Page 16 (2/2)

"So curses too - at us It was Ray We&039;d forgot hiot him in the back on a canvas I stayed beside him Bill could turn the car now, and we headed back

"The little slides were bigger but we got around them We wanted to meet cars now, but there still weren&039;t any Bill stopped at a roadside phone, but it was dead, and the light in the booth died while he was trying to get a dial tone The radio was nothing but static now The only word that ever see at Bill to go slower and faster

"We passed the turnoff here, but after a quarter of a mile the road was blocked by another slide - not a soul in sight, not a light - except that godawful thing up there We came back here There wasn&039;t anywhere else"

She breathed deeply Doc asked: "What about the little roads back across the Santa Monica mountains? Specifically, what about Monica Mountainway?"

"Little roads?" Mrs Hixon looked up at hioddamn fool idiot, those hter went out of control Doc clapped his hand over her led wildly for a moment, then let her head slu her away down the platforo to take her place as a pillow for Ann, atchful as a mouse

Paul said to Doc: "I wonder why there weren&039;t any other cars trapped in that stretch of the highway? Seeot out past the first, smaller slides," Doc opined "The sa to come into that stretch And still, despite all she says, I think some may have escaped over Monica Mountainway"

Hunter called up: "Co the cot We&039;ve got to get Ray out of the truck, so so and breathless and a little teeter-gaited from their wild run past the h started east along 125th Street with an initial feeling of reassurance at having entered the hallway to their friendly, familiar Afro-Latin hoo, were es, empty pop bottles, and half-pint flasks testified to the vanished h here and there were eledy, tith theirblue froainst the sun when they scanned east, but as far as they could tell the sa the crosstown street that led through the heart of Harlem

The only sounds, at first, besides their own footsteps and the s of unseen radios, sounding horribly important, by their tone; but the words were uncatchable by reason of static and distance - and drowned out by the excited, equally unintelligible calling to each other of distant sirens and horns

"Where&039;s everybody?" High whispered

"Atomic attack," Pepe affirmed "Russia&039;s sent the super-doops Everybody crouchin&039; down below in the basehost of the ail returning to his voice: "Fireball risin&039; from the river!"

"No!" Arab contradicted, softly "While we at the river, Resurrection coht after all Everybody snatched - no time to turn off their cars or their radios We the only ones left"

They took hold of each other and tiptoed, to kill the sound of their footsteps as they went fearfully on

Sally Harris and Jake Lesher tiptoed out of the tiny aluminum-lined box that had lifted them the last three stories Before their eyes was dirand piano Under their feet was thick carpet, sponge-based

Sally yoohooed softly With a whispered sigh the door behind theht it and blocked it with a tiny table holding a silver tray

"What are you trying to do?" Jake asked

"I don&039;t know," she said "We&039;ll hear the buzzer if anybody else wants in Come on"

"Wait a minute," Jake said "You&039;re sure Hasseltine&039;s not hoed "I&039;ll have a look while you raid the icebox Just leave the sterling alone Cout?"

Like a mouse with a friend, she led him to the kitchen

Dai Davies listened icked a over the wireless to the tiny Severn-shore pub near Portishead, where he&039;d gone after a two-hour snooze to do his lateFrom time to time he embroidered the reports fancifully for the edification and jollification of his unappreciative fellow-topers: "Purple and sickly areat star-written Arape juice and denatured beer!" and, "It&039;s a saintly Soviet super-balloon, boys, set to pop over lawless Chicago and strew the Yankee heartland with begemmed copies of Marx&039;s holy Manifesto!"

The reports were co over an Atlantic cable, the derisive announcer said - extraordinary severe netic storreatly wished that Dick Hillary were still with him - this lovely nonsense was just the thing to ht and space fiction squirm; besides, he&039;d be a better audience for a Welsh poet&039;s rare wit than these Sohty drinks later, the wireless reports began to include mention of a cracked and capturedstill more derisive, yet noith a nervous note in his voice, aled abruptly, and there was much more drunken emotion than wit in his cry: "Steal our moon-bach, would they, those das to Wales? And they hurt her, we&039;ll swiate, e not, my hearties?"

ThisWelshman," "Bolshy, I&039;d think," "No more for you, you&039;re drunk" - this last frorabbing up ait like a knuckleduster "And you follow ht you myself, all up and down the Mendip Hills!"

The diaure in dungarees and wide-bri outside

"Is there aught on the wireless or the telly of the tide?" this apparition called to the host "Two hours yet till low, and the Channel&039;s ebbing as I&039;ve never seen it, even at the equinoctial springs with an east gale blowing Coress a man&039;ll be able to walk on all the Welsh Grounds by noon and an hour after that the Channel&039;ll be near dry!"

"Good!" Dai cried loudly, letting the host take away thehunch-shouldered on the bar as the others made a tentative move toward the door "Then I&039;ll walk the five ht across the Severn sands and be shut of you lily-livered Soood riddance," so jokester pointed out: "If that&039;s your ai the Grounds and Usk Patch for stepping stones if you like - and ht across here, man, it&039;s Monmouth, not Wales"

"Monmouth&039;s still Welsh tohis chin onto the bar "Oh, go gawk at this watery prodigy, all of you It&039;sbroken and chained thethe ocean, too"

General Spike Stevens snapped: "Get Christ to swirouped in front of the righthand screen, ignoring the other, which for le of visual static

The picture from the satellite above Christet face with Luna swinging behind her, but both planet andas electronic distortion invaded the screen

"I&039;ve been trying, General, but I can&039;t raise theone Ultrashort&039;s going - every kind of couide And even those - "

"But we&039;re a headquarters!"

"I&039;m sorry, General, but - "

"Get me HQ One!"

"General, they don&039;t - "

There was a strong vibration frohts flickered, went out, caain The buried roohts went out - all except the pale glow of the Christ astronomic picture on the screen was replaced by the silhouette of a large feline head with pricked ears and grinning jaws It was as if, out on that uner had peered into the telescope For a moment the picture held Then it swam, and the screen blacked out

"My Christ, as that?" the General yelled in the dark

"You saw it, too?" Colonel Mabel Wallingford deh, half hysterical, half exultant, rimmed her question

"Shut up, you stupid bitch!" the General shrilled "Jier h the blackness "Inkblot effect It couldn&039;t have been - "

"Quiet!" Colonel Willard Griswold yelled at all three of the and splashing

Aboard the "Prince Charles" they were especially conscious of the choking radioways

Both the insurgents now controlling the luxury liner, and also the loyal crew et off roup to their revolutionary leaders, the other to the British Navy And Wolf Loner, three thousand ood it was to be without newspapers and radio - he rather wished he and his dory weren&039;t reaching Boston quite so soon

The Wanderer&039;sout through space as swiftly as its gravitational field, al instrunetic influence, there were stranger straight-line influences strea the side of the earth facing it They ripped the van Allen belts and dumped a cloudburst of protons and electrons on Earth

These powerful straight-line influences were greatly intensified when Luna went into orbit around the Wanderer and began to break up They produced ionization and other, subtler effects, the chief perceptible result of which iftly to unfit Earth&039;s stratosphere and also her lower atnetic coht of the Wanderer traveled west around the world, or, rather, as the world spun eastward into it, this poisoning of the radio sky spread to the whole globe, greatly contributing to the fog of catastrophe that was cutting off country from country, city from city, and, ultimately, mind from mind