was no stopping the Grass now, even if the means had been to hand.
The Gambiers, the Tuamotus and the Marquesas were swallowed up. Tahiti,
dwellingplace of beautiful if syphilitic women, disappeared under a
green blanket, as did the Cook Islands, Samoa and the Fijis. The Grass
jumped southward to a foothold in New Zealand and northward into
Micronesia. Panic infected the Australians and a mass migration to the
central part of the country was begun, but with little hope the
surrounding deserts would offer any effective barrier.

_82._ My first thought when I heard the Grass for the second time had
broken its bounds, was that I had perhaps been a little hasty with Miss
Francis. It was not at all likely she would succeed where so many better
trained and better equipped scientists had so far failed, but I felt a
vicarious sympathy with her, as being out of the picture when all her
colleagues were striving with might and main to save the world;
especially after the years she had spent on Mount Whitney. It would be
an act of simple generosity on my part, I thought, to give her the
wherewithal to entertain the illusion of importance. When all was said
and done, she was a woman, and I could afford a chivalrous gesture even
in the face of her overweening arrogance.

I am sorry to say she responded with complete illgrace. "I knew youd
eventually have to come crawling to me to save your hide."

"You mistake the situation entirely, Miss Francis," I informed her with
dignity. "I am conferring, not asking favors. I have every confidence in
my research staff--"

"My God! Those guineapig murderers; those discoveryforgers; those
whitesmocked acolytes in the temple of Yes. You value your life or your
purse at exactly what theyre worth if you expect those drugstoreclerks
to preserve them for you."

"I doubt if either is in the slightest danger," I assured her
confidently. "Hysterics have lost perspective. Long before the Grass
becomes an immediate concern my drugstoreclerks, with less exalted
opinions of their talents than you, will have found the means to destroy
it."

"A soothing fairytale. Weener, the truth is not in you. You know the
reason you come to me is that youre frightened, scared, terrified. Well,
strangely enough, I'm not going to reject your munificence. I'll accept
it, because to do God's work is more important than any personal pride
of mine or any knowledge that one of the best things _Cynodon dactylon_
could do