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vicinity, had no wish to draw attention to his project before its completion. Caution was the byword. The two tracts of land, one local and one in the area of the object he sought, would have to be unoccupied at the present time.
    The latter was no problem. Norman boldly punched in the coordinates he knew so well, thirty degrees longitude, thirty degrees latitude and the minutiae of minutes. But as to a local site, this presented some difficulties. It was his aim to conduct the final experiment during the hours of darkness, when there would be few folk about to interfere. But for now, a little test run?
    Norman snapped his fingers. “Eurekas,” he whistled, taking up a Brentford street directory and thumbing through the dog-eared pages. The ideal spot. The St Mary’s Allotment. The day being hot, all those dedicated tillers of God’s good earth would by now be resting their leathern elbows upon the Swan’s bar counter and lying about the dimensions of their marrows.
    Norman punched in the appropriate coordinates and leant back in his chair, waiting for the power to build up sufficiently for transference to occur. He crossed his fingers, lisped what words he knew of the Latin litany and pressed a blood-red button which had until recently been the property of the local fire brigade.
    A low purring rose from the electronic throat of the machinery, accompanied by a pulse-like beating. The lights upon the console sprang into redoubled illumination and the radio valves began to pulsate, expanding and contracting like some vertical crop of transparent onions. The little bulbs blinked in enigmatic sequences, passing back and forwards through the spectrum. Norman clapped his hands together and bobbed up and down in his chair. A thick blue smoke began to fill the room as the humming of the machinery rose several octaves into an ear-splitting whine. A strange pressure made itself felt in the kitchenette as if the gravitational field was being slowly increased.
    Norman suddenly realized that he was unable to raise his hands from the console or his feet from the floor, and someone or something was apparently lowering two-hundredweight sacks of cement on to his shoulders. His ears popping sickeningly, he gritted his gums and made a desperate attempt to keep his eyelids up.
    The ghastly whining and the terrible pressure increased. The lights grew brighter and brighter and the pulse beat ever faster. The apparatus was beginning to vibrate, window panes tumbled from their dried-putty housings and a crack swept across the ceiling. Beneath closed lids, Norman’s eyes were thoroughly crossed. Without grace he left his chair and travelled downwards at great speed towards the linoleum.
     
    All over Brentford electric appliances were beginning to fail: kettles ceased their whistlings, television pictures suddenly shrank to the size of matchboxes, the automated beer pumps at the New Inn trickled to a halt in mid-flow, and at the Swan the lights went out, leaving the rear section of the saloon-bar in darkness and the patrons blindly searching for their pints.
    Omally groaned. “It is the end of mankind as we know it,” he said. “I should never have got up so early today.”
    Pooley, who had had carrots the night before, topped up his pint from the Irishman’s glass. “Steady on, John,” he said in a soothing voice. “It is a power cut, nothing more. We have been getting them more or less every Wednesday afternoon for months now.”
    “But not like this.”
    Old Pete’s dog Chips set up a dismal howl which was unexpectedly taken up by Neville the part-time barman. “Look at it! Look at it!” he wailed, pointing invisibly in the darkness. “Look at the bloody thing!”
    Bitow Bitow Bitow Bitow
went the Captain Laser Alien Attack Machine, scornfully indifferent to the whims of the Southern Electricity Board, or anyone else for that matter.
     
    *
     
    In the tiny kitchenette to the rear of the corner shop there was a sharp and