Another helicopter which had seen the bizarre scene from half-a-mile away hastened towards the spinney, the grim-faced pilot noting the clouds of bats which dispersed in all directions.

'Looked like Tamperley,' he yelled to the man at his side.

'If it was, then he's bought it for sure. Go easy, Joe. I never seen nothin' like it! We don't want to get caught up in a cloud o' bleedin' bats.'

But Joe was already veering away. There wasn't a bat in sight. Just a column of black smoke rising up out of the quarry in the wood as flames began to lick greedily at the lower branches, leaping from one to another with the speed of a frightened squirrel.

Nothing could be done to help the two men in the blazing wreckage. They were already in the final stages of cremation.

'Well,' Haynes said, 'The spraying operation is complete. All we can do now is wait. If we don't poison 'em, maybe they'll starve without insect life to feed on.'

'God knows what the long-term result will be,' Newman groaned.

'We've a good idea what it'll be if we don't check the spread of this virus.'

'There's no pattern to the bats' behaviour now,' Professor Newman went on, 'There are reports from both rural and urban areas. We've flushed 'em out of cover, and they're widespread throughout the Midlands.'

'The human death-toll is ejtimated at something in the region of ten thousand,' Haynes told him. He turned away and looked out of the window. The mist was thinning across the Chase as the early morning sunshine finally broke through. 'We'll probably never know the exact figures, as a lot of the corpses were burned in the fires. People won't stand for it much longer. Even the ordinary, normally complacent citizen is no longer prepared to shut himself away in his house. Food supplies are running out. Those brought in from outside are not being distributed as they should be. It's a case of the strong dominating the weak. At least this .spraying idea of Rickers's has given us a breathing space. Everybody's just waiting now, but if it doesn't work . .. well, I'd rather not think about it. That'll be the end,'

The drone of helicopters was absent from the rural scene. Seldom were vehicles heard at all now. Aircraft passed over on their flights north and south, but only government-authorised planes were allowed to land at either Elmdon or the East Midlands Airport.

And gradually the sounds of insects in the woods and fields were dying away. The grasshopper's chirruping became slow, like a chain-saw with the power switched off. Wasps crawled lazily, not even having the energy to sting when molested. Midges died by their millions in hedgerows and fields. And already bird life was beginning to suffer. The swifts and swallows should have been congregating on telegraph-wires in readiness for their long flight south, but many were found lying beneath these communal perches as though electrified by the currents. Everybody knew the true cause of death.

Only the bats seemed unharmed by the extermination of almost every form of insect life. The creatures for whom the poison had been intended showed no signs of ill effects. In fact, they became more active, and were seen in greater numbers than before.

They're restless, disturbed,' Rickers said uneasily as he stood at the laboratory window, with Haynes and Newman. Dusk was closing in over the Chase, and already dozens of bats were to be seen, flying apparently aimlessly, frequently dashing themselves against the windows of the Biological Research Centre, almost as though they recognised this place as the headquarters of the war which was being waged against them.

'And the insecticides are apparently having no effect on them,' Newman murmured. 'We've killed off nearly everything else within a radius of sixty miles, but the bats appear to be unharmed. How the hell are they surviving?'

They're eating poisoned insect life,' Haynes said, shaking his head in bewilderment, 'and they're thriving on it. They don't even have to look for it. The woods and, fields are carpeted with it. And there's more than enough to keep them going until the winter.'

'Maybe that'll be the finish of them,' Rickers suggested. 'They'll hibernate, and then in spring there'll be no food for them and they'll starve.'

'Like hell!' Newman said. They'll just spread to the rest of the country. And we can't poison the whole of the British Isles from John o' Groats to Land's End. Anyway, this hibernation isn't what everybody thinks it is. Bats don't sleep solidly throughout the winter. A spell of mild weather and they're as active as they are in summer.'

'But we don't know that we've failed yet,' Rickers insisted. 'Maybe the poison is taking longer to work on the bats. The virus could be slowing it up.'

'Or even acting as an inoculation. The virus could well be rendering it harmless. There's so much we bloody well don't know about the whole thing. All we can do is wait, but right now things don't look very hopeful.'

By 24th September it was clear to the whole world that the insecticide experiment was a failure and also that the overall situation had worsened. The numbers of bats flying at night had visibly increased. The young were now totally independent and flew with the adults like swarms of locusts over the whole countryside. Every night held its own terrors. Even the most secure barricades were proved to be inadequate, almost as though the creatures were now deliberately seeking out human victims. Fleet Street constantly reminded the public that Professor Brian Newman was the sole cause of the disaster and that every death must weigh heavily on his conscience.

The man responsible for the spread of this mutated virus,' one London daily newspaper leader article ran, 'has so far failed to come up with an antidote, and it is now reasonable to assume that none exists. An experiment to poison the bats has resulted in the destruction-of virtually the whole of the insect life in the Midlands. What is Professor Newman doing about it? The man responsible for the spread of myxomatosis, the scourge which once cleared Britain of rabbits, entered a monastery in an attempt to cleanse his conscience of the suffering which he had caused to millions of coneys. Surely that is all that is left for Professor Newman, a monk's habit, and a lifetime spent praying for forgiveness. Repent, Professor Newman.'

Brian Newman's hand trembled as he put the paper down on the table.

'Stop blaming yourself,' Susan Wylie said as she entered the room and placed a cup of coffee at his elbow. 'The Press always have to put somebody in the stocks. How the hell can they compare you with this myxomatosis guy? His intention was to cause deliberate suffering. Yours was an accident, a biological freak.'

Newman sat up suddenly, his fists clenched.

'My God!' he muttered. 'Why didn't I think of it before?'

'Think of what?'

'Where's last week's Scientific American.' He began to rummage through a pile of newspapers and magazines beside where he was sitting.

'What is it?'

'Here it is.' He pulled out the magazine he sought and began to flip quickly through the pages. 'Now, let me see, I know I read it somewhere in here... ah, yes, this is it.'

Susan Wylie peered over his shoulder. The article in question was written by one of the leading biologists in the United States and was titled 'Myxomatosis for Rats and Mice.'

'Recent experiments have proved,' it read, 'that a type of myxomatosis, a mutation of the virus which destroys rabbits, is lethal to rats and mice. Once this can be distributed widely it could save the United States billions of dollars annually-in vermin destruction, damage to growing crops, and also help to check the spread of many diseases... '

'Is it possible?' Newman breathed.