The Night of the Triffids (8 page)

    Made of vulcanized heavy-duty cotton with neoprene collar and cuffs it fitted as closely as a second skin. From the hip dangled a length of hose that would be connected to the aircraft's air supply.

    'Any news on what's causing the blackout?' I asked.

    'There've been bulletins on the radio, suggesting it's just a thick layer of cloud-'

    'Heck of a thick layer.'

    'Tea?'

    'Thanks.'

    'Only, if you ask me, David, this thing's got the boffins foxed. Which machine are you taking up?'

    'The Panther.'

    'Lucky devil; the gods are smiling on you, old son.'

    'Let's hope so.' I finished pulling the heavy-duty zip across my chest.

    Just then the commander's PA poked her head around the door.

    'Are you decent?'

    'As he'll ever be,' Mitch quipped.

    'Change of plan,' she told me. 'The Old Man's ordered ground crew to pull out the Javelin.'

    'The Javelin? That's a two-seater. What made him change his mind?'

    'Don't ask me.' She flashed a cherry-red lipsticked smile. 'I only work here.'

    'Maybe they want me to hold your hand, David.' Mitch grinned. 'I can shoo away all those big nasty birds that keep attacking you.'

    'Maybe,' I agreed 'Perhaps you'd better suit up, too.'

    'Wow, they're going to make me a hero as well,' he exclaimed. 'Those girls are gonna flock around me, just you wait and see, mate.' As he began to loosen his tie he called across to the pretty PA who was just leaving. 'Hey, gorgeous. I've got an idea: why don't I pick you up around eight tonight?'

    'I've got a better idea.' She shot him a smile. 'Don't bother.'

    Mitch shrugged, then winked at me. 'Well, she didn't exactly say no, did she?'

    

    

    Mitch's efforts to wriggle into the pressure suit were wasted. When we presented ourselves at the Old Man's office it was to hear that I would be taking a passenger with me in the two-seater jet fighter.

    By then it had started to rain. The sound of raindrops drumming on the corrugated-iron roof was somehow ominous.

    Commander Reynolds, better known as the Old Man, was sixty-five if he was a day and so heavily jowled that he looked like an old bulldog just roused from a deep sleep.

    'Masen,' growled the Old Man. 'This is Mr Hinkman.'

    A bright-eyed young man standing by the desk bobbed his head and held out his hand. There was an eager air about him; he looked like a fresh-faced student who'd just been awarded his first assignment.

    'Mr Hinkman is a meteorologist,' continued the Old Man in his characteristic slow growl. 'That means weather's his forte. He'll be taking the navigation seat.'

    'Yessir,' I said, a little reluctantly. 'But can I ask if Mr Hinkman's had any experience of flying in a jet fighter?'

    'Not that-'

    Even though the eager young meteorologist had begun to speak the Old Man growled over the top of his reply. 'None, I dare say. Not that he needs it. He'll sit behind you in the cockpit, Masen. Make notes, photograph what needs photographing, that kind of thing.'

    'Yessir.'

    'Any questions?'

    'No, sir… well, that is…'

    'Yes, Masen?'

    'Do we have any idea yet what's causing the darkness, sir?'

    The rain drummed harder against the roof as the Old Man thoughtfully scratched one of his pendulous jowls. 'Personally I've never seen anything like it. Too dark for normal cloud; the closest I've come to this kind of blackout in daytime was in Suez. Damned sandstorm blew up so hard you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. Mr Hinkman?'

    Mr Hinkman realized he was being invited to contribute to the discussion. Eagerly, eyes shining, he launched in. 'Commander Reynolds may have hit the nail on the head. The clouds we are familiar with in this part of the world are composed of water or
ice
particles that don't entirely obscure the light. However, sandstorms are composed of, ah, naturally enough,
sand
particles. These make a far better barrier against light, and quite literally block out the sun.'

    The Old Man looked surprised. 'Sandstorms? On the Isle of Wight? Surely you're not serious!'

    'Well, not sandstorms as such, Commander. But for daylight to be reduced by… well, ah, by one hundred per cent, then we're looking at a pretty unusual phenomenon.'

    'And your job, Messrs Masen and Hinkman, is to solve this particular mystery.'

    Hinkman had begun speaking again about airborne particles but the Old Man was peering gravely at his watch. 'Sixteen hundred hours. And if I'm not mistaken I can hear the engines of your aircraft. Godspeed, gentlemen.'

    A man of few words, he shook Hinkman's hand, then mine. 'God-awful weather, Masen. I'm sorry to send you up in muck like this, but needs must and all that.'

    Rain drummed against the roof and through the window I fancied I glimpsed a blue-white flicker of lightning.

    Although those dark skies were far from friendly, I had an appointment with them that would not wait.

    

    

    At a little after four-thirty we were ensconced in the cockpit as the jet plane sat on the runway waiting for take-off clearance from the control tower.

    As I sat in the pilot's seat, Hinkman, sitting behind me, hardly paused for breath. Although he was similarly clad in helmet and flyer's pressure suit, which must have been strange to him, his chatter was fluent and rapid.

    'There are ten principal cloud forms,' he said. 'From the nimbostratus that forms at a relatively low level up through to the high clouds of cirrus and cirrostratus and so forth that can exist at an altitude of 16,000 feet.'

    I continued my pre-flight checks as he talked. Meanwhile the rain rattled fiercely against the perspex canopy of the jet. Already the odour of aviation fuel hung in the air. A distillation of triffid oil, it smelled sweet, like pears baking in a pie.

    'I fully expect the obscuring layer of cloud will begin at low level,' Hinkman was saying. 'But as it is clearly the variety of cloud known as cumulonimbus that is producing this thunderstorm, it may well extend upwards to a height in excess of 20,000 feet.'

    As if the elements wished to concur with the meteorologist's observation a fork of lightning tore across the sky. A moment later a peal of thunder buffeted the aircraft as it stood on the runway.

    'Mr Masen?'

    'Yes?'

    'Our plan is elegant in its simplicity. You're to fly the plane up through the cloud until we reach unbroken sunlight so that we can determine the extent of the blackout layer.'

    'I understand.'

    'This aircraft can reach an altitude of twenty thousand feet?'

    'It has a ceiling of about
fifty
thousand feet. Will that be high enough for you, Mr Hinkman?'

    'Yes… yes, it will be.'

    I now detected a certain falling-off in Hinkman's enthusiasm.

    Another burst of lightning flooded the landscape with electric blue light. Trees, momentarily in silhouette, looked like great shaggy beasts massing for attack. A potent image. Chilling, too.

    'Ah, Mr Masen…'

    'David, please.'

    'Oh, yes, quite, quite. Then please call me Seymour.'

    'Yes, Seymour?'

    'The thunderstorm, I can't help but noticing, seems rather severe.'

    'It's a real humdinger, isn't it, Seymour?'

    'Ah… yes.' I heard a pale imitation of a laugh in my earpiece. 'It is that, David. Uhm, I just wondered…'

    'Yes?'

    'Should we actually be flying in this weather?'

    'As Commander Reynolds said: Needs must.'

    'Ah, yes, he did.'

    'And we
do
want to get to the bottom of this infernal blackout?'

    'Yes, yes, of course. Uhm… but isn't… isn't it possible our aircraft will be struck by lightning?'

    'No. I'd say it's not a possibility, Seymour. I'd say it was a certainty.'

    'Oh, my goodness.'

    'Don't worry. I crashed a plane yesterday, so I don't think I'll be that unlucky for it to happen again today, do you?'

    'I… uhm…'

    'There's the green light. Hang on tight, Seymour. This baby can really move.'

    I thought he'd begun to say something; it may even have been a prayer. But the roar of the engines drowned out his words. A moment later we soared towards whatever lay above us.

    

    

    

    WHEN all was said and done, I had expected a routine flight. What I discovered a few short moments later gave me ample food for thought.

    True, these were no ordinary conditions. The weather was atrocious. And, true, I'd taken off in absolute darkness with Seymour Hinkman, the now extremely introspective - and oh-so-silent - meteorologist. Nevertheless, this plane, the Gloster Javelin, was an all-weather and night fighter designed to cope ably with sorties even in the midwinter Arctic.

    So, up and up I soared.

    Five thousand feet, six thousand, seven thousand…

    And still darkness seemingly everlasting.

    Periodically I radioed base. But there was little to report.

    Ten thousand, twelve thousand, fourteen thousand feet.

    By now I was taking the plane in long, twenty-mile circles around an invisible Isle of Wight below. I continued to soar upward, the engines howling. What little water remained on the canopy was scoured away by the six-hundred-mile-an-hour blast of air.

    Eighteen thousand feet.

    The altimeter raced, higher and higher figures rolling across the counter.

    I heard a small voice in my ear.

    'David… uhm, D-David… we came through it all right?'

    'The storm? Yes, no problems.'

    'We weren't struck by lightning?'

    'We were hit six times.'

    'Six?' His voice suddenly sounded strangled. '
Six
?'

    'Six,' I confirmed calmly. 'Don't worry. It made the instruments a bit lively. But because we weren't earthed there was no damage.'

    'Thank heaven,' he breathed.

    I couldn't see his face when I glanced back because of his helmet, visor and oxygen mask but I could see his head turning from left to right. Evidently he'd now mastered his fear enough to take an interest in his surroundings once more. 'How high are we, exactly?' he asked.

    'Coming up to twenty thousand feet.'

    'We should be nearing the top of the cloud any moment now.'

    'See anything?'

    'Not a dicky bird. And you?'

    'Nothing. I'll continue ascending.'

    'You'll be… uhm, able to find your way back?'

    'Don't worry, I'm in radio contact with the ground and they have us nice and square in their radar screen. We're directly above Winchester now.'

    'Winchester,' Seymour echoed. 'Good grief. My father was sports master at a school there. You know, he escaped the Blinding because he took a dive from a polo pony the day before the lights appeared in the sky. Knocked him cold for forty-eight hours.'

    I found myself warming to Seymour. The little dose of fear inculcated by our taking off in a thunderstorm had humanized him no end.

    'I'm banking to the right now,' I told him. 'That will take us south toward the coast again. How're you feeling?'

    'Fine, thanks. Well… a little queasy around the gills but I think it's passing.'

    A moment later the white numerals clicked past the twenty-five thou mark.

    'Seymour. Twenty-five thousand feet.'

    'I dare say we've found ourselves some record-breaking clouds, David. We should be… wait… just wait a moment.' His voice became hushed. 'I can see cloud shapes - we must be nearly above it.'

    I looked upward, searching for a milky glow of sunlight penetrating the cloud. There was nothing yet. Increasing the thrust of the twin Sapphire turbojets I climbed still higher.

    Twenty-six thousand feet… twenty-seven, twenty-eight.

    
Any moment now,
I told myself. Any moment we'd erupt into a vista of sunlight cascading onto a cotton-wool cloudscape.

    Thirty thousand feet: I pulled back the stick and piled on the power. Now the plane sat on its tail while hurtling straight up like a skyrocket.

    At thirty-three thousand feet we were free of the cloud.

    'Oh…' Seymour's voice in my earpiece was one of puzzlement, even disappointment.

    We'd left the cloud, but we'd found no light.

    At least, not the kind of light we'd expected.

    A profound transformation had been wrought upon the world.

    'What… I… I don't understand…'

    I was hearing Seymour's voice. But my attention was focused on the light in the sky.

    Imagine a dying ember. Imagine it just moments before the glow goes from the ash. There is a redness, but it is a dull, dull red that promises nothing but the dying of the fire.

    The light I saw reminded me of that kind of dying glow. For all I could see - from the edge of one horizon across the full arc of the sky to the next horizon - was that same musky red. It gave precious little illumination. And it looked cold. Even more deathly cold than it was anyway at that height. The air moaned over the wings of the plane in a near-funereal dirge. One that gave voice to my own suddenly apprehensive feelings.