i opened a vacuum ~ packed can of cigarettes and lit one for eachof us." you remember what michael beadley said about the tightropewed all been walking on for years?"" yes, but... "" well, i think that what happened was that we came off it andthat a few of us. just managed to survive the crash. "i drew on my cigarette, looking out at the sea and at the infiniteblue sky above it." up there, " i went on, " up there, there were ~ and maybe therestill are ~ unknown numbers of satellite weapons circling roundand round the earth. just a lot of dormant menaces, touringaround, waiting for someone, or something, to them offwhat was in them? you dont know, i dont know. top ~ secretstuff. all weve heard is guesses ~ fissile materials, radioactivedusts, bacteria, viruses... now suppose that one type happened tohave been constructed especially to emit radiations that our eyeswould not stand ~ something that would burn out or at leastdamage the optic nerve."josella gripped my hand."oh no, bill no, they couldnt.. thatd be ~ diabolical.. . .oh, i cant believe ~ oh no, bill!""my sweet, all the things up there were diabolical. do you doubtthat if it could be done, someone would do it?then suppose there were a mistake, or perhaps an accident ~maybe such an accident as actually encountering a shower ofcomet debris, if you like ~ which starts some of these thingspopping." somebody begins talking about comets. it might not be politic todeny that ~ and there turned out to be so little time, anyway." well, naturally these things would have been intended tooperate close to the ground, where the effect would be spreadover a definitely calculable area but they start going off outthere in space, or maybe when they hit the atmosphere ~ eitherway, theyre operating so far up that people all round the worldcan receive direct radiations from them. . . . ." just what did happen is anyones guess now. but one thing imquite certain of ~ that somehow or other we brought this lot downon ourselves. and there was that plague, too: it wasnt typhoid,you know. . . ." i find that its just the wrong side of coincidence for me tobelieve that our of all the thousands of years in which adestructive comet could arrive, it happens to do so just a fewyears after we have succeeded in establishing satelliteweapons ~ dont you? no, i think that we kept on that tightropequite a while, considering the things that might havehappened ~ but sooner or later the foot had to slip. "" well, when you put it that way . . . ." murmured josella. she brokeoff and was lost in silence for quite a while. then she said:" i suppose in a way that should be more horrible than the ideaof nature striking blindly at us. and yet i dont think it is. makesme feel less hopeless about things because it makes them at leastcomprehensible. if it was like that, then it is at least a thing thatcan be prevented from happening again ~ just one more of themistakes our very great grandchildren are going to have toavoid. and oh dear, there were so many, many mistakes ! but wecan warn them. "" hm ~ well, " i said. "anyway, once theyve beaten the triffids, andpulled themselves out of this mess, theyll have plenty of scopefor making brand ~ new mistakes of their very own. "

" poor little things, " she said, as if she were gazing downincreasingly great rows of grandchildren, "its not much thatwere offering them, is it?"we sat there a little longer, looking at the empty sea, and thendrove down to the town.after a search which produced most of the things on our wantslist, we went down to picnic on the shore in the sunshine ~ witha good stretch of shingle behind us over which no triffid couldapproach unheard." we must do more of this, while we can, " josella said. have, " iagreed.i said it with a feeling that i would like us to go together and saya last farewell to places and things we had known, while it wasstill possible. every year now the prospect of imprisonment