Omega

He shook his head. 'Call it professional habit but I've a hunch I can be more useful as a double agent. Might even be able to give you more tip-offs. Tell you what -

I'll go down with your Yankee friend on my way out and have a word with the radio ham. Is he trustworthy?' 'Yes.'

'Then I'll give him a frequency and a daily listening time, and a simple code for "Expect physical attack", "Expect psychic attack" and so on – half a dozen basic messages I might want to send. I'm always giving the radio operators timed code messages for Beehive agents and I don't have to explain them, so I could slip an extra one in if it was urgent to tell you something.'

'Watch that neck of yours.'

'I will.' He smiled. 'Frankly, I'd like to stay with you. But apart from anything else, "where a man's treasure is, there will his heart be also". So I'll be on my way in the morning.'

'What's the treasure's name?' Moira asked. 'Brenda. Throw in a spell for her, when you've a moment. She could do with it,' Gareth Underwood said.

'Have you got a typewriter?' Tonia asked eagerly.

'Typewriter, yes,' Geraint Lloyd said, 'but I'm having to watch the paper. This is a school, remember.'

'You could spare a dozen sheets a week, say, I'm sure. We could do one copy for the village and one for the camp, on notice-boards – and each place would keep the back numbers as archives. Goddam it, man, you're a community asset. You're in touch with the world, even if only in bits and pieces. Passing it on by word of mouth isn't enough. We can have a newspaper.'

Geraint had to admit he found the crop-haired American's enthusiasm infectious. She had arrived with Liz and the camp children and the mysterious Underwood, at nine o'clock, and had been barely able to contain her impatience while Underwood insisted on fifteen minutes in private with

Geraint before he went on his way. Geraint had come out to find she had already arranged for Liz to take charge of both classes for the first hour so that she could have him to herself. Within forty minutes she had sucked his brain dry of everything he had learned and could remember of his radio-collected information from Britain and abroad. She had particularly wanted to know, naturally, about America. He had to tell her that radio reception had been very bad after the earthquake and had only just begun to improve to the point where he could manage occasional exchanges with American hams; a tall aerial which Greg had built for him had helped a lot. The States, from what his scattered contacts could tell him, were in much the same situation as Britain. Population loss seemed to have been slightly less disastrous because although the vinegar-mask a

When Tonia had gleaned all she could, she insisted on being shown his equipment and asking if he would teach her to operate it, so that between them they could increase its hours on the air. Once she had his promise, she plunged into her plan for a village-and-camp newspaper.

'For God's sake,' he laughed when she paused to draw breath, 'not so fast! You'll choke yourself.'

She gri

Liz Warner put her head round the door and asked: 'Could I have him back now, do you think? It's been two hours.'

Eileen stood in the cabin door, tasting the air of sunrise and finding it good. Nobody was yet up except for Greg on sentry patrol and very probably Peter out doing the round of his snares – but she turned aside from that thought; it was too lovely a morning to examine distress. She closed the cabin door behind her and walked.

There had been some reshuffling of sleeping arrangements now that three family cabins were ready. Old Sally had moved in with Angie to share her motor caravan, which by now was cosily lagged and just right for the two older women, who had become close friends. Eileen and two unmarried girl newcomers, now joined by Miriam, had been allocated one of the family cabins which had promptly been dubbed the Spinster Shack. Since the oldest of them was twenty-four, they had taken no more than pretended offence at the name.

Although it was late October – only a few days to go to Samhain – the weather, apart from a couple of damp and chilly weeks at the end of September and begi

This morning Eileen cared nothing for long-range climatology. It was enough that today's sky was soft and clear, that only the gentlest of breezes made sea-sounds in the treetops, that the ground was dry under her rubber sneakers and that she felt no need for a jacket over her sweater and jeans.

She strolled over to Greg who had stopped to talk to the goats tethered among the tree-stumps where daily felling was pushing the edge of the forest back. The goats looked at them with their strange primordial eyes and went on munching. They laughed and left them, Eileen walking beside Greg as he continued his patrol towards the logging lane, round the bend of the tree-line.

'Still an hour to breakfast,' Eileen said. 'I think I'll climb up to the Giant's Bed.'

'Wish I could come with you. It'll be marvellous up there, on a morning like this.'

She waved to him from the edge of the plantation and started walking up one of the dark, straight, two-metre-wide paths that quartered the forest like a chessboard. It was more a tu