A huge, compact fire started up in the heart of the forest now, in response to the Carolinum’s god-like touch of destruction; the flames leaped up, hundreds of feet tall, forming themselves into a tower of billowing light about the epicenter of the blast. A cloud of smoke and ash, laden with flying lumps of debris, began to collect like a thunderhead above the blaze. And, punching through it all like a fist of light, there was a pillar of steam, rising out of the crater made by the Carolinum Bomb, a pillar red-lit from below as if by a miniature volcano.

Nebogipfel and I could do nothing but cower in the water, keeping under for as long as we could, and, in the intervals when we were forced to surface for air, holding our arms above our heads for fear of the shower of scorched, falling debris.

At last, after some hours of this, Nebogipfel decreed it safe enough to approach the land.

I was exhausted, my limbs heavy in the water. My face and neck were stinging with burns, and my thirst raged; but even so I was forced to carry the Morlock for most of the way back to the shore, for his little strength had given out long before the end of our ordeal.

The beach was scarcely recognizable from the gentle spot where I had hunted for bivalves with Hilary Bond, mere hours before. The sand was strewn with debris from the forest — much of it smashed-up branches and bits of tree trunk, some of it still smoldering — and muddy rivulets worked their way across the pocked surface. The heat emanating from the forest was still all but unbearable — fires burned on in many sections of it — and the tall, purple-red glow of the Carolinum column shone out over the agitated waters. I stumbled past a scorched corpse, I think it was a Diatryma chick, and I found a reasonably clear patch of sand. I brushed away a coating of ash which had settled there, and dumped the Morlock on the ground.

I found a little rill and cupped my hand to catch the water. The liquid was muddy and flecked with black soot — the stream was polluted by the burnt flesh of trees and animals, I surmised — but my thirst was so great that I had no choice but to drink it down, in great, dirty handfuls.

“Well,” I said, and my voice was reduced to a croak by the smoke and my exertions, “this is a damned fine fist of things. Man has been present in the Palaeocene for less than a year… and, already — this!”

Nebogipfel was stirring. He tried to get his arms under him; but he could barely lift his face from the sand. He had lost his face-mask, and the huge, soft lids of his delicate eyes were encrusted with sand. I felt touched by an odd tenderness. Once again, this wretched Morlock had been forced to endure the devastation of War among humans — among members of my own, shoddy race — and had suffered as a consequence.

As gently as if I were lifting a child, I lifted him from the sand, turned him over, and sat him up; his legs dangled like lengths of string. “Take it easy, old man,” I said. “You’re safe now.”

His blind head swiveled towards me, his functioning eye leaking immense tears. He murmured liquid syllables.

“What?” I bent to hear. “What are you saying?”

He broke into English. “…not safe…”

“What?”

“We are not safe here — not at all…”

“But why? The fire can’t reach us now.”

“Not the fire… the radiations… Even when the glow is finished… in weeks, or months, still the radiative particles will linger… the radiations will eat into the skin… It is not a safe place.”

I cupped his thin, papery cheek in my hand; and at that moment — burned, thirsty beyond belief — I felt as if I wanted to chuck it all in, to sit on that ruined beach, regardless of fires, Bombs and radiative particles: to sit and wait for the final Darkness to close about me. But some lingering bits of strength coalesced around my concern at the Morlock’s feeble agitation.

“Then,” I said, “we will walk away from here, and see if we can find somewhere we can rest.”

Ignoring the pain of the cracked skin of my own shoulders and face, I slipped my arms under his limp body and picked him up.

It was late afternoon by now, and the light was fading from the sky. After perhaps a mile, we were far enough from the central blaze that the sky was clear of smoke, but the crimson pillar above the Carolinum crater illuminated the darkling sky, almost as steadily as the Aldis lamps which had lit up the London Dome.

I was startled by a young Pristichampus who came bursting from the forest’s rim. The yellow-white mouth of the beast was gaping wide as it tried to cool itself, and I saw that it dragged one hind leg quite badly; it looked as if it was almost blind, and quite terrified.

Pristichampus stumbled past us and fled, screeching in an unearthly fashion.

I could feel clean sand under my bare feet once more, and I could smell the rich brine of the Sea, a vapor which began the job of washing the stink of smoke and ash out of my head. The ocean remained placid and immovable, its surface oily in the Carolinum light, despite all the foolishness of Humanity; and I pledged my gratitude to that patient body — for now the Sea had cradled me, saving my life even as my fellow humans had blown each other to bits.

This reverie of walking was broken by a distant call.

“Ha-llooo…”

It came drifting along the beach, and, perhaps a quarter-mile away ahead of me, I made out a waving figure, walking towards me.

For a moment I stood there, quite unable to move; for I suspect that I had assumed, in some morbid recess of my soul, that all the members of the Chronic Expeditionary Force must have been consumed by the atomic explosion, and that Nebogipfel and I had been once more left alone in time.

The other chap was a soldier who had evidently been far enough away from the action to remain unscathed, for he was dressed in the trooper’s standard jungle-green twill shirt, riflegreen felt hat and trousers with anklets. He carried a light machinegun, with leather ammunition pouches. He was tall, wire-thin, and red-haired; and he seemed familiar. I had no idea how I looked: a frightful mess, I imagine, with scorched and blackened face and hair, white-staring eyes, naked save for my trousers, and with the inhuman bundle of the Morlock in my arms.

The trooper pushed back his hat. “This is all a fine pickle, isn’t it, sir?” He had the clipped, Teutonic accent of the North-East of England.

I remembered him. “Stubbins, isn’t it?”

“That’s me, sir.” He turned and waved up the beach. “I’ve been map-making up that way. Was six or seven miles away when I saw Jerry coming over the water. As soon as I saw that big column of flame go up — well, I knew what was what.” He looked towards the encampment site uncertainly.

I shifted my weight, trying to hide my fatigue. “But I shouldn’t go back to the encampment yet. The fire’s still burning — and Nebogipfel warns of radiative emissions.”

For answer, I lifted the Morlock a little.

“Oh, him.” Stubbins scratched the back of his head; the short hairs there rasped.

“There’ll be nothing you can do to help, Stubbins — not yet.”

He sighed. “Well then, sir, what are we to do?”

“I think we should carry on up the beach a little way, and find somewhere to shelter for the night. I expect we’ll be safe — I doubt that any Palaeocene animal will be unwise enough to interfere with men tonight, after all that — but we perhaps should build a fire. Do you have matches, Stubbins?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” He tapped his breast pocket, and a box rattled. “Don’t you worry about that.”

“I won’t.”

I resumed my steady walking along the beach, but my arms were aching uncommonly, and my legs seemed to be trembling. Stubbins noted my distress, and with silent kindness, he hung his machine-gun from his broad back, and lifted the unconscious Morlock from my arms. He had a wiry strength, and did not find, it seemed, Nebogipfel a burden.