"What do the weather experts think has caused it?" he asked.
"None of them seems to know. It certainly has some unusual features. I don't know whether you've noticed, but it doesn't let up, even momentarily." He tilted his head toward the window behind him and Maitland listened to the steady unvarying whine passing through the maze of rooftops and chimneys.
He nodded to Symington. "What's its speed now?"
"About fifty-five. Quite brisk, really. It's amazing that these old places can hold together even at that. I wouldn't like to be in Tokyo or Bangkok, though."
Maitland looked up. "Do you mean they're having the same trouble?"
Symington nodded. "Same trouble, same wind. That's another curious thing about it. As far as we can make out, the wind force is increasing at the same rate all over the world. It's at its highest- about sixty miles an hour-at the equator, and diminishing gradually with latitude. In other words, it's almost as if a complete shell of solid air, with its axis at the poles, were revolving around the globe. There may be one or two minor variations where local prevailing winds overlay the global system, but its direction is constantly westward." He looked at his watch. "Let's catch the ten o'clock news. Should be on now."
He switched on a portable radio, waited until the chimes had ended and then turned up the volume.
"… widespread havoc is reported from many parts of the world, particularly in the Far East and the Pacific, where tens of thousands are homeless. Winds of up to hurricane force have flattened entire towns and villages, causing heavy flooding and hampering the efforts of rescue workers. Our correspondent in New Delhi has stated that the Indian government is to introduce a number of relief measures… For the fourth day in succession shipping has been at a standstill… No news has yet been received of any survivors of the 65,000-ton tanker _Onassis Flyer_, which capsized in heavy seas in the channel ear'y this morning…"
Symington switched the set off, drummed his fingers lightly on the table. "Hurricane is a slight exaggeration. A hundred miles an hour is a devastating speed. No relief work at all is possible; peopie are too busy trying to find a hole in the ground."
Maitland closed his eyes, listened to the drumming of the shutters. Away in the distance somewhere a car horn sounded. London seemed massive and secure, a vast immovable citadel of brick and mortar compared with the flimsy bamboo cities of the Pacific seaboard.
Symington went off into his study, came back a few moments later with a rack of testtubes. He put it down on the table and Maitland sat forward to examine the tubes. There were half a dozen in all, neatly labeled and annotated. They each contained the same red-brown dust that Maitland had seen everywhere for the past few days. In the first tube there was a quarter of an inch, in the others progressively more, until the last tube held almost three inches.
Reading the labels, Maitland saw that they were dated. "I've been measuring the daily dust fall," Symington explained. "There's a rain meter in the garden."
Maitland held up the tube on the right. "Nearly ten cc.'s," he remarked. "Pretty heavy." He raised the tube up to the light, shook the crystals from side to side. "What are they? Looks almost like sand, but where the hell's it come from?"
Symington smiled somberly. "Not from the south coast, anyway. Quite a long way off. Out of curiosity I asked one of the soil chemists at the Ministry to analyze a sample. Apparently this is loess, the fine crystalline topsoil found on the alluvial plains of Tibet and Northern China. We haven't heard any news from there recently, and I'm not surprised. If the same concentrations of dust are falling all over the northern hemisphere, it means that something like fifty million tons of soil has been carted all the way across the Middle East and Europe and dumped on the British Isles alone, equal to the top two feet of our country's entire surface."
Symington paced over to the window, then swung around on Maitland, his face tired and drawn. "Donald, I have to admit it; I'm worried. Do you realize what the inertial drag is of such a mass? It should have stopped the wind in its tracks. God, if it can move the whole of Tibet without even a shrug, it can move anything."
The telephone in the hall rang. Excusing himself, Symington stepped out of the lounge. He closed the door behind him without bothering to replace the strips of felt, and the constant pressure pulses caused by the wind striking the shutters finally jolted the door off its catch.
Through the narrow opening Maitland caught:
"… I thought we were supposed to be taking over the old RAP field at Tern Hill. The H-bomb bays there are over fifteen feet thick, and connected by underground bunkers. What? Well, tell the Minister that the minimum accommodation required for one person for a period longer than a month is three thousand cubic feet. If he crams thousands of people into those underground platforms they'll soon go mad-"
Symington came back and closed the door, then stared pensively at the floor.
"I'm afraid I couldn't help overhearing some of that," Maitland said. "Surely the government isn't taking emergency measures already?"
Symington eyed Maitland thoughtfully for a few seconds before he replied. "No, not exactly. Just a few precautionary moves. There are people in the War Office whose job is to stay permanently three jumps ahead of the politicians. If the wind goes on increasing, say to hurricane force, there'll be a tremendous outcry in the House of Commons if we haven't prepared at least a handful of deep shelters. As long as one tenth of one per cent of the population are catered for, everybody's happy." He paused bleakly for a moment. "But God help the other 99.9."
____________________
Windborne, the sound of engines murmured below the hill crest.
For a moment they echoed and reverberated in the air-stream moving rapidly across the cold earth, then abruptly, 200 yards away, the horizon rose into the sky as the long lines of vehicles lumbered forward. Like gigantic robots assembling for some futuristic land battle, the vast graders and tournadozers, walking draglines and supertractors edged slowly toward each other. They moved in two opposing lines, each composed of 50 vehicles, wheels as tall as houses, their broad tracks ten feet wide.
High above them, behind the hydraulic rams and metal grabs, their drivers sat almost motionless at their controls, swaying in their seats as the vehicles rolled through dips in the green turf. Clouds of exhaust poured from the vehicles' stacks, swept away by the dark wind, the throb of their engines filling the air with menacing thunder.
When the opposing lines were 200 yards from each other their flanks turned at right angles to form a huge square, and the entire assembly ground to a halt.
As the minutes passed only the wind could be heard, rolling and whining through the sharp metal angles of the machines. Then a small broad figure in a dark coat strode rapidly from the windward line of vehicles toward the center of the arena. Here he paused, his head bared, revealing a massive domed forehead, small hard eyes and callous mouth. He turned his face to the wind, raising his head slightly, so that his heavy jaw pointed into it like the iron-clad prow of an ancient dreadnought.
Surrounded by the long lines of machines, he stood looking beyond them, the wind dragging at the flaps of his coat, his eyes questing through the low storm clouds that fled past as if trying to escape his gaze.
Glancing at his watch, he raised his arm, clenched his fist above his head and then dropped it sharply.
With a roar of racing clutches and exhausts, the huge vehicles snapped into motion. Tracks skating in the soft earth, wheels spinning, they plunged and jostled, the long lines breaking into a mass of slamming metal.