The officer to whom he was taken had heard him out and then regarded him seriously.
'I like your spirit,' he said, 'but just listen to me a minute. You seem to know something of the situation, but you're tackling it the wrong way. It's no good your going over there.' He waved his hand to the west. 'You couldn't do a damned thing if you got through, except make yourself another victim.
'Your girl doesn't want you to die. You know, if you give it a moment's thought, that she'd be far prouder of you for helping to fight this stuff and beat it; for helping to blot the damned growths out and make thousands of people safe.'
'But she's―!'
'And don't you realise that from the body of every man who dies out there, more of the yellow balls grow? If you go out there, you'll not only be helpless, but you'll be giving your body to feed them. No, my lad, your job is to help us to fight against the menace. This is a state of emergency, and we need all the help we can get. What about it?'
Ralph at length consented, though with not too good a grace. He knew the officer was right. It was his job to fight, not to throw away his life, but ... He did not quite trust himself. Sometime the urge to find Dorothy might prove too strong for him....
His working partner's voice broke in on his thoughts. 'What d'yer say to a cigarette, mate?'
Ralph delivered a final blow to the stake they were fixing, and agreed. To right and left of them across the moorland hills stretched the long line of posts. Here and there, parties of men who had completed their sections were already beginning to weave an impenetrable net of barbed wire around the stakes. Behind, on the roadway, was a never-ending line of trucks loaded with more wire and yet more stakes, while closer, between themselves and the road, a sweating army of men laboured to dig a broad trench.
Ralph was amazed at the organisation which in two or three days had enabled the authorities to be well on the way to barricading off a whole corner of the country. At the same time he was puzzled; the purpose of the wire was obvious, but he failed to understand the reason for the broad, shallow trench. Nor was his partner, Bill 'Awkins, as he called himself, able to explain its use. But he was ready to concede that the authorities knew what they were about, and were not wasting any time.
'Yus,' he remarked, 'they're quick on the job. they are. Why, a few nights ago there was a gale warning—p'raps you 'eard it?'
Ralph nodded.
'Well, the minute they knew that, they changed their plans like a flash. This 'ere line was to 'ave been miles farther forward; they'd even begun to get the supplies up there when the order for retreat came. You see, the wind in these parts is pretty near always from the west; that's what's got 'em scared —the idea of this stuff being swept right across the country. If it's true what they say about some feller a-startin' it on purpose, then 'e picked a likely place.
' 'Owever, the wind didn't come to much, after all. Most of them yeller balls just rolled a bit, and then got stuck in the valleys and 'ollows and suchlike—blamed lucky it was, too.'
'Then all this,' said Ralph, indicating the defences, 'is in case a real storm comes along?'
'That'll be about the idea,' Bill agreed.
They smoked for a while in silence. From time to time a great plane would roar across the moor, carrying food supplies to be dropped to the isolated; and, once, a large caterpillar tractor came swaying and plunging past them, bound for the west. Bill grinned as he caught sight of the men aboard it and the instruments they held.
'What are they?' asked Ralph. 'Looks like a squad of divers going on duty.'
'Asbestos suits and masks,' the other explained. 'And they're carrying flame-throwers. Those'll give the blinkin' things a bit of a toasting!'
Chapter Five
THE ATTACK ON THE WIND
Some six nights later, Ralph sat with a group in the stable which was their billet. One man was holding forth pessimistically.
'I suppose they're doing a bit of good with all this flame-throwing and whatnot, but it ain't getting 'em far. It's the plant underneath that they want to get at, not just the yellow balls. They're only the fruit—you don't kill an apple-tree by knocking off the apples. Fungi have a sort of web of stuff spreading all through the ground around them; that's the life of the things, and that's what they―'
There came a thunderous knocking on the door and a stentorian call to turn out.
'Wind's rising,' said the sergeant. 'You all know your jobs. Get to 'em, and look slippy!'
The wind swept in from the Atlantic at gale force. The first few puffs stirred the yellow balls and rolled them a little at the ends of their skimpy stalks. Later followed a gust which twisted them so that the stalks snapped and they were free to roll where the wind urged. As the pressure grew to a steady blast, it swept up a mass of the light balls and carried them bounding across the countryside, an army of vegetable invaders launching their attack to capture the land and destroy human beings.
The wind of a week before had moved only the balls in the most exposed positions, but this time, none but the youngest and least developed had the strength in their stalks to resist the air which tore at them. Every now and then a splashing flurry of white would spring from the hurtling, bouncing horde as the tough, yellow skin of one was ripped by some sharp spike or the corner of a roof. Then the great spores themselves were caught up by the wind and carried on faster as an advance guard of the yellow army.
The gale seemed to display a diabolical zest for this new game. It increased its force to drive the balls yet more furiously. Hedges, ditches and trees failed to check the headlong charge. Even rivers proved no obstacle; with the wind behind, the balls sailed across in their thousands, bobbing and jerking on the rough surface.
They were thrust relentlessly down the narrow streets of the little towns, jostling and jamming against the corners of the buildings until the houses were hidden in a cloud of swirling spores, and the surviving balls tore loose to follow bowling in the wake of their fellows.
This time, the wind did not desert them. Many lodged in sheltered hollows, but they served merely to fill them up and make a path over which the rest could travel. The wave of invaders climbed the slopes and swept up and out on to the moor, where, unobstructed, they gathered speed to charge yet more swiftly upon the defenders.
There was a line of fire across the country. Ralph had soon learned the purpose of the broad trench. Filled now with blazing oil and wood, it formed a rampart of flame.
'Here they come,' cried the look-out, clinging to a swaying perch high above.
Soon all could see the few whirling balls which seemed to lead the way, and the turgid mass of yellow pressing close behind the outrunners.
They held their breaths....
The first balls hurled themselves to destruction upon a cheval-de-frise, a hedge of bristling spikes which slit and tore their skins and set free the spores to go scudding on into the flames. But they came too thick and fast. In many places they piled up solid against the sharp fence, forming ramps for those behind to come racing over the top and fall among the meshes of barbed wire.
Every now and then a ball seemed to leap as though it possessed motive power within itself. Missing the wire, it would bowl across no-man's-land to a final explosion in the flaming ditch, its burning spores shooting aloft like the discharge of a monstrous firework.
'My God!' muttered the man next to Ralph. 'If this wind doesn't drop soon, we'll be done. Look at that!'
'That' was one of several balls which, miraculously escaping all traps prepared for it, had leaped past them into the darkness behind.