planted beans.

Beans! For some obscure reason the word reminded him
of Sagby. That fellow had had all the luck! There he was,
safely in some wilderness with his patched tent, his botanical
presses, and an old-fashioned green tin that he wore slung
round his shoulders. "Take your holiday earlier," Sagby
had advised when they had met for lunch the day before his
departure, though he had not suggested that Kevern should
go with him, "later on we are more likely to have wet weather
than dry." Sagby was a meteorologist and certain, therefore,
as his friends joked, to prophesy a depression when the
vacation lists were posted up, but this time his instinct
had been right; if the trains stopped running, he might get

an extra week of freedom in the first stretch of sunshine
for months.

The corridors were deserted, his chair was almost
comfortable, but Kevern began to feel strangely uneasy.
Perhaps it was because he was alone in this gigantic honey-
comb where two thousand worked by day, and nobody slept at
night. Twenty past six, was it worth while waiting any
longer? They might have sent for Robinson to go to some
committee and forgotten to let him know. He zipped his brief-
case shut and rose to his feet.

"Mr. Kevern!" The second of the two watchmen had come
so softly on his rubber-soled shoes that he had not heard
him approach, "Mr. Robinson is ready to see you now."

Why, Robinson's got the wind up, good and proper, was
Kevern's first reaction when he came into his chief's room.
He was then so startled that he had slipped back into schoolboy
slang, even in thought, that it took him a moment to respond to
Robinson's greeting. The sharp features reminded him for a

hundredth time of a vulture on a perch. He had worked for
him for twenty years, but it was still a mystery what pleasure
his chief got out of life? He did not smoke, he did not drink,
and he appeared to have no family or other interests, but to
live for the Department, ~~it was~~ her was mother, wife and children,
rolled into one.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting, Kevern," Robinson in-
dicated the chair opposite his desk. He clipped some papers
together, and then looked up with the famous smile that was
reputed to chill his subordinates to the marrow, "well, this
time, how much of the Game do you know?"

It was the cover word for their Department, but the use
of the word game revealed to Kevern why the slang phrase had
come into his mind. Robinson's fanaticism had something of
the fifteen year old's blind devotion to bird watching or
model planes. "Not much, I am afraid," it was unwise to re-
mind him that it was six months since their last interview,
"I've heard plenty of rumors, but surely it all comes back to
the fundamental issue in the end? When the East and the West
are ready, they will spring at each other like a couple of
fighting cats. Till then, it is words, words, words..."

"Nothing else?"

Kevern moistened his lips. It was a long time since he

had sat in the hall of that once fashionable but deserted
hotel, with the rosebud in his buttonhole that was to serve
as identification, wondering what Robinson would be like?
Then, of course, he had not known him by name. It had been
so casual, Kevern had found himself in Intelligence because
of some supposed information that they could have got as
easily out of a cheap atlas, and he suspected that he had
kept the job because some clerk had dropped his card into the
permanent instead of the temporary register. "Do you mean
the Strike?" He felt as if he were sitting again for his
first test. "Surely that is simply a fifth column manoeuvre?"

"The many wars to end war that simply sow new ones."

"Yes, I've seen that too, chalked up on the hoardings."

"So you know nothing of...the something that turns all
this upside down?"

"I heard a story that something happened at Bramble
Airport. I did not check it because it was outside my orbit..."
Kevern cursed himself for the slip, "I mean my section. Oh,
it can't be that the East has got a space station first?"
This would throw the West back to the beginning of history,
when might was right, and the only law was the sword, or to-day
it would be a tank.

"No, their engineers are bogged down on the question of fuel, worse than we are ourselves. They went all out on a fluroine mixture, and as we know, that failed. But isn't Sagby a friend of yours, don't you both belong to some inter-planetary group?"

"Yes, why?" Surely the Department was not going to start another loyalty check?

"He's on holiday, I know, but do you happen to have the name of his hotel?"

Kevern smiled, you could not call a couple of holes where the tent poles had been or possibly a blackened stone, an inn. "No, he'll be camping out in some valley, he never even mentioned the region, he moves about, you know, looking for mosses."

"I cannot imagine what botany has to do with the sky?"

"He has some idea that he might be able to measure the atmosphere by the moisture lichens absorb, no, I'm no scientist, I've got that wrong, but if he could prove that there were certain plants on the moon, it would mean that the first crew to land could take less seaweed with them."

"You astonish me," Robinson said, as patiently as if he were asking a timid child the way to the coast, "I had no idea

that seaweed was a part of interplanetary flight. Perhaps
to prevent rocket sickness?"

"No, I think one eats it, compressed into pellets."

Everybody laughed at Sagby. Kevern had not been interested in the interplanetaries at all, at the last meeting he had had to pretend to listen to some engineer lecturing in mathematical formulas on imports to the moon, but a colleague had once said in Sagby's hearing, "that crazy fellow ought to resign from his job" and he had watched his friend hesitate and stop talking in the middle of an enthusiastic sentence. It was a fatal thing to try to be helpful. "Can anyone belong to that association of yours," he had said with assumed interest, and the next thing he knew was that Sagby had got him on the floor peering up at a model rocket that looked to him exactly like a lighthouse. What was this interview really about? Was Robinson angry at what he might consider their lack of dignity, or had another important document disappeared? The last time an admiral had rolled one of the top secret maps into a fly switch, and it had been six weeks before the wretched object had been traced.

"If Nicholson hadn't lost his head, I think we could
have handled the situation."

Kevern looked up enquiringly. If Nicholson was involved,

the matter was serious. He was the head of the rival depart-
ment, Scientific Intelligence, and according to Robinson, a
more dangerous enemy than the Easterners. "But what has
happened?" he asked.

"Nicholson tried to hush things up for twenty four
hours, then after three men had died, he had to come to us."

"It was true that there was an explosion then?"

"No, nothing like that." Robinson hesitated, and Kevern,
looking at the carpet, saw that there was a tiny crack across
the toe of his left shoe. What a nuisance! He had hoped that
the pair would have lasted him through next winter, and now he
would have to be even more economical on his holiday than usual.

It must have been almost a minute before Robinson spoke
again, "I went to the airport myself, because the delay was
such when Nicholson came to see me, that I thought I had better
go out personally. I found a fantastic state of alarm and
speculation, all of which could have been prevented had I been
summoned at once. However, as far as I can reconstruct the
story, keeping to facts, and not theories....have you noticed,
Kevern, how often our scientific colleagues let their imagina-
tions run riot?" H-kevern nodded, this was magnificent, his
chief handled very few cases now personally but when he did,
the technique! It was as superb to watch as really great

football. He leaned forward in his chair and answered eagerly, "Now that Science is so fashionable, it's too easy for the S.I. to get grants." He knew that that was the answer Robinson expected.

"Of course, unlike ourselves, who have the precision work to do. Well, as you know, Bramble is a military airport and while the Conference was in session, we had arranged that there was to be no night training, there was nothing in the sky but the routine patrol."

"Yes," Kevern nodded, this was really getting exciting. It would be like the Easterners to send a secret guided missile over Western territory at the very moment when their delegates were bargaining about a fresh pause in the interminable cold war.

"Our radar men picked up an unidentifiable shape on their screen, and they had hardly reported this, when the patrolling pilot requested permission to land. It was, of course, given to him."

"They've got a new bomber," Kevern almost shouted.

"That was my reaction, but as you will see, the Easterners had nothing to do with it. In fact, I saw a reputation from them yesterday, because they are as worried about it as we are. I must say that their leader seemed more

"Bishop was quite interesting with his tests. I remembered something that I had not thought about for thirty years. It is all scientific, you know, like testing the flight direction of birds."

"Of course," Kevern nodded impatiently, "but what happened at the airport?"

"The story is this," Robinson continued, as if he had bitten off too large and hot a mouthful of dumpling, and could hardly speak, "it was a calm night, with moderate visibility, and the pilot was on his patrol, according to orders. Suddenly he saw an object on his starboard side. It was not a disk, he is positive about this, but long, more the shape of an Eskimo kayak seen from an immense distance, though the thing was actually close to him. His radio operator noticed it at the same moment, and shouted to him, 'look!' The next thing that happened was that a message crackled through inclosedly 'Fear nothing. Landing Thursday. Resistance useless. Beware rays.' At first they thought it was a joke, and radioed back an unprintable message, very rude, I gather. Then the pilot saw the edge of his wing tip dissolve under his eyes. It was not enough to make landing dangerous, but sufficient to make him start evasive action. He thinks they released a smoke screen, because for the next five minutes

he was in a thick cloud, but a batch of unidentifiable mes-
sages came over the radio."

"Couldn't this have been a joke? You know what airforce
pilots are?"

"We checked and re-checked. Owing to the Conference
there wasn't a plane in the sky for miles."

Both men sat and looked at each other. The room seemed
to get cold again. "And to-day is Wednesday," Kevern said,
staring at the calendar on the wall. There was a picture
on it of a wagon of hay and as if a wind had dropped suddenly,
the air grew warmer again.

"It's only half of what happened," Robinson continued.
"The control tower gave permission for the plane to land.
Then the signals went silent, and a mess boy came rushing out,
screaming for the doctor. The control officer was unconscious
by the time they got to him, but he had written out half of
an identical message on his slate. He died the following
afternoon."

"I should suspect our Eastern friends of trying some
experiment."

"No," Robinson shook his head, "they asked us very
politely yesterday to postpone the sessions for a week. This
has become so much a part of these Conferences that fortunately

the public was not alarmed. And we knew the reason," his chief almost smiled.

"What was it?" Kevern asked, feeling more baffled than ever.

"As you know, we have an Arctic air watch, and the morning after our pilot's adventure, wreckage was sighted near a base on our side of the North Pole. We sent up a helicopter to look at it, and found it was one of the planes from the Easterner's meteorological survey. There seemed no reason for it to have flown so far out of its course, the crew was dead, and our men reported that the bodies were lying on the ice flow, frozen of course, but without a trace of fear on their faces. Only the radio operator looked utterly surprised. But pleasantly so, my agent wrote me, not at all as if he had known that the plane was crashing. They brought back the log book and the radio pad, it was in the Easterner's language, but not in code. After the routine observations, the man had scribbled down part of a message, it was identical with the one our pilot had received except that it ended with the word 'beware'."

"There MUST be an explanation somewhere," Kevern groaned.

"It appears that the Easterners have lost two planes. They think we are responsible. One of their men bolted, and

came howling to us for mercy."

"And the message is always the same?"

"Yes. Since then we have been getting a lot of signals, I can only say from nowhere, but not in words, they seem to be more like graphs."

"The first message came *au clair*."

"That is the most astonishing part of the incident. Hasn't it struck you, though, that it is like one of those standard forms that you find in any telegraph office? It's fantastic, I know, but I can't help wondering whether your friend Sagby has been able to communicate with them? He might have told them what to say. There is no reply to any signals sent by us."

"But how could he have discovered their, would it be a wave length? As far as I know, he had no special knowledge of radio. He was always crawling about on his hands and knees, looking at mosses through a magnifying glass."

Kevern had a momentary vision of his friend, lying on some hillside in front of his tent, with his special, solitary knowledge wound about him like a cocoon. "I wish I hadn't laughed at him so much."

"It's a bit of a shock," Robinson continued, and for the first time during their association, Kevern felt an appeal for sympathy, "it cuts the ground from under the

Department."

"It's not only the Department, it's the world!"

"Yes, the days to come will be very disconcerting, especially for the bishops."

"Everything is disconcerting to a bishop," Kevern snorted, remembering some experiences that he had had in the course of duty, "they still get worried about apes."

"I don't even know what to call our...visitors in my report. Celestial seems too Chinese."

"Yes, they would say that we were biased."

"We are so totally unprepared. I ask myself a dozen times a day, what are we going to do with the army? Even if we keep a few regiments to help the police, promotion will be stopped."

"But will it be a peaceful landing?"

Robinson shrugged his shoulders, and Kevern noticed that since their last meeting, there were grey streaks in his chief's thick hair, "how can we stop them, if they have conquered out-of-gravity flight?"

"It still seems to me like a trick of the Easterners."

"They are capable of sacrificing a couple of crews to mislead us, but I think I told you that I saw a deputation. They are frightened out of their lives."

"Did they ask you directly about the planes?"

"No, and we were pleasant but vague. It was a novelty to have the upper hand."

"I always say that the thing to do with an Easterner is to knock him down, and when he gets up, knock him down again. Then you can kiss him and he will be your friend for life. As their name shows they are of the East, and at present all they respect is brute force."

"Try to make our woolly headed politicians understand this. Sometimes I think that it is what they admire themselves. It's quite natural in their atmosphere of green cushions and glasses of water. However, the fact remains that the Easterners have had the same signals and none of their men can read them."

"And how were we able to decipher them?"

Robinson permitted himself to smile. "I got our best team to try to crack the code. I was convinced that we should find some logical explanation. They got pages of numbers out of the scribbles but they could not fit the results together. It was as if the messages had been scrambled. Then I had an inspiration."

"You cracked it yourself!" Kevern yelled delightedly. It might be hypnotism as people complained, but sit in front of Robinson long enough, and there was nothing that one would

not do for him. The worst doubts turned eventually to loyalty.

"Oh, say it was the Department. I rang up Parish."

"Parish?" It was possible that Kevern knew the fellow well, but not under that particular name. "Parish? Have I met him?"

"Probably not. He's at Willowmarsh, in charge of the electric brains."

"Not Hare and Tortoise?"

"Hare and Tortoise! What do you mean by those extraordinary appellations?"

"The announcer used those names for them when they made their broadcast."

"Has there been a leakage again," Robinson said angrily, "they are classified material and it never entered my head that they would...what did you say...speak on the radio? I must order an investigation at once."

"But it was the Department that arranged it," Kevern said hastily, knowing that his colleagues would put him on the black list if his indiscreet remark led to another of the chief's famous and interminable enquiries. "The idea was to use the talk for a smoke-screen. The public joked about them for a day, and then forgot them."

"Publicity is always a mistake, I think. But what were their voices like on the air?"

Kevern relaxed, Robinson was prepared to make a joke of it. "Hare was rather shrill, but Tortoise had a bell like a buoy in a rough sea."

"I hope they did not end by throwing cocoanuts at one another."

"It was a dignified and educational programme. All I understood at the end of it, was that electrotonics could do for modern accountancy what the safety lamp had done for mining in the nineteenth century."

"I still think it was unwise to call attention to them, but as I was telling you, we fed all the data that we had into one of the two machines. I am afraid that my mathematical ceiling was reached before we came to the end of the ramifications, but Parish discovered finally that there was a pattern in the zigzags, they seemed to indicate latitude, and the only place that fitted the reading was Bramble. It confirmed their signal. They are landing."

"Do you suppose they are human?"

"I shouldn't imagine so, but how do we know?" Robinson unlocked the drawer of his desk and took out an envelope.

"That is why I am so anxious now to find Sagby. I am almost

sure that he has been in touch with them."

If the entire Intelligence service has been unable to
trace his friend, the story became more fantastic than ever.
Sagby was probably peacefully sprawled on a hillside, running
his enormous hand over his tiny mosses, with the bald spot
on his round skull burned brick red by the sun, and his calves
a mass of mosquito bites below his preposterous shorts.
"He is due back on Sunday," Kevern suggested.

"But Sunday isn't to-night? We have no means of putting our visitors off or communicating with them at all, unless Sagby can talk to them. Has he ever spoken to you about a landing?"

"Only to say that he believed it to be possible. I am
afraid I always laughed at him. I was able to accept a space
ship and out-of-gravity flight, but I never thought seriously
that we might have...."

"Uninvited guests."

"Precisely." Kevern's eyes were focussed on the envelope,
he suspected that it contained photographs.

"Well," Robinson continued, looking him straight in
the face, "it appears that we have to provide a mouse."

"A real one, or one of the electrotonic babies?"

"Neither. I want a volunteer from the Department, and

as your friend Sagby has disappeared, I wondered if you would
like the job?"

There must be a catch to it, Kevern thought, he knew no
mathematics, and although he had received few reprimands, he
had had no spectacular successes. In fact, although he had
been given the job originally at the Ministry of Transportation
as a cover for possible journeys, Robinson had needed him so
seldom for the last three years that he had come to look upon
himself as a transport man instead of being "in the Game".
He looked up enquiringly and Robinson took a photograph out
of the envelope, and pointed with a pencil at what seemed to
be a blob of sepia at the bottom of a streak of light.

"I am not going to pretend, Kevern, that it isn't dangerous. None of Nicholson's lot would volunteer. We have transferred Tortoise and its operators to the airport, but we can keep them underground and screened, and there has been no trouble so far. Only I need an observer beside the machine to keep me in touch with the news, especially to-night. We wanted Sagby or else someone in his group."

"Well, just how dangerous is it?" Kevern asked.

"There seems to be some impulse or ray, it is possibly
radioactive, though it does not affect the counters in a
normal manner. The signals warn us to be careful but they
do not tell us what we ought to do."

"You said that three men were killed?"

"Yes, but that was before I was called in and had lead
screens installed. Then the ray, or whatever it is, does not
affect everyone in the same manner. The pilot is perfectly
well, the man at the control tower was a casualty."

"What exactly happens?"

"Dr. Bishop has half a dozen men in hospital. They are
alive but unconscious; as he says, it is as if they were frozen.
Their hearts are still beating, but they are ice-cold, no
matter what he does for them. He is sure that he will find
the right treatment in time, but I am not ordering you to
undertake the job, just asking you if you would care to volun-
teer. I supposed you were interested in planets."

"No, it was one of those things. I let Sagby persuade
me to join, but it's too mathematical..." How strange, Kevern
thought, he had prayed for months not to have to be a "useless
mouth" and this was like a wish coming true in a dream, deeply
satisfying but with the feeling in another layer of conscious-
ness that he would wake up and find it all imagination. He
glanced round the bare, familiar room. The worn chairs, the
paper weight on the desk, (it was the emblem of the Department
and he had gazed at it during scores of interviews) the thin,
geometric line in the green carpet seemed to glow with a new

friendliness and warmth. Of course he was hesitating only
because of his surprise. Could it be that some true-or-not-
true questionaire was being tried out on him as an experiment?

"I should like to do the job myself," Robinson said
violently, and although some of his subordinates might not
have believed him, Kevern accepted the statement. "I've still
got the Department to think of," his chief continued, "if
everything cracks, we are the core of government and we have
to exist until... the visitors take over."

"But is the world really going to change, climate and
food and perhaps even speech? Or are we going to wake up in
forty eight hours to find life going on as usual, with head-
lines, a state procession, interviews with the new comers,
and the same old bargaining going on into infinity?"

Robinson shrugged his shoulders. He picked up a magni-
fying glass from the tray on his desk, and began to re-examine
the blob on the right hand corner of the photograph. He
made no further comment, and Kevern felt nervously for his
note-book, just for something to do. "Time is beyond your
reach," the words of an old ballad came back to him, that
story about Alexander, (or Iskendar as they called him in
parts of Asia Minor,) the king who had wanted to explore the
future but his army had mutinied. Perhaps he could do a
paper for the association on early interplanetary enthusiasm?
That, at least, was not mathematical.

"Well?" Robinson replaced the photograph in its envelope.
He was not a man who liked to be kept waiting.

"What is there in it for me?" Kevern was shocked to hear his own voice *put the question*.

"What do you want?"

"Not to have to retire next spring, but to stay with
the Department."

"That's quite a request," there was a faint smile on
Robinson's face as he locked the drawer and put the key in his
pocket. "It would mean finding you an honorary post somewhere,
still I think we could manage it."

"Am I to go out to Bramble at once, or have I time to
fetch an overcoat?" They were supposed to be ready for instant
departure but as Robinson's letter had only been delivered
to him at his office at midday, he had nothing with him.

"You can have till midnight. Be at my headquarters then
for final instructions. I am going to give you Perkins and a
car. You might be stranded somewhere, with this strike, and
be unable to get through to me. And, by the way, would you
like an advance of salary? The banks are shut, and you may
have a few preparations to make."

"Thank you, you remember everything. I suppose I had better pay my debts." There was only the cleaning woman's

wages and perhaps a special dinner, but he had very little
cash on him, as it happened.

"If you'll sign this," Robinson pushed a paper over
to him.

"What! Don't I even get danger money?" Kevern joked,
and they both laughed. He signed his name, how odd it would
be if this really were for the last time, and took the packet.
Robinson tried the filing cabinet to make sure that it was
locked, took his hat from a peg, and opened the door. "I am
sure that I need not warn you to be silent about this," he said
in a tired voice.

"Who would believe me?" Kevern protested, "when I cannot
convince myself that it is true!"

The corridor was empty. It was narrow and dark. The
hundred of workers in the building had gone to their homes.
It was impossible to think in millions, but if he added up
the names of the clerks and the messengers in his own small
section, Kevern could count almost a hundred names. They would
wake up to-morrow and the habits that had grown inside them
since their cradles would be turned into reverse. Or would
there be simply a sensation like a tornado, terrible and
destructive to those in its path, but impersonal to the lucky
ones outside? He, himself, would be unconscious or dead, he

wouldn't know. How bad this air was, it was suffocating,
they ought to do something about the ventilation, everybody
complained of it, he thought irritably. They turned and
went down the steps, instead of going back through the hall,
and out into the by now empty car park.

Kevern took a deep breath once they got into the open
air. Whatever was going to happen, it was a beautiful city.
He looked across at the towers, here and there he could see
a light up in a window, as if a yellow bee were hanging there,
and the sunset was not spectacular, it was calm, almost thin,
the sky to be expected in an often wet May, before the weight
and dust of summer had asserted itself. Two cars drove
up to the curb, a man in shirt sleeves was watering the
flower beds. Everything was ordinary, everything was quiet.
"Here is my private number, it has just been changed,"
Robinson slipped a small piece of paper into his hand. "You
can phone me up to eleven if you happen to change your mind,
I think I know of a substitute."

"I shall be there."

"Bishop says that he believes the men will come round,
besides, I don't want to seem superstitious, but I have a
feeling that our visitors want to keep us in ignorance till

they land. I expect they will have an antidote with them.
They said 'fear nothing'."

"I'm not afraid." This was true, Kevern was simply
exceedingly bewildered.

"I shall not think any the worse of you if you phone,"
Robinson sounded almost anxious, "it has given me a jolt
myself."

"I think I'm interested." Kevern tried to make his
voice seem as ordinary as possible. He waited until Robinson
had driven off in his own car, then he jumped into the seat
beside Perkins, the cheerful, freckled youth who was always
on hand to take people to the station, fetch photographs,
or do odd jobs. He would let the boy drive him home, and
then dismiss him, though it was thoughtful of Robinson to have
given him the chance of visiting some hard to get at friend
during these final hours. All his needs could be satisfied,
however, within walking distance of his apartment. "Time
is beyond your reach..." at the moment he sympathised with
Iskendar's army, he wanted food and a quiet rest.

There were cars and taxis as far as the eye could see,

light green, dark green, sometimes black, with here and
there a truck or a delivery van, or some rattling, elder-
ly machine of uncertain make, overflowing with passengers.
"It'll be like this, sir, as far as the Highway, Perkins
grumbled, "why doesn't the Government do something? If
the East drops the bomb first, the transport men are not
going to keep their rights or wages for a day."

"You can't make them understand," Kevern answered,
thinking wearily that the more people were educated, the
less they appeared to learn. He looked at his watch.
Suppose Robinson asked him where he had spent the evening,
and he answered, "in a traffic jam," what could they do
but laugh? At least it was a part of this age. "Why
don't they mobilise," Perkins continued, "there ought to
be a tax on talk."

"What a splendid idea!" Both of them smiled, and
Perkins made a risky dash to gain a few yards. Oh well,
it all came down to the human element in the end. The
boy was young enough not to mind the rough environment of
an army camp, he was a first class driver, and with luck,
if he got a senior officer's car, he would have a far more
exciting life than taking tired little men with brief cases

back and forth to the station. Whatever changes there
were to be, and Kevern thought with astonishment of that
white shape on the photograph that still meant so little
to him, a youth like Perkins would take them all in his
stride.

A crowd had formed in front of them, it sprawled across
the pavement in front of a television set in a shop window.
"Go home," an announcer was thundering on the radio, "go home.
Negotiations between the strikers and the Government have been
broken off and all transport will cease running at eight
o'clock." The lights were green, but the most skilful driver
could not budge an inch, they sat there till the lamps were
red again, while people swarmed into the road beside them, in
an effort to pass the store.

"...has denied that any mobilisation is contemplated..."
most of the words were lost in the buzz of talk, somebody,
minister or lowly official was trying to prevent a panic, but
from the appearance of the masses, he was unlikely to be
believed.

"A further announcement will be made..."

"Oh, turn it off, we want to get home." Then there was
a roar of laughter from the crowd watching the screen and

36

Perkins stood up. "Must have been a sportsman in his youth," he explained, "some old fool was making a speech. They heaved a tomato at him and he caught it!"

Somebody switched the station and tuned in to a programme of popular songs. "Mr. Kevern, please.....Mr. Kevern! Won't you give me a lift?" They both looked up to see Jeff standing on the curb. "Jump in," Perkins yelled, "the light's going to change."

Kevern leaned back and opened the door, Jeff dropped on to the back seat, and the line began to move again.

"Couldn't you get a bus home?" Perkins asked, with professional curiosity.

"Yes, we started as usual, but after we had sat in a block for half an hour, the driver ordered us out. He said he had to report to his group by eight o'clock and he wasn't going to try to take us any further. I managed to phone our neighbour, so that the wife wouldn't be anxious, then I thought if I could get to the avenue, I might pick up a coach."

"What does he think he is doing?" Perkins groaned, putting on the brakes abruptly, as a car swung into a side street without warning. "The police ought to keep fools like that off the road." They were stuck again, drivers started blowing their horns, but nothing helped. There was a solid mass of

vehicles that stretched for half a mile, and as Perkins guessed,
an even worse tangle at the Highway.

"Whatever has happened?" Kevern asked. "Usually by this time the rush hour is over and the place is fairly empty."

"Didn't you know?" Perkins pushed his cap back, scratched
ed his head and grinned, "it's our old Bomb story over again.
People say that we are going to mobilise. Then some washer-
woman mutters something is going to drop, she feels it in her
left toe, and there is a panic rush to the country. Look at
those snails," he pointed to a car that had two dogs and
several children inside it, and mattresses strapped to the
roof, "they are taking house and everything with them."

"There isn't going to be a war," Kevern said, a little
too confidently.

"I wouldn't be so sure, Mr. Kevern," Perkins gave the
windscreen an unnecessary rub, "a lot of us feel that this
Government is too old for its job. What did I do my two years
service for, if we are going to give way to those Eastern
fellows all along the line? I might have been an engineer
if I had finished my apprenticeship, but I got my stripes
in the army, and I couldn't go back to being a boy and saying
'yes, sir,' and 'no, sir,' after I came out. We could knock
the East out to-morrow, if those civilian asses didn't hold

us back." He liked old Kevern, Perkins thought, but officials
were hopelessly out of touch with facts.

"It's all so hard...."

"They say the heavens are taking a hand," Jeff interrupted
solemnly.

"The what?" Perkins opened his mouth in amazement.

"Just what I said, Mr. Perkins, the h-heavens." He got
the h out with some difficulty. "My daughter's 'usband is
working at Bramble." Kevern stopped counting the cars in front
of him as he caught the name, and began to listen intently.

"Something 'appened out there, something not normal. My
wife saw the girl yesterday afternoon, and she said, 'Mother,
I want you to know that something 'as upset Bert. 'E can't
tell me what it is, but 'e's seen something.' The wife said
Bert couldn't eat 'is dinner, though Margery 'ad fixed 'im a
steak, but hee just drank 'is coffee. Then 'e asked 'er for
more, and with coffee the price it is, they'd agreed not to 'ave
seconds except on Sundays, and put the savings into their 'oliday
box. 'It's the Whydrogeen,' 'e kept muttering, 'they've brought
down the ... h-heavens.'"

Perkins looked at Kevern, tapped his forehead, and winked.

"You can laugh, if you'd 'ad an inch of guts in you,
you'd have finished your apprenticeship. But let me tell you,

one of these days, we're going to find messengers from another
planet arriving in our midst."

"And if we do, I'll drive them round. Unless they've
got jeeps with them on their flying saucers."

Yes, Kevern thought, you don't know what you are saying,
but that is precisely what you will have to do, twenty four
hours from now. Then, as if the shock had been so intense at
first that it had paralysed him temporarily, he began to tremble.
If this was his last evening, what was he doing in this bottle-
neck? He must get out, move, run, somehow get home.

"I'll walk, Perkins, it will be quicker."

"Just a minute, Mr. Kevern." The line began to move
again, it was still jerky, as if a child were drawing toys
on a string across linoleum, but at least they were going for-
ward. "Workers," Jeff snorted, with his mind on the marrowfat
peas that wanted watering, "I work as 'ard as they do. It's
power they're after, and they couldn't care less what 'appens
to us." He stared up at the sky, and continued, still think-
ing of his plants, "see how red it is? We'll have another
fine day to-morrow."

The car in front stopped abruptly. "Look at that!"
Perkins managed somehow to swing round and pass it. He leaned
over to swear at the driver and saw that it was a girl who

was fumbling with the steering wheel. "I'll stop and give
you a lesson, honey, on my way back," he yelled, and the
girl shrieked with anger. "Quite a good pair of legs,"
Perkins added cheerfully, "but it's a shame to let a child
like that drive."

Five yards further on they had to pull up again, be-
side a stand full of the morning newspapers. "Hopes of a
Settlement" screamed at them from the headlines. How stale
the words had become in a matter of hours! The speculations
of the best informed editor had been replaced by a mass de-
termination to get out of the city, that was already cancelling
itself out, because too many people had streamed on to the
same roads. "Have you heard," the owner of the stand shouted
at them anxiously, "the strikers say that they will break up
any vehicles moving after eight o'clock."

"Let them talk," Perkins edged a few paces onward, "it's
all another rumor," but Kevern noticed that one driver after
the other was turning into a side street and parking there.
"No, Perkins, you had better go back at once. We don't want
to take any chances with a Ministry car." He glanced up at
a clock overhead, and saw that it was twelve minutes to eight.
"What will you do, Jeff, you can sleep in my sitting room if
you like?"

"No, you had better come back with me," Perkins said firmly, "we will make you up a bed at the garage, and if anybody comes to work to-morrow, which I doubt, you are opposite your building. Only I don't like leaving you here, Mr. Kevern. I pride myself on getting my passengers to their destinations."

"Oh, I'm almost home, and a little exercise will do me good." They were blocked once more and Kevern jumped out, pressing a tip into the driver's hand so much bigger than anything that Perkins had expected, that the youth grinned from ear to ear. "You wouldn't like me to try to get you to the Highway?" he asked, but Kevern shook his head. "You can't turn here, but try going up the next street and circling back. I hope that you get to the Garage in time. See you in the morning, Jeff, though I suppose I shall have to walk." He had forgotten as he said the words that whatever happened, he would be out at Bramble airport, but as he watched the car disappear round the corner, the wild, preposterous story flooded his mind to such an extent that he stood without moving on the curb, until a man in overalls bellowed in his ear, "keep moving, mate, this isn't a lighthouse, it's a street."

There was still a solid line of cars stretching bumper to bumper as far as the square, but the walkers were now more

42

numerous, tramping boldly in between the stationary trucks.
Looking at their faces, Kevern had the impression that it was
almost a parade. Many looked tired, a few were anxious, but
the strike had broken the monotony of life and they were enjoy-
ing the adventure. Yes, the discord that people complained of,
was not in civilisation itself. (Nor in Jeff's foreigners!)
It came because man was also an animal, and his awareness of
danger, the joy of rolling on the grass in the sun, of wading
in water, of everything that had helped him to survive and grow
for thousands of years, was being submerged under a flow of
social restrictions that were just as primitive, in spite of
technological discoveries, as the superstitions of the stone
age savage. It was not true that science was upsetting the
balance between body and brain, man was destroying himself by
some irrational impulse to turn each child into a copy of its
neighbour, although identity of form, or cell, was never found
in Nature itself. To-night, Fate had snipped the city's rou-
tine with a wanton gaiety, and the crowd streamed along, shout-
ing, whistling, and happy.

An old woman passed him, with a blue and white check
bag swinging from her arm, looking younger by twenty years.
A workman shifted his bag of tools from one shoulder to the
other, and stopped to light a cigarette. Then a girl sat down
on a doorstep to take off her shoes, and somebody yelled

unfeelingly, "now you know what a route march is like."
People began to drift away, into bars and eating houses.
"A single bomb can wipe us out" a man muttered, but nobody
took any notice of him. Why should he try to spoil their
fun. "Come on, have some bacon and eggs." Three girls in
bright dresses swung along arm in arm. "Remember when the
busmen came out four years ago, and we had to get up at five
to walk to work?" Complete strangers were chattering to
each other, as if they were cousins. Then, although they
were so crowded together that there was scarcely room for a
child, they separated to leave a clear passage in the middle
of the pavement.

"Repent!" A woman in a nurse's white uniform came
swiftly up the street, one hand lifted in the air, the other
clasping a Bible to her chest. "Repent! The Day of Judgment
is at hand." The voice was soft and penetrating, she looked
neither to right nor left, but her eyes blazed, and people
drew away from her.

"It's odd, she doesn't appear mad," Kevern's neighbour
whispered, "the face seems calm enough."

"Always look at the mouth. The mouth shows more than
the eyes in such attacks. It's loose, like a bag."

"Get the police," a woman yelled in panic, but a man

45

age? For a moment he wondered whether whoever was to land at Bramble would question him about such things, if his mind would be seared by some lightning recognition. Then he laughed, it was only a test. Robinson was trying to see how credulous he was, perhaps it would be wiser to go home, sleep, and forget about the appointment. Then he remembered the photograph. Something had happened at Bramble. Jeff had no motive for lying about his son-in-law, he could believe him, even if he did not trust his chief. And Sagby too, Sagby had pleaded with him more than once, "if only you would listen to me, Kevern. We are on the eve of events that are going to make these speculations about bombs and plans as stale as yesterday's newspapers."

"Keep moving." It was a warm evening, and several men had stopped to take off their coats. Kevern shoved his way to the inner side of the pavement, turned up by the tobacconist, and walked as briskly as he could towards a second avenue that ran slant-wise into the Highway. Once across it, he was within five minutes of his home.

A few steps, and it really was another world. The side street was narrow and deserted, no women were standing on the steps, they were all inside round their radios, waiting for the eight o'clock announcement. The padding of feet, shouts,

and an occasional motor horn mingled into a noisy roar behind
him, but here he was actually alone except for a girl in a
bright apron, watering geraniums on her balcony, and a small
boy, kneeling in his cot, with his nose against the window
pane. To-morrow night even the Ministers might seem as ab-
original and quaint as the kangaroo stitched on to the child's
pocket. All that mattered now was to live in the immediate
present. He almost ran until he reached the other main road
that was as jammed with people, cars and trucks, as the one
that he had left.

Men, women and children were clustered at the curb,
waiting for a chance to cross. "Why don't the police do some-
thing?" an angry woman said, clutching a basket of groceries.
It was unfortunate that as she was rather plump, she should
have chosen to wear a white summer dress sprinkled with some
gigantic life-size storks.

"The police! They are never there when they're wanted."

"But they always have time to notice if I let my dog off
the lead, even if there isn't another soul in the street."

"There'll be a panic, that's what there'll be, and I
want to get home."

"Cheer up, grandad, none of us are going to war" and a
boy, with the peace emblem in his buttonhole, winked cheekily
at the crowd.

"It's greed, that's what it is, greed."

"It's not, it's the price of bread and potatoes, and
the children's shoes."

"We have to be patient," a frail old lady said, standing at Kevern's elbow. She had a black straw hat on her almost white hair, and was trying not to seem anxious.

The neon lights went on under the hoardings. They lit up the pictures of a car, of a poodle begging for a dog biscuit, and a man holding up a foaming glass of beer. It was eight o'clock. People looked fearfully at each other. All the traffic stopped.

"Quickly," Kevern grasped the elderly lady by the arm, "all together now." They took advantage of the sudden pause to hurl themselves across the road, as if they were swimming through weed, while cars hooted frantically. The woman with the storks on her dress, pushed rudely past, and one of the enormous printed birds seemed to turn towards them in a note of interrogation. The boy laughed. A truck began to move. "We have as much right to the road as you have," a clerk shouted indignantly. People pressed into them from behind, they reached the opposite pavement almost at a trot, and stopped, it was like a fair, in front of a row of white cauliflowers, as stiff as nosegays in their bright green

leaves, above a stall of oranges. "How kind of you," the old lady said timidly, disengaging her arm.

"Do you live far away?" Kevern asked. He was in a desperate hurry by now but she seemed too delicate to be left among these crowds alone.

"No, just round the corner. I went out to buy the evening paper for my daughter while she put the children to bed, and I believe I have been standing opposite for half an hour. Is it mobilisation?" she added, trying to seem casual.

"No, it is really only a strike."

"My daughter never tells me anything, but I like to know the truth. It's the uncertainty that worries me, far more than facts."

"I work at the Ministry of Transportation," Kevern explained, "and I think the men will be back at work in a day or two." They would start running the trains out of sheer curiosity as soon as the landing was known, unless the police stopped travelling, in order to control the crowds. He wondered if the interplanetaries had unions, but the idea seemed to make the situation more fantastic than ever, (did they get overtime for out-of-gravity flight?), then he was angry with himself for projecting the present into the future, and he wished that he could ring up Sagby, to be re-assured

by the enthusiasm in his friend's voice.

"If my son-in-law is called up, I can help with the running of the house," the old lady continued defiantly, "my daughter takes such care of me, she will not let me lift a finger at present." She sighed, and Kevern nodded, a crisis gave the old something to think about, it did not disturb their lives as it did those of younger people with families, and contrary to public opinion, the aged often had a last, brief flowering when an empire crumbled. There was work for them, contact with the world, and they were happy. "I live here," she stopped in front of a tall, red building, and he saw that she intended to invite him in, to meet the daughter and stay for supper. "I have friends waiting for me," he said guiltily, he did not like to hurt her feelings but if this were his last evening, time was racing and he wanted every moment for himself. The eagerness faded from a face that had once been very beautiful, and he found himself looking down at wrinkled skin and almost colorless, disappointed eyes. "Perhaps I shall see you to-morrow," he added hastily, "I live so near that we are practically neighbours," and he scribbled his address on an odd piece of paper. She smiled, and he hurried away, murmuring something about keeping his friends waiting, at least she would have a story to tell her relatives over the evening meal.

It was a quarter past eight before Kevern reached his apartment. It was not a particularly pleasant place, being one of a series of small, hutch-like compartments in a big block, but it was near Robinson's house, or as they called it, his headquarters, and convenient in the old days when reports had had to be taken there, late in the evening. He took his key out of his pocket, let himself in, and switched on the light. It was already almost dark. He had cleared his desk in preparation for his holiday, but the postman had dropped a few more letters into the box. There was nothing of importance, a small bill, an invitation to a lecture, the request from an acquaintance for a colleague's address. The cleaning woman had left a note in the kitchen, reminding him about a leaking tap. He sat down, scribbled a few lines to say that he was going away sooner than he had intended, and left these with a week's wages, on the table. He went into the bathroom and washed, coming back through the bedroom he saw that there was a sleeve of his pyjama coat hanging from under the pillow, when he got back he really must find somebody who would clean the place properly. When he got back? He was not going for his holiday! He was going on a journey, but not in the usual sense of the word.

Kevern reached up and took a volume out of the bookcase,

but though he saw the words, he was like a child spelling
them out letter by letter, so that he could not remember the
meaning after he had finished the sentence. He pushed it
back impatiently into its place, and noticed that there was
a rim of dust along the edge of the shelf. He stood staring
at this for a while, wondering what the visitors would be
like? Friendly people, as in the myths, with some strange
and simple knowledge to heal misery and disease? Or was this
the last moment of comparative freedom before powerful machine-
like creatures turned what was human back to serfdom? Then,
in spite of himself, his thoughts wandered to the rocky coast
where he had expected to spend his holiday, to surf breaking
on familiar rocks, and the crescent of rough, tawny sand with
small hollows full of crushed and irridescent shells. He
supposed it would vanish, though the metal of his desk was so
hard, the outline of the furniture so precise, that it was
difficult to realise that he might never see these things
again. He yawned. It was sultry and a little damp. He walk-
ed over to the kitchen window and looked down at the ash cans
in the yard. "Do you want to exist for a few more years as
a useless mouth?" he said aloud, and shook his head. All
the same, he wished that the night were over. The sky was a
haughty, deep delphinium blue between the towers, precisely
as if it had chosen to be that special tint for a flower show.

His hand shook as he pulled the curtains, there was the same
urge to move that he felt when the tide was coming in, even
if he were sitting above its reach; he fetched his overcoat
from the cupboard, and looked round, was there anything more
here that he ought to do? For the flash of a second he seemed
to see his books piled up on the floor, being sorted by a
stranger, the faded postcard that marked a special holiday
torn in two in the wastepaper basket, a bewildered husk or
self turning from shadow to nothingness as he stared at it.
Imagination, Kevern thought, slamming the door behind him,
after all, perhaps they had found Sagby or Robinson might
slap him on the shoulder, "trapped you that time, my boy" and
up the stairs he would come again, furious with himself and
tired, and as he had not put the bottle out, there would be
no milk for breakfast. He wondered if he ought to go back
and leave another note for the cleaning woman, asking her to
make sure that a pint came as usual, but he was too lazy, and
besides, idiotic though it was, he was afraid to go back to
his oddly desolate rooms.

The street had changed its character completely during

the short time that Kevern had been indoors. The traffic
blocks had dissolved, there were no more cars to be seen,
and the local people had come out to chatter and stroll among
the fruit stalls, and sign of summer, under a few peppermint-
striped awnings. Girls were flocking towards the cinema
round the next corner, in their working clothes but with
scarves that matched the bright flowers in the shop windows,
whose names nobody but the florists knew. It was gay, it
was just like any other evening, until people shivered sudden-
ly in a cold blast of air, as if a mountain wind was bobbing
from roof to roof. This time Kevern was startled. Had it
anything to do with the events at Bramble Airport? "Can't
think what has come over the weather," a man said near him,
"I'm sure it is their wretched experiments." Then almost as
abruptly it grew warm again, as if there were going to be a
thunderstorm. He passed a clock, it was ten minutes to nine,
What was he going to do with the three hours he had left?

He counted over his friends, several were on holiday,
others were in remote parts of the city. He had no wish to
see colleagues whose every remark was familiar from constant
repetition at the office, nor did he want to sit in a cinema
and watch an imitation of life. He could eat and walk round
the streets, and then when he was tired, sit down somewhere
and...read the paper, a part of his mind suggested ironically

and the absurdity of the situation struck him so forcibly that he burst out laughing, to the alarm of a passer by. Well, if he did not hurry he would not even get dinner, the restaurants closed early in this quarter of the town. He turned to cross the road, and bumped into a woman coming from the opposite direction, "why, Ernest," she said in utmost surprise, "it's nice to see you cheerful, but you always enjoyed a crisis."

Hardly anybody now called Kevern by his Christian name. He looked up baffled, and it was a moment before recognition came to him. "Jenny!" he shouted delightedly, "this is an unexpected gift of Fate. I was lonely, it seemed such a dreary evening, and here you are."

"You don't look lonely, you were actually laughing as you came up the street," she held her hand out to be kissed, but Kevern ignored it and touched her cheek instead. "I'm too old to be continental now," he protested, "but I haven't smudged your make up, I've remembered your training."

"It's a very long time ago."

"I did see you once at a party, just after the war."

"And you were so formal, Ernest, that I thought you didn't want to remember me. There were walls round you," she made a stiff gesture with her hands.

"It was shock. It was hard to get used to being free to move."

A couple of men in overalls pushed by briskly, and some
boys tossed a ball dangerously close to their heads. "Can't
we go and sit somewhere?" Kevern suggested, "I was on my way
to dinner. It's late, but I'm in transport now and have to
go back on duty at midnight, because of this wretched strike."

"And I was walking home."

The sky was dark blue, and Jenny's coat matched it;
there were a few stars, and lights that were saffron points
at the end of the avenue. Somebody had dropped a theatre
programme and there were newspapers lying in the gutter; a
dog had put his paw through one of them so that only the head-
line *HOPE* was left as if in derision. The cornices above them
were no longer brick but the color of a rubbed penny, it was
sinister and yet so commonplace that as he tried to keep up
with Jenny who walked with a speed born of long practice in
dodging crowds, he felt that they had returned to one of those
films of the silent days, when love scenes usually took place
among shadows and fallen leaves. "Are you acting now?" he
asked, "I've been too busy the last weeks to look at the
papers. The strike to-day came as a surprise."

"No, not at present." The voice was sad. Jenny had
lost her position in the theatre neither through carelessness
nor pride, nor even through age. (What could she be now?

Forty-five, fifty, he wasn't sure,) but one day she had had a
metropolis at her feet, and the next she had been a homeless
refugee, lining up with everybody else to get a visa. She
had been lucky, she had escaped, there had been occasional
appearances since, but she had been the flower of a certain
moment in her city's life, she had not shared its evil, but
she had had to share its ruin.

"Will this do?" Kevern stopped in front of a small
restaurant, "I come here sometimes in the evening, and it is
usually quiet."

"I dined with Anna. You remember Anna? She always has
a headache if anything happens. But I want to talk, so I
shall drink coffee while you eat."

They found themselves almost alone; the majority of
people had already dined, and those who might drop in for
something after a film, were still in the cinema. Kevern
ordered quickly, his hunger had left him, then he ventured to
look for the first time directly at Jenny; apart from an ex-
pression of indifference or repose that was seldom to be found
in the theatre, she had not changed. "I was thinking of the
day when we went swimming in the lake," he said, "and missed
the train home."

"And the storm troopers stopped us on the way back."

"Yes, we were walking along a path through the woods,
and I had just said how beautiful the trees were, when those
evil, booted men sprang out of the bushes." It had had
the grim quality of a folk tale, without a happy ending.

"If you had not been a foreigner, they might have beaten
us," Jenny shuddered, and drank some coffee quickly. "You
pretended that you could only speak English and then, though
there were signposts all the way, you asked them where the
bus stop was! It was a stroke of genius."

"It convinced them of my stupidity. I remember the
leader saying to you, 'go, but go quickly. The next is the
last bus.'"

"People were murdered there that night. But must you
remember such sad things, until that time we had been happy."

"Those few days, those terribly few days..."

"They were so short."

"I felt so free that spring. The city had no memories
for me. I was like a sailor blown there out of his course,
and given shore leave until his ship had been refitted.
There was a ferment of creation everywhere, everything was
new to me, not merely in art but in life. And how the people
loved you! I can see them now, waiting in the rain. Then,
I cannot imagine how it happened, we met, and you liked me a

little. We used to go walking on Sundays."

Jenny looked up with a mischievous glance that meant she was about to tease him. "You were so fun-nee, Ernest," it was the only word she mispronounced, "I never knew what you would do next. The others were in love with themselves, with the glory of having their friends see me walking beside them, or with telling tales about me that never happened. You wanted to know what I thought."

"I was proud too, when you asked me to go out with you."

"Yes, but it was in a different way. You were glad when I suggested places where nobody would know us."

It was true. He had seldom accompanied Jenny home, and except for Paul who had introduced them to each other, he had never known her friends. He had seen her occasionally for a few stolen hours, usually at the lake. "Do you remember, Jenny, if I met you at a party, I pretended that you were a stranger? You liked it better that way."

"There would have been too much gossip otherwise."

"But sometimes you telephoned. It changed the morning for me."

"Once you were out. I looked at the big lime tree standing outside my window and felt horribly lonely."

"Oh, Jenny, did you?"

"Yes, Ernest, for all of five minutes."

They both laughed. "And now, Ernest," she glanced at her watch, "I must telephone my friend. He will be anxious, because he rang me while I was still with Anna, and I promised to go straight home. If you are not tired of me already, I will ask him to fetch me from here in half an hour."

"Make it an hour."

"No," she shook her head, "you have your work, and this is not a night to be out late."

Kevern watched her walk swiftly over to the telephone booth. Yes, Jenny was younger than she had been twenty years ago, and even more beautiful. Yet, would it have helped him had he stayed with her? (Not that she had ever asked him!) He had never been able to bind himself to persons or causes. If Robinson offered him the chance to live his life over again, it would be repetition, he would not make changes, though their early stolen meetings were now dancing through his head, each with a color of its own, making the last years seem grey and wasted. It was as we both willed, he thought, then the door opened and several boys and girls came clattering down the steps. The film up the road had ended. Kevern took no notice of them at first, but then the sound of a half familiar and rather unpleasant voice startled him. "Oh, I

couldn't, Egon," he looked up and recognised *Mary* Thresher's scarf, she was sitting with her back to him, and fortunately some distance away, at the window table.

Her friend was most obviously from Room eighty one. He had a broad head, almost like an Easterner, and his hair stood up like black wire all round his forehead. "You've got to sleep somewhere" he grunted, as if it were the most commonplace thing in the world to ask her to share his room.

"But I told Mother when I phoned that I was spending the night with Miss Woods!"

"As she lives an hour from here, and there are no buses running, how do you propose to get there at one o'clock in the morning?"

"I could miss the party." Mary sounded frightened. It served her right for being so sure of herself, Kevern thought, he was watching the situation with some amusement.

"But I want you to meet my friends! This strike is the most important thing that has happened for years. We are going to crack Transportation into egg shells. It's the beginning of the end."

Kevern was not really interested in the conversation but the man spoke so loudly that everybody in the room stopped to listen to him. Suppose what he said was true, and the

government was about to fall, what had these theorists to
offer in its place? A plan that would run so counter to
human nature that it would end in chaos, from which the strong
and aggressive would emerge as rulers. It was better that
what was to be was decided at Bramble Airport, and not by
these idiots.

"Public opinion is turning against government," Egon
continued pompously, he had one of the big tin peace badges
in his buttonhole, "they will not dare to mobilise. You must
listen to people, Mary, and learn to evaluate their conversa-
tion."

"I do try," the Thresher girl protested. It was more
interesting to think about her exciting friends, than to
notice her dreary neighbours. All the same, it was awkward
that just to-night there were neither buses nor trains.
"Mother might ring Miss Woods up, to find out if I'm there,"
she said anxiously, she did not want Egon to laugh at her.

The booth was behind them but as Jenny returned, the
man made no attempt to move the chair that they had pushed
into the passage way. He looked at her instead so insolently
that Kevern half rose, but Jenny motioned him to be quiet.
"The world is on the phone," she said, "I thought I should
never get the number," then she added in a whisper, "do you
know those people? They have no manners."

Mary had turned and was staring at him but Kevern
shifted his seat unobtrusively so that he had his back to
her. "It's a girl from the Ministry," he explained, "she
was sent to me once as a substitute when my own secretary
had flu, and I did not enjoy the experience. A sulky type,
but I suspect that her home conditions are bad."

"Get rid of her at once, irritable people are bad for
the liver."

"In a Ministry we cannot please ourselves, but I was
thankful when my secretary came back again."

The man shouted for the waiter, then they heard him
say in a bad-tempered voice, "if you must be stupid, I'll get
the Armstrongs to put you up, you know the daughter, she works
in your department."

"The girl is going to cry," Jenny said softly, she was
watching the scene with interest. Actually *the girl* was stunned,
the disappointment had taken all words from her. She had
hated the picture, it had been vulgar and horrid, yet she
could not help noticing how much Egon had enjoyed it, and now
he was angry with her because she would not sleep with him.
She knew she was a 'substitute', not because she had a greater
dictation speed, as she told her parents at home, but because
nobody liked her enough to ask for her permanently. Then

she remembered Ruth. Ruth couldn't live more than a dozen streets away. "I think I had better give up the party," she said, "thank you very much for everything." Before Egon could stop her, she had rushed outside. He shrugged his shoulders, started to get up, thought better of it, and shouted angrily for more coffee.

"No experience at all," Jenny commented maliciously. "But if you are in transport, Ernest, tell me how long this strike is going to last? It makes me uneasy, it was the way things started at home."

Kevern nodded, from boyhood to age, what had he heard but marching in the streets? Some years the men had leaflets, other years there were rifles. "I used to believe we could help people through psychological understanding. I still think we can, at the price of moving like snails. I am not afraid of bombs, but only of human ignorance."

"You haven't changed. But listen, Ernest. If the maid bangs the back door accidently, Anna has a headache and goes to bed for the day. When there is a real crisis, she knots her handkerchief as she did this evening, and swears that it's the end of the world."

"It probably is!"

"I'm not joking this time. I sense things, it's in my

64

family, and I know that something is going to happen. I wouldn't listen to you when you wanted to take me away, you spoke of a cottage in the country and I said I was afraid of caterpillars, but I knew in my heart that you were right. Only you were a stranger, and I had everything to lose."

"I would have made you come with me but I think I was afraid."

"You, Ernest, never!"

"Oh, yes, I was. Of your beauty, your way of life, your gifts. It was history that separated us."

"I was sitting beside Anna to-night, quite silently, because she enjoys crying..."

"Has she a Pekinese?"

"Why, yes, Ernest, how clever of you! A black one with ears like butterflies."

Anna was a mythical being to him, he had never seen her, but Kevern could imagine the room; there were probably rose pink curtains, and a tall red vase with tritons painted on it, and incessant trays of coffee. "And were you thinking about the end of the world too?"

"No, to-night as I was sitting there, the years came back to me, how I had had everything and lost it, and found a fragment again and friends, although the core of the dream

had gone. I'm a refugee without a country, and memories
are all I have left of the triumphant half of my life."

"The world never likes us to grow."

"There is something in me that is more than growing.
What I could do if I had the opportunity! I talk to people,
they let me play a few weeks in a cheap revival of a twenty
year old play, but when I want to show them this seething,
desperate age, they say, look at her neck, can you see the
wrinkles, she is getting old. Tell me, Ernest, do you see
any wrinkles?"

"Most truthfully, no."

"There is a certain understanding that has to develop
slowly. I want to do what your psychologists are doing,
uncover the real emotion under what people suppose they feel,
rage when they are apparently affectionate, greed when they
imagine that they pity. Then all that they cry for in the
theatre is a round, silly face and a good pair of legs."

"You are asking too much. You want people to think."

"It's too easy to go to bed with people, there is
something more to life than that."

"It's a part of the whole, but not everything," Kevern
agreed, "but if I were told I could choose one memory to
take with me to the shades, it would be that day you turned
yourself into a mermaid."

"Please, Ernest, be serious," Jenny smiled all the
same. "We had discovered something new and they smashed us.
Why did this happen?"

"We have to leave that to the historians another century
ahead. And they will see us as ciphers. They will not know
that this man was late for a meeting because he was afraid
of draughts, nor that a plan was pushed on account of some
minister's knowledge of an obscure language, but those are
the trifles that alter the fate of millions. I have lost a
great deal as well," in his youth the aged had not been re-
ferred to as "useless mouths". "Sometimes I feel a refugee
myself."

"No, it is different for you. You Atlantic people are
sailors, moving means nothing to you, but I belong to the
land. I am so rooted to a single place that I still live
perpetually waiting for the summons to go home. A musician
has his music, a painter his colors, even a writer can get
himself translated, but I had chosen speech, and this was
taken from me. Oh, I had some money, I did not starve, I was
one of those whom you would call the fortunate ones, but how
could I experiment? Sometimes I never saw a stage for a
year."

"I know," Kevern said. "However perfect your English
is, you cannot love it the same as your native tongue."

"Even that has changed. I went back after the war.
The few friends who had survived found me dreadfully old-
fashioned. They called me the flower preserved in wax, and
I couldn't understand them."

"They stayed where they were, and were just as uprooted
as the emigrants. The migrations carried the traditions with
them. You have sown one of them here." The critics always
spoke of Jenny with admiration, even if she appeared so seldom.

"Perhaps, but they do not find me another play. They
seem to flatter me, they say that my wit needs a continental
audience, but what they really mean is 'to hell with all
foreigners'. You have so many friends, Ernest, can't you
help me?"

Jenny had always supposed him to have some mysterious
influence, when actually he had no importance at all. Besides,
there were two aspects of the question. At the highest in-
tellectual level, expression was universal, but below this,
plays came out of national experience and needed an inter-
preter who had grown up with his material. He looked at the
pale, scornful face in front of him and saw Jenny, not as an
individual, but as the symbol of her age; there had been

creation, color had been freed, it was centuries since they
had tried to look at truth so nakedly, but much had been lost
in a wanton destruction. Then he answered, not knowing what
else to say, "my friends are scattered. You must give me time,
but sometimes miracles happen."

Jenny shrugged her shoulders, then she said with a sur-
prising tenderness, "so you think of the old days sometimes?"

"Very often, especially of the first time I saw you,
it was in a play about Alexander." She had handled the rather
raw material with the assurance of a perfect swordsman.

"I had some very philosophical speeches in it. I had to
persuade the emperor that it was better to sleep in my tent
than to follow glory across some river."

"The Indus. I went to see it afterwards. It is a wide,
muddy stream the color of an elephant."

"Oh, Ernest, how Atlantic of you! So practical, and so
hard."

"I was only describing the Indus." The enchantment of
the early days made him young for a moment, and Kevern felt
in his pocket for Robinson's card. Why should he be the first
to volunteer? It was gay to be with Jenny again, perhaps she
would need him in whatever was to come?

"How sad!" Jenny contrived to suggest infinite melan-
choly with an inflexion of her voice.

"Is death so terrible?"

"I prefer to be alive."

The minutes were flying past but instead of ringing
up Robinson, Kevern sat on in a sleepy daze, because another
Jenny was tickling his ear with a grass stalk, or pouring
her grief out over a lost buckle, as if she were facing an
audience of thousands instead of a solitary friend. How she
had laughed at him when he had found it later under a bush,
and stung himself on some nettles picking it up. Yet memories
were always second hand. It was possible to remake a relation-
ship, but on the basis that it was new, it was fatal to repeat
an episode. Then the present Jenny startled him by saying,
"suppose this were the end of the world, what would you do?"

"Do?" Kevern looked up anxiously, but it was merely a
casual remark. "Spend the evening with you, Jenny, as I am
doing now."

"Oh, Ernest, be serious. Your hair is quite grey, and
you are talking like a boy."

"We have asked the question ever since we made flint scrapers in caves. To grow, perhaps; it's the explanation I prefer myself."

"Or be transplanted!" Jenny leaned back in her chair, looking tired and sorrowful, it was another of her familiar and instantaneous changes. "Tell your friends about me, darling, there is not much time."

Kevern glanced round the room. They were the last there, and a waiter was clearing tables and setting chairs in order. "My friend will arrive in a moment," Jenny said, taking a card out of her handbag, "here is my address, when will you come to see me?"

"As soon as the strike is over," Kevern lied. This was ending too, yet strangely enough, he did not mind, a tremendous impulse was driving him forward, he would not give up the assignment now whatever he was offered. Perhaps this was how a few of the humble foot soldiers had felt, who had followed Alexander willingly? "If you still remember the ballad," he pleaded, "say a few lines of it."

Jenny shook her head, the blur of an announcement on the radio came faintly through the half open kitchen door and the waiter went in to listen to it. Then very softly, in almost a whisper, Jenny began, and as Kevern listened, it was almost as if he were living through a life, or a summer, in a few brief minutes.

Iskendar

came over the passes,
leaving his army
to mumble alone;
he loosened his horse
to nibble the grasses,
sandily growing
from bush to stone.

They did not know
(that grumbling army)
he chased To-morrow
through the stumbling snow.

A girl came up
to the ford below him,
to fill her cup
and water the sheep;
she knew his name
from the star on his turban,
and murmured in terror,
"Iskendar, peace."

She lifted
her cinnamon head-cloth slowly,
it fell to the square
stone at his feet;
we should have felt
the sleepy violets
and smelt their blackness
in that smooth hair.

But Iskendar said only:

"the empires of the mind hold me no longer
in this strange world
what can I seek but danger?

I am lonely
for the lands beyond the lands beyond the Indus
though after the great vulture
and the thousand deaths,
there is nothing but Nothingness there."

He held up the star
and saw his army
turn in splendour,
with lances, with drums;
"it is going back to yesterday
that breaks the heart, Iskendar,
Time is beyond your reach,
the darkness comes."

The sudden silence when Jenny ended was almost
terrifying. The waiter had come back and was staring
at her, a cloth over his arm. A man, it must be her
escort, was coming towards the table. "You turned my
clock back twenty years," Kevern said, "but how were
you able to develop such mastery. It was pure creation,
you got no help from my words." Jenny yawned, "you
must go now, Ernest, I may be great, but I have to walk
home."

Kevern bowed, as formally as in the old days if
they had happened to meet unexpectedly at a party.
"I can never thank you enough," he said clumsily,
knowing that it was too late now to do anything for her.
"Remember to speak to your friends," she said again anxious-
ly, and he nodded. He glanced up at the clock, it was a
quarter to twelve, his chief would soon be ready for him.
They followed him out, Kevern shook hands with a murmured
farewell and with the words of the ballad still ringing

in his ears, he hurried towards Robinson's house.

"I'm not late?" Kevern looked at his watch.

"You have even a minute to spare," Robinson said, "but there are too many cigarettes inside, and as you know, I don't smoke. Some of my colleagues are there, discussing the situation. I hear you had to walk most of the way home." So I was followed, Kevern thought, but Robinson added instantly, "I had to send for Perkins and he told me. It was the worst jam that I have seen for years."

"A lot of people got it into their heads that the reserves were to be called up. Mobilisation meant war, and war meant the Bomb. There was almost a panic."

"Wait till they hear about Bramble! I can't imagine how we are going to control the crowds to-morrow. That is what I have been discussing with my colleagues most of the evening."

Kevern said nothing, and his chief continued, "are you still willing to undertake the job? I only want volunteers."

"I said I would be here."

75

"Let's go then." He signed to the doorman at the foot of the steps, and a moment later Perkins drove up in a fast special car with a yellow sticker across the wind-shield. "I thought it wiser to get a permit from the strikers," Robinson said ruefully, "they have overturned one of the official cars, and I didn't want to borrow one from the air-force."

"Evening, Mr. Kevern! I didn't expect to see you again so soon," Perkins said, holding open the door.

"Did you get back all right?"

"Yes, it was six minutes past eight by the time we got to the garage, but the strikers gave everyone ten minutes grace. They have broken up a lot of trucks, though, on the outskirts, I hear."

Robinson took his seat, looking even more taciturn than usual, and they started at a fair pace towards the avenue. "Take it easy, Perkins," he ordered, "they say there are road blocks, besides we want to give the fellows a chance to see their own stickers."

"Yes, sir," Perkins reduced speed reluctantly, but instead of going directly to the Highway, he took a longer and quieter route through a maze of little streets. If this was to be his last drive, Kevern thought, he hoped that

Perkins would not be reckless. It would be the height of humiliation to be killed in some stupid collision with an improvised barricade, instead of at his airport post. It is the last time, he repeated to himself, but it might have been a phrase from the daily newspaper, it was devoid of meaning. The roads were dark, people were tired after their unaccustomed exercise, and the pavements were empty. It was not until they reached the outskirts that they saw the first group of strikers. The men stood round a brazier warming their hands, with armlets of the different transport unions round their arms, in working clothes under old overcoats or mackintoshes, yet looking like some Flemish painting of an old, forgotten war, with the pinnacles of the city towering above their heads. It was impossible to see in the darkness where the roofs ended, and the sky began.

"I gave up everything for my work," Robinson said, as quietly as if he were reading a report, "and to-morrow may see the end of the Department."

"I doubt it," Kevern answered, turning up his collar because he felt suddenly cold, "as you said yourself earlier, they will have to preserve the forms of government for their own sakes, to prevent disorder."

"If only we knew what they were like!"

"I expect that they are just as curious about us. Perhaps they'll land like tourists from a cruise ship, buy up all the trinkets in sight and take off again, without our being any the wiser, if we can't communicate by language."

"I am unable to take the situation so lightly, and I am also worried about Sagby. My entire force has been unable to locate him. You have no clue as to where he might be?"

"No, I remembered this evening that he had never once told us the name of any place. The region yes, but it was always 'that valley where the mosses were so plentiful' or 'I got some new and interesting evidence for my lichens working along the river', but he kept his labels for his specimens, I have no idea where he is."

"Do you suppose that he is really in communication..." Robinson curled up his lips, unwilling to say the words, "...with outer space?"

"In that case, surely, he would have been here to-night?"

"Poor fellow, he is certainly missing his great moment."

They stopped suddenly in front of a rough barricade but when the men saw the yellow sticker, they unfastened a chain that they fixed across the roadway, and waved them on. "You know," Robinson continued, once the car was moving again, "there may be another explanation. If he knows that they are unfriendly,

78

he may have deliberately hidden himself in some cave."

"No," Kevern shook his head, "his curiosity would get the better of him. He either knows nothing about it, or he might just possibly be stuck to some apparatus somewhere, trying to pick up signals. I think myself he is so interested in his plants that he just does not want to be disturbed."

"You may be right." Robinson yawned, and looked at his watch. They were spinning past gardens, houses with trees, and an occasional small park. There were no meadows, and it was too early for hay making, but Kevern could have sworn that he smelt clover, grass and was it lime blossom, as they left the city behind them and came into open country. His eyes closed, and curious, disconnected images flowed through his mind, though he was not asleep. He seemed to be sitting beside a lake in the sun, and the water between him and the opposite shore was like a fan of watered silk. He was three, and the cook put a round bun into his hand, almost too big to hold. The filing cabinet was open, and there was a paper that he had lost, caught in the hinge of the drawer. He wondered vaguely why these haphazard memories should return instead of others so much more emotional or important, then he drowsed, thankful for the soft air, the swift, smooth motion of the car, and the silence.

"It's a desolate place," Robinson's voice roused him, it must have been half an hour later, and as Kevern opened his eyes he saw that they had already reached the marshes; there was sand on either side of the road, and instead of grass, he fancied that he smelt salt in the air from an ocean that would have been visible in daylight. They stopped in front of a Neon-lighted sign that read "Bramble Airport. No Entry Without A Pass." Perkins leaned out to hand a paper to an officer who was apparently waiting for them, they were motioned on, and they drove briskly up to the administration building. It looked like a skeleton in the moonlight, the low white walls were the color of bones.

"Good evening, or is it good morning, Perkins?" Kevern said as he sprang out of the car. Perkins grinned, and for a second he was almost envious of the boy's self confidence, he was so young and sure of himself, but no, Kevern reflected, he had had enough, he did not want to live life over again. He followed Robinson up the steps and into a room hung with maps and charts. "Mr. Kevern, Commander Matthews" his chief said even more hurriedly than usual, as a man rose from behind a large desk. "Anything new since I phoned?"

The commander looked at Kevern, hesitated and answered, "not since my last report."

"Well, what do I have to put on," Kevern asked, trying to appear unembarrassed and cheerful.

"Your things are in this cubicle, sir," the elder of the two men answered. "You'll have to take all your own clothes off; it would be a pity to spoil them."

"That sounds as if I were going to paddle about in oil."

"No, sir, you'll be dry enough, but you have to leave everything you wear in the Contamination Room when you come out."

"Do tell me, is it radiation only, or a ray as well?"

"We don't know, sir," the man said unwillingly, "it seems to be radioactive, but it does not respond to the counters."

"I see. But the other fellows died from radiation sickness?" Kevern hazarded.

The three men looked at each other. "It's all right, you can talk, I volunteered, and the situation was explained to me," Kevern said impatiently. "I just wanted to check up on the latest details. There have been seven deaths up to date, I believe?"

"No, sir, five. There are several men in hospital, yet others who came in contact with whatever it is, are perfectly well. It seems to depend on the helmet. The pilot

had one on and there isn't a thing wrong with him. I mean
the man who made the first report. The officer on the control
tower was bareheaded. You'll notice that even the fitters
working a mile away have got scarves over their mouths, as if
a rag of wool could keep out anything!'

So his intuition had been correct; there had been more
casualties, well, it seemed a matter of chance. One of the
men glanced at his watch, and Kevern wondered if they knew
more than they admitted? He nodded, the sergeant pulled back
the curtain, and he found himself in a tiny cubicle, facing a
pile of equipment. By the time that he emerged, five minutes
later, he had on rubber boots reaching to his hips, and a padde
g
plastic overall, zipped tightly up to his neck. "Leave all
your things here, sir, we'll look after them, you get your
helmet and your gloves on the field."

"I have to see Mr. Robinson first."

"Of course, sir, he said he would be waiting outside
for you."

Kevern glanced round. One of the men was putting the
suit that he had just taken off on to a coat hanger. He pick-
ed up his wallet, found a note, and put it beside the chess
board. "For drinks," he said, "when you go off duty." He
was about to hand them the wallet when he remembered that
most of the cash that Robinson had given him, was still

unspent inside it. It would save endless complications with
the accountancy department if he could return it to his chief.
"I have some papers here for Mr. Robinson," he explained,
lest they should think he did not trust them, and they nodded.
"Thanks, sir, and good luck." The elder man opened the door,
and Kevern waddled rather than walked after the sergeant.

It was a slow and difficult trip out to the field. A
group of people were standing about fifty yards away from a
curious, temporary structure that was a cross between half of
a cement balloon, and the chart room of an old-fashioned
steamer, held together by a band of metal or glass that turned
into windows as they approached. He recognised Robinson
standing next to Commander Matthews, and a man whom he thought
must be Parish. "Quite a space suit," Robinson remarked as
he arrived.

"I feel as if I were out of gravity already in these
boots!" The remark loosened the tension, and there was some
uneasy laughter. It was strange, Kevern thought, he had on
an airman's suit for the first time, now that it was too late
for him to fly.

"Oh, they are uncomfortable," Matthews admitted, with
an attempted heartiness, "they are meant for a pilot's seat,
you know, not for a stroll."

"All you have to do is to sit beside Tortoise," Parish said, in a cracked, tired voice, and though what light there was came from a single lamp, Kevern saw that the man could not have slept for days. "It's quite simple, when you go in the man who is now watching her, will show you a couple of controls in case she needs more juice. Otherwise everything is automatic. I understand that you are not a mathematician, but if you would like me to explain her construction..."

Kevern shook his head, "please just give me my instructions."

"You are the one human element left," Parish managed a smile. "The signals she collects are flashed on a panel in the room underneath where some of my staff are trying to decipher them. It's possible some of the curves refer to navigation, but most of the zigzags are merely atmospheric."

"I want you to understand, Kevern, that whoever is up with Tortoise, is in an exposed position," Robinson broke in quietly. "The place underneath has a thick cement roof, and a lead screen, and so far, we have had no casualties there at all. But we need an observer with a full view of the runway to report to us if there is a landing. They may want us to turn on all the lights."

Kevern nodded, "anything else?" he asked.

"No," Parish who seemed to be in charge, looked up
from a note-book full of figures. "We shall check with you
by phone, every quarter of an hour, and you will be relieved
at four o'clock."

"That is in just three hours," Robinson interrupted,
"but if you recognise a message on the machine, or you feel
faint, call us up at once."

Matthews glanced at his watch, "the most important
point to remember is this. Whatever happens, don't unscrew
your helmet. Keep as quiet as possible, watch the field, and
don't experiment. We know the safety factor is the head
piece."

Another sergeant brought up an object that looked like
a miniature diving bell, together with a pair of rubber
gauntlets. "Mind looking after my wallet?" Kevern said,
handing it to Robinson. "Most of the cash is still inside it,"
he added in almost a whisper, "it will save a lot of trouble
with the accounts." This must be a nightmare, he thought
suddenly, he would wake up in a moment and find himself
late for the office.

"Can you move your fingers, sir?" They were strapping
something over his wrists. He saw Robinson staring at him
in a pitying, bewildered way, and muttered as two men lifted

up the helmet, "if anything should happen, I enjoyed working
under you."

"Thanks. Remember, they are supposed to land at three."

The globe snapped into place. It had great eye pieces
and tubes connected with the oxygen containers that they were
hitching on to his back. "We are trying to give you as pure
an air as possible," Parish shouted, although the voice was
muffled and remote, "stand the canisters on the table once
you are inside, but be careful not to loosen the screws."

He wondered if he looked more like a diver or a space
cadet, could he even get as far as the building with this
weight on his shoulders? He was very hot, but he took a step,
it was just possible to move. "The door opens electrotoni-
cally," Robinson yelled.

"Till breakfast," he tried to shout back gaily, but he
was in a world of instrument voices, and could only hear what
filtered through his head phones. He lurched across the stiff
grass and over the white chalk circle that marked the danger
zone, praying that he would not sprawl forward in these clumsy
clothes, and be unable to get up. How dark the building
seemed! "One, two, three, four," he began to count his steps
as if he were struggling up a steep hill on the first excur-
sion of the holidays. He was panting by the time that he

reached the door, it opened as if invisibly, and he found
himself face to face with another man in identical equipment,
who was staring at him in intense relief. "You sit here,"
the voice came in a curious gasp and the figure pointed with
the finger of its great awkward, glove to a place beside a
small panel. "You must watch her for current and if the in-
dicator drops below the red line, switch on the reserve.
Otherwise, the fellows underneath us are doing all the work,
you have only got to watch the runway. Good luck!" He hurried
towards the exit, and alone with Tortoise, Kevern sat down
in front of the window.

The great machine purred. It seemed alive, the cells
flashed red and green. Instead of letters. There was a slot
at the side, like a hungry mouth daubed with fluorescent
paint, but no light except above the indicator; this was
shaded so that though Kevern could read the figures, it would
not dazzle a plane approaching the runway. The first thing
was to remove his oxygen containers, they made him feel as
if an outsize rucksack had slipped out of balance, but it
was not an easy job with hands that had turned into rubber
flippers, he jerked, and fancied that one of the screws had
loosened itself, but as soon as the canisters were on the
table, and the tubes arranged, he felt more at ease; even

the boots were bearable if he did not have to walk in them.
A voice came faintly through the ear phones, it was Robinson
speaking, "how are you? Is everything all right?"

"Fine, thank you," Kevern's voice sounded like a shout,
"I'm just settling down for a lazy night."

"Don't go to sleep on us," Robinson joked back. "We
shall be waking you up again in a quarter of an hour."

There was an uninterrupted view of the airport through
the gigantic window in front of him. It was probably due to
lack of light, but the tarmac, the hangers at the side, every-
thing that was actually steel or concrete and of infinite
weight, seemed transparent and temporary. A geological moment
ago (but how long it seemed in human time) thousands of wild
and rough-maned ponies had grazed and fought and galloped
along these sands. The grit was there but the animals had
vanshed. A few fossiled bones were all that remained of
fifty generations. Oh well, the world revolved, no matter
how hard Man tried to hold it still, sometimes the moments
most passionately loved, were the first to disappear. Kevern
looked at his watch. It was a quarter past two.

Eight hours ago, he had been sitting in an ordinary
suit in an ordinary chair, waiting until Robinson was ready
to see him. It too seemed a century away. If only he could

break through this fog of irreality! It was partly the
danger, if there were this radioactivity in the air, (and he
must call it that because if it happened to be an entirely
new ray, it would be his successor who would find a name for
it!) it touched another race memory, the poison was Renaissance
and subtle, he might walk from his watch to the de-contamination
room without feeling a trace of sickness, and two days later,
as if he had nicked a finger on some unnoticed dagger, end
gasping in a hospital bed. The threads tangled, he envied
Robinson, the fellow had had what he wanted in life and now
would live to see some of the answers, yet, even so, and he
looked at the containers on the table, this was better than
dying slowly inch by inch, a "useless mouth" in some home for
the aged.

"Hello!" This time it seemed to be Parish, "anything
to report?"

"I'm afraid not, it's monotonously quiet."

"My fellows are getting a lot of lines, rather like iso-
bars, they might be navigational, but nothing makes sense."

"There's not even a mouse out here." Kevern fancied
that he heard a tinge of disappointment in the tone as Parish
answered, "it's half past two."

"Perhaps their time is different from ours?"

"It makes it awkward," Parish replied, then he added, after a pause, "and how are you getting on yourself?"

"I never felt better," Kevern answered truthfully, apart from the buzz of the machine that made it just that harder to hear through the head phones, his fatigue had gone and he felt no desire to sleep.

"Ring us at once if anything happens."

He answered mechanically, and stared down the field. What fools they would look in the morning if it turned out that some young flyer had managed to trick, not only his fellow pilots, but the flower of the Intelligence Service as well! It would not surprise him, a planned economy outlawed the adventurous, and men grew desperate, carrying out the same tasks every day. He would like to meet the fellow....but no, five of the staff were dead, Robinson knew the facts, these rags could have nothing to do with the air force itself,

It must be the Easterners. People trusted them too much, they were so tired of war. Of course this was simply a ruse to concentrate attention upon the area round Bramble, while the enemy slipped across to drop their bombs in the overcrowded centre of the country. He reached instinctively for the oxygen container, and felt the tube jerk at his neck; he had forgotten for a moment that he was not at a desk in front of his

own telephone. Then he let his hand fall on the table.
The patrols were going on as usual, he had seen the list up
in the commander's office. There had been no alteration in
the routine pattern of defence, the night was half over, the
radar men were at their screens, and there had been no warnings.

Or was Sagby right? Were they really about to step from
one volume of history to another, and if so, what would the
new comers bring them? Knowledge - but the world would not
use the information that it had. They knew the cause of
malaria, but there were still swamps and flies. Mankind pre-
ferred taboos to sanity, because ignorance came from its an-
cestral inheritance and had an innate hatred of progress.
Was it the end of the world, (he seemed to hear the faint
voice of the old madwoman coming down the street,) oh, well,
there had been just as many prophecies of doom at the beginning
of civilisation as now. Other empires had perished. He knew
only that it was unjust to blame science for man's ills; it
was not the tools but the use that people made of them.

"And Iskendar, at the head of his army, marched forward
into the mist."

It was another way of saying that Iskendar wanted to
explore the future. Kevern sighed, he could almost draw the
faces of Iskendar's soldiers, but it was hard to imagine what

interplanetary beings could be like. He thumped the table
angrily, there must be a logical explanation, probably some-
thing so simple that some schoolboy would discover it.

"It's a quarter to three," Robinson sounded frantic.

"It's foggy outside," Kevern explained, "I can't see
the circuit." It was cold, he wriggled his toes inside his
boots, and wondered if he would get frostbite? The search-
light from the tower padded like a snow leopard through the
mist, sniffing from mark to mark along the tarmac. Suddenly
he felt lonely. He wanted an ordinary human voice, Jeff or
Perkins or the sergeant, to ask him for a light. Could they
have kidnapped Sagby? He smiled at the preposterous idea.
Poor fellow, what a fool he would feel when he came back
with his dirty, battered tent to find that his day of possible
glory was over. "They might have let me know!" He could
hear his friend's voice, and see the smile covering a bitter
disappointment. But how strange. He would probably never
see Sagby again. Kevern sat up with a jerk and reached for
his pencil; he must not let his imagination run away with
him, but focus his mind completely on his work. A faint
whistle sounded in his ears, it might be a trickle of air
through an eyelet hole, or some reed a man had improvised to
call back the outposts of an army. It was almost inaudible

but it made him feel inexplicably happy, as if Fate had granted
him his wish, and he was already in the air, at the controls
of his own plane. The ocean was below him, the water was a
turquoise stone, everything that moved was in the sky, the
clouds tumbled round each other, scattering from the wings
and fusilage, the higher he rose, the more he felt at ease.
Yes, now he knew what he both wanted and loved, it was the
day after to-morrow.

Something snapped. He jumped. It was only the bulb
that had burned itself out in the tube above the indicator
panel. Burr...bump....burr....bump....the machine seemed to
be functioning perfectly but he wondered if it needed more
current? Some people would have been afraid of sitting beside
the monster with the light gone, but to Kevern the smooth,
continuous functioning of the cells was a triumph of the mind
over darkness. He tried to speak to Robinson but the line
seemed dead. According to the irradiated clock on the wall,
it was five minutes to three.

It should have seemed cooler in the black-out but the
room was getting unbearably hot. Kevern looked out and
noticed that the fog had cleared, but sweat was misting his
goggles, and he was growing more uncomfortable every minute.
His head ached, the helmet was too small, why couldn't the

idiot have found him a proper size? Could he possibly hold
out till his relief came with this pad pressing on to his
skull? "Be careful, sir, not to unscrew the helmet." Be
careful! It was what people had said to him all his life,
nobody had ever said "try". (And nobody had said it to
Iskendar either.) All that he needed was space, then he
would soar into the sky again, they wanted to confine him
to water and earth. The faint whistling in his ears had
turned into a rasp. He put his hand up and a screw dropped
into it, so the noise must have been air seeping through a
pinpoint hole at his neck. He loosened the straps, the pres-
sure eased wonderfully as he lifted the heavy globe from his
head, and for no reason, he laughed. "Oh," he gasped, it was
so funny to think of Robinson with a situation at last that
for all his coolness he was unable to handle, "oh," he choked,
but he had merely caught his breath, this sense of suffocation
would be over in a second. Nothing to report? He trembled
with excitement and coughing. Were those searchlights crossing
the window? Was that a signal? Or merely a reflexion? He
panted, why, it was a wave racing up the grass. It hit him,
he went down, oh, where was his helmet? Something was wrong,
he wasn't coming to the surface. His mouth stretched open,
the wind indicator had broken away but if he could once reach

that yellow, dancing balloon it would lift him above this
turbulence and strain. It was the lead that they had strapped
on his arms that was drowning him. His chest cracked...all
was pain and no memory, the ship's bell rang, (but it was
the clock striking three) as he tumbled forward among the
valves. Burr...bump....burr....bump....Tortoise clicked
quietly for a moment, then of itself or because the body
falling beside it, had torn out the switch, lingered into
silence.

The fog cleared. A disk, the color of moonlight, landed
on the runway.