Newman opened his eyes. Susan was by his side, her arms around him. She was crying. The man lay face down in the drive, the revolver a foot or so away from his outstretched fingers, blood soaking into the gravel.

Still Newman was trying to work it all out. His brain was confused. It wouldn't function properly. This guy was a nutter. Not his fault, though. He'd chickened out at the last minute. Couldn't go through with murder. Committed suicide instead.

'All right, Professor?'

For the first time Newman was aware that someone was standing just inside the open gates. A tall man dressed in a jungle hat, combat jacket, bandolier across his chest. 'Don't worry, Professor. I had him covered the whole time. Had to be careful I didn't hit either of you, though.'

Newman nodded to the BVF soldier, noting the thin trickle of smoke coming from the barrel of the Luger in his hand.

Thanks.' he murmured. 'Thanks a million. I was lucky you happened to be around. I should've asked for a guard before. I told 'em I didn't need one.'

'You've had one all along,' the soldier told him, 'only you didn't know it. Night and day. We can't take chances with you, Professor. Whatever the public might think, you're the one man who stands any chance of coming up with an antidote.'

'I just hope I can justify your confidence.' Newman pulled Susan Wylie close to him, and together they went inside and closed the door.

The weather was changing. Still the sun beat down, but now its heat was tempered by the coming of autumn. Each morning a thick mist followed the dawn, grey vapour which dispersed reluctantly towards mid-morning, and each evening brought a refreshing coolness to the parched land.

Fleets of helicopters stood at the ready throughout the Midlands, all fitted with crop-spraying attachments, the pilots waiting impatiently for the thick mist to evaporate. From the north Staffordshire moors as far south as Worcester, from the Wash to the Wrekin, the operation stretched, .the largest assault on insect life in British history.

'Crazy,' Tamperley of West Midlands Fertilizers muttered to his companion as they watched the rays of the sun beginning to disperse the fog. 'It won't work. I could've told 'em that.'

'Don't see no reason why not.' Whittaker climbed up into the helicopter, and tapped the huge tank containing insecticide. 'This stuff was withdrawn five years ago because it was proved to be detrimental to wildlife. Don't see why it shouldn't kill bats.'

'I'll believe it when I see it.' Tamperley lit a cigarette. 'Reckon we'll be on the move in about twenty minutes.'

It was 11.30 a.m. before they took off, the countryside around them now becoming bathed in bright sunshine. Some of the trees below were already showing signs of brown in their foliage. Drought or not, autumn would dominate the rural scene from now onwards.

Whittaker recognised Chasetown sprawling below them and the dark green and purple of Cannock Chase over to their left. Something golden glinted in the sunlight, the ball on the main spire of Lichfield Cathedral. They dropped lower.

Traffic was sparse. An isolated community, even on a small island, had nowhere to go. Smoke hung in the air in places. Heath and forest fires still burned, but they had been abandoned long ago. Town fires were given priority.

Tamperley turned to his colleague. 'That's the place,' he said, pointing in the direction of a tall television transmitter, rising like a lighthouse out of a dark green ocean. 'The fields between those two woods.'

Whittaker nodded and began connecting up various attachments. They could see other helicopters already at work, skimming fields and woods, turning, going back, three or four covering a large expanse of arable ground. Organisation. He had to hand it to the authorities, in spite of what Tamperley said. They were doing everything possible. If it resulted in failure then they'd done their best. Nobody could blame them, only that professor who had allowed the bats to escape. It was all his fault.

'OK,' Tamperley called. They were flying at a height of twenty feet, skimming hedgerows, rising to negotiate a couple of spinneys. 'Let 'er go.'

'Never sprayed woods before,' Whittaker muttered to himself. A lifelong member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, he realised the dangers to birdlife from toxic sprays. Yet the bats had to be destroyed; otherwise it meant the end of everything.

Back and forth they went, methodically, barely missing a square yard on a 20-acre field, Tamperley knew his job.

They finished the field and turned their attention to the spinneys, gaining additional height because of some of the taller trees. Wood-pigeons were flying aimlessly. They had been deprived of their morning feed on some lush clover by the helicopters and now there was no peace even in their day-roosts.

'Hey, what's that?' Tamperley yelled above the roar of the engine.

Whitaker looked down in the direction the pilot pointed and saw a small wood with dense undergrowth.

'What...' he began, and then he saw it, a black cloud spiralling upwards, a flock of living creatures, formation-less, spreading out as they gained height. Has first thought was that they were starlings. Their mode of flight was different, though; faster and more erratic. Their aerobatics would have been the envy of any pilot.

'It's them!' he yelled. 'The bats!'

'Some of 'em,' Tamperley shouted back. 'That spinney must be one of their roosting places. Well, we might as well give 'em the works. I'm going down on 'em. Let 'em have it!'

Whittaker increased the flow of insecticide as they dipped. The spray was thick and yellow, reminding him of urine. It hit the bats, the sheer force of the liquid sending several of them spinning to the ground. The remainder wheeled and jinked, above and below the helicopter, some dashing themselves against the sides of the machine and falling earthwards, lifeless.

The helicopter was stationary, hovering, the full force of the nozzles directed immediately beneath it. Bats were everywhere, hurling themselves at the glass of the cockpit as though they sensed whence this liquid death came.

There was a brief moment during which the two men thought that victory was theirs, a total slaughter. In fact, Tamperley was already preparing to move on when the cockpit was darkened by shadows, tiny flickering shapes that merged into near-total darkness, obscuring the sunlight.

'Hell's bells!' Whittaker croaked. 'Just look at 'em!'

Bats clung to every available inch of toughened glass, somehow securing a hold on the smooth surface, upside down, hundreds of malevolent faces staring at the two men with an insane hatred beyond comprehension.

'Jesus! ' Tamperley jerked on the lever. 'Let's get back to base!'

The helicopter responded, moved forward, and then shuddered to a standstill as though a brake had been applied. One final roar from the engine, and then it died away, stuttering into silence. The two men could hear the shrill piping of their attackers.

'They've clogged the vanes!' Tamperley screamed.

Whittaker watched in horror as the pilot tried desperately to restart the engine, but they were already embarking upon a direct downward course, hurtling towards the spinney below, the cockpit a coffin, borne by the bats down to a quarry grave.

With a screech of tearing metal and splintering wood the undercarriage was ripped away by the topmost branches of a tall Corsican pine, the trunk spearing into the cockpit. The machine hung precariously for a couple of seconds, its fall checked. Then the tree snapped lower down, and the helicopter plunged on the last stage of its journey of death, jagged rocks rushing up to meet it, bats whirring above as though in triumph at their victory, then scattering in every direction as they witnessed the final destruction.