And yet it now seems obvious that the real crisis is long past. Tucked away on a back page of the same New York Times is a short report of the sighting of another ‘double galaxy’ by observers at the Hubble Institute on Mount Palomar. The news is summarized in less than a dozen lines and without comment, although the implication is inescapable that yet another focal area has been set up somewhere on the earth’s surface, perhaps in the temple-filled jungles of Cambodia or the haunted amber forests of the Chilean highland. But it is only a year since the Mount Palomar astronomers identified the first double galaxy in the constellation Andromeda, the great oblate diadem that is probably the most beautiful object in the universe, the island galaxy of M 31.

Although these sightings by now seem commonplace, and at least half a dozen ‘double constellations’ can be picked from the night sky on any evening of the week, four months ago when the party of scientific attaches landed at Miami Airport on a conducted tour of the stricken area there was still widespread ignorance of what the Hubble Effect (as the phenomenon had been christened in the Western Hemisphere and the English-speaking world) actually involved. Apart from a handful of forestry workers and biologists from the US Department of Agriculture, few qualified observers had witnessed the phenomenon and there were implausible stories in the newspapers of the forest ‘crystallizing’ and everything ‘turning into coloured glass’.

One unfortunate consequence of the Hubble Effect is that it is virtually impossible to photograph anything transformed by it. As any reader of scientific journals knows, glassware is extremely difficult to reproduce, and even blocks of the highest screen on the best quality art papers — let alone the coarse blocks used on newsprint — have failed to reproduce the brilliant multi-faceted lattices of the Hubble Effect, with their myriads of interior prisms, as anything more than a vague blur like half-melted snow.

Perhaps in retaliation, the newspapers had begun to suggest that the secrecy which surrounded the affected area in the Everglades then no more than three or four acres of forest to the north-east of Maynard — was being deliberately imposed by the administration, and a clamour was raised about the rights of inspection and the unseen horrors concealed from the public. It so happened that the focal area discovered by Professor Auguste LePage in Madagascar in the Matarre Valley, far into the hinterland of the island — was about 150 miles from the nearest road-head and totally inaccessible, while the Soviet authorities had clamped a security cordon as tight as Los Alamos’s around their own affected area in the Pripet Marshes of Byelorussia, where a legion of scientific workers under the leadership of the metabiologist Lysenko (all, incidentally, chasing a complete red herring) was analysing every facet of the inexplicable phenomenon.

Before any political capital could be made from this campaign, the Department of Agriculture in Washington announced that all facilities for inspection would be gladly provided, and the invitation to the scientific attaches proceeded as part of the programme of technical missions and tours.

As we drove westwards from Miami Airport it was immediately obvious that in a sense the newspapers had been right, and that there was far more to the Hubble Effect than the official handouts had let us believe. The highway to Maynard had been closed to general traffic, and our bus twice overtook military convoys within twenty miles of Miami. In addition, as if to remind us of the celestial origin of the phenomenon, the news of yet another manifestation came through on the radio bulletins.

‘There’s an Associated Press report from New Delhi,’ George Schneider, the West German attach, came aft to tell us. ‘This time there are millions of reliable witnesses. Apparently it should have been plainly visible in the Western Hemisphere last night. Did none of you see it?’

Paul Mathieu, our French confrere, pulled a droll face. ‘Last night I was looking at the moon, my dear George, not the Echo satellite. It sounds ominous, but if Venus now has two lamps, so much the better.’

Involuntarily we looked out through the windows, searching above the roadside pines for any glimpse of the Echo satellite. According to the AP reports its luminosity had increased by at least ten-fold, transforming the thin pinpoint of light which had burrowed across the night sky for so many faithful years into a brilliant luminary outshone only by the moon. All over Asia, from the refugee camps on the shores of the Jordan to the crowded tenements of Shanghai, it was being observed at the very moment we were making our fifty mile drive to Maynard.

‘Perhaps the balloon is breaking up,’ I suggested in a lame effort to revive our spirits. ‘The fragments of aluminium paint will be highly reflective and form a local cloud like a gigantic mirror. It’s probably nothing to do with the Hubble Effect.’

‘I’m sorry, James. I wish we could believe that.’ Sidney Reston, of the State Department, who was acting as our courier, interrupted his conversation with the US Army major in charge of the bus to sit down with us. ‘But it looks as if they’re very much connected. All the other satellites aloft are showing the same increased albedo, seems more and more like a case of "Hubble bubble, double trouble".’

This absurd jingle echoed in my ears as we neared the eastern fringes of Big Cypress Swamp. Five miles from Maynard we left the highway and turned on to a rough track which ran through the date palms towards the Opotoka River. The surface of the road had been churned by scores of tracked vehicles, and a substantial military camp had been set up among the great oaks, the lines of tents hidden by the grey festoons of the spanish moss. Large piles of collapsible metal fencing were being unloaded from the trucks, and I noticed a squad of men painting a number of huge black signs with a vivid luminous paint.

‘Are we going on manoeuvres, major?’ the Swedish member of our party complained as the dust filled the cabin. ‘We wished to see the forest near Maynard. Why have we left the highway?’

‘The highway is closed,’ the major replied evenly. ‘You’ll be taken on a tour of the site, I assure you, gentlemen. The only safe approach is by river.’

‘Safe approach?’ I repeated to Reston. ‘I say, what is this, Sidney?’

‘Just the army, James,’ he assured me. ‘You know what they’re like in emergencies. If a tree moves they declare war on it.’ With a shake of his head he peered out at the activity around us. ‘But I admit I can’t see why they have to proclaim martial law.’

Reaching the bank of the river, where half a dozen amphibious vehicles were moored by a floating quay, we debarked from the bus and were taken into a large quonset used for briefing visitors. Here we found some fifty or sixty other notables senior members of government laboratories, public health officials and science journalists — who had been brought by bus from Miami earlier that morning. The atmosphere of light-hearted banter barely concealed a growing uneasiness, but the elaborate precautions of the military still seemed ludicrously exaggerated. After an interval for coffee we were officially welcomed and issued with our instructions for the day. These warned us in particular to remain strictly within the marked perimeters, not to attempt to obtain any of the ‘contaminated material’, and above all never to linger at any one spot but always to remain in rapid motion.

Needless to say, the pantomime humour of all this was lost on none of us and we were in high spirits when we set off down the river in three of the landing craft, the green walls of the forest slipping past on either side. I noticed immediately the quieter mood, by contrast, of the passenger beside me. A slimly built man of about forty, he was wearing a white tropical suit which emphasized the thin rim of dark beard framing his face. His black hair was brushed low over a bony forehead, and with the jaundiced gaze in his small liquid eyes gave him the appearance of a moody D. H. Lawrence. I made one or two attempts to talk to him, but he smiled briefly and looked away across the water. I assumed that he was one of the research chemists or biologists.