'In point of fact our ascendancy has been so complete that we are rarely called upon to kill wolves nowadays – in fact, most of us have quite forgotten what it means to have to fight in a personal way against another species. But, when the need arises we have no compunction in fully supporting those who slay the threat whether it is from wolves, insects, bacteria, or filterable viruses; we give no quarter, and certainly expect no pardon.

'The situation vis– -vis the Children would seem to be that we have not grasped that they represent a danger to our species, while they are in no doubt that we are a danger to theirs. And they intend to survive. We might do well to remind ourselves what that intention implies. We can watch it any day in a garden; it is a fight that goes perpetually, bitterly, lawlessly, without trace of mercy or compassion...'

His manner was quiet, but there was no doubt that his intention was pointed; and yet, somehow, as so often with Zellaby, the gap between theory and practical circumstances seemed too inadequately bridged to carry conviction.

Presently Bernard said:

'Surely this is quite a change of front by the Children. They've exerted persuasion and pressure from time to time, but, apart from a few early incidents, almost no violence. Now we have this outbreak. Can you point to the start of it, or has it been working up?'

'Decidedly,' said Zellaby. 'There was no sign whatever of anything in this category before the matter of Jimmy Pawle and his car.'

'And that was – let me see – last Wednesday, the third of July. I wonder -' he was beginning, but broke off as the gong called us to luncheon.

'My experience, hitherto, of interplanetary invasion,' said Zellaby, as he concocted his own particular taste in salad-dressing, 'has been vicarious – indeed, one might even say hypothetically vicarious, or do I mean vicariously hypothetical -?' He pondered that a moment, and resumed: 'At any rate it has been quite extensive. Yet, oddly enough, I cannot recall a single account of one that is of the least help in our present dilemma. They were, almost without exception, unpleasant; but, also, they were almost always forthright, rather than insidious.

'Take H. G. Wells' Martians, for instance. As the original exponents of the death-ray they were formidable, but their behaviour was quite conventional: they simply conducted a straightforward campaign with this weapon which outclassed anything that could be brought against it. But at least we could try to fight back, whereas in this case -'

'Not cayenne, dear,' said his wife.

'Not what?'

'Not cayenne. Hiccups,' Angela reminded him.

'So it does. Where is the sugar?'

'By your left hand, dear.'

'Oh, yes... where was I?'

'With H. G.'s Martians,' I told him.

'Of course. Well, there you have the prototype of innumerable invasions. A super-weapon which man fights valiantly with his own puny armoury until he is saved by one of several possible kinds of bell. Naturally, in America it is all rather bigger and better. Something descends, and something comes out of it. Within ten minutes, owing no doubt to the excellent communications in that country, there is a coast-to-coast panic, and all highways out of all cities are crammed, in all lanes, by the fleeing populace – except in Washington. There, by contrast, enormous crowds stretching as far as the eye can reach, stand grave and silent, white-faced but trusting, with their eyes upon the White House, while somewhere in the Catskills a hitherto ignored professor and his daughter, with their rugged young assistant strive like demented midwives to assist the birth of the dea ex laboritoria which will save the world at the last moment, minus one.

'Over here, one feels, the report of such an invasion would be received in at least some quarters with a tinge of preliminary scepticism, but we must allow the Americans to know their own people best.

'Yet, overall, what do we have? Just another war. The motivations are simplified, the armaments complicated, but the pattern is the same, and, as a result, not one of the prognostications, speculations, or extrapolations turns out to be of the least use to us when the thing actually happens. It really does seem a pity when one thinks of all the cerebration the prognosticators have spent on it, doesn't it?'

He busied himself with eating his salad.

'It is still one of my problems to know when you are to be taken literally, and when metaphorically,' I told him.

'This time you can take him literally, with assurance,' Bernard put in.

Zellaby cocked a sideways look at him.

'Just like that? Not even reflex opposition?' he inquired. 'Tell me, Colonel, how long have you accepted this invasion as a fact?'

'For about eight years,' Bernard told him. 'And you?'

'About the same time – perhaps a little before. I did not like it, I do not like it, I am probably going to like it even less. But I had to accept it. The old Holmes axiom, you know: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable , must be the truth." I had not known, however, that that was recognized in official circles. What did you decide to do about it?'

'Well, we did our best to preserve their isolation here, and to see to their education.'

'And a fine, helpful thing that turns out to have been, if I may say so. Why?'

'Just a minute,' I put in, 'I'm in between the literal and figurative again. You are both of you seriously accepting as a fact that these Children are – a kind of invaders? That they do originate somewhere outside the Earth?'

'See?' said Zellaby. 'No coast-to-coast panic. Just scepticism. I told you.'

'We are,' Bernard told me. 'It is the only hypothesis that my department has not been forced to abandon – though, of course, there are some who still won't accept it, even though we had the help of a little more evidence than Mr Zellaby did.'

'Ah!' said Zellaby, brought to sudden attention, with a forkful of greenstuff in mid-air. 'Are we getting closer to the mysterious MI interest in us?'

'There's no longer any reason now, I think, why it should not have a restricted circulation,' Bernard admitted. 'I know that in the early stages you did quite a little inquiring into our interest on your own account, Zellaby, but I don't believe you ever discovered the clue.'

'Which was?' inquired Zellaby.

'Simply that Midwich was not the only, nor even the first place to have a Dayout. Also, that during the three weeks around that time there was a marked rise in the radar detection of unidentified flying objects.'

'Well, I'm damned!' said Zellaby. 'Oh, vanity, vanity...! There are other groups of Children beside ours, then? Where?'

But Bernard was not to be hurried, he continued deliberately:

'One Dayout took place at a small township in the Northern Territory of Australia. Something apparently went badly wrong there. There were thirty-three pregnancies, but for some reason the Children all died; most of them a few hours after birth, the eldest at a week old.

'There was another Dayout at an Eskimo settlement on Victoria Island, north of Canada. The inhabitants are cagey about what happened there, but it is believed that they were so outraged, or perhaps alarmed, at the arrival of babies so unlike their own kind that they exposed them almost at once. At any rate, none survived. And that, by the way, taken in conjunction with the time of the Midwich babies' return here, suggests that the power of duress does not develop until they are a week or two old, and that they may be truly individuals until then. Still another Dayout -'

Zellaby held up his hand.

'Let me guess. There was one behind the Iron Curtain.'