The Intelligencer was lodged over the printshop of a local tributary which had agreed to the ousting with the most hypocritical assurances of joy at the honor done them and payment—in the smallest possible type—by the addition to the great newspaper's masthead of the words, "And Pomona Post-Telegram."

Packed into this inadequate space were the entire staff and files of the metropolitan daily. No wonder the confusion obviated all possibility of normal routine. In addition, the disruption of railroad schedules made the delivery of mail a hazard rather than a certainty. Perhaps this was why, weeks after they were due, it was only upon my return from interviewing Miss Francis I received my checks from the Weekly Ruminant and the Honeycomb.

It may have been the boomtown atmosphere I have already mentioned or because at the same time I got my weekly salary; at any event, moved by an unaccountable impulse I took the two checks to a barbershop where, perhaps incongruously, a wellknown firm of Los Angeles stockbrokers had quartered themselves. I forced the checks upon a troubledlooking individual—too taciturn to be mistaken for the barber—and mumbling, "Buy me all the shares of Consolidated Pemmican and Allied Concentrates this will cover," hurried out before sober thought could cause me to change my mind.

For certainly this was no investment my cool judgment would approve, but the wildest hunch, causing me to embark on what was no less than a speculation. I went back to the desk I shared with ten others, bitterly regretting the things I might have bought with the money and berating myself for my rashness. Only the abnormal pressure of events could have made me yield to so irrational an impulse.

In the meantime things happened fast. Barely had the tardiest Intelligencer employees got away when the enveloping jaws of the weed closed tight, catching millions of dollars' worth of property within. The project to bomb the grass out of existence, dormant for some weeks, could no longer be denied.

Even its most ardent advocates, however, now conceded reluctantly that ordinary explosives would be futile—more than futile, an assistance to the growth by scattering the propagating fragments. For the first time people began talking openly of using the outlawed atomicbomb.

The instant response to this suggestion was an overwhelming opposition. The President, Congress, the Army, Navy and public opinion generally agreed that the weapon was too terrible to use in so comparatively trivial a cause.

But the machinery for some type of bombing had been set in motion and had to be used. The fuel was stored, the airfields jammed, all available planes, new, old, obsolescent and obsolete assembled, and for three days and nights the great fleets shuttled backandforth over the jungled area, dropping thousands of tons of incendiary bombs. Following close behind, still more planes dropped cargoes of fuel to feed the colossal bonfire.

Inverted lightning flashes leapt upward, and after them great, rolling white, yellow, red and blue flames. The smoke, the smell of roasting vegetation, the roar and crackle of the conflagration, and the heat engendered were all noticeable as far away as Capistrano and Santa Barbara.

Down from the sky, through the surface of the grass, the incendiaries burned great patches clear to the earth. The weed, which had resisted fire so contemptuously before, suddenly became inflammable and burned like celluloid for days. Miles of twisted stems, cleaned of blade and life, exposed tortured nakedness to aerial reconnoiter. Bald spots the size of villages appeared, black and smoldering; the shape of the mass was altered and altered again, but when, long after, the last spark flickered out and the last ember grew dull, the grass itself, torn and injured, but not defeated or even noticeably beaten back, remained. It had been a brilliant performance—and an ineffective one.

The failure of the incendiary bombing not only produced ruefully triumphant Itoldyousos from disgruntled and doubly outraged propertyowners, but a new crop of bids for the Intelligencer's reward to the developer of a saving agent. From suggested emigrations to Mars and giant magnifying glasses set up to wither the grass with the aid of the sun, they ranged to projects for cutting a canal clear around the weed from San Francisco Bay to the Colorado River and letting the Pacific Ocean do the rest. Another solution envisaged shutting off all light from the grass by means of innumerable radiobeams to interrupt the sun's rays in the hope that with an inability to manufacture chlorophyll an atrophy would set in. Several contestants urged inoculating other grasses, such as bamboo, with the Metamorphizer, expecting the two giants of vegetation, like the Kilkenny cats, would end by devouring each other. This proposal received such wide popular support there is reason to believe it got some serious consideration in official quarters, but it was eventually abandoned on the ground that while it gave only a single slim chance of success it certainly doubled the potential growths to contend with. The analogy of a backfire in forest conflagrations was deemed poetic but inapplicable.

More comparatively prosaic courses included walling in the grass with concrete; the Great Wall of China was the only work of man visible from the moon; were Americans to let backward China best them? A concrete wall only a mile high and half a mile thick could be seen by any curious astronomer on the planet Venus—assuming Venerians to be afflicted with terrestrial vices—and would cost no more than a very small war, to say nothing of employing thousands who would otherwise dissipate the taxpayers' money on Relief. A variant of this plan was to smother the weed with tons of dry cement and sand from airplanes; the rainy season, due to begin in a few months, would add the necessary water and the grass would then be encased in a presumably unbreakable tomb.

But the most popular suggestion embodied the use of salt, ordinary table salt. From their own experience in backyard and garden, eager men and women wrote in urging this common mineral be used to end the menace of the grass. "It will Kill ennything," wrote an Imperial Valley farmer. "Its lethal effect on plantlife is instantaneous," agreed a former Beverly Hills resident. "I know there is not anything like Salt to destroy Weeds" was part of a long and rambling letter on blueruled tabletpaper, "In the June of 1926 or 7 I cannot remember exactly it may have been 28 I accidentally dropped some Salt on a beautiful Plumbago...."

It was proposed to spray the surface, to drive tunnels through the roots to conduct brine, to bombard sectors with sixteeninch guns firing shrapnel loaded with salt, to isolate by means of a wide saline band the whole territory, both occupied and threatened. Salt enthusiasts argued that nothing except a few million tons of an inexpensive mineral would be wasted if an improbable failure occurred, but if successful in stopping the advance the country could wait safely behind its rampart till some weapon to regain the overrun area was found.

But the salt advocates didnt have everything their own way. There arose a bitter antisalt faction taking pleasure at hurling sneers at these optimistic predictions and delight in demolishing the arguments. Miss Francis, they said, who ought to know more about it than anyone else, claimed the grass would break down even the most stable compound and take what it needed. Well, salt was a compound, wasnt it? If the prosalt fanatics had their way they would just be offering food to a hungry plant. The salt supporters asked what proof Miss Francis had ever advanced that the plant absorbed everything or indeed that her Metamorphizer had anything to do with metabolism and had not merely induced some kind of botanical giantism? The antisalts, jeering at their enemies as Salinists and Salinites, promptly threw away Miss Francis' hypothetical support and relied instead on the proposition that if the salt were to be efficacious—an unlikely contingency—it would have to reach the roots and if crudeoil, poured on when the plant was young, had not done so what possible hope could the prosalt cranks offer for their panacea now the rampant grass was grown to its present proportions?

The salt argument cut society in half. Learned doctors battled in the columns of scientific journals. Businessmen dictated sputtering letters to their secretaries. Housewives wrote newspapers or argued heatedly in the cornergrocery. Radiocommentators cautiously skirted the edge of controversy and more than one enthusiast had to be warned by his sponsor. Fistfights started in taverns over the question and judicious bartenders served beer without offering the objectionable seasoning with it.

The Intelligencer, at the start, was vehemently antisalt. "Is there an American Cato," Le ffacase asked, "to call for the final ignominy suffered by Carthage to be applied, not to the land of an enemy, but to our own?" Shortly after this editorial, entitled "Carthage, California" appeared, the Intelligencer swung to the opposite side and Le ffacase offered the prosalt argument under the heading "Lot's Wife."

The Daughters of the American Revolution declared themselves in favor of salt and refused the use of Constitution Hall to an antisalt meeting. Stung, the Central Executive Committee of the Communist party circulated a manifesto declaring the use of salt was an attempt to encircle, not the grass, for that was a mere subterfuge of imperialism, but the Soviet Union; and called upon all its peripheral fringe to write their congressmen and demonstrate against the saline project. From India the aged Mohandas Gandhi asked in piping tones why such a valuable adjunct was to be wasted in rich America while impoverished ryots paid a harsh tax on this necessity of life? And the Council of Peoples' Commissars, careless of the action of the American Stalinists, offered to sell the United States all its surplus salt. The herringpicklers of Holland struck in a body while the American salt refiners bid as one to produce on a costplus basis.

This last was a clincher and the obscurantic antisalts received the deathblow they richly deserved. The Communist party reversed themselves swiftly. All respectable and patriotic people lined up behind salt. With such popular unanimity apparent, the government could do no less than take heed. A band twenty miles wide, stretching from Oceanside to the Salton Sea, from the Salton Sea to the little town of Mojave and from there to Ventura, was marked out on maps to be saltsown by the very same bombercommand which had dropped the spectacular but futile incendiaries. The triumph of the salt people was ungenerous in its enthusiasm; the disgruntled antisalts, now a mere handful of diehards publishing an esoteric press, muttered everyone would be sorry, wait and see.

30. The grass itself waited for nothing. It seemed to take new strength from the indignities inflicted upon it and it increased, if anything, its tempo of growth. It plunged into the ocean in a dozen spots at once. It swarmed over sand which had never known anything but cactus and the Sierra Madres became great humps of green against the skyline. This last conquest shocked those who had thought the mountains immune in their inhospitable heights. Cynodon dactylon, uninoculated, had always shunned coldness, though it survived some degrees of frost. The giant growth, however, seemed to be less subject to this inhibition, though it too showed slower progress in the higher and colder regions. The Intelligencer planned to move from Pomona to San Bernardino and if necessary to Victorville.

Daily Le ffacase became a sterner taskmaster, a more pettishly exacting employer. By the living guts of William Lloyd Garrison, he raged, had no one ever driven the simple elements of punctuation into my bloody head? Had no schoolmaster in moments of heroic enthusiasm attempted to pound a few rules of rhetoric through my incrassate skull? Had I never heard of taste? Was the word "style" outside my macilent vocabulary? What the devil did I mean by standing there with my mouth open, exposing my unfortunate teeth for all the world to see? Was it possible for any allegedly human to be as addlepated as I? And had I been thrust from my mother's womb—I suppress his horrible adjectives—only to torment and afflict his longsuffering editorial patience?

A hundred times I was tempted to sever my connection with this journalistic autocrat. My column was widely read and two publishinghouses had approached me with the idea of putting out a book, any editorial revision and emendations to be taken care of by them without disturbing me at all. I could have allied myself with almost any paper in the country, undoubtedly at better than the meager stipend Le ffacase doled out to me.

But I think loyalty is one of the most admirable of virtues and it was not in my nature to desert the Intelligencer—certainly not till I could secure a lengthy and ironclad contract, such as for some reason other papers seemed unwilling to offer me. In accord with this innate loyalty of mine—I take no credit for it, I was born that way—I did not balk at the assignments given me though they ranged from the hazardous to the absurd.

One of the more pleasant of these excursions thought up by Mr Le ffacase was to fly over the grass and to Catalina, embark on a chartered boat there and survey the parts of the coast now overrun. A fresh point of observation. Accompanying me was the moviecameraman, Rafe Slafe, as uncommunicative and earnest in his medications as before.

It was a sad sight to see neat rectangular patterns of roads and highways, cultivated fields and orangegroves, checkered towns and sprawling suburbs come to an abrupt stop where they were blotted out by the regimented uniformity of the onrushing grass. For miles we flew above its dazzling green until our eyes ached from the sameness and our minds were dulled from the lack of variety below. On the sea far ahead a frothing whitecap broke the monotony of color, a flyingfish jumped out of the water to glisten for a moment in the sun, loose seaweed floated on the surface, to change in some degree the intense blue. But here below no alien touch lightened the unnatural homogeneity. No solitary tree broke this endless pasture, now healed of the wounds inflicted by the incendiary bombing, no saltlick, wandering stream or struggling bush enlivened this prairie. There was not even an odd conformation, a higher clump here or there, a dead patch to relieve the unimaginative symmetry. I have read of men going mad in solitary confinement from looking at the same unchanging walls; well, here was a solitary cell hundreds of miles in area and its power to destroy the mind was that much magnified.

I got little consolation from the presence of the others, for the pilot was engaged in navigation while Slafe was, as ever, singlemindedly recording mile after mile of the verdant mat beneath, never pausing nor speaking, though how he justified the use of so much film when one foot was identical with what went before and the next, I could not understand.

At last we cleared the awful cancer and flew over the sea. A thousand variations I had never noticed before offered themselves to my suddenly refreshed eyes. Not for one split second was the water the same. Leaping, tossing, spiraling, foaming back upon itself, making its own shadows and mirroring in an infinitely faceted glass the sunlight, it changed so constantly it was impossible to grasp even a fraction of its mutations. But Slafe evidently did not share my blessed relief, for he turned his camera back to catch every last glimpse of the solid green I was so happy to leave behind.

At the airport, on the way to the boat, on the little vessel itself, I expected Slafe to relax, to indulge in a conversational word, to do something to mark him as more than an automaton. But his actions were confined to using the nasalsyringe, to exchanging one camera for another, to quizzing the sun through that absurd lorgnette, and to muttering over cans of film which he sorted and resorted, always to his inevitable discontent.

While we waited to start, a perverse fog rolled between us and the mainland. It made a dramatic curtain over the object of our visit and emphasized the normality and untouchedness of Avalon behind us. As the boat got under way, strain my eyes as I could eastward, not the faintest suggestion of the ominous outline showed. We sped toward it, cutting the purple sea into white foam. Slafe was in the bow, customarily taciturn, the crew were busy. Alone on board I had no immediate occupation and so I took out my copy of the Intelligencer and after reading the column which went under my name and noting the incredible bad taste which had diluted when it had not excluded everything I had written, I turned as for consolation to the marketquotations. The Dow-Jones average was down again, as might be expected since the spread of the weed had unsettled the delicate balance of the stockmarket. My eyes automatically ran down the column and over to the corner where stocks were quoted in cents to reassure my faith in Consolidated Pemmican and Allied Concentrates. There it was, immovable through any storm or stress or injudicious investment by Albert Weener, "CP&AC ... 1/16."

I must have raised my eyes from the newspaper just about the time the fog lifted. Before us, like the smokewreath accompanying the discharge of some giant cannon, the green mass volleyed into the sea. It did not slope gently like a beach or offer a rugged shoulder to be gnawed away as a rocky cliff, but thundered forward into the surging brine, yielding but invincible, a landforce potent as the wave itself. Hundreds of feet into the air it towered, falling abruptly in a sharp wall, its ends and fringes merging with the surf and wallowing in happy freedom. The breakers did not batter it for it offered them no enmity to rage and boil upon, but giving way with each surge, smothered the eternal anger of the ocean with its own placid surety.

The seagulls, the helldivers, pelicans, seapigeons had not been affected. Resting briefly on the weed, they winged out for their food and returned. It mattered no more to them that the manmade piers and wharves, the seacoast towns, gypjoints, rollercoasters, whorehouses, cottages, hotels, streets, gastanks, quarries, potterykilns, oilfields and factories had been swallowed up than if some old wreck in the sand, once offering them foothold, had been taken back by the sea. If I thought the grass awesome from the land, monotonous from the air, it seemed eternal from the water.

But impressive as it was from any angle, there were just so many things I could say about it. My art, unlike Slafe's, not permitting of endless repetition, I was glad to get back to the Pomona office, to pad what little copy I had, retire into the small tent I shared with six other sufferers from the housing shortage, and attempt some sleep.

31. The course mapped for the saltband caused almost as much controversy, anguish and denunciation as the proposal itself. Cities and towns fought to have the saltband laid between them and the approaching grass, understandably ignoring larger calculations and considerations. Cattle ranchers shot at surveying parties and individual farmers or homeowners fought against having their particular piece of property covered with salt. The original plan had contemplated straight lines; eventually the band twisted and turned like a typewriter ribbon plagued by a kitten, avoiding not only natural obstacles, but the domains of those with proper influence.

Recovery plants worked three shifts a day to pile up great mounds of the white crystals, which were hauled to the airfields by trains and trucks. The laden trucks moved over the highways bumper to bumper; the freighttrains' engines nosed the cabooses of those in front. All other goods were shunted on sidings, perishables rotted, valuables went undelivered; all transportation was reserved for the salt.

Not only was the undertaking unprecedented for its magnitude, but the urgency and the breakdowns, bottlenecks, shortages and disruptions caused by the grass itself added to the formidable accomplishment. But the people were aroused and aware of danger, and they put almost the same effort behind the saltsowing as they would have in turning out instruments of war.

The sowing itself was in a way anticlimactic. By the whim of Le ffacase I went in one of the planes on the first day of the task. My protests, as always, proving futile, I spent a very boresome time flying backandforth over the same patch of ground. That is, it would have been boresome had it not been for the dangers involved, for in order to sow the salt evenly and thickly it was necessary to fly low, to hedgehop, the pilot called it. If the parachutejump had unnerved me, the flying at terrific speed straight toward a tree, hill or electricpowerline and then curving upward at the last second to miss them by a whisper must have put gray in my hair and taken years from my life.

The rivers, washes and creeks on the inner edge had been roughly dammed to lessen future erosion of the salt and inappropriately gay flags marked the boundaries of the area. Owing to our speed the salt billowed out behind us like powdery fumes, but beyond the evidence of this smoky trail we might merely have been a group of madmen confusedly searching for some object lost upon the ground.

In reporting for the Intelligencer it was impossible to dramatize the event; even the rewritemen were baffled, for under the enormous head SALT SOWN they could not find enough copy to carry over from page one.

32. The sowing of the salt went on for weeks, and the grass leaped forward as if to meet it. It raced southward through Long Beach, Seal Beach and the deserted dunes to Newport and Balboa; it came east in a fury through Puente and Monrovia, northeastward it moved into Lancaster, Simi and Piru. Only in its course north did the weed show a slower pace; by the time we had been forced to leave Pomona for San Bernardino it had got no farther than Calabasas and Malibu.

The westward migration of the American people was abruptly reversed. Those actually displaced by the grass infected others, through whose homes they passed in their flight, with their own panic. Land values west of the Rockies dropped to practically nothing and the rich farms of the Great Plains were worth no more than they had been a hundred years before. People had seen directly, heard over the radio, or read in newspapers of the countless methods vainly used to stop the grass and there was little confidence in the saltband's succeeding where other devices had failed. True, there were hereandthere individuals or whole families or even entire communities obstinate enough to scorn flight, but in the opinion of most they were like pigheadedly trustful peasants who cling, in the face of all warning, to homes on the slopes of an active volcano.

It was generally thought the government itself, in creating the saltband, was making no more than a gesture. Whatever the validity of this pessimism, the work itself was impressive. Viewed from high in the air only a month after the start it was already visible; after two months it was a thick, glistening river winding over mountain, desert, and what had been green fields, a white crystalline barrier behind which the country waited nervously.

When the salt had been first proposed, batches had been dumped in proximity to the grass, but the quantity had been too small to demonstrate any conclusion and observers had been immediately driven from the scene of the experiments by the grass.

Nevertheless, the very inclusiveness of these trials confirmed the doubts of the waiting country as the narrow gap before the salt was closed and the weed rolled to it near Capistrano. I would like to think of the meeting as dramatic, heightened by inaudible drumrolls and flashes of invisible lightning. Actually the conflict was pedestrian.

Manipulated once more by my tyrant, I was stationed, like other reporters and radiomen, in a captive balloon. For the utmost in discomfort and lack of dignity let me recommend this ludicrous invention. Cramped, seasickened, inconvenienced—I don't like to mention this, but provisions for answering the calls of nature were, to say the least, inadequate—I swayed and rocked in that inconsiderable basket, chilled, blinded by the dazzle of the salt, knocked about by gusts of irresponsible wind, and generally disgusted by the uselessness of my pursuit. A telescope to the eye and constant radioreports from shuttling planes told of the approaching grass, but under the circumstances weariness rather than excitement or anxiety was the prevailing emotion.

At last the collision came. The long runners, curiously flat from the air, pushed their way ahead. The salt seemed no more to them than bare ground, concrete, vegetation, or any of the hundred obstacles they had traveled. Unstutteringly the vinelike stolons went forward. A foot, two, six, ten. No recoil, no hesitation, no recognition they were traversing a wall erected against them.

Behind these first outposts, the higher growth came on, and still farther off the great bulk itself reared skyward, blotting out the horizon behind, threatening, inexhaustible. It seemed to prod its precursors, to demand hungrily ever more and more room to expand.

But the creeping of the runners over the first few feet of salt dwindled to a stop. This caused experienced observers like myself no elation; we had seen it happen many times before at the encountering of any novel obstacle, and its only effect had been to make the weed change its tactics in order to overcome the obstruction, as it did now. A second rank moved forward on top of the halted first, a third upon the second and so on till a living wall frowned down upon the salt, throwing its shadow across it for hundreds of ominous yards. It towered erect and then, repeating the tactic invariably successful, it toppled forward to create a bridgehead from which to launch new assaults.

The next day new stolons emerged from the mass, but now for the first time excitement seized us up in our bobbing post of observation. Not only were the new runners visibly shorter in length but they crept forward more slowly, haltingly, as though hurt. This impression was generally discredited, people were surfeited with optimism; they felt our reports were wishful thinking. Their pessimism seemed to be confirmed when the weed repeated its action of the day before, falling ahead of itself upon the salt; and few took stock in our excited announcements that the grass had covered only half the previous distance.

Again the probing fingers poked out, again the reserves piled up, again the mass fell. But it fell far short of a normal leap. There could no longer be any doubt about it; the advance had been slowed, almost stopped. The salt was working.

Everywhere along the entire band the story was the same. The grass rushed confidently in, bit off great chunks, then smaller, then smaller, until its movement ceased entirely. That part which embedded itself in the salt lost the dazzling green color so characteristic and turned piebald, from dirty gray through brown and yellow, an appearance so familiar in its normal counterpart on lawns and vacant lots.

The encircled area filled up and choked with the balked weed. Time after time it essayed the deadly band, only to be thwarted. The glistening fortification, hardly battered, stood triumphant, imprisoning the invader within. Commentators in trembling voices broke the joyful news over every receivingset and even the stodgiest newspapers brought out their blackest type to announce GRASS STOPPED!

33. The President of the United States, as befitted a farmer knowing something of grasses on his own account, issued a proclamation of thanksgiving for the end of the peril which had beset the country. The stockmarket recovered from funereal depths and jumped upward. In all the great cities hysterical rapture so heated the blood of the people that all restraints withered. In frantic joy women were raped in the streets, dozens of banks were looted, thousands of plateglasswindows were smashed while millions of celebrants wept tears of 86 proof ecstasy. Torn tickertapes made Broadway impassable and the smallest whistlestops spontaneously revived the old custom of uprooting outhouses and perching them on the church steeple.

I had my own particular reason to rejoice coincident with the stoppage of the grass. It was so unreal, so dreamlike, that for many days I had trouble convincing myself of its actuality. It began with a series of agitated telephone messages from a firm of stockbrokers asking for my immediate presence, which because of my assignments, failed to reach me for some time. So engrossed was I in the events surrounding the victory over the grass I could not conceive why any broker would want to see me and so put off my visit several times, till the urgency of the calls began to pique my curiosity.

The man who greeted me was runcible, with little strands of sickly hair twisted mopwise over his bald head. His striped suit was rumpled, the collar of his shirt was wrinkled, and dots of perspiration stood out on his upperlip and forehead. "Mr Weener?" he asked. "Oh, thank God, thank God."

Completely at a loss, I followed him into his private office. "You recall commissioning us—when we were located in Pomona—to purchase some shares of Consolidated Pemmican and Allied Concentrates for your account?"

To tell the truth, while I had not forgotten the event, I had been sufficiently ashamed of my rashness to have pushed all recollection of the transaction to the back of my mind. But I nodded confirmingly.

"No doubt you would be willing to sell at a handsome profit?"

Aha, I thought, the rise of the market has sent Consolidated Pemmican up for once beyond its usual 1/8. I am probably a rich man and this fellow wants to cheat me of the fruits of my foresight. "You bought the stock outright?"

"Of course, Mr Weener," he affirmed in a hurt tone.

"Good. Then I will take immediate delivery."

He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his lip and forehead with evident inefficiency for the perspiration either remained or started afresh. "Mr Weener," he said, "I am authorized to offer you six times—six times," he echoed impressively, "the amount of your original investment. This is an amazing return."

If it was worth it to him, it was worth it to me. "I will take immediate delivery," I repeated firmly.

"And no brokerage fees involved," he added, as one making an unbelievable concession.

I shook my head.

"Mr Weener," he said, "I have been empowered to make you an incredible tender for your stock. Not only will the boardofdirectors of Consolidated Pemmican return to you six times the amount of your investment, but they will assign to you, over and above this price, 49 percent of the company's votingstock. It is a magnificent and unparalleled bid and I sincerely advise you to take it."

I pressed my palms into the back of the chair. I, Albert Weener, was a capitalist. The money involved already seemed negligible, for it was a mere matter of a few thousand dollars, but to own what amounted to a controlling interest, even in a defunct or somnolent corporation, made me an important person. Only a reflex made me gasp, "I will take immediate delivery."

The broker dropped his hands against his thighs. "Mr Weener, you are an acute man. Mr Weener, I must confess the truth. You have bought more shares of Consolidated Pemmican than there are in existence; you not only own the firm, lock, stock and barrel, but you owe yourself money." He gave a weak laugh.

"Above and beyond this, Mr Weener, through an unfortunate series of events due to the confusion of the times—without it, such an absurd situation would never have occurred—several people: our own firm, our New York correspondents, and the present heads of Consolidated Pemmican are liable to prosecution by the Securities Exchange Commission. We can only throw ourselves on your mercy."

I waved this aside magnanimously. "Where is my property located?"

"Well, I believe Consolidated Pemmican has an office in New York."

"Yes, but the factory, the works; where is the product made?"

"Strictly speaking, I understand active operations ceased back in 1919. However, there is a plant somewhere in New Jersey, I think; I'll look it up for you."

My dream of wealth began fading as the whole situation became clear and suspicions implicit in the peculiar behavior of the stock were confirmed. The corporation had evidently fallen into the hands of unscrupulous promoters who manipulated for the small but steady "take" its fluctuations on the market afforded. Without attempting to operate the factory, my reasoning ran, they had taken advantage of the stock's low price to double whatever they cared to invest twice yearly. It was a neat and wellshaped little racket and discovery, as the broker admitted, would have exposed them to legal action. Only my recklessness with the checks from the Weekly Ruminant and the Honeycomb had broken the routine.

But ... they had offered me several thousand dollars, evidently in cold cash. Defunct or not, then, the business was presumably worth at least that. And if they had employed the stock to maintain some sort of income, why, I could certainly learn to do the same. I was an independent man afterall.

Except for the slightly embarrassing detail of being without current funds I was also free of Le ffacase and the Daily Intelligencer. "Mr Blank," I said, "I need some money for immediate expenses."

"I knew youd see things in a sensible light, Weener. I'll have your check in a minute."

"You misunderstand me. I have no intention of giving up any part of Consolidated Pemmican."

"Ah?"

"No."

He looked at me intently. "Mr. Weener, I am not a wealthy man. Above and beyond that, since this grass business started, I assure you any common laborer has made more money than I. Any common laborer," he repeated sadly.

"Oh, I only need about a thousand dollars for immediate outlays. Just write me a check for that much, like a good fellow."

"Mr Weener, how can we be sure you won't call upon us again for more—ah—expensemoney?"

I drew myself up indignantly. "Mr Blank, no one has ever questioned my integrity before. When I say a thousand dollars is all the expensemoney I require, why, it is all the expensemoney I require. To doubt it is to insult me."

"Ah," he said.

"Ah," I agreed.

Reluctantly he wrote the check and handed it to me. Then, more amicably, we settled the details of the stock transfer and he gave me the location of my property. I went back to the Intelligencer office with the springy step of a man who acknowledges no master. In my mind I prepared a triumph: I would wait—even if it took days—for the first bullying word from Le ffacase and then I would magnificently fling my resignation in his face.

34. When the grass was thought to be invincible, Miss Francis, as the discoverer of the compound which started it on its course, was the recipient of a universal if grudging respect. Those whom the grass had made homeless hated her and would have overcome their natural feeling of protection toward a woman sufficiently to lynch her if they could. Men like Senator Jones instinctively disliked her; others, like Dr Johnson, detested her, but no one thought of her lightly, even when they glibly coupled the word nut with her name.

When it was found the saltband worked Miss Francis immediately became the butt of all the ridicule and contumely which could be heaped upon her head. What could you expect of a woman who meddled with things outside her province? Since she had asserted the grass would absorb everything, its failure to absorb the salt proved beyond all doubt she was an ignoramus, a dangerous charlatan, and a crazy woman, better locked up, who had destroyed Southern California to her own obscure benefit. The victory over the grass became a victory over Miss Francis; of the ordinary gumchewing moviegoing maninthestreet over the pretentious highbrow. She was ignominiously ejected from her chickenhouse-laboratory on the ground that it was more needed for its original use, and she was jeered at in every vehicle of public expression. In spite of my natural chivalry, I cannot say I pitied her in her fall, which she took with an unbecoming humility amounting to arrogance.

35. It was amazing how quickly viewpoints returned to an apparent normality as soon as the grass stopped at the saltband. That it still existed, in undisputed possession of nearly all Southern California after dispersing and scattering millions of people all over the country, disturbing by its very being a large part of the national economy, was only something read in newspapers, an accepted fact to be pushed into the farthest background of awareness, now the immediate threat was gone. The salt patrol, vigilant for erosions or leachings, a select corps, was alert night and day to keep the saline wall intact. The general attitude, if it concerned itself at all with the events of the past half year, looked upon it merely as one of those setbacks periodically afflicting the country like depressions, epidemics, floods, earthquakes, or other manmade or natural misfortunes. The United States had been a great nation when Los Angeles was a pueblo of five thousand people; the movies could set up in business elsewhere, Iowans find another spot for senescence, the country go on much as usual.

One of the first results of the defeat of the grass was the building, almost overnight, it seemed, of a great city on the east bank of the Salton Sea. Displaced realtors from the metropolis found the surrounding mountains ideally suited for subdivision and laid out romantically named suburbs large enough to contain the entire population of California before the site of the city had been completely surveyed. Beyond their claims, the memorial parks, columbariums, homes of eternal rest and elysian lawns offered choice lots—with a special discount on caskets—on the installmentplan. Magnificent brochures were printed, a skeletal biographical dictionary—$5 for notice, $50 for a portrait—planned, advertisements in leading magazines urged the migration of industry: "contented labor and all local taxes remitted for ten years."

These essential preliminaries accomplished, the city itself was laid out, watermains installed, and paving and grading begun. It was no great feat to divert the now aimless Colorado River aqueduct to the site nor to erect thousands of prefabricated houses. The climate was declared to be unequalled, salubrious, equable, pleasant and bracing. Factories were erected, airports laid out, hospitals, prisons, and insane asylums built. The Imperial and Coachella valleys shipped their products in at low cost, and as a gesture to those who might suffer from homesickness it was called New Los Angeles.

Perhaps in relief from the fear and despair so recently dispelled, New Los Angeles began to boom from the moment the mayor first handed the key to a passing distinguished visitor. It grew and spread as the grass had grown and spread, the embryonic skeletons of its unborn skyline rivaled the height of the green mass now triumphant in its namesake, presenting, as newsphotographers were quick to see, an aspect from the west not entirely dissimilar to Manhattan's.

To New Los Angeles, of course, the Daily Intelligencer moved as soon as a tent large enough to house its presses could be set up. But I did not move with it. For some reason, perhaps intuitively forewarned of my intention, Le ffacase never gave me the opportunity to humiliate him as I planned. On the contrary, I received from him, a few days before the paper's removal, a silly and characteristic note: "Since the freak grass has been stopped it seems indicated other abnormalities be terminated also. Your usefulness to this paper, always debatable, is now clearly at an end. As of this moment your putative services will be no longer required. W.R.L."

Bitter vexation came over me at having lost the opportunity to give this bully a piece of my mind and my impulse was to go immediately to his office and tell him I scorned his petty paycheck, but I reflected a man of his nature would merely find some tricky way of turning the interview to his malicious satisfaction and he would know soon enough it was the paper which was suffering a loss and not I.

I started next morning and drove eastward toward my property, quite satisfied to leave behind forever the scenes of my early struggles. The West had given me only petty irritations. In the East, with its older culture and higher level of intelligence, I looked forward to having my worth appreciated.



FOUR

Man Triumphant ... II

36. Everything I had visualized in the broker's office turned out too pessimistically accurate. Consolidated Pemmican and Allied Concentrates was nothing but a mailing address in one of the most forlorn of Manhattan buildings, long before jettisoned by the tide of commerce. The factory, no bigger than a very small house, was a brokenwindowed affair whose solid brick construction alone saved it from total demolition at the playful hands of the local children. The roof had long since fallen in and symbolical grass and weeds had pushed their way through cracks in the floor to flourish in a sickly and surreptitious way.

The whole concern, until my stock purchase, had been the chattel and creature of one Button Gwynnet Fles. In appearance he was such a genuine Yankee, lean and sharp, with a slight stoop and prying eyes, that one quite expected a straw to protrude from between his thin lips or have him draw from his pocket a wooden nutmeg and offer it for sale. After getting to know him I learned this apparent shrewdness was a pure defense mechanism, that he was really an artless and ingenuous soul who had been taught by other hands the swindle he practiced for many years and had merely continued it because he knew no way of making an honest living. He was, like myself, unattached, and disarmed whatever lingering suspicions of him I might have by offering to share his quarters with me until I should have found suitable accommodations.

The poor fellow was completely at my mercy and I not only forbore, generously, to press my advantage, but made him vicepresident of the newly reorganized concern, permitting him to buy back a portion of the stock he had sold. The boom in the market having sent our shares up to an abnormal 1/2, we flooded our brokers with selling offers, at the same time spreading rumors—by no means exaggerated—of the firm's instability, buying back control when Consolidated Pemmican reached its norm of 1/16. We made no fortunes on this transaction, but I was enabled to look ahead to a year on a more comfortable economic level than ever before.

But it was by no means in my plans merely to continue to milk the corporation. I am, I hope, not without vision, and I saw Consolidated Pemmican under my direction turned into an active and flourishing industry. Its very decrepitude, I reasoned, was my opportunity; starting from scratch and working with nothing, I would build a substantial structure.

One of the new businesses which had sprung up was that of personally conducted tours of the grass. After the experience of Gootes and myself, parachute landings had been ruled out as too hazardous, but someone happily thought of the use of snowshoes and it was on these clumsy means that tourists, at a high cost and at less than snail's pace, tramped wonderingly over the tamed menace.

My thought then, as I explained to Fles, was to reactivate the factory and sell my product to the sightseers. Food, high in calories and small in bulk, was a necessity on their excursions and nourishing pemmican high in protein quickly replaced the cloying and messy candybar. We made no profit, but we suffered no loss and the factory was in actual operation so that no snoopers could ever accuse us of selling stock in an enterprise with a purely imaginary existence.

I liked New York; it accorded well with my temperament and I wondered how I had ever endured those weary years far from the center of the country's financial life, its theaters and its great human drama. Give me the old Times Square and the East Fifties any day and you can keep Death Valley and functional architecture. I was at home at last and I foresaw a future of slow but sure progress toward a position of eminence and respectability. The undignified days of Miss Francis and Le ffacase faded from my mind and I was aware of the grass only as a cause for selling our excellent pemmican.

I won't say I didnt read the occasional accounts of the weed appearing in Time or the newspapers, or watch films of it in the movies with more than common interest, but it was no longer an engrossing factor in my life. I was now taken up with larger concerns, working furiously to expand my success and for a year after leaving the Intelligencer I doubt if I gave it more than a minute's thought a day.

37. The band of salt remained an impregnable bulwark. Where the winter rains leached it, new tons of the mineral replaced those washed away. Constant observation showed no advance; if anything the edge of the grass impinging directly on the salt was sullenly retreating. The central bulk remained, a vast, obstinate mass, but most people thought it would somehow end by consuming itself, if indeed this doom were not anticipated by fresh scatterings of salt striking at its vitals as soon as the rains ceased.

No more than any other reader, then, was I disquieted by the following small item in my morning paper:

FREAK WEED STIRS SPECULATION

San Diego, Mar 7. (AP) An unusual patch of Bermuda grass discovered growing in one of the city parks' flower beds here today caused an excited flurry among observers. Reaching to a height of nearly four feet and defying all efforts of the park gardeners to uproot it, the vivid green interloper reminded fearful spectators of the plague which over ran Los Angeles two years ago. Scientists were reassuring, however, as they pointed out that the giantism of the Los Angeles devil grass was not transmissible by seed and that no stolons or rhizomes of the abnormal plant had any means of traveling to San Diego, protected as it is by the band of salt confining the Los Angeles growth.

I was even more confident, for I had seen with my own eyes the shoots grown by Miss Francis from seeds of the inoculated plant. A genuine freak, this time, I thought, and promptly forgot the item.

Would have forgotten it, I should say, had I not an hour later received a telegram, RETURN INSTANTLY CAN USE YOUR IMPRESSIONS OF NEW GRASS LEFFACASE. I knew from the fact he had only used nine of the ten words paid for he considered the situation serious.

The answer prompted by impulse would, I knew, not be transmitted by the telegraph company and on second thought I saw no reason why I should not take advantage of the editor's need. Business was slack and I was overworked; a succession of petty annoyances had driven me almost to a nervous breakdown and a vacation at the expense of the New Los Angeles Daily Intelligencer sounded pleasantly restful after the serious work of grappling with industrial affairs. Of course I did not need their paltry few dollars, but at the moment some of my assets were frozen and a weekly paycheck would be temporarily convenient, saving me the bother of liquidating a portion of my smaller investments.

Besides, if, as was barely possible, this new growth was in some unbelievable way an extension of the old, it would of course ruin our sales of pemmican to the tourists and it behooved me to be on the spot. I therefore answered: CONSIDER DOUBLE FORMER SALARY WIRE TRANSPORTATION. Next day the great transcontinental plane pouterpigeoned along the runway of the magnificent New Los Angeles airport.

I was in no great hurry to see the editor, but took a taxi instead to the headquarters of the American Alpinists Incorporated where there was frank worry over the news and acknowledgment that no further consignments of pemmican would be accepted until the situation became more settled. I left their offices in a thoughtful mood. Pausing only to wire Fles to unload as much stock as he could—for even if this were only a temporary scare it would undoubtedly affect the market—I finally drove to the Intelligencer.

Knowing Le ffacase I hardly expected to be received with either cordiality or politeness, but I was not quite prepared for the actual salute. A replica of his original office had been devised, even to the shabby letters on the door, and he was seated in his chair beneath the gallery of cartoons. He began calmly enough when I entered, speaking in a low, almost gentle tone, helping himself to snuff between sentences, but gradually working up into a quite artistic crescendo.

"Ah, Weener, as you yourself would undoubtedly put it in your inimitable way, a bad penny always turns up. I could not say canis revertit suam vomitem, for it would invert a relationship—the puke has returned to the dog.

"It is a sad thought that the listless exercise which eventuated in your begetting was indulged in by two whose genes and chromosomes united to produce a male rather than a female child. For think, Weener, if you had been born a woman, with what gusto would you have peddled your flaccid flesh upon the city streets and offered your miserable dogsbody to the reluctant use of undiscriminating customers. You are the paradigmatic whore, Weener, and I weep for the physiological accident which condemns you to sell your servility rather than your vulva. Ah, Weener, it restores my faith in human depravity to have you around to attempt your petty confidence tricks on me once more; I rejoice to find I had not overestimated mankind as long as I can see one aspect of it embodied in your 'homely face and bad complexion,' as the great Gilbert so mildly put it. I shall give orders to triplelock the pettycash, to count the stampmoney diligently, to watch all checks for inept forgery. Welcome back to the Intelligencer and be grateful for nature's mistakes, since they afford you employment as well as existence.

"But enough of the friendly garrulousness of an old man whose powers are failing. Remove your unwholesomelooking person from my sight and convey the decrepit vehicle of your spirit to San Diego. It is but a gesture; I expect no coherent words from your clogged and sputtery pen; but while I am sufficiently like yourself to deceive the public into thinking you have written what they read, I am not yet great enough scoundrel to do so without your visiting the scene of your presumed labors. Go—and do not stop on the way to draw expensemoney from the cashier for she has strict orders not to pay it."

Jealousy, nothing but jealousy, I thought, first of my literary ability and now of my independence of his crazy whims. I turned my back deliberately and walked slowly out, to show my contempt for his rantings.

In my heart, now, there was little doubt the new grass was an extension of the old and it didnt take more than a single look at the overrun park to confirm this. The same creeping runners growing perceptibly from instant to instant, the same brilliant color, the same towering central mass gorged with food. I could have described it line by line and blade by blade in my sleep. I wasted no more time gazing at it, but hurried away after hardly more than a minute's inspection.

I could take no credit for my perceptivity since everyone in San Diego knew as well as I that this was no duplicate freak, but the same, the identical, the fearsome grass. But a quite understandable conspiracy had been tacitly entered into; the knowledge was successfully hushed until property could be disposed of before it became quite worthless. The conspiracy defeated itself, however, with so many frantic sellers competing against each other and the news was out by the time the first of my new columns appeared in the Intelligencer.

The first question which occurred to those of us calm enough to escape panic was, how had the weed jumped the saltband? It was answered simultaneously by many learned professors whose desire to break into print and share the front page with the terrible grass overcame their natural academic reticence. There was no doubt that originally the peculiar voracity of the inoculated plant had not been inherited; but it was equally uncontroverted that somehow, during the period it had been halted by the salt, a mutation had happened and now every wind blowing over the weed carried seeds no longer innocent but bearing embryos of the destroyer.

Terror ran before the grass like a herald. The shock felt when Los Angeles went down was multiplied tenfold. Now there was no predictable course men could shape their actions to avoid. No longer was it possible to watch and chart the daily advance of a single body so a partially accurate picture could be formed of what might be expected tomorrow. Instead of one mass there were countless ones; at the whim of a chance wind or bird, seeds might alight in an area apparently safe and overwhelm a community miles away from the living glacier. No place was out of range of the attack; no square foot of land kept any value.

The stockmarket crashed, and I congratulated myself on having sent Fles orders to sell. A day or two later the exchanges were closed and, shortly after, the banks. Business came to a practical standstill. The great industries shut down and all normal transactions of daily life were conducted by means of barter. For the first time in threequarters of a century the farmer was topdog; his eggs and milk, his wheat and corn and potatoes he could exchange for whatever he fancied and on his own terms. Fortunately for starving citydwellers his appetite for manufactured articles and for luxuries was insatiable; their automobiles, furcoats, costumejewelry, washingmachines, files of the National Geographic, and their periodfurniture left the city flat for the farm, to come back in the more acceptable form of steaks, butter, fowl, and turnips. The whole elaborate structure of money and credit seemed to disappear overnight like some tenuous dream.

The frenzied actions of the humanbeings had no effect on the grass. The saltband still stood inviolate, as did smaller counterparts hastily laid around the earlier of the seedborne growths, but everywhere else the grass swept ahead like a tidalwave, its speed seemingly increased by the months of repression behind. It swallowed San Diego in a gulp and leaped beyond the United States to take in Baja California in one swift downward lick. It sprang upon the deserts, whose lack of water was no deterrent, now always sending little groups ahead like paratroopers or fifthcolumnists; they established positions till the main body came up and consolidated them. It curled up the high mountains, leaving only the snow on their peaks unmolested and it jumped over struggling rivers with the dexterity of a girl playing hopscotch.

It lunged eastward into Arizona and Nevada, it swarmed north up the San Joaquin Valley through Fresno and spilled over the lip of the High Sierras toward Lake Tahoe. New Los Angeles, its back protected by the Salton Sea, was, like the original one, subjected to a pincer movement which strangled the promising life from it before it was two years old.

Forced to move again, Le ffacase characteristically demanded the burden fall upon the employees of the paper, paying them off in scrip on the poor excuse that no money was available. I saw no future in staying with this sinking ship and eager to be back at the center of things—Fles wrote me that the large stock of pemmican which had been accumulating without buyers could now be very profitably disposed of—I severed my connection for the second time with the Intelligencer and returned to my proper sphere.

This of course did not mean that I failed to follow each step of the grass; such a course would have been quite impossible since its every move affected the life and fortune of every citizen. By some strange freak it spared the entire coast north of Santa Barbara. Whether it had some disinclination to approach saltwater—it had been notably slow in its original advance westward—or whether it was sheer accident, San Luis Obispo, Monterey and San Francisco remained untouched as the cities to the south and east were buried under grassy avalanches. This odd mercy raised queer hopes in some: perhaps their town or their state would be saved.

The prostration of the country which had begun with the first wave of panic could not be allowed to continue. The government moved in and seized, first the banks and then the railroads. Abandoned realestate was declared forfeit and opened to homesteading. Prices were pegged and farmers forced to pay taxes in produce.

Although these measures restored a similitude of life to the nation, it remained but a feeble imitation of its previous self. Many of the idle factories failed to reopen, others moved with painful caution. Goods, already scarce, disappeared almost completely and at the same time a reckless disregard of formerly sacred symbols seized upon the people. The grass was coming, so what good was the lot on which they were paying installments? The grass was coming, so why gather together the dollars to meet the interest on the mortgage? The grass was coming—what was the use of depositing money in the bank which would probably go bust tomorrow?

The inflation would have been worse had it not been for the pegged prices and other stern measures. The glut on the labor market was tremendous and wages reached the vanishing point in a currency which would buy little. Suddenly, the United States, which had so long boasted of being the richest country in the world, found itself desperately poor.

Government work projects did little to relieve the suffering of the proletariat. Deaths from malnutrition mounted and the feeble strikes in the few operating industries were easily and quickly crushed by starving strikebreakers ashamed of their deed yet desperately eager to feed their hungry families. Riots broke out in New York and Detroit, but the police were fortunately wellfed and the arms wielding the blackjacks which crushed the skulls of the undernourished rioters were stout.

There was a sweeping revival of organized religion and men too broke to afford the neighborhood movie flocked to the churches. Brother Paul, now on a national hookup, repeated his exhortations to all Christians, urging them to join their Savior in the midst of the grass. There was great agitation for restraining him; more reserved pastors pointed out that he was responsible for increasing the national suicide rate, but the Federal Communications Commission took no action against him, possibly because, as some said, it was cheaper to let a percentage of the surplus population find an ecstatic death than to feed it.

On political maps the United States had lost not one foot of territory. Population statistics showed it harbored as many men, women, and children as before. Not one tenth of the national wealth had been destroyed by the grass or a sixth of the country given up to it, yet it had done what seven wars and many vicissitudes had failed to do: it brought the country to the nadir of its existence, to a hopeless despondency unknown at Valley Forge.

At this desperate point the federal government decided it could no longer temporize with the clamor for using atomic power against the grass. All the arguments so weighty at first became insignificant against the insolent facts. It was announced in a Washington pressconference that as soon as arrangements could be made the most fearful of all weapons would be employed.

38. No one doubted the atomicbomb would do the trick, finally and conclusively. The searing, volcanic heat, irresistible penetration, efficient destructiveness and the aftermath of apocalyptic radiation promised the end of the grass.

When I say no one, of course I mean no clearthinking person of vision with his feet on the ground who didnt go deliberately out of his way to look for the dark side of things. Naturally there were crackpots, as there always are, who opposed the use of the bomb for various untenable reasons, and among them I was not surprised to find Miss Francis.

Though her pessimistic and unpopular opinions had been discredited time and again, the newspapers, possibly to enliven their now perpetually gloomy columns with a little humor, gave some space to interviews which, with variations predicated on editorial policy, ran something like this:

Will you tell our readers what you think of using the atom bomb against the grass?

I think it at the very best a waste of time; at the worst, extremely dangerous.

In what way, Miss Francis?

In every way. Did you ever hear of a chain-reaction, young man? Or radioactivity? Can you conceive, among other possibilities—and mind, this is merely a possibility, a quite unscientific guess merely advanced in the vain hope of avoiding one more folly—of the whole mass becoming radioactive, squaring or cubing its speed of growth, or perhaps throwing before it a lethal band miles wide? Mind you, I'm not anticipating any of this, not even saying it is a probability; but these or similar hazards may well attend this illconsidered venture.

You speak strongly, Miss Francis. None of the rather fantastic things you predict followed Hiroshima, Nagasaki or Bikini.

In the first place, I tried, with apparent unsuccess, to make it clear I'm not predicting. I am merely mentioning possibilities. In the second place, we don't know exactly what were the aftereffects of the previous bombs because of a general inability to correlate cause and effect. I only know that in every case the use of the atomic bomb has been followed at greater or lesser intervals by tidal waves, earthquakes and other 'natural' phenomena. Now do not quote me as saying the Hilo tidal wave was the result of the Nagasaki bomb or the Chicagku earthquake, the Bikini; for I didnt. I only point out that they followed at roughly equal intervals.

Then you are opposed to the bomb?

Common sense is. Not that that will be a deterrent.

What would you substitute for it?

If I had a counteragent to the grass ready I would not be wasting time talking to reporters. I am working on one. When it is found, by me or another, it will be a true counteragent, changing the very structure and habit of Cynodon dactylon as the Metamorphizer changed it originally. External weapons, by definition, can at best, at the very best, merely stop the grass—not render it innocuous. Equals fighting equals produce only deadlocks.

And so on. The few reputable scientists who condescended to answer her at all and didnt treat her views with dignified silence quickly demonstrated the absurdity of her objections. Chainreactions and radioactive advanceguard! Sundaysupplement stuff, without the slightest basis of reasoning; not a mathematical symbol or laboratory experiment to back up these fictional nightmares. And not use external weapons, indeed! Was the grass to be hypnotized then? Or made to change its behaviorpatterns through judicious sessions with psychoanalysts stationed along its periphery?

Whether because of Miss Francis' prophesies or not, it would be futile to deny that a certain amount of trepidation accompanied the decision to use the bomb. Residents of Arizona wanted it dropped in California; San Franciscans urged the poetic justice and great utility of applying it to the very spot where the growth originated; all were in favor of the devastation at the farthest possible distance from themselves.

Partly in response to this pressure and partly in consideration of other factors, including the possibility of international repercussions, the Commission to Combat Dangerous Vegetation decided on one of the least awesome bombs in the catalogue. Just a little bomb—hardly more than a toy, a plaything, the very smallest practicable—ought to allay all fears and set everyone's mind at rest. If it were effective, a bigger one could be employed, or numbers of smaller ones.

This much being settled, there was still the question of where to initiate the attack. Edge or heart? Once more there was controversy, but it lacked the enthusiasm remembered by veterans of the salt argument; a certain lassitude in debate was evident as though too much excitement had been dissipated on earlier hopes, leaving none for this one. There was little grumbling or soreness when the decision was finally confirmed to let fall the bomb on what had been Long Beach.

When I read of the elaborate preparations being made to cover the great event, of the special writers, experts, broadcasters, cameramen, I was thankful indeed I was no longer a newspaperman, arbitrarily to be ordered aloft or sent aboard some erratic craft offshore on the bare chance I might catch a comprehensive or distinctive enough glance of the action to repay an editor for my discomfort. Instead, I sat contentedly in my apartment and listened to the radio.

Whether our expectations had been too high or whether all the eyewitnesses became simultaneously inept, I must say the spot broadcast and later newspaper and magazine accounts were uniformly disappointing. It was like the hundredth repetition of an oftentold story. The flash, the chaos, the mushroomcloud, the reverberation were all in precise order; nothing new, nothing startling, and I imagine the rest of the country, as I did, turned away from the radio with a distinct feeling of having been let down.

First observation through telescope and by airplanes keeping a necessarily cautious distance, showed the bomb had destroyed a patch of vegetation about as large as had been expected. Though not spectacular, the bombing had apparently been effective on a comparatively small segment and it was anticipated that as soon as it was safe to come close and confirm this, the action would be repeated on a larger scale. While hundreds more of the baby bombs, as they were now affectionately called, were ordered and preparations made systematically to blast the grass out of existence, the aerial observers kept swooping in closer and closer with cameras trained to catch every aspect of the damage.

There was no doubt an area of approximately four square miles had been utterly cleaned of the weed and a further zone nine times that size had been smashed and riven, the grass there torn and mangled—in all probability deprived of life. Successive reconnoitering showed no changes in the annihilated center, but on the tenth day after the explosion a most startling observation of the peripheral region was made. It had turned a brilliant orange.

Not a brown or yellow, or any of the various shades of decay which Bermuda in its original form took on at times, but a glowing and unearthly, jewellike blaze.

The strange color was strictly confined to the devastated edge of the bombcrater; airmen flying low could see its distinction from the rest of the mass clear and sharp. In the center, nothing; around it, the weird orange; and beyond, the usual and accustomed green.

But on second look, not quite usual, not quite accustomed. The inoculated grass had always been a shade or two more intense than ordinary Cynodon dactylon; this, just beyond the orange, was still more brilliant. Not only that, but it behaved unaccountably. It writhed and spumed upward in great clumps, culminating in enormous, overhanging caps inevitably suggesting the mushroomcloud of the bomb.

The grass had always been cautious of the sea; now the dazzling growth plunged into the saltwater with frenzy, leaping and building upon itself. Great masses of vegetation, piers, causeways, isthmuses of grass offered the illusion of growing out of the ocean bottom, linking themselves to the land, extending too late the lost coast far out into the Pacific.

But this was far from the last aftereffect. Though attention had naturally been diverted from the orange band to the eccentric behavior of the contiguous grass, it did not go unobserved and about a week after its first change of color it seemed to be losing its unnatural hue and turning green again.

Not the green of the great mass, nor of the queer periphery, nor of uninspired devilgrass. It was a green unknown in living plant before; a glassy, translucent green, the green of a cathedral window in the moonlight. By contrast, the widening circle about it seemed subdued and orderly. The fantastic shapes, the tortured writhings, the unnatural extensions into the ocean were no longer manifest, instead, for miles around the ravaged spot where the bomb had been dropped, the grass burst into bloom. Purple flowers appeared—not the usual muddy brown, faintly mauve—but a redviolet, brilliant and clear. The period of generation was abnormally shortened; seed was borne almost instantly—but the seed was a sport.

It did not droop and detach itself and sink into the ground. Instead, tufted and fluffy, like dandelion seed or thistledown, it floated upward in incredible quantities, so that for hundreds of miles the sky was obscured by this cloud bearing the germ of the inoculated grass.

It drifted easily and the winds blew it beyond the confines of the creeping parent. It lit on spots far from the threatening advance and sprouted overnight into great clumps of devilgrass. All the anxiety and panic which had gone before was trivial in the face of this new threat. Now the advance was no longer calculable or predictable; at any moment a spot apparently beyond danger might be threatened and attacked.

Immediately men remembered the exotic growth of flowers which came up to hide some of London's scars after the blitz and the lush plantlife observed in Hiroshima. Why hadnt the allwise scientists remembered and taken them into account before the bomb was dropped? Why had they been blind to this obvious danger? Fortunately the anger and terror were assuaged. Observers soon discovered the mutants were sterile, incapable of reproduction. More than that: though the new clumps spread and flourished and grew rapidly, they lacked the tenacity and stamina of the parent. Eventually they withered and dwindled and were in the end no different from the uninoculated grass.

Now a third change was seen in the color band. The green turned distinctly blue and the sharp line between it and the rest of the weed vanished as the blueness shaded out imperceptibly over miles into the green. The barren spot made by the bomb was covered; the whole mass of vegetation, thousands of square miles of it, was animated by a surging new vigor, so that eastward and southward the rampant tentacles jumped to capture and occupy great new swaths of territory.

Triumphantly Brother Paul castigated the bombardiers and urged repentance for the blasphemy to avert further welldeserved punishment. Grudgingly, one or two papers recalled Miss Francis' warning. Churches opened their doors on special days of humiliation and fasting. But for most of the people there was a general feeling of relief; the ultimate in weapons had been used; the grass would wear itself out in good time; meanwhile, they were thankful the effect of the atomicbomb had been no worse. If anything the spirit of the country, despite the great setback, was better after the dropping of the bomb than before.

I was so fascinated by the entire episode that I stayed by my radio practically all my waking hours, much to the distress of Button Fles. Every report, every scrap of news interested me. So it was that I caught an item in a newscast, probably unheard by most, or smiled aside, if heard. Red Egg, organ of the Russian Poultry Farmers, editorialized, "a certain imperialist nation, unscrupulously pilfering the technical advance of Soviet Science, is using atomic power, contrary to international law. This is intolerable to a peace-loving people embracing 1/6 of the earth's surface and the poultrymen of the Collective, Little Red Father, have unanimously protested against such capitalist aggression which can only be directed against the Soviet Union."

The following day, Red Star agreed; on the next, Pravda reviewed the "threatening situation." Two days later Izvestia devoted a column to "Blackmail, Peter the Great, Suvarov and Imperialist Slyness." Twentyfour hours after, the Ministerial Council of the Union of Soviet Republics declared a state of war existed—through no action of its own—between the United States and the Soviet Union.

39. At first the people were incredulous. They could not believe the radio reports were anything but a ghastly mistake, an accidental garbling produced by atmospheric conditions. Historians had told them from their schooldays of traditional Russian-American friendship. The Russian Fleet came to the Atlantic coast in 1862 to escape revolutionary infection, but the Americans innocently took it as a gesture of solidarity in the Civil War. The Communist party had repeated with the monotony of a popular hymntune at a revival that the Soviet Union asked only to be let alone, that it had no belligerent designs, that it was, as Lincoln said of the modest farmer, desirous only of the land that "jines mine." At no point were the two nations' territories contiguous.

Agitators were promptly jailed for saying the Soviet Union wasnt—if it ever had been—a socialist country; its imperialism stemming directly from its rejection of the socialist idea. As a great imperialist power bursting with natural resources it must inevitably conflict with the other great imperialist power. In our might we had done what we could to thwart Russian ambition; now they seized the opportunity to disable a rival.

Congressmen and senators shredded the air of their respective chambers with screams of outrage. In every speech, "Stab in the back" found an honorable if monotonous place. Zhadanov, boss of the Soviet Union since the death of the sainted Stalin, answered gruffly, "War is no minuet. We do not wait for the capitalist pigs to bow politely before we rise to defend the heritage of Czar Ivan and our own dear, glorious, inspiring, venerated Stalin. Stab in the back! We will stab the fascist lackeys of Morgan, Rockefeller and Jack and Heinze in whatever portion of the anatomy they present to us."

As usual, the recurring prophets who hold their seances between hostilities and invariably predict a quick, decisive war—in 1861 they gave it six weeks; in 1914 they gave it six weeks; in 1941 they gave it six weeks—were proved wrong. They had been overweeningly sure this time: rockets, guided missiles or great fleets of planes would sweep across the skies and devastate the belligerents within three hours of the declaration of war—which of course would be dispensed with. Not a building would remain intact in the great cities nor hardly a civilian alive.

But three hours after Elmer Davis—heading an immediately revived Office of War Information—announced the news in his famous monotone, New York and Chicago and Seattle were still standing and so, three days later, were Moscow and Leningrad and Vladivostok.

Astonishment and unbelief were nationwide. The Empire State, the Palmolive Building, the Mark Hopkins—all still intact? Only when commentators, rummaging nervously among old manuscripts, recalled the solemn gentlemen's agreement never to use heavierthanaircraft of any description should the unthinkable war come, did the public give a heartfelt sigh of relief. Of course! Both the Soviet Union and the United States were nations of unstained honor and, rather than recall their pledged word, would have suffered the loss of a dozen wars. Everyone breathed easier, necks relaxed from the strain of scanning the skies; there would be neither bombs, rockets, nor guided missiles in this war.

As soon as the conviction was established that the country was safe from the memory of Hiroshima, panic gave place to relief and for the first time some of the old spirit was manifest. There was no rush to recruitingstations, but selectiveservice, operating smoothly except in the extreme West, took care of mobilization and the war was accepted, if not with enthusiasm, at least as an inescapable fate.

The coming of the grass had not depleted nor unbalanced the country's resources beyond readjustment, but it had upset the sensitive workings of the national economy. This was tolerable by a sick land—and the grass had made the nation sick—in peacetime; but "war is the health of the state" and the President moved quickly.

All large industries were immediately seized, as were the mines and means of transportation. A basic fiftyfivehour workweek was imposed. A new chief of staff and of naval operations was appointed and the young men went off to camp to train either for implementing or repelling invasion. Then came a period of quiet during which both countries attacked each other ferociously over the radio.

40. In the socialistic orgy of nationalizing business, I was fortunate; Consolidated Pemmican and Allied Concentrates was left in the hands of private initiative. Better than that, it had not been tied down and made helpless by the multiplicity of regulations hampering the few types of endeavor remaining nominally free of regimenting bureaucracy. Opportunity, long prepared for and not, I trust, undeserved, was before me.

In the pass to which our country had come it seemed to me I could be of most service supplying our armed forces with fieldrations. Such an unselfish and patriotic desire one would think easy of realization—as I so innocently did—and I immediately began interviewing numberless officers of the Quartermaster's Department to further this worthy aim.

I certainly believe every corporation must have its rules, otherwise executives would be besieged all day by timewasters. The United States government is surely a corporation, as I always used to say in advocating election of a business administration, and standard procedures and regulations are essential. Still, there ought to be a limit to the number and length of questionnaires to fill out and the number of underlings to interview before a serious businessman can get to see a responsible official.

After making three fruitless trips to Washington and getting exhaustively familiar with countless tantalizing waitingrooms, I became impatient. The man I needed to see was a Brigadier General Thario, but after wasting valuable days and hours I was no nearer reaching him than in the beginning. I had filled out the necessary forms and stated the nature of my business so often I began to be alarmed lest my hand refuse to write anything else and I be condemned for the rest of my life to repeat the idiotic phrases called for in the blank spaces.

I am afraid I must have raised my voice in expressing my exasperation to the young lady who acted as receptionist and barrier. At any rate she looked startled, and I think pressed a button on her desk. A pinkfaced, whitemustached gentleman came hastily through the door behind her. The jacket of his uniform fitted snugly at the waist and his bald head was sunburnt and shiny.

"What's this? What's this? ... going on here?"

I saw the single star on his shoulderstraps and ventured, "General Thario?"

He hid his white mustache with a forefinger pink as his cheeks. "Yes. Yes. But you must have an appointment to speak to me. That's the rule, you know. Must have an appointment." He appeared extremely nervous and harassed, his eyes darting back to the refuge of his office, but he was evidently held to the spot by whatever distress animated his receptionist.

"General Thario," I persisted firmly, "I quite appreciate your viewpoint, but I have been trying for days to get such an appointment with you on a matter of vital concern and I have been put off every time by what I can only describe as redtape. I am sorry to say so, General Thario, but I must repeat, redtape."

He looked more worried than before and his eyes ranged over the room for some escape. "Know just how you feel," he muttered, "Know just how you feel. Horrible stuff. Swaddled in it here. Simply swaddled in it. Strangled." He cleared his throat as though to disembarrass it of a garrote. "But, uh, hang it, Mr—"

"Weener. Albert Weener. President of Consolidated Pemmican and Allied Concentrates Incorporated."

"—Well, you know, Mr. Weener ... man your position ... appreciate absolute necessity certain amount of routine ... keep the cranks out, otherwise swarming with them, simply swarming ... wartime precautions ... must excuse me now ... terribly rushed ... glad to have met—"

Swallowing the rest of the sentence and putting his hand over his mouth lest he should inadvertently regurgitate it, he started for his office. "General Thario," I pleaded, "a moment. Consider our positions reversed. I have long since established my identity, my responsibility. I want nothing for myself; I am here doing a patriotic duty. Surely enough of the routine you mention has been complied with to permit me to speak to you for five or ten minutes. Do for one moment as I say, General, and put yourself in my place. Think of the discouragement you as a citizen would feel to be hampered, perhaps more than is necessary."

He took his hand down from his mouth and looked at me out of blue eyes so pale as to be almost colorless. "But hang it, you know, Mr Weener ... highly irregular. Sympathize completely, but consider ... don't like being put in such a position ... why don't you come back in the morning?"

"General," I urged, flushed with victory, "give me ten minutes now."

He collapsed. "Know just how you feel ... wanted to be out in the field myself ... no desk soldier ... lot of nonsense if you ask me. Come in, come in."

In his office I explained the sort of contract I was anxious to secure and assured him of my ability to fulfill its terms. But I could see his mind was not intent upon the specifications for fieldrations. Looking up occasionally from a dejected study of his knees, he kept inquiring, in elliptical, practically verbless questions, how many men my plant employed, whether I had a satisfactory manager and if a knowledge of chemistry was essential to the manufacture of concentrates; evading or discussing in the vaguest terms the actual business in hand.

However, he seemed very friendly and affable toward me personally once the chill air of the waitingroom had been left behind and as Button Fles had advised me insistently to entertain without regard to expense any officials with whom I came in contact, I thought it politic to invite him to dinner. He demurred at first, but at length accepted, instructing his secretary to phone his wife not to expect him home early. I suggested Mrs Thario join us, but he shook his head, muttering, "No place for women, Mr Weener, no place for women." Whether this referred to Washington or the restaurant where we were going or to his life largely was not clear.

Wartime Washington was in its usual chaotic turmoil and it was impossible to get a taxi, so we had to walk. But the general did not seem at all averse to the exercise. It seemed to me he rather enjoyed returning the salutes with the greatest punctilio and flourish. On our way we came to one of the capital's most famous taverns and I thought I detected a hesitancy in his stride.

Now I am not a drinking man myself. I limit my imbibing to an occasional glass of beer on account of the yeast it contains, which I consider beneficial. I hope, however, I am no prig or puritan and so I asked casually if he would care to stop in for an appetizer.

"Well, now you mention it, Mr Weener ... hum ... fact is ... don't mind if I do."

While I confined myself to my medicinal beverage the general conducted a most remarkable raid on the bar. As I have hinted, he was in demeanor a mild appearing, if not indeed a timid man. In the course of an hour's conversation no word of profanity, such as is affected by many military men, had crossed his lips. The framed photograph of his wife and daughters on his desk and his respectful references to women indicated he was not the type of soldier who lusts for rapine. But seated before that dull mahogany bar, whatever inhibitions, whatever conventional shackles, whatever selfdenials and repressions had been inculcated fell from him swiftly and completely. He barked his orders at the bartender, who seemed to know him very well, as though he were addressing a parade formation of badly disciplined troops.

Not only did General Thario drink enormously, but he broke all the rules I had ever heard laid down about drinking. He began with a small, squat glass, which I believe is called an Oldfashioned glass, containing half cognac and half ryewhisky. He followed this with a tall tumbler—"twelve full ounces ... none of your eightounce thimbles ... not trifled with"—of champagne into which the bartender, upon his instructions and under his critical eye, poured two jiggers of tropical rum. Then he wiped his lips with a handkerchief pulled from his sleeve and began with a serious air on a combination of benedictine and tequila. The more he imbibed, the longer, more complete and more coherent his sentences became. He dropped his harassed air; his abdomen receded, his chest expanded, bringing to my notice for the first time the rows of ribbons which confirmed his earlier assertion that he was not a desk soldier.

He was sipping curacao liberally laced with applejack when he suggested we have our dinner sent in rather than leave this comfortable spot. "The fact of the matter is, Mr Weener—I'm going to call you Albert if you don't mind—"

I said I didnt mind with all the heartiness at my command.

"The fact of the matter is, Albert, I have devoted my unfortunate life to two arts: the military and the potatory. As you may have noticed, most of the miserable creatures on the wrong side of a bar adopt one of two reprehensible courses: either they treat drinking as though the aim of blending liquids were to imitate some French chef's fiddlefaddle—a dash of bitters, a squirt of orange, an olive, cherry, or onion wrenched from its proper place in the saladbowl, a twist of lemonpeel, sprig of mint or lump of sugar and an eyedropperful of whisky; or else they embrace the opposite extreme of vulgarity and gulp whatever rotgut is thrust at them to addle their undiscerning brains and atrophy their undiscriminating palates. Either practice is foreign to my nature and philosophy. I believe the happiest combinations of liquors are simple ones, containing no more than two ingredients, each of which should be noble—that is to say, drinkable in its own right."