Andromeda Breakthrough

CHAPTER NINE DEPRESSION

OSBORNE stared out of the carriage window at the sprawl of South London. His left arm was still in a sling to take the strain off the pectoral muscle which Kaufman's gunman had shot through. Otherwise he was very little hurt, and the wound itself was healing rapidly.

If he had had a miraculous escape, so had London.

Damage from the previous night's hurricane was not as great as he had feared, so far as he could see from the slowly moving train. TV aerials were bent grotesquely and a lot of roofs had gaping holes where chimney stacks had toppled. He was jammed against the glass by the pressure of the other standing passengers. The journey from his home at Orpington had taken more than two hours already. He could not complain the train was late; it was unscheduled. With the power lines out of action only diesel trains from the coast were getting through. His train eased forward in stops and starts, passed from section to section by manual signalling.

Being a cautious man, he had started out early, knowing that after a night like the past one travel would be difficult.

But he was beginning to worry. The Ministry meeting was scheduled for 10.30. The others; living around Whitehall, would doubtless be there on time.

The train stopped for ten minutes south of the river.

Osborne saw a Battersea power station, as vast and solid as ever, the usual plume of white smoke from the stack whipped away by the still boisterous wind. Almost imperceptibly they started again, and kept going. The electric signalling system was working here and they swung over the points and cruised gently into Charing Cross. Hastily scrawled notices gave warnings about falling glass from the roof; they were ignored by the rush of exasperated commuters making for the exits.

Out in the Strand life seemed fairly normal. A hoarding had blown down, but traffic was moving, though slowly. The centre of Trafalgar Square was roped off. Nelson still looked across London from his column, but presumably the authorities were taking precautions.

Osborne turned into Whitehall. A barricade or two where windows had been blown out, nothing more. Big Ben stood unharmed, its clock proclaiming that it was 10.21. Osborne quickened his steps. He would be just in time after all.

The Minister was already in his office when he arrived. He grunted a perfunctory greeting and returned to his reading.

'Neilson sent a message he'd be on time,' he said without looking up.

The American arrived a moment later. Osborne cut short his attempt at a cheerful greeting at the sight of the black band on Neilson's arm. The man looked older; the death of his son had hit him hard.

Without preliminaries the Minister opened the meeting.

'No time or reason for formalities,' he said. 'Professor Neilson wants your help, Osborne.' He paused and gave a quizzical look. 'As Neilson's in the picture as regards your position over the Thorness debacle, you won't mind my referring to it. To put your mind at rest, the enquiry's shelved. It's pretty pointless with the two main witnesses, Fleming and the girl, missing. So put that business out of your mind for the time being. This is what you might call a national emergency. An international commission's being set up under Professor Neilson, and we want someone to run the secretariat.'

'Preferably you,' said Neilson. The words were unnaturally hoarse and loud.

Osborne turned to him. 'You're feeling it too, are you?' he asked. 'The breathing?'

Neilson nodded. 'It's pretty general, and worse in the hills.'

'They're evacuating the Highlands,' said the Minister.

'We haven't announced it yet, but it's all part of a general pattern. The air at any altitude is getting too thin to be able to breathe.'

Neilson got up and walked to a table where a weather map had been spread out, held in position by drawing pins.

'The Alps and the Pyrenees are now depopulated,' he said.

'Would you just come over here, Minister, and you, Osborne? I can show you what we've so far ascertained.'

The two men stood on either side of the American. 'The atmospheric pressure's falling rapidly all around here' - he swept his hand in a wide curve from the Shetlands to Brittany - 'as well as in all spots where we have weather ships or Navy vessels able to make careful checks. In other words, the pressure's lowest over the sea in the Northern Atlantic and into the Mediterranean. The indications are slighter in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, but they are there. Naturally, air rushes from the land masses to compensate, and so you have your storms and this thin atmosphere.'

'What do you want me to do?' Osborne asked.

'If you're fit enough?' interposed the Minister. 'Not getting any trouble from your injury?'

'I'm all right, Minister.'

'Good,' said Neilson. 'Now, as you can imagine, the data I've been able to collect is too vague, too sporadic. We want all the news we can get, properly collated, and then rationalised.

That takes some organising.'

The Minister moved to Osborne and put his hand on his shoulder. 'With this regrettable sabotage business hanging over you, the security people are rather agin your continuing to have access to - well, you understand, old boy? But we can second you to this weather job and faces are saved all round. Specious but practical.'

Osborne gave a wry smile. Before he could say anything, Neilson began explaining what he wanted. 'We've got to work back through the weather records for the past month or six weeks. Your Air Ministry has got out some preliminary data. There's no doubt in my mind that this abnormally low pressure began in one area.'

The Minister returned to the map. 'And I expect you can guess where that was, Osborne,' he said. 'It was here.' He stabbed with his index finger into a cluster of spirals. Beside his finger point the dotted lines of the prohibited maritime area fanned westwards - the Thorness rocket testing range.

Osborne felt no surprise. There was a sort of inevitability about the whole thing.

'So now you have some idea of the channels into which your work may lead,' said the Minister resignedly. 'But I would impress on you that you must remain objective. For a good while your work must be organising a reporting system from all countries. The U.N. people in New York have pushed through a general agreement for co-operation with the committee. You'll get no niet's or non's.'

A mass of wind surged against the building, the modern steel windows protesting but not rattling. It died away as suddenly as it had come. Somewhere in the street glass was tinkling. 'The great thing is speed,' said the Minister.

For the rest of the day Osborne and Neilson worked on setting up an organisation. Largely it was a matter of instructing clerical staff and setting up communications. The Meteorological people at Bracknell would service the information.

They installed a radio link. Land lines were no longer reliable.

Before the spring night had fallen the wind began to increase again. There was every sign of a far worse storm even than during the previous night. Osborne gave up all idea of going home.

Neilson went off to his hotel to get some dinner and Osborne was left alone. He took time off to relax and think.

The way every nation, large and small, had signified its eagerness to co-operate had been encouraging and stimulating. One tiny blank appeared in the long list of countries listed as willing to help. Osborne felt it peculiar that in the face of such danger from a natural phenomenon internal politics should be so jealously regarded in Azaran.

He picked up the phone and asked for the communications duty officer in the Middle East Section at the Foreign Office. The phone was answered immediately, but it was difficult to hear. The air had chosen that moment to whirl itself into a frenzy. Osborne had to shout his request, the effort making him gasp for breath.

Equally laboured came the reply: 'We'll try, sir, but things are difficult. Line communications have gone to hell, and radio is no more reliable. We'll be lucky to get any message out of this building tonight, let alone overseas. And as you know, sir, there's been an upheaval there. Azaran's officially sealed itself off.' A crash drowned out the rest of the words.

'Window's just blown in,' came the voice, 'God, what a night!'

It was mid-afternoon when Fleming heaved himself off his bed and went to his shower. Lethargy was insidiously enveloping him, making it possible to lie for hours doing nothing, sometimes hardly thinking. He had not really imagined that Abu would have any success in getting him an interview with Gamboul, any more than he had a definite idea of what he could say to her if he got the chance. Yet, in the frustration of his existence, he had played a sort of game ever since Abu had gone, pretending that the next ten minutes, or the ten minutes after those, would bring a summons.

It hadn't come, of course. Showered and refreshed in body, if not in mind, he made his way to the computer building.

Andre was seated at the console, Kaufman close by.

She looked desperately ill. Fleming hesitated beside her, but she took no notice of him and he moved away along the corridor.

The output printer was working and Abu was studying the figures emerging.

'I could do nothing,' murmured the Arab, without looking up. 'I'm suspected now.'

Fleming bent down as if to read the figures. 'I don't think there's anything any of us can do except warn people.'

Abu tore off the newly completed sheet and stood up. 'Go to my home this evening,' he whispered. 'Give the guards the slip. I can't come. I'm being watched. Lemka will tell you.'

Before Fleming could question him further Abu had walked quickly away to the filing office. Fleming watched his retreating back thoughtfully.

Dawnay came from the other end of the corridor. 'I saw Abu Zeki all conspiratorial with you through the glass doors,' she said, 'so I held back. What was it all about?'

'I don't know,' Fleming admitted. 'A trap perhaps; he had a session with La Gamboul this morning. Or it may be a wild goose chase. But we may as well go down fighting. And what happy tidings have you got?'

'I know what the little beast is.'

'What is it?'

'An artificially synthesised bacterium. If we knew how it acts we'd have an idea of what we're up against.'

'Can Andre... ?' He hesitated.

Dawnay gave a rueful smile. 'I tried. She says the computer can't help. It knows nothing about the bacterium.'

They walked towards the door, to get away from a guard who had paused near them. 'I'm reduced to straw-clutching,'

he continued. 'So I'll try walking into our friend Abu's trap if that's what it is.'

She clutched at his arm. 'Be careful, John,' she begged.

'With you gone - '

'I always turn up,' he grinned.

Getting away from the compound wasn't easy. Fleming had to wait until nightfall, and he was not too certain of the place where Abu said he had left his car. But he was helped by the weather. The winds after sporadic bursts of boisterousness throughout the day, was developing into a major gale.

The guards had all sought shelter against pillars and walls from the stinging sand.

His eyes adjusted to the moonless darkness after he had walked from the main compound into the service area. Abu's car was parked among several others. The ignition key was in position as Abu had promised. He drove away, not too fast, in case the speed aroused some hidden sentry.

Following the route was tricky. He wished he had taken more careful note of landmarks on the weekend trip. Twice he ran off the track during a particularly violent gust of wind when dense clouds of sand hit him, but the rear-engined Italian car was ideal for the terrain. He got to Abu's house in a couple of hours.

The door opened an inch when he knocked. He identified himself and Lemka told him to come in quickly.

An old woman in Arab costume was sitting in one corner.

She pulled her veil over the lower part of her face but her eyes were friendly. On her lap she nursed a baby.

Fleming looked at the child. 'Your son?' he asked Lemka.

'Yes; Jan,' she said proudly. 'Dr Neilson was his godfather.

You have children?'

'No.' He felt awkward with this very direct young woman.

'You would like some coffee?' Lemka said. She spoke to her mother in Arabic. The woman laid the child down in its cot and went to the kitchen.

'What's all this about?' Fleming asked when they had both sat down, Lemka beside the cot which she gently rocked.

'Abu couldn't tell me anything.'

'I made him ask you to come,' Lemka said quietly. 'You see, I have a cousin who is radio navigator of Intel's air transports. He's on the Europe run.'

'They're still flying there?'

She nodded. 'It's difficult, but they get through. It would help if you could get in touch with English scientists? My cousin is not allowed to carry messages. All crews are searched before take-off. But he has promised me he will try.'

Fleming became thoughtful. It all seemed like a trap.

'Why should he?' he asked.

Lemka's mother came in with the coffee, poured out two cups and stole silently away, squatting on the floor in the far corner. Lemka glanced at her, then at the baby. 'He'd do it for me, for his family; for our little Jan.'

It was something simple, human - the sort of human value which shone out in this nightmare world. Fleming believed her.

'He's going to London; fine. What could he take? A letter?'

She nodded. 'It is dangerous, you understand. People are locked up for such things. Even shot.'

'Thank you,' was all Fleming could find to say. 'I will ask Professor Dawnay what the message could usefully include.'

He stood up to go.

Lemka came beside him. 'What is going to happen?' she whispered.

He drew the curtains back from the tiny window. Sheltered by the precipitous hill, the air was clear of sand and the stars sprinkled the black vault of the sky with a myriad pinpoints of light.'

'There are two things,' he said half to himself. 'First, the intelligence out there in Andromeda that sent the message wanted to make contact with whatever forms of life it could find anywhere in the galaxy - in a sort of evangelical way.'

He looked down at Lemka and smiled. 'Remember how we mentioned St Paul?'

Lemka nodded.

'The intelligence is a sort of missionary in space,' he continued.

'When it finds life which responds, it converts it; takes it over. It's tried before, maybe over several million years on different worlds - maybe with success - and now it's tried here, through the girl Andromeda, for what she calls our own good. That's one thing.'

'And the other?'

'Where it finds an intellect hostile to it, it destroys it and possibly substitutes something else. That's what's happening now, because we fought. Or rather, because I fought. And lost.' His voice faltered. 'That's why, Lemka, you might say that I've condemned the whole human race.'

'Not yet,' she whispered.

'No,' he agreed, 'not quite yet. There's just a chance that Professor Dawnay will have something for your cousin.'

It was early morning when Fleming got back to the compound.

He simply drove openly through the main gates under the flood lamps, waving cheerfully to the sentry. The man grinned back. It was clear that so far as the Western people were concerned the guards were instructed to stop them getting out, not to prevent them coming in.

Fleming waited till the working day had begun before he went to see Dawnay. Whatever they put in the message it had to be terse, factual and conveying something more than an appeal for help.

Abu Zeki was in the laboratory with Dawnay. He looked relieved to see Fleming but said nothing.

Dawnay was bending over a big tank she had had installed below the low long window. The glass top was screwed down.

Several robber tubes and wires passed through seals in the top. They were connected to recording instruments, one of which Fleming recognised as a barograph. In the bottom were two or three inches of an opaque fluid.

She greeted him perfunctorily. 'No luck with Andre,' she said, busy with notes on the instrument recordings. 'She was trying to be helpful, I think, but she hasn't the will to do much. Still, I got some of the data I wanted, thanks to Abu.'

'Found anything?' Fleming asked.

'Not much. I now know what it does.' She removed a test tube clamped vertically with its mouth over one of the tubes from the tank. 'It absorbs nitrogen. You'd find less than 3 per cent in this sample from the air just above water surface. It also takes up some oxygen, not much - but see for yourself.'

She turned to a filing cabinet and withdrew an untidy sheaf of papers. 'Just glance over those formulae, will you, John? Tell me if you've seen anything like them before.'

He studied the data in silence. 'I said it looked familiar. It still does.' He handed the papers back.

'It's another synthesis,' she murmured.

He was really alarmed. 'Not another one starting?' he exclaimed.

'No,' she reassured him. 'We worked back to this a long way. Yesterday evening I was on familiar stuff. It came out of the computer at Thorness - oh, it must have been more than a year ago, when I began the D.N.A. synthesis.'

'It's part of that?' he asked in a low voice. 'Part of the programme which constructed the girl ?'

'No. It came up quite separately.' Dawnay was firm about it. 'I based an experiment on it; one had to at that stage when we were still groping in the dark, really,' She moved to the tank and looked with despair down at the opaque, sullen fluid at the bottom.

'I actually made some of these bacteria.'

'What happened to them?'

She answered with an obvious effort. 'They seemed harmless, pointless, Another failure. I kept them in a whole range of cultures for a week. They did not die, but they did not develop. Just multiplied. So the tubes were washed out and sterilised.'

He started towards her. 'Don't you realise... ?'

'Of course I do,' she said sharply. 'The bacteria went down the sink, into the drain, from the drain to the sewer, and into the sea.'

'Which is precisely what that bloody machine intended should happen! But an ounce or so is the most it can have been. It can't have spread the way it has.'

'Not impossible,' she said. 'I've tried to fix the date more or less exactly when I abandoned that line of research. It's an academic point really. But I'm certain it is a year ago at least. With this tank fixed up I have been able to calculate the rate of growth. It's fantastic. No virus or bacteria so far known has a rate even comparable to it. And now the buildup's greater. You can envisage the sort of progression now that it's invaded all the main oceans.'

'How long,' he asked, 'will it take... ?'

She looked up at him. 'Possibly another year. Probably less. All sea water will then reach maximum saturation.'

Fleming studied the wall-graph which recorded hour by hour the nitrogen content in the air of the tank. 'It does nothing but absorb nitrogen and some oxygen?' he asked.

'Not so far as I've discovered,' she replied. 'But the sea normally absorbs nitrogen very, very slowly. Plankton and so on. Any artificial fertiliser manufacturing plant takes out in a week as much as the sea absorbs in a year. It hasn't mattered. There's plenty. But this bacteria could easily absorb all the nitrogen in the world's atmosphere. That's what's happening now. It's bringing down air pressure. In the end there'll be no nitrogen and therefore no plants.

When the pressure really drops off the scale there won't be any way for us to absorb oxygen, and then there'll be no more animals.'

'Unless - ' Fleming began.

'There's no unless.'

Fleming glanced at Abu Zeki, standing quiet and expectant in the background. 'Madeleine,' he said, 'thanks to Abu there's a chance of us getting a letter to London.'

She showed little interest. 'To say what?' she demanded.

'What it is.'

'There's no point.' She shrugged. 'But all right, if you wish. It will be a gesture, though it's too late.' She bent once more over the tank, staring down into the fluid. 'The girl was right,' she muttered. 'The computer made life. This time it's made death. So far as we're concerned that's Finis - doom in that water.'

'We'll write, all the same,' Fleming insisted. 'Lemka's cousin is ready to take the risk. Keep it short but put in every fact you know.' His voice was decisive. It stirred Dawnay a little out of her despair.

'All right, John,' she agreed.

Abu smiled, 'I'll wait till the note is ready, Professor,' he told Dawnay. 'I'll go into town for a meal. It's my normal practice. My cousin goes to the same cafe.'

Fleming moved to the door. 'Good luck, both of you,' he said with forced cheerfulness. 'Maybe we can all meet back here later this evening?'

He strode out into the hot wind, making for his own quarters.

He was glad to be by himself. It was difficult for him to play the role of optimist. And he wanted time to think.

He always thought best by himself, with a bottle of Scotch by his side.

He sent an orderly to the comissariat for a new bottle.

The boy returned in five minutes. Intel did not stint the creature comforts, the mental and spiritual dope, for its prisoners.

He skipped dinner and so he was a little drunk when he returned to the laboratory. The wind was as wild as ever, and it was already dark. There had not even been the usual brief twilight. Abu was already there with Dawnay. 'I saw my cousin,' he told Fleming. 'He took the note. I don't know, of course, how he got on at the airport, but I heard the transport take off on schedule. Just on an hour back.'

Fleming thanked him. 'It may not get through; it may be ignored at the other end, and even if it isn't we don't know what they can do if they study it and accept the truth of it.

It would take a lot of swallowing.' He flexed his arms. 'So we're still really on our own. Which means we need the girl.

Go across to sick quarters, Abu, and tell the nurse to bring her over.'

'Now?' Abu asked doubtfully.

'Now,' Fleming repeated. 'Kaufman has her dragged out whenever they want a computing job done. The nurse has to obey, poor lass.'

'What do you propose to do with her?' Dawnay asked disapprovingly.

'Use her as an ally.'

'She won't play. Anyway, she's too weak.'

'She'll have to try, won't she? She's the only thing we've got. If the computer at Thorness made a bacterium there must be an anti-bacterium. I'm not expert in your line, Madeleine, but surely that's a basic fact of biology?'

'Do you happen to know of this bug which will conveniently act in the opposite direction ?' she asked.

'The computer must.' He waved away her sarcasm. 'I realise it's not the same computer, but it managed to reconstruct the formula for the original one, or at least we and Andre made it work. We can do it again, for an antidote.'

Before Dawnay could reply Abu returned. He held the door open while the nurse brought Andre inside in her wheelchair. Fleming was accustomed to see the girl a little weaker, a little more wraithlike, every time he saw her. But he had not got used to the way she now glared at him, her eyes smouldering with resentment.

'All right, nurse,' he said without looking at Andre, 'leave her. We'll call you when it's time to take her back.'

The girl stood her ground. 'She should not be here, sir; I had just got her to sleep.'

Abu interposed. 'Please be sure it's all right.'

The nurse patted the rug around Andre's legs and reluctantly left. When the door had closed Andre asked what they wanted her for; she did little more than whisper, even that was jerky and hard to understand.

'We need another formula from the computer,' Fleming explained. 'Another bacterium or perhaps a virus. It's got to kill the first one and then work the other way round. It would have to release nitrogen held in the water.'

'And it would have to breed faster than the first one,'

Dawnay added. 'It would be another tricky piece of biosynthesis, another life-creating process. For that I need a formula.'

Andre had listened with almost horrifying intensity, looking from one to the other, hanging on every word.

'But why?' she protested.

Fleming lost his temper. 'For God's sake!' he shouted.

Dawnay uttered a word of warning and with difficulty he calmed down. Then, crouching beside Andre, he slowly and patiently explained how the existing bacteria were changing the world's weather and making it impossible to breathe, the preliminary to complete destruction of all life. 'So we need just one small bug to start breeding on an even greater scale to counteract it,' he finished.

Once more she shook her head. 'It is not possible,' she whispered.

'Look,' he said urgently, 'if you can come up with one sort you can come up with another - and save us all.'

Her big eyes looked back into his. Imperceptibly they softened, the hostility lessening. 'Save you?' she managed to say aloud. 'What about me?' She tried to move her hands over her breasts and touch her face. The effort was too much and she lay back.

'If you had the strength - you'd try.' It was Dawnay who was begging her now.

'I don't know.' She shook her head weakly. 'It would take too long.'

Fleming looked over Andre's head at Dawnay. 'Would it?'

he muttered.

Involuntarily Dawnay glanced at the girl. 'I don't know,'

she said. 'She's... ' She got a grip on herself. 'If you mean would I take too long with the actual lab work, that's another matter. There are still twenty-four hours in however many days we've got left, and I don't like sleeping much.'

Both of them looked at Andre again. They were two people willing her to obey, to do the seemingly impossible.

The ghost of a smile flickered over her mouth, and she nodded.

Fleming turned to Abu. 'Get the nurse to take her back,'

he said. 'She's the only ally we've got, poor kid. Tell the nurse to have her ready for duty at the computer at 9 tomorrow morning. Try to explain that we're not sadists. Tell her how necessary it is. Frighten her a bit if you like by hinting how she'll also die if she fails us.'

Abu's persuasion - or intimidation - worked. The nurse obediently wheeled Andre into the computer block shortly after nine the next morning. The girl said her patient was too weak to move, and she would have to use the wheelchair to work while interpreting the screen.

Only Fleming was present. Dawnay felt too little hope to be able to bear to watch, and Abu remained in the main office so that he could report any approach by Kaufman or the mysteriously silent Gamboul. One of the things which would have been disquieting, if Fleming had not been so preoccupied with a greater problem, was the way Intel seemed to be leaving them to their own devices.

Andre put her hands unsteadily on the sensory controls.

The computer had hummed to activity as soon as she entered the building. But the screen brightened very slowly. Its imagery was blurred, and even when Fleming pulled the curtains over the windows across the hall the pattern was almost indistinguishable. He watched Andre raise her head to the screen; he saw how she seemed to be gripping the controls as if they yielded some supply of strength. Her effort to concentrate was pathetic. Presently she relaxed her hold. Her body slumped and her head bowed to her breast.

She began to talk thickly, sobs shaking her shoulders.

Fleming bent over her. 'I can't follow them,' he heard her say. 'Take me away from it.' And then she added, as if to herself, 'I don't want to die.'

The nurse came forward, pushing Fleming away. 'She has done enough; too much, you must not ask... ' Abruptly she grasped the chair and wheeled Andre away from the screen.

Fleming refused to move out of the way. 'Andre,' he said quietly, 'none of us wants to die, but we all will, unless some miracle starts sucking the air back out of the sea.'

She raised her head with an effort. 'You will die together.

I'll die alone.' He put out his hand to comfort her, touching hers. She moved her arm away. 'Don't touch me,' she whispered.

'I must seem horrible to you.'

'No!' he said urgently. 'You have always seemed beautiful to me. Ever since.., ever since we ran away from Thorness.

But try to think, please! Only you can help us now. I don't even know what this is doing. Is the power still with Gamboul?'

He indicated the mass of the computer ranged all around him and she nodded her head. 'Then why does she never come here?' he demanded.

Andre remained quiet, gathering her strength. 'There is no need. She has seen the message. The computer has set her on a path. She will not turn back. Nor will she come here.

She needs no more. I could not show her anything. I can hardly see it any more.' Her eyes looked askance towards the blank screen. 'I will come back when I have rested.'

Without asking permission, the nurse started to push the chair away. Fleming did not stop her this time. He watched them disappear through the exit doors and for a full minute he remained where he was, in the heavy silence of the deserted building.

Suddenly he jumped. The output printer was working. It clicked rapidly, then stopped. Once more it started. This time the keys moved slowly but they kept on. He went to the section and took hold of the short length of paper already typed.

'Pretty ropey,' he decided as he looked through it, 'but some sort of biological data, all right.'

He went to tell Dawnay. It was a triviality in itself - this preliminary analysis. But in its inference it was tremendous.

It showed that after all Andre would help, and maybe Dawnay could still achieve a miracle - if they had time.

As he stepped out of doors the fury of the wind swept over him, making him stagger. He began panting, and there was no help in the gulps of air he took. With head down and body leaning into a dry, suffocating gale, he plodded through the swirling sand to the laboratory doors. His zest and optimism had gone. Time was something they couldn't buy.

Three thousand miles away dawn was breaking over London - a London stricken with disaster. A few tin-hatted policemen stood in the middle of the wider streets well away from the buildings. The jangle of an ambulance bell occasionally penetrated the howling of the wind. Lights burned weakly on the first floor of the Ministry of Science building from the few windows which had not been blown out and boarded.

The grey light of early morning accentuated the weariness of the four men sitting around the littered table. For several hours they had not contributed a constructive idea. Discussion had really become argument, the futile criticism of over-exhausted men.

Neilson, normally reticent and co-operative, had given way to exasperation when Osborne and the Prime Minister's secretary launched into an interminable argument about departmental responsibility and finance for the expanded activity agreed upon the previous evening.

'You have a wonderful talent here,' observed Neilson, 'for plodding through routine while the heavens are falling.'

'We're tired, Professor Neilson,' said the Minister sharply.

'We can only do what we feel is best.'

'I'm sorry,' Neilson said.

The Prime Minister's secretary reached for a cigarette, found the packet empty, and hurled it into a corner. 'There's no power over half the country, and the rest is under water, or snowed up or blown down. People are dying faster than the army can bury them. If you could only give us some sort of forecast how long it's going on.'

Neilson was on the point of answering when a secretary came in, tip-toeing to Osborne.

'Something urgent for you, sir,' he said. 'Brought by a despatch rider from London airport.'

Osborne took the buff-coloured envelope and slit it open. With deliberate slowness he unfolded the flimsy paper, and read it.

At last he looked up. 'It's from Azaran,' he said, 'from Madeleine Dawnay.' He handed it to the Minister.

'You two had better see this together,' the Minister said to Neilson and the Prime Minister's secretary. 'It will save time. the Cabinet must be informed right away, of course.' He waited impatiently while the two men read the note. 'Any proposals, Neilson?' he asked.

Neilson nodded. 'Can you get me to Azaran - today?' he demanded.