‘No,’ said the Group Captain. ‘It’s an idea. Sounds like the same fellow who got the perimeter taped.’
‘It is.’ Colonel Latcher nodded.
‘Quite a line of his own in ornithological warfare,’ commented the Group Captain. ‘I think perhaps we can improve on the canary, but we’re grateful for the idea. A bit too late for it today. I’ll lay it on for early tomorrow, with pictures from the lowest safe altitude while there’s a good cross-light.’
The Intelligence Major emerged from silence.
‘Bombs, I think,’ he said reflectively. ‘Fragmentation, perhaps.’
‘Bombs?’ asked the Group Captain, with raised brows.
‘Wouldn’t do any harm to have some handy. Never know what these Ivans are up to. Might be a good idea to have a wham at it, anyway. Stop it getting away. Knock it out so that we can have a proper look at it.’
‘Bit drastic at this stage,’ suggested the Chief Constable. ‘I mean, wouldn’t it be better to take it intact, if possible.’
‘Probably,’ agreed the Major, ‘but meanwhile we are just allowing it to go on doing whatever it came to do, while it holds us off with this whatever-it-is.’
‘I don’t see what it could have come to do in Midwich,’ another officer put in, ‘therefore I imagine that it force-landed, and is using this screen to prevent interference while it makes repairs.’
‘There’s The Grange …’ someone said tentatively.
‘In either case, the sooner we get authority to disable it further, the better,’ said the Major. ‘It had no business over our territory, anyway. Real point is, of course, that it mustn’t get away. Much too interesting. Apart from the thing itself, that screen effect could be very useful indeed. I shall recommend taking any action necessary to secure it; intact if possible; but damaged if necessary.’
There was considerable discussion, but it came to little since almost everyone present seemed to hold no more than a watching and reporting brief. The only decisions I can recall were that parachute flares would be dropped every hour for observation purposes, and that the helicopter would attempt to get more informative photographs in the morning; beyond that nothing definite had been achieved when the conference broke up.
I did not see why I had been taken along there at all – or, for the matter of that, why Bernard had been there, for he had made not a single contribution to the conference. As we drove back I asked:
‘Is it out of order for me to inquire where you come into this?’
‘Not altogether. I have a professional interest.’
‘The Grange?’ I suggested.
‘Yes. The Grange comes within my scope, and naturally anything untoward in its neighbourhood interests us. This, one might call very untoward, don’t you think?’
‘Us’ I had already gathered from his self-introduction before the conference, could be either Military Intelligence in general, or his particular department of it.
‘I thought,’ I said, ‘that the Special Branch looked after that kind of thing.’
‘There are various angles,’ he said, vaguely, and changed the subject.
We managed to get him a room at The Eagle, and the three of us dined together. I had hoped that after dinner he might make good his promise to ‘explain later’, but though we talked of a number of things, including Midwich, he was clearly avoiding any more mention of his professional interest in it. But for all that it was a good evening that left me wondering how one can be so careless as to let some people drift out of one’s life.
Twice in the course of the evening I rang up the Trayne police to inquire whether there had been any change in the Midwich situation, and both times they reported that it was quite unaltered. After the second, we decided it was no good waiting up, and after a final round we retired.
‘A nice man,’ said Janet, as our door closed. ‘I was afraid it might be old-warriors-together which is so boring for wives, but he didn’t let it be a bit like that. Why did he take you along this afternoon?’
‘That’s what’s puzzling me,’ I confessed. ‘He seemed to have second thoughts and become more reserved altogether once we actually got close to it.’
‘It really is very queer,’ Janet said, as if the whole thing had just struck her afresh. ‘Didn’t he have anything at all to say about what it is?’
‘Neither he, nor any of the rest of them,’ I assured her. ‘About the one thing they’ve learnt is what we could tell them – that you don’t know when it hits you, and there’s no sign afterwards that it did.’
‘And that at least is encouraging. Let’s hope that no one in the village comes to any more harm than we did,’ she said.
*
While we were still sleeping, on the morning of the 28th, a met. officer gave it as his opinion that ground mist in Midwich would clear early, and a crew of two boarded a helicopter. A wire cage containing a pair of lively but perplexed ferrets was handed in after them. Presently the machine took off, and whimmered noisily upwards.
‘They reckon,’ remarked the pilot, ‘that six thousand will be dead safe, so we’ll try at seven thou. for luck. If that’s okay, we’ll bring her down slowly.’
The observer settled his gear, and occupied himself with teasing the ferrets until the pilot told him:
‘Right. You can lower away now, and we’ll make the trial crossing at seven.’
The cage went through the door. The observer let three hundred feet of line unreel. The machine came round, and the pilot informed ground that he was about to make a preliminary run over Midwich. The observer lay on the floor, observing the ferrets, through glasses.
They were doing fine at present, clambering with non-stop sinuousness all round and over one another. He took the glasses off them for a moment, and turned towards the village ahead, then:
‘Oy, Skipper,’ he said.
‘Uh?’
‘That thing we’re supposed to photograph, by the Abbey.’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, either it was a mirage, or it’s flipped off,’ said the observer.
CHAPTER 5
Midwich Reviviscit
AT almost the same moment that the observer made his discovery, the picket at the Stouch-Midwich road was carrying out its routine test. The sergeant in charge threw a lump of sugar across the white line that had been drawn across the road, and watched while the dog, on its long lead, dashed after it. The dog snapped up the sugar, and crunched it.
The sergeant regarded the dog carefully for a moment, and walked close to the line himself. He hesitated there, and then stepped across it. Nothing happened. With increasing confidence, he took a few more paces. Half a dozen rooks cawed as they passed over his head. He watched them flap steadily away over Midwich.
‘Hey, you there, Signals,’ he called. ‘Inform H. Q. Oppley. Affected area reduced, and believed clear. Will confirm after further tests.’
*
A few minutes earlier, in Kyle Manor, Gordon Zellaby had stirred with difficulty, and given out a sound like a half-groan. Presently he realized that he was lying on the floor; also, that the room which had been brightly lit and warm, perhaps a trifle over-warm, a moment ago, was now dark, and clammily cold.
He shivered. He did not think he had ever felt quite so cold. It went right through so that every fibre ached with it. There was a sound in the darkness of someone else stirring. Ferrelyn’s voice said, shakily:
‘What’s happened …? Daddy …? Angela …? Where are you?’
Zellaby moved an aching and reluctant jaw to say:
‘I’m here, nearly f-frozen. Angela, my dear …?’
‘Just here, Gordon,’ said her voice unsteadily, close behind him.
He put out a hand which encountered something, but his fingers were too numbed to tell him what it was.
There was a sound of movement across the room.
‘Gosh, I’m stiff! Oo-oo-ooh! Oh, dear!’ complained Ferrelyn’s voice. ‘Oo-ow-oo! I don’t believe these are my legs at all.’ She stopped moving for a moment. ‘What’s that rattling noise?’
‘My t-teeth, I th-think,’ said Zellaby, with an effort.
There was more movement, followed by a stumbling sound. Then a clatter of curtain-rings, and the room was revealed in a grey light.
Zellaby’s eyes went to the grate. He stared at it in disbelief. A moment ago he had put a new log on the fire, now there was nothing there but a few ashes. Angela, sitting up on the carpet a yard away from him, and Ferrelyn by the window, were both staring at the grate, too.
‘What on earth – ?’ began Ferrelyn.
‘The ch-champagne?’ suggested Zellaby.
‘Oh, really, Daddy …!’
Against the protest of every joint Zellaby tried to get up. He found it too painful, and decided to stay where he was for a bit. Ferrelyn crossed unsteadily to the fireplace. She reached a hand towards it, and stood there, shivering.