'Ah, yes, he did.'

'And we do want to get to the bottom of this infernal blackout?'

'Yes, yes, of course. Uhm... but isn't... isn't it possible our aircraft will be struck by lightning?'

'No. I'd say it's not a possibility, Seymour. I'd say it was a certainty.'

'Oh, my goodness.'

'Don't worry. I crashed a plane yesterday, so I don't think I'll be that unlucky for it to happen again today, do you?'

'I... uhm...'

'There's the green light. Hang on tight, Seymour. This baby can really move.'

I thought he'd begun to say something; it may even have been a prayer. But the roar of the engines drowned out his words. A moment later we soared towards whatever lay above us.

CHAPTER SIX.

RECCE.

WHEN all was said and done, I had expected a routine flight. What I discovered a few short moments later gave me ample food for thought.

True, these were no ordinary conditions. The weather was atrocious. And, true, I'd taken off in absolute darkness with Seymour Hinkman, the now extremely introspective - and oh-so-silent - meteorologist. Nevertheless, this plane, the Gloster Javelin, was an all-weather and night fighter designed to cope ably with sorties even in the midwinter Arctic.

So, up and up I soared.

Five thousand feet, six thousand, seven thousand...

And still darkness seemingly everlasting.

Periodically I radioed base. But there was little to report.

Ten thousand, twelve thousand, fourteen thousand feet.

By now I was taking the plane in long, twenty-mile circles around an invisible Isle of Wight below. I continued to soar upward, the engines howling. What little water remained on the canopy was scoured away by the six-hundred-mile-an-hour blast of air.

Eighteen thousand feet.

The altimeter raced, higher and higher figures rolling across the counter.

I heard a small voice in my ear.

'David... uhm, D-David... we came through it all right?'

'The storm? Yes, no problems.'

'We weren't struck by lightning?'

'We were hit six times.'

'Six?' His voice suddenly sounded strangled. 'Six?'

'Six,' I confirmed calmly. 'Don't worry. It made the instruments a bit lively. But because we weren't earthed there was no damage.'

'Thank heaven,' he breathed.

I couldn't see his face when I glanced back because of his helmet, visor and oxygen mask but I could see his head turning from left to right. Evidently he'd now mastered his fear enough to take an interest in his surroundings once more. 'How high are we, exactly?' he asked.

'Coming up to twenty thousand feet.'

'We should be nearing the top of the cloud any moment now.'

'See anything?'

'Not a dicky bird. And you?'

'Nothing. I'll continue ascending.'

'You'll be... uhm, able to find your way back?'

'Don't worry, I'm in radio contact with the ground and they have us nice and square in their radar screen. We're directly above Winchester now.'

'Winchester,' Seymour echoed. 'Good grief. My father was sports master at a school there. You know, he escaped the Blinding because he took a dive from a polo pony the day before the lights appeared in the sky. Knocked him cold for forty-eight hours.'

I found myself warming to Seymour. The little dose of fear inculcated by our taking off in a thunderstorm had humanized him no end.

'I'm banking to the right now,' I told him. 'That will take us south toward the coast again. How're you feeling?'

'Fine, thanks. Well... a little queasy around the gills but I think it's passing.'

A moment later the white numerals clicked past the twenty-five thou mark.

'Seymour. Twenty-five thousand feet.'

'I dare say we've found ourselves some record-breaking clouds, David. We should be... wait... just wait a moment.' His voice became hushed. 'I can see cloud shapes - we must be nearly above it.'

I looked upward, searching for a milky glow of sunlight penetrating the cloud. There was nothing yet. Increasing the thrust of the twin Sapphire turbojets I climbed still higher.

Twenty-six thousand feet... twenty-seven, twenty-eight.

Any moment now, I told myself. Any moment we'd erupt into a vista of sunlight cascading onto a cotton-wool cloudscape.

Thirty thousand feet: I pulled back the stick and piled on the power. Now the plane sat on its tail while hurtling straight up like a skyrocket.

At thirty-three thousand feet we were free of the cloud.

'Oh...' Seymour's voice in my earpiece was one of puzzlement, even disappointment.

We'd left the cloud, but we'd found no light.

At least, not the kind of light we'd expected.

A profound transformation had been wrought upon the world.

'What... I... I don't understand...'

I was hearing Seymour's voice. But my attention was focused on the light in the sky.

Imagine a dying ember. Imagine it just moments before the glow goes from the ash. There is a redness, but it is a dull, dull red that promises nothing but the dying of the fire.

The light I saw reminded me of that kind of dying glow. For all I could see - from the edge of one horizon across the full arc of the sky to the next horizon - was that same musky red. It gave precious little illumination. And it looked cold. Even more deathly cold than it was anyway at that height. The air moaned over the wings of the plane in a near-funereal dirge. One that gave voice to my own suddenly apprehensive feelings.

'I don't understand,' Seymour said. 'The cloud lies below us. So where is the sun?'

For half an hour we circled high in that sombre sky. Its profoundly muted redness gave forth little light.

I glanced along the metal wings of the plane. Above the clouds in daytime sparkling sunlight would usually dance along its length from root to tip. Now the light turned the once silvery surface to the colour of rust.

'So, it can't be ordinary cloud that's responsible for the darkness,' I ventured at length. 'At least, not thunderclouds.'

'No,' Seymour agreed. 'They've exacerbated it, there's no doubt about that. But there must be another cloud layer even higher up that's obscuring the sun.'

'But you said the cloud would probably be no higher than twenty-five thousand feet?'

'Yes, that is true. But fly higher if you can.'

I did take the plane up higher. In fact, right to its maximum ceiling of fifty-five thousand feet where no audible engine noise reached the cockpit through the rarefied atmosphere. Here the sky should have been near-black rather than blue. But there was only that gloomy red.

Even if we'd somehow mistaken the time and flown after sunset we would have seen a brilliant display of diamond-bright stars. It was as if the gods themselves had grown weary of the Earth and drawn a red shroud across its face.

For some moments I talked to HQ; I half fancied I could hear the Old Man in the background, growling instructions to the ground controller. Every so often a splash of static sounded in my ear as lightning played merry hell in the heavens above the aerodrome. Behind me, Seymour made his notes and took his photographs.

I glanced at the fuel gauges. The needles indicated the tanks were a quarter full.

Our time was up. I told Seymour to stow the camera. We were going home.

I eased back on the power and allowed the plane to descend. Until the very last moments of approach I would be landing blind. The control tower would have to talk me in until I could see the strip's landing lights.

Already in my mind's eye I could see the radar controller poring over his screen, watching the fat blip of light that was our signal.

Behind me, Seymour was a little livelier and, although I imagine he was thinking aloud rather than talking to me, he was speculating about the cause of the loss of sunlight. 'Volcanic eruptions can fling out debris into the higher atmosphere, resulting in some sunlight blockage. But never to this degree - at least, not in living memory. The eruption of Krakatoa significantly reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the surface of the Earth: this in turn resulted in lower temperatures globally and that meant a succession of fearful winters and cool summers. But this is unprecedented. To go further, we might speculate that-'

In my earpiece I heard ground control. 'Reduce altitude to fifteen thousand feet, continue your speed of four hundred knots, maintain course setting of-'

Again there was a rush of static in my ear that sounded like a wave breaking against a sea wall.

I waited for the return of the ground controller's steady voice.

Static still hissed.

'...Therefore,' Seymour was saying, 'clearly neither water nor ice particles are responsible for this acute diminution of sunlight. If volcanic eruptions aren't responsible then we're forced to-'

'Ground control,' I said quickly. 'Am no longer receiving. Over.'

A rush of static. But no voice.

'Ground control. Do you read me? Over.'

'The quantity of debris in the upper atmosphere must be phenomenal. One could-'

'Seymour,' I said sharply.

'Uhm?'

'We've a problem.'

'What kind of problem?' He spoke almost dreamily, obviously still running through his own mental calculations.

'I've lost contact with ground control.'

'Is that serious?'

'Yes. Very.'

'Try again.'

'I have. They're not responding.'

I opened the throttle and the sharp cone of the fighter's nose lifted. The altimeter reversed its downward progress as we regained height.

'We're climbing,' Seymour said unnecessarily. 'We need to land, don't we?'

'We do. But preferably on the runway - not in someone's cabbage patch.'

'You mean we can't land until we re-establish radio contact?'

'Something like that,' I said tightly. 'I'm going to circle for a few moments while they - I hope - cure their technical hiccup.'