nd down. The grass walls towered upward almost
within reach; beyond the hole they so unexpectedly made in its surface
the weed stretched out levelly, peaceful and inviting. I shuddered and
peered down the reversed telescope where the ladder once more hung
temptingly before Slafe.

Again he waved it aside. Gootes appeared to argue with him for he shook
his head obstinately and went on using his camera. At length the
reporter seized him forcibly with a strength I had not known he
possessed and boosted him up the first rungs of the ladder. Slafe seemed
at last resigned to leave, but he pointed anxiously to his other cameras
and cans of film. Gootes nodded energetically and waved the photographer
upward.

I saw every detail of what happened then, emphasized and heightened as
though revealed through a slowmotion picture. I heard Slafe climb on
board and knew that in a few seconds now we would be free and away. I
saw the bright sun reflect itself dazzlingly upon the blades of the
grass, sloping imperceptibly away to merge with the city it squatted
upon in the distance.

The sun where we were was dazzling, I say, but in the hole where Gootes
was now tying Slafe's paraphernalia to the ladder, the shadow of the
walls darkened it into twilight. I squinted, telepathically urging him
to hurry; he seemed slow and fumbling. And then ...

And then the walls collapsed. Not slowly, not with warning, not
dramatically or with trumpets. They came together as silently and
naturally as two waves close a trough in the ocean, but without
disturbance or upheaval. They fell into an embrace, into a coalescence
as inevitable as the well they obliterated was fortuitous. They closed
like the jaws of a trap somehow above malevolence, leaving only the top
of the ladder projecting upward from the smooth and placid surface of
the weed.

Whether in some involuntary recoil the pilot pressed a wrong control or
whether the action of the grass itself snatched the ladder from the ship
I don't know; but that last bit attached to the machine was torn free
and fell upon the green. It was the only thing to mark the spot where
the bowl which had held us had been, and it lay, a brown and futile
tangle of rope and wood, a helpless speck of artifice on an
imperturbable mass of vegetation.

_24._ Mr Le ffacase removed the tube of the dictaphone from his lips as
I entered. "Weener, although a rigid adherence to fact compels me to
claim some acquaintance with