quely and I was not allowed to come near until I swallowed my pride
and claimed connection with the _Intelligencer_. Even then it was
necessary for me to explain myself to several nervous soldiers on pain
of being ordered from the spot.

I was struck as I had not been before by the dynamic quality of the
grass; never the same for successive instants. Constant movement and
struggle as the expanding parts fought for room among themselves,
pushing upward and outward, seemed to indicate perceptible sentience
permeating the whole body. Preparing, brooding, it was disturbed,
searching, alert.

Its external aspect reflected the change. The proportions of height to
breadth had altered since the explosion. The peak had disappeared,
flattening out into an irregular plateau. Its progress across the
ground, however, had been vastly accelerated; it had crossed the streets
on all sides of the block and was spreading with great rapidity over the
whole district. For the moment no new effort was apparently being made
to halt its progress, the activities of the militia being confined to
patrolling the area and shooing decent citizens away. I wondered if a
new strategy contemplated allowing the thing to exhaust itself. Since it
looked more vigorous with each passing hour, I saw myself on the payroll
of the _Intelligencer_ for a long time to come.

Captain Eltwiss walked by and I asked him if this were so. "Don't
worry," he reassured me. "We're hep now, with the actual, unbeatable
mccoy. Park the body and watch what happens to old Mr Grass."

I had every intention of staying and I thought it advisable to remain
close to the captain in order, if his boast were wellfounded, to be in
on the kill. He was in excellent spirits and although I did not think it
tactful to refer to it, it was evident his little difference with the
colonel about the unreceived orders had not affected him. We chatted
amiably. I mentioned what Miss Francis had said about the weed springing
up in new places from each of the shreds dispersed by the explosion, but
he merely shrugged and laughed.

"I know these longbearded scientific nuts. They can find calamity around
the corner quicker than a drunk can find a bar."

"The discoverer of the Metamorphizer is a woman, so her long beard is
doubtful," I told him, just a little irritated by his cocksureness.

He laughed with as much ease at himself as at anything else. "A woman
scientist, ay? Funny things womenll do when