EXCURSION.

THE man slithered backward from the hatchway of the strange-looking vehicle. With a swing of his long arms he shut the hatch - it clanged noisily - then stood back, wiping his oily hands on a rag.

I can only describe the machine as looking like an iron elephant. Painted a pale shade of grey, it had two large rounded cabins side by side that gave the impression of an elephant's extended ears. From the front of the vehicle something very much like an elephant's trunk but made of metal, protruded. The whole bizarre arrangement, complete with air intakes, exhaust pipes and an iron-grey body, sat on a pair of caterpillar tracks. In size, it was perhaps a shade larger than a battle tank.

The machine's resemblance to the animal hadn't escaped its owners. One of the long grey flanks carried the word JUMBO in large letters. While just behind one of the glass-panelled cabins I noticed a colourful painting of a Red Indian warrior in fierce profile, his chin high, gazing towards some far horizon. Beside that, in what can only be described as a sassy script, were the words Give 'Em Hell!

There were more notices stencilled on the lower part of the machine, although these were more prosaic instructions like Compressed-Air Inlet and Service This Vehicle With 100 Octane Fuel Only.

'Good morning, Mr Masen.' The man who'd been working on the motor offered me his hand. He was tall, gangling, with blond hair and bright blue eyes. I put his age at around thirty-five. His accent had the courteous drawl of the Southern States. He noticed more oil streaked on the back of his hand, wiped it on the seat of his combat trousers, then offered it to me again.

I didn't respond.

He smiled. 'Can't say I blame you, feller. I'd be a mite too sore to shake hands as well.' The voice was as bright and as friendly as his blue eyes. 'You're feeling all right? No cramps or nausea?'

I shook my head. 'I feel well enough... considering.' I spoke a trifle stiffly.

'Good, good! Say, Jazmay.' He gave the girl a relaxed grin. 'I don't know what Mr Masen here thinks about you pointing the gun like that but I'm getting a tad nervous...' He turned to me. 'Say. You're not going to slug me or run away, are you? No. No, of course you won't. Jazmay, stow the gun away and fire up old Jumbo, will you?'

The girl opened one of the cabin doors of the vehicle, slotted the gun into a rack, then climbed down into a sort of well that contained the driver's cockpit beneath the cabin. With a preliminary whirring the motor fired into life. Twin plumes of blue smoke spurted from behind the elephantine 'ears'.

'Sounds great, doesn't she?' The man spoke enthusiastically, patting the machine. 'I fitted new plugs on the old gal in your honour...' He started off to the vehicle. But almost immediately turned back to me. 'The name's Sam Dymes, by the way. Different spelling but pronounced the same as that old coin from way back when.' He held out his hand again to shake mine, then gave a bashful smile. 'Oh, you don't shake, do you? Sorry about that. And sorry about the...' He mimed injecting himself in the arm. 'We figured it'd be the best way of bringing you here without damaging you.'

I stared, a hundred angry questions jostling to be vocalized. But I was too downright astonished to spit them out.

'Sam Dymes,' he repeated, touching his chest, as he backed towards the vehicle. 'Now, if you can jump aboard, please. I need to show you something.'

As the vehicle rumbled on its caterpillar tracks along a roadway, it passed more of its kind. Big, grey elephantine machines with JUMBO painted on the side. Each one bore a different signature painting behind the driver's cab. There were renditions of champing shark teeth, cartoon characters, svelte girls. Each vehicle had its own personalized name: Lucky Lady, Wild Thing, Fire-Eater - while one right at the end of the line rejoiced in the name Munchin' Martha, its painting depicting a formidable woman eating whole triffid plants like they were celery shoots.

I sat in one of the front two bucket seats alongside Sam Dymes. Jazmay, who drove the great metal beast, sat below me, her head level with my feet.

The jolting had one positive effect. The questions that had been choked back were suddenly free.

'Why the hell have you brought me here?'

Sam Dymes shot me a look of wide-eyed innocence. 'For one, I need to show you something. Hang on tight, we'll be through the gates in a moment. It gets a little bumpy down here.'

'No... hell... damn it! Why have you brought me to this place? Why did you have to shoot my friend? And what in God's name have you done with Kerris?'

'Kerris?' He rubbed his jaw reflectively. 'She's fine.'

'How do you know that?'

'You're going to have to trust me on that one.'

'She's here?'

'No. She's back in New York City, Mr Masen. Safe.'

'But your thugs had no qualms about killing my friend.'

'I'm sorry. I didn't know about any fatalities. Believe me, that wasn't our intention.'

'What was your intention?'

'To bring you safely here?'

'Whereabouts is here... exactly?'

'South of the Mason-Dixon Line,' he said guardedly. 'You don't need to know precisely where.'

'OK, Mr Dime. Why am I here?'

'The name's Dymes. Why are you here? I hope that's going to be as plain as the nose on your face.' He awarded me that shy smile again. 'Excuse me. Time for a little pest control.'

Through the front windows I saw that the truck had reached a hefty gate that took four men to swing open. We were through it in a second. Behind me I saw the gate being shut, then firmly secured with chains.

'Jazmay, can you switch on the flow for me? Thank you.'

Ahead triffids crossed our path, moving in their jerking way, the cones on top of their trunks whipping backwards and forwards.

Despite my anger, I craned my neck forward for a better view. At that moment Sam Dymes gripped a joystick in his hand, then depressed a red button on top of it with his thumb.

A ball of orange flame shot from the end of the metal 'trunk'. A second later three triffids were caught in that rolling fire ball. Green leaves blackened, wilted, cones shrivelled. One plant flopped down to the trackway.

Sam Dymes smiled back at me. 'This is one thing we've got that those darn' weeds don't have. Fire. Glorious fire!' He gave them another blast for good measure. A lot of triffids began to resemble Old Testament burning bushes. Sam called out: 'These guys are getting smart. As soon as you burn a couple up the others get out of your way.'

The lumbering vehicle crunched over the smoking remains of triffids that had been hit by the flame-thrower. The rest of the plants, even though there were thousands of them, no longer tried to get in front of the vehicle. A few, though, popped away with their stings at the cabin's glass panels as we passed, leaving the characteristic smear of poison.

'Safe as houses.' Sam gave the panel a good rap with his knuckles. 'Toughened glass.'

The triffid pattern around the base had all the old characteristics. Close in near the fence the triffids had packed tight, testing it with their strength, no doubt hoping deep in their botanical brains - if, indeed, that was what they had - that their combined pressure would break the wire. The further you moved away from the picket fence, however, the sparser the plants became. Perhaps in the triffid armies these outliers had the role of reserves or sentries. Of course, these days you would rarely be free of the plant entirely. As the vehicle rumbled across an open plain I could see solitary triffids dotted here and there. Mostly they remained unmoving. However, as the truck approached and they 'heard' the roar of its engine, they shuffled their stumpy legs so that they could turn to the source of the sound. They certainly looked like predators watching their prey go by.

Sam Dymes sat back in his seat now, his hand only lightly on the joystick that controlled the metal 'trunk' of the flamethrower. All in all, this was an impressive machine. I knew how valuable an all-terrain triffid-destroyer like this would be to my people back home.

Meanwhile, though, I hadn't solved the mystery of why I'd been brought here.

'Thanks for the ride,' I said coolly. 'But you're still being niggardly with the answers.'

'I'm sorry, Mr Masen, truly I am.'

'Who are you exactly... your community, that is?'

'Your former hosts refer to us as the Quintling faction.'

'Yes, I've heard of you.'

'Nothing good, I'd wager?'

'That you're a bunch of outlaws,' I told him. 'That you steal and murder.'

'Joshua Quintling was one of the original founders of the New York community, but General Fielding came along to introduce some more...' He shrugged. 'More vigorous methods, shall we say. So, twenty years ago, Quintling left with his family and other families who wished to live in a more humane way.'

'So the Quintling faction wound up here?'

'Not exactly. General Fielding ordered one of his warships to go after Quintling's unarmed steamer. The warship shot Quintling's boat to hell. Quintling's wife and baby son were killed, along with a dozen others. Quintling only avoided losing everyone else on board by running the steamer aground in an estuary that was too shallow for the warship to sail up. Otherwise...' He gave an expressive shrug. Then he looked at me, the blue eyes serious. 'But you don't believe me, do you, Mr Masen?'

'I suppose I'll have to take your word for it.' But my coolness towards him must have conveyed my scepticism.

'Have it your own way, Mr Masen. I'm hardly likely to instil belief with the butt of a rifle, am I?'

'As far as I can see I'm very much at your mercy.' Though I didn't voice it I began to wonder if at some point the vehicle would stop and I'd be simply turfed out onto the ground and left to fend for myself in this triffid-haunted waste.

He regarded me for a moment. 'Do you really think we've invested so much time and fuel - valuable fuel - to bring you here just so we can harm you?'

'Search me.'

'Why, that's preposterous.' He actually looked hurt by my implication. 'We went to a whole lot of trouble to rescue you.'

'Rescue me?'

'Sure.'

'Did I look as if I needed rescuing? If you could have seen me you'd have known I was having a great time. Besides, I was due to sail home the next day.'

'Yes, we know that.'

'Then what the hell were you playing at?'

'We knew you were sailing to England.' He looked at me levelly. 'We also knew that sailing behind you - just a little way over the horizon, out of sight - would be a battleship with a couple of destroyer escorts.'

'You're telling me that General Fielding plans to invade the Isle of Wight?'

'That's our information, Mr Masen.'

'But what's the point? We'd welcome friendly contact with open arms.'

'Are you sure of that?'

'Of course.'

The man took a deep breath, allowing his eyes to scan the sunlit landscape and its triffid sentinels.

'It seems you've been in the dark, Mr Masen. A metaphorical dark as well as a literal one.'

'Go on, surprise me.'

'You know the New York community under General Fielding doesn't have access to oil wells or gasoline reserves?'

'Yes. They run cars on wood alcohol.'

'Which is so rough it chews motors to hell after a couple of thousand miles.'

I nodded.

'Well,' Sam Dymes said, 'We've a couple of oil wells, plus a refinery that produces around a million gallons of gasoline a year - it's not much, I grant you. But it means we can run this old girl.' He patted the seat affectionately. 'And we have good clean aviation fuel for the boat-planes.'

'Which New York doesn't have.'

'Correct, Mr Masen. So they can only tootle around the oceans in their coal-fired steamers. You see, therefore, that if they can get their hands on your Masen-Coker... uhm, what do they call the thing, now?'

'Masen-Coker Processor.'

He nodded. 'The Masen-Coker Processor... then General Fielding can refine that darn triffid sap and have as much fuel as he wants for his automobiles, transport planes - and warplanes.'

'And the consequence of that?'

'The consequence of that for us is that we'll be wiped off the face of the Earth. Up here in the river estuaries we're safe from his warships. But if he has bombers and fighters... well.' Sam Dymes whistled. 'He'll bomb us all to hell and back.'

'Make peace with him.'

'You mean surrender?'

'No,' I said earnestly. 'Send a delegation. Negotiate.'

'He won't accept it. Soon he'll have the whip hand. Yes, he'll take our women and children to fuel his population drive. But our men? Why, they'll be shipped off to the coal mines or the logging camps, or those damn slave farms in the Caribbean where they work night and day to clear the triffids and grow all those fancy crops to keep his followers happy.'

'You really think he's so unreasonable?' I pictured Kerris's father, General Fielding - the man with that burning yellow eye. OK, so he appeared to me to be a firm leader, even a visionary one. But a murdering tyrant? No, I didn't see that.

Sam Dymes looked at me, his fingers tapping his lips, assessing me. Then, after an interval: 'Yes, Mr Masen. I do think General Fielding is totally unreasonable. I also think he would stop at nothing if he could conquer us, as well as invading the Isle of Wight. Moreover, I believe he is a brutal dictator.'

'But that's only your opinion.'

'Not only my opinion, Mr Masen.'

'Oh? Who else's?'

'Can't you guess?' The man smiled, enjoying keeping me in suspense.

I shrugged. 'Whose?'

'None other than that of your own father, Bill Masen.'