He thought for some moments after I finished, and then seemed to come to a decision. He turned to Janet.
‘Mrs Gayford, I wonder if you would excuse me if I were to take your husband along with me? It’s this Midwich business that has brought me here. I think he might be able to help us, if he’s willing.’
‘To find out what’s happened, you mean?’ Janet asked.
‘Well – let’s say in connexion with it. What do you think?’ he added to me.
‘If I can, of course. Though I don’t see … Who is us?’ I inquired.
‘I’ll explain as we go,’ he told me. ‘I really ought to have been there an hour ago. I’d not drag him off like this, if it weren’t important, Mrs Gayford. You’ll be all right on your own here?’
Janet assured him that The Eagle was a safe place, and we rose.
‘Just one thing,’ he added before we left, ‘don’t let any of those fellows in the bar pester you. Get them slung out if they try. They’re all a bit peevish since they’ve learnt that their editors won’t be touching this Midwich business. Not a word to any of ‘em. Tell you more about it later.’
‘Very well. Agog, but silent. That’s me,’ Janet agreed as we left.
*
HQ had been established a little back from the affected area, on the Oppley road. At the police-block Bernard produced a pass which earned him a salute from the constable on duty, and we passed through without further trouble. A very young three-pipper sitting forlornly in a tent brightened up at our arrival, and decided that as Colonel Latcher was out inspecting the lines it was his duty to put us in the picture.
The caged-birds had now, it seemed, finished their job, and been returned to their doting and reluctantly public-spirited owners.
‘We’ll probably have protests from the RSPCA, as well as claims for damages when they contract croup or something,’ said the Captain, ‘but here’s the result.’ And he produced a large-scale map showing a perfect circle almost two miles in diameter, with Midwich Church lying somewhat south and a little east of its centre.
‘That’s it,’ he explained, ‘and as far as we can tell it is a circle, not just a belt. We’ve got an o.p. on Oppley church tower, and no movement in the area has been observed – and there are a couple of chaps lying in the road outside the pub who haven’t moved, either. As to what it is, we’re not much further.
‘We’ve established that it is static, invisible, odourless, non-registering on radar, non-echoing on sound, immediate in effect on at least mammals, birds, reptiles, and insects; and apparently has no after-effects – at least, no direct effects, though naturally the people in the bus and the others who were in it for some time are feeling roughish from exposure. But that’s about as far as we go. Frankly, as to what it really is, we haven’t a clue yet.’
Bernard asked him a few questions which elicited little more, and then we made our way in search of Colonel Latcher. We found him after a while, in company with an older man who turned out to be the Chief Constable of Winshire. Both of them, with some lesser lights in attendance, were standing on a slight rise regarding the terrain. Their grouping suggested an eighteenth-century engraving of generals watching a battle that was not going too well, only there was no visible battle. Bernard introduced himself and me. The Colonel regarded him intently.
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Ah yes. You’re the chap on the phone who told me this had to be kept quiet.’
Before Bernard could reply, the Chief Constable came in:
‘Kept quiet! Kept quiet, indeed. A two-mile circle of country completely blanketed by this thing, and you’d like it kept quiet.’
‘That was the instruction,’ said Bernard. ‘The Security -‘
‘But how the devil do they think – ?’
Colonel Latcher cut in, heading him off.
‘We’ve done our best to put it around as a surprise tactical exercise. Bit thin, but it makes something to say. Had to say something. Trouble is, for all we know it may be some little trick of our own gone wrong. So much damned secrecy nowadays that nobody knows anything. Don’t know what the other chap has; don’t even know what you may have to use yourself. All these scientist fellers in back rooms ruining the profession. Can’t keep up with what you don’t know. Soldiering’ll soon be nothing but wizards and wires.’
‘The news agencies are on to it already,’ grumbled the Chief Constable. ‘We’ve headed some of ‘em off. But you know what they are. They’ll be sneaking round some way, pushing their noses into it, and having to be pulled out. And how are we going to keep them quiet?’
‘That, at least, needn’t worry you much,’ Bernard told him. ‘There’s been a Home Office advice on this already. Very sore they are. But I think it will hold. It really depends on whether it turns out to have enough sensation in it to make trouble worth while.’
‘H’m,’ said the Colonel, looking out across the somnolent scene again. ‘And I suppose that depends on whether, from a newspaper view, the sleeping beauty would be a sensation, or a bore.’
*
Quite an assortment of people kept on turning up in the course of the next hour or two, all apparently representing the interests of various departments, civil and military. A larger tent was erected beside the Oppley road, and in it a conference was called for 16.30. Colonel Latcher led off with a review of the situation. It did not take long. Just as he was concluding it a Group Captain arrived. He marched in with a malevolent air, and slapped a large photograph down on to the table in front of the Colonel.
‘There you are, gentlemen,’ he said grimly. ‘That cost two good men in one good aircraft, and we were lucky not to lose another. I hope it was worth it.’
We crowded round to study the photograph, and compare it with the map.
‘What’s that?’ asked a Major of Intelligence, pointing.
The object he indicated showed as a pale oval outline, with a shape, judging by the shadows, not unlike the inverted bowl of a spoon. The Chief Constable bent down, peering more closely.
‘I can’t imagine,’ he admitted. ‘Looks as if it might be some unusual kind of building – only it can’t be. I was round by the Abbey ruins myself less than a week ago, and there was no sign of anything there then; besides, that’s British Heritage Association property. They don’t build, they just prop things up.’
One of the others looked from the photograph to the map, and back again.
‘Whatever it is, it’s in just about the mathematical centre of the trouble,’ he pointed out. ‘If it wasn’t there a few days ago, it must be something that’s landed there.’
‘Unless it could be a rick, with a very bleached cover,’ someone suggested.
The Chief Constable snorted. ‘Look at the scale, man – and the shape. It’d have to be the size of a dozen ricks, at least.’
‘Then what the devil is it?’ inquired the Major.
One after another we studied it through the magnifier.
‘You couldn’t get a lower altitude picture?’ suggested the Major.
‘Trying that was how we lost the aircraft,’ the Group Captain told him curtly.
‘How far up does the whatsit – this affected area – extend?’ someone asked.
The Group Captain shrugged. ‘You could find that out by flying into it,’ he said. ‘This,’ he added, tapping the photograph, ‘was taken at ten thousand. The crew noticed no effect there.’
Colonel Latcher cleared his throat.
‘Two of my officers suggest that the area may be hemispherical in form,’ he remarked.
‘So it may,’ agreed the Group Captain, ‘or it may be rhomboidal, or dodecahedral.’
‘I gather,’ said the Colonel mildly, ‘that they observed birds flying into it; getting a fix on them at the moment they became affected. They claim to have established that the edge of the zone does not extend vertically like a wall – that it definitely is not a cylinder, in fact. The sides contract slightly. From that they argue that it must be either domed, or conical. They say their evidence favours a hemisphere, but they have had to work on too small a segment of too large an arc to be certain.’
‘Well, that’s the first contribution we’ve had for some time,’ acknowledged the Group Captain. He pondered, ‘If they’re right about a hemisphere, that should give it a ceiling of about five thousand over the centre. I suppose they didn’t have any helpful ideas on how we establish that without losing another aircraft?’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Colonel Latcher said, diffidently, ‘one of them did. He suggested that perhaps a helicopter dangling a canary in a cage on a few hundred feet of line and slowly reducing height – Well, I know it sounds a bit -‘