'Blackbury Volunteers it is, then,' said Mr Atterbury.

Frost formed on the receiver of the public phone in The White Swan.

'Ready, Mr Einstein?'

'Let's go, Mr Fletcher!'

The telephone clicked, and was silent. The air warmed up again.

Thirty seconds later, the air grew cold in the little wooden hut twenty miles away that housed the controls of Blackbury University's radio telescope.

'It works!'

'Off course. Off all the forces in the universe, the hardest to overcome is the force of habit. Gravity is easy-peasy by comparison.'

'When did you think of that?'

'It came to me ven I was working on a particularly large trout.'

'Really? Well ... let's see what we can do ...'

Mr Fletcher looked around the little room. It was currently occupied only by Adrian 'Nozzer' Miller, who'd wanted to be an astronomer because he thought it was all to do with staving up late looking through telescopes, and hadn't bargained on it being basically about adding columns of figures in a little shed in the middle of a windy field.

The figures the telescope was producing were all that was left of an exploding star twenty million years ago. A billion small rubbery things on two planets who had been getting on with life in a quiet sort of way had been totally destroyed, but they were certainly helping Adrian get his Ph.D. and, who knows, they might have thought it all worthwhile if anyone had asked them.

He looked up as the telescope motors ground into action. Lights flickered on the control panel.

He stared at the main switches, and then reached out for them. They were so cold they hurt.

'Ow!'

The big dish turned towards the moon, which was just over Blackbury.

There was a clattering from the printer beside him, and the endless stream of paper it was pro- ducing now read:

OIOIOIOOIOIOIOIOOOIOOOOIOOOOIIOOIIOOIOIO

HEREGOESNOTHINGGGGoooooooooi 1101111 WELLIMB^CKboooioooi ...

Mr Fletcher had just bounced off the moon.

'Vot was it like?'

'I didn't have time to see much, but I don't think I'd like to live there. It worked, though. The sky's the limit, Mr Einstein!'

'Exactly, Mr Fletcher! By the vay, where did that young man go?'

'I think he had to rush off somewhere.'

'Oh. Well... we should go and tell the others, don't you think?'

It was a quiet night in Blackbury Central police station. Sergeant Comely had time to sit back and watch the little lights on the radio.

He'd never really been happy about the ra- dio, even when he was younger. It was the bane of his life. He suffered from education, and he'd never been able to remember all that 'Foxtrot Tango Piper' business - at least when he was, e.g., pelting down the street at 2 a.m. in pur- suit of miscreants. He'd end up sending messages about 'Photograph Teapot Psychological'. It had definitely blighted his promotion chances.

He especially hated radio on nights like this, when he was in charge. He hadn't joined the police to be good at technology.

Then the phones started to ring. There was the manager of the Odeon. Sergeant Comely couldn't quite make out what he was saying.

'Yes, yes, all right, Halloween Spectacular,' he said. 'What do you mean, it's all gone cold? What

do you want me to do? Arrest a cinema for being cold? I'm a police officer, not a central heating specialist! I don't repair video machines, either!'

The phone rang again as soon as he put it down, but this time one of the young constables answered it.

'It's someone from the university,' he said, put- ting his hand over the mouthpiece. 'He says a strange alien force has invaded the radio telescope. You know, that big satellite dish thing over towards Slate?'

Sergeant Comely sighed. 'Canyou get a descrip- tion?' he said.

'I saw a film about this, Sarge,' said another policeman. 'These aliens landed and replaced everyone in the town with giant vegetables.'

'Really? Round here it'd be days before anyone noticed,' said the sergeant.

The constable put the phone down.

'He just said it was like a strange alien force,' he said. 'Very cold, too.'

'Oh, a cold strange alien force,' said Sergeant Comely.

'And it was invisible, too.'

'Right. Would he recognize it if he didn't see it again?'

The young policemen looked puzzled. I'm too good for this, the sergeant thought.

'All right,' he said. 'So we know the following. Strange invisible aliens have invaded Blackbury. They dropped in at The Dirty Duck, where they blew up the Space Invaders machine, which makes

sense. And then they went to the pictures. Well, that makes sense too. It's probably years before new films get as far as Alfred Centuri ...'

The phone rang again. The constable answered it.

'And what, we ask ourselves, is their next course of action?'

'It's the manager of Pizza Surprise, Sarge,' said the constable. 'He says—'

'Right!' said the sergeant. 'That's right! They drop in for a Number Three with Extra Pepperoni! It probably looks like a friend of theirs.'

'Wouldn't do any harm to go and chat to him,' said the constable. It had been a long time since dinner. 'You know, just to show a bit of—'

'/'// go,' said Sergeant Comely, picking up his hat. 'But if I come back as a giant cucumber, there's going to be trouble.'

'No anchovies on mine, Sarge,' said the con- stable, as Sergeant Comely stepped out into the night.

There was something strange in the air. Sergeant Comely had lived in Blackbury all his life, and it had never felt like this. There was an electrical tingle to things, and the air tasted of tin.

It suddenly struck him.

What if it were real? Just because they made silly films about aliens and things didn't actually mean, did it, that it couldn't ever happen? He watched them on late night television. They always picked small towns to land near.

He shook his head. Nah ...

William Stickers walked through him.

'You know, you really shouldn't have done that, William,' said the Alderman, as Sergeant Comely hurried away.

'He's nothing but a symbol of the oppression of the proletariat,' said William Stickers.

'You've got to have policemen,' said Mrs Liberty. 'Otherwise people would simply do as they liked.'

'Well, we can't have that, can we?' said Mr Vicenti.

The Alderman looked around at the brightly lit street as they strolled along it. There weren't many living people around, but there were quite a lot of dead ones, looking in shop windows or, in the case of some of the older ones, looking at shop windows and wondering what they were.

' I certainly don't remember all these shopkeepers from my time,' he said. 'They must have moved in recently. Mr Boots and Mr Mothercare and Mr Spudjulicay.'

'Whom?' said Mrs Liberty.

The Alderman pointed to the sign on the other side of the street.

'Spud-u-like,' said Mr Vicenti. 'Hmm.'

'Is that how you pronounce it?' said the Alderman. 'I thought perhaps he was French. My word. And electric light all over the place. And no horse -. . . manure in the streets at all.'

'Really!' snapped Mrs Liberty. 'Please remember you are in company with a Lady.'

'That's why he said manure,' said William Stickers, happily.

'And the food!' said the Alderman. 'Hindoo and Chinese! Chicken from Kentucky! And what did you say the stuff was that the clothes are made of?'

'Plastic, I think,' said Mr Vicenti.

'Very colourful and long-lasting,' said Mrs Liberty. 'And many of the girls wear bloomers, too. Extremely practical and emancipated.'

'And many of them are extremely handsome,' said William Stickers.

'And everyone's taller and I haven't seen anyone on crutches,' said the Alderman.

'It wasn't always like this,' said Mr Vicenti. 'The nineteen thirties were rather gloomy.'