The kon tiki, just a few sticks lashed to an old inner tube, bobbed gently in the sea about a hundred yards off the beach. The square of canvas that served as its sail used to be an oil painting, portraying a vapid-looking lady somewhat past her prime. Every time the canvas flapped, a fine dust shed itself into the sea, looking for all the world like little powdery tears.

        To Jamieson's mind she looked like she deserved to shed them.

        Jamieson doubted the kon tiki would have caught anything at all by now, he simply hadn't been there long enough after he'd got back from town. And it was getting late now. Perhaps he'd better call it a day, there was always the morning.

        He reluctantly got up, pulled the winding stick out of the sand, and set to.

        To his surprise there were a couple of fish on the line, and snapper too. Much relieved, he clouted them over the head with the handle of his fish knife, carefully unhooked them - something he never found easy - and dropped them into his Maori kit. He then carried the kon tiki to its hiding place behind a bush.

        The rough rope sling of the kit notched itself into its usual place on his shoulder as he began the mile-long walk back home. Cloud had piled upon cloud in the dusk of summer sky ahead. Jamieson loved those colors. It made him think of the brickworks and its smoking kilns he had seen on a school visit to Crown Lynn up in Auckland way back when he was in the Primers.

        Smelling that burnt chalk smell again almost made him miss that quick, peculiar flash that lit up those clouds and everything else around. Lightning? Didn't really seem like it somehow...

        He was beginning to think he had somehow imagined it when he heard - and felt - a low rumbling thunder that seemed to come from beneath his feet as well as through the air. Earthquake? He started to tremble inwardly. That one they'd had on the farm way back when he was sixteen was frightening, the worst experience he had ever had. He had been out in the paddocks when it happened, and he hadn't run home that fast since he was a little kiddie. He told himself it was just to see if everyone was all right, but he knew that really... And ever since then, even the slightest jolt...

        It was only when he reached the swing bridge that he noticed the thick, ominously gray cloud sweeping in from the west at an amazing speed. He felt the first drops of rain on his arm as soon as he looked up. Then he couldn't help himself, he began to run. He decided to bypass the swing bridge, the creek was only a foot or so deep at this time of year.

        Only tiredness after his very long day stopped Jamieson from keeping on running flat out through the low bushes fronting the flat, sandy front yard.

        Whatever was going on with the weather hadn't apparently put the cats off though, they poured off the verandah as soon as they saw him. He could swear there were more of them than ever, Old George had certainly been keen on his cats.

        But now it was up to him to get them fed. Normally he would gut the fish in the yard and leave them to it, but that wind was beginning to bring some real rain with it. He jumped up onto the verandah instead and opened them up there. Hardly enough for eight cats - or was it nine, it was hard to tell as they jostled for position, snarling viscously at each other. Bloody animals.

        Pushing the door open, he felt very glad to be inside.

        He never minded the house's rather gloomy late afternoon interior. The headland behind it with its forest of radiata pine meant it only really got the sun in the morning. But it was a good little house, not a shack like so many here on the coast. The photo over its living-room fireplace showed it in its original setting. It had been a turn-of-the-century worker's cottage built right in the center of Auckland, Freeman's Bay in fact. Old George had had friends in the coastal barge business, and they had transported it lock stock and barrel all this way to the Coromandel's East Coast for him when he'd got back from Japan. Another photo showed it on its barge being towed down the Waitemata Harbor. But time had taken its toll, George's sister had talked him into spending the rest of his days with her. So the place had to go on the market, and nobody back at the office really thought there was a market for it.

        Then, to make things worse, Old George had died the day his sister was due to come and pick him up.

        Jamieson had felt really sorry, he had grown to know and like him. He had fought an entirely different kind of war from Dad, who had been at Tobruk and later Crete, or Granddad at Gallipoli. George's war had been in New Guinea, and after the Surrender, lending a hand with J-Force during the Occupation of Japan. Jamieson hadn't fully realized just how different the Pacific War had been until he came across a chocolate-box full of photos at the back of the knife drawer in the kitchen. Whether they were from Hiroshima or Nagasaki he couldn't tell, but they were unlike the ones he had seen in the Herald or The Weekly News. These ones showed burned-out bodies lying under the rubble of those absolutely flattened buildings, and babies that looked like they could be sleeping, except...

        Jamieson had been glad to take his summer holidays a little early to look after the place for a while until the estate could be sorted out and Millie picked up Old George's things. Being a land agent wasn't all just about making money as so many people believed. His Uncle Bert (or `Dirty Berty' as Mum had always called him in spite of his DFC and Bar) had drummed that into him when he went to stay with him in town to learn the business. `Try to do people and you'll just bugger yourself,' he had said time after time.

        Jamieson turned the light on in the washhouse out the back to get some of the bits of firewood Old George had left over from last winter. He had to get a fire going; it was freezing cold, in fact he had even begun to shiver.

        He looked quickly out the tiny window. The way the trees were moving and twisting in the wind made him think of those photos again. And that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

        Then, in spite of all the racket, he heard a heavy pounding on his front door.

        He froze. But he had to do something. So he made himself move back into the house, go down the hall, and open the door to the shadow that he could see behind its twin frosted panes.

        "It's begun...!" Errol shouted at him, stepping straight into the hall and all but pushing Jamieson aside. "They've gone and bloody done it!"

        Jamieson could say nothing.

        "The War! The Third bloody World War!"

        Again Jamieson just stared at him.

        "Heavens..." was all he could manage to say.

        The two men stared at each other for several seconds. Errol Courdenay, tall and thin, his usually cheerful blue-eyed face topped with curly blond hair, was framed now in the hood of his black parka and overtrousers that dripped all over the once-polished wooden floor. Jamieson Mathewson, far more solidly-built than the man before him, was also blue-eyed, but his hair was black and crew cut. He was wearing his customary black singlet, rough woolen trousers, and old cow-cockie boots.

        "No questions, Jim," Errol said to him. "Just come round to my place. Got a couple of friends staying over. That bomb landed on Hamilton, believe it or not. Fallout has to be coming this way. We've got to get out of here."

        "Hamilton..?" was all Jamieson could say.

        "I know. But you'd better believe it. That's what's happened, God knows why. So come on."

        "You don't want to come here? My car's just ten minutes walk - "

        "No need - I've got something better. Believe me. Just come - you don't need to bring anything - we haven't got the time. - Come on!" he urged.

        "Okay, just grab my wet weather gear," Jamieson instantly decided. He had no idea what Errol had in mind, but something in his look made him think he'd better not argue.

        The track round the rocky headland to Errol's shack was more of a half-blind stumble in those conditions, what with the tide being in as well. So he was very glad to see Errol's shack - and it was a shack - when they finally did see it when they were barely a hundred yards away.

        Errol bashed the door twice before he opened it. But he didn't go in, he just stayed on the step and shouted in: "Follow me - and hurry!"

        The two guests when they appeared, looking even more shaken than Errol had, turned out to be Carol Cope and John `Johnstone' Stone, both of whom Jamieson had met during Errol's party a week ago. Carol was small and skinny, and not too good-looking at all with her pointy face and thick circular glasses (but then brainy girls never were pretty). Johnstone - and Jamieson had thought it unfair that people had actually lengthened his name while they struggled to shorten his own - was only slightly smaller than Jamieson himself. He was part-Maori, and looked rather like a cross between Mario Lanza and that Maori singer his Aunt Clarissa admired so much, Inia Te Wiata. He certainly didn't dress like an Opera singer though, in fact he looked like he was still wearing that funny-looking cross-tweed business suit he had the night of that party. With his big soft hands and tiny feet, he probably hadn't done a day's work or kicked a Rugger ball in his life.

        But then Johnstone and Carol were both obviously city folk like Errol himself. Jamieson now remembered there had been few locals apart from himself at that party. Perhaps that was just as well with that damned awful music, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and all the rest of it.

        "Come on..!" Errol urged again as the three greeted each other.

        But to Jamieson's surprise Errol didn't go back down the track towards the sea, instead he headed for his little wooden outhouse. Jamieson saw Carol and Johnstone look at each other, then at Jamieson, but he could look back at them as puzzled as they were. He had assumed Errol had a boat of some sort, though he hadn't seen one on their way here. (In this weather..?)

        "Come on..!" Errol shouted again as he pulled the outhouse's slightly sagging door open with a graunch, fastened it back against a post, then beckoned the others to follow. Jamieson could see that he had somehow stepped right in as if the outhouse was somehow bigger than it looked, but he couldn't see how.

        Carol and Johnstone again looked at each other uncertainly.

        "Hurry - we don't have much time..!" Errol's voice echoed back to them in an odd way.

        "Well, okay, what's to lose?" Johnstone said, shrugging his shoulders. "- Ladies first?" he grinned at Carol as he gestured towards the door.

        But Carol just screwed her face up at him.

        "All right..." he said as he shambled into the outhouse.

         " - Good Grief - I don't believe it!," Jamieson heard Johnstone's voice from within. "Come and have a look at this Carol - and Jim, it's incredible. - I didn't know you had a workshop in here, Errol. I don't see how it all fits..."

        This made Carol very curious. She was in through the door like a shot.

        "Holy Shit..." her voice echoed softly out.

        Jamieson ignored the fact that he had never heard a woman speak like that in his life and raced to have a look himself.

        And he saw as he stepped in and round the dunny itself - just a seat over a small rubbish bin - that it was just what they had said. The entire back of the outhouse had been swung back like a door, which now opened into a dimly-lit workshop of the sort one might find at the back of a garage or woolshed.

        "Didn't know you did carpentry," Johnstone said, gazing round as Carol was doing.

        "There's something odd here..." Carol said suspiciously, looking out the long dusty triple-paned window above the workbench. "What's that house doing there?"

        "I know - there's a lot to this," he said to her. "I'll explain everything just as soon as I can, Carol. - Jim, you might like to shut that door we just came through."

        Jamieson did as he was asked.

        He noticed that Errol looked instantly relieved.

        "Is this some sort of underground bomb-shelter?" Johnstone asked him, looking through the window. "Certainly a very elaborate one."

        "You could say that," Errol said as he opened another door at the other end of the workshop. Jamieson noticed there was a paneled door in the back wall opposite the windows that presumably led to a garage or something.

        Jamieson began to feel confused and uncomfortable as he looked out that window himself and saw a lawn - and the corner of an old colonial-style house about twenty yards away. How could that possibly be there? Errol's outhouse backed onto a cliff, albeit a low one.

        "What's going on here, Errol?" Carol asked Errol as he stepped through the door and gestured towards the house.

        "As I said, I can explain everything at our leisure once we get inside the house," he grinned at her. "Then if you don't like what you see, you can go back to - whatever's out there."

        "Some choice," Johnstone grimaced as he followed Errol out through the door. " - Come on folks, least we can hear what Errol's got to say. - Has he ever let us down?"

        "Huh..!" Carol sniffed. But then her curiosity once again got the better of her and she went through too.

        Jamieson looked back at the door he'd just closed, but decided he could really only follow the others.

        "Any of you read any science fiction by the way?" Errol asked them all as they made their way along the flagstone path to the house.

        "What do you mean?" Carol asked him shrilly.

        "Oh come on Carol, you love it as much as I do," Johnstone laughed.

        "No I don't," she rounded on him. "Straight science only. You know that. Hate all that other stuff. 'Specially Astrology."

        "She studies science up at Varsity back in Auckland," Johnstone explained. "Very clever girl."

        "Thank you so much," she glared at him. "I even read your newspaper stories sometimes. Always know which are yours. Who do you write for now? Truth, isn't it?"

        "Didn't know you read that kind of rubbish," Johnstone laughed.

        Jamieson didn't like this kind of city-folk chitchat at all. And as for that science fiction nonsense, that was written by cranks for fools who should know better. Like all that `flying saucer' tomfoolery.

        Errol just smiled at them in that easy way of his. But that was Errol all over, Jamieson was now beginning to think. Easy life, easy friendships, easy everything. Easy money from somewhere too, no doubt.

        And easy women.

        Jamieson glanced back to the garage they had just left. And it was a garage, in the same style as the house, weatherboards, pitched corrugated iron roof, finials each end. It looked a little wider than normal though, perhaps it was a double. He wondered what it might contain.

        He then looked beyond its other side expecting to see at least part of the outhouse. But it simply wasn't there. Just neatly mown lawn like that surrounding the house ahead, with native trees beyond.

        He looked at the others, but they hadn't apparently noticed anything. He thought straight away of pointing it out to them, but he wasn't sure of what he had actually seen. He didn't know what to do.

        They finally reached the semicircular area of crazy paving in front of the house. It was an old villa, but obviously beautifully maintained. Like so many houses of that kind that could be found on one of New Zealand's older farms or better residential suburbs, the verandah went right round it. So far as he could tell now in the dimming light, the house appeared to be set in a large clearing in the middle of a forest of native trees. A row of nikau palms stood about fifty feet away from each side of the house itself. Small ferns also pushed up against the verandah along the sides, what appeared to be a taller stand grew at the back. The wide front steps divided a flower bed containing blooms of all sorts of bright colors, though it was hard to see these in the dim light.

        It was only now Jamieson noticed that the storm had died down almost as quickly as it had arisen, clear patches were now beginning to appear in the clouds overhead. He could even smell the heady mix of fragrances from the flowers and all the other plants he could see. In fact the place now kind of reminded him of his Aunt Billies's. She too was a passionate gardener, but her house was smaller and only had its verandah along the front. It was also somewhat run down. But then her other passion was the eight or nine stray dogs she looked after. If these had just been the old and useless Collies and Huntaways from farms round the area that she couldn't see `put down', that mightn't have been so bad. But somehow she had picked up two townie dachshunds which nipped, yelped and carried on. Ugly damn things.

        But most of New Zealand's old colonial houses were a lot worse than Auntie Billies's. He himself had sold many that were bulldozed straight away and replaced with flash new brick-and-tile homes. Even their own old house back on the farm had become a hayshed with chooks now laying their eggs in his old bedroom. Penny's pigs rooting round in it all. Got to be modern, with the 1970's just round the corner...

        But that was all over now, wasn't it? Good God...

        He found himself grasping the knob of the handrail at the bottom of the steps. He had all but blacked out.

        "You all right?" Errol was looking at him, concerned. The others were now looking at him too. "Finally really got to you, has it? I'm sorry, guess we'd better get you inside, nice cup of tea. - Give me a hand here, Johnstone..."

        "No, I'm all right," Jamieson waved them off. "I can make it under my own steam. Won't say no to the cuppa though," he tried to grin.

        "That's the spirit - knew you had it in you," Errol said as Jamieson made it onto the verandah with the others. " - You two okay?" he looked back at Johnstone and Carol.

        "To be honest," Carol said, "no. It's beginning to catch up on me too. It's so unreal - and so is this. I can't believe we're underground," she looked up at the `sky'. "No way."

        "Come inside," Errol said as he opened the front door for them. "We have a lot to talk about - and do..."

        The interior of the house as they entered it was just as well kept as the exterior - indeed it all looked as if it had just been recently restored - or even built. Jamieson swore he could still smell the paint and the varnish, and, as they went up the hall with its pictures of New Zealand landscapes of the kind he had seen countless times before, he caught a whiff of the obviously fresh wallpaper.

        "Yes, as you can see, it was built in the old style not too long ago," Errol had noticed them all looking round. "Now, through here is the lounge..." he said they reached a paneled door to their right near the end of the hallway. He opened it and gestured the party through.

        The lounge was pretty much as Jamieson would have expected it to be. Perhaps five yards by five, it had the most curious wallpaper consisting of large vines with roses picked out in gold on a cream background. He remembered having seen similar such papers as the bottom-most layers of the oldest of the colonial houses he had sold. But it certainly suited the room with its comfortable floral-patterned three-piece suit and accompanying side-tables of bright flowers that looked like they came from the flower bed at the front of the house. A bookshelf in the corner near the hall door contained all sorts of large volumes of that same old-but-new look. It even contained a copy of the Encyclopedia Britannica like the one he had seen in school.

        In the center of the room in front of the couch was a low oblong glass-topped table of colonial design in dark teak. On it was a tea and coffee set with five cups and plates neatly set out ready for use, and a muslin-covered tray of cakes and things.

        But sitting in one of the chairs nearest the hall door was a slightly plumpish, even matronly, woman perhaps ten years older than they were. She could have popped in from a Mother's Union meeting. She kind of reminded Jamieson of one of the young wives from the farm next door; blonde, her eyes a calm clear pale blue, hair trimmed shortish but attractively fringed at the bottom. Jamieson couldn't help being attracted to her.

        He suspected Errol felt the same way, for his voice dropped a notch or two as he introduced his friends to her.

        "Everybody, this is Estelle. Estelle, I would like you to meet Carol, Johnstone, and this is my good solid new friend, Jamieson."

        Estelle gazed quietly at each of them in turn as Errol introduced them. When her gaze fell on him, Jamieson knew he had no idea in the world what kind of person she was. And he came from a family who could sum people up in a glance and about three simple words.

        "I'll just pour the tea and coffee, then we'll have our chat," Errol said to them all. "There's a lot we," he nodded to Estelle, "need to tell you just as I am sure you have a lot to ask us. Later on we'll have a nice roast dinner. One thing I have to tell you is that we have no alcohol available, though I am sure we can provide for your special requirements, Johnstone."

        "Thanks, Errol," Johnstone said. It was almost as if they had been talking about his medicine.

        Errol then asked them in turn whether they preferred tea or coffee, Errol and Estelle chose coffee, while Jamieson and the others tea.

        Errol then lifted the cover on the tray. Jamieson saw that the assortment of cakes included slices of both fruit and Madeira cake, and even Pavlova, all of which he loved.

        As they all leaned forward in turn to make their various selections, Jamieson noticed that the huge gilt-framed painting above the fireplace was not a traditional landscape as he would have expected from what he had seen in the hall. In fact it looked like a piece of that horrible modern art which his Auntie Clarissa claimed she loved but which he hated above all else. Across most of its area it showed what appeared to be finely-detailed skeins of bluish-white cloud-like stuff, some of it straight, but most of it in swirling patterns. Here and there were black smudges - and at the center of one he could swear he caught the faintest tiniest pinprick of orange light. He assumed that it was just some funny trick of the eye. At the top left edge he saw a triangle of dark, though the slightly curved edge where it shaded into those white masses was the most delicate shade of sky blue he had ever seen.

        Then his eye caught sight of a patch of browny green to its right with an edge he thought he recognized the shape of...

        "Hey - what are we seeing here, Errol?" Carol's voice stumbled over itself as she called out in sheer terror.

        "You are seeing nothing less than the death of our own lovely planet Earth," Errol replied softly. "And that is not a photograph or a painting. That is happening live, right now, just as you see it. Estelle has an eye -a sort of satellite - above Europe, about six hundred miles up."

         Jamieson began to feel a little frightened. He had seen the odd splotchy black and white image from space on television. This was different.

        " - Bullshit, Errol," Carol shrieked into the stone-dead silence that followed. "Good God, just where are we? We're not underground, that's for sure. - And who are you?" she looked squarely at Estelle. " - And you..!" she now fixed her gaze on Errol himself.

        "Okay, so I lied about us being underground," Errol said simply. "You know I don't have any principles."

        Carol just looked at him too stunned to say anything.

        "We're actually safely out in Space," he then added as if he was actually trying to cheer her up.

        "What the hell do you mean," Carol shouted at him. "You not telling us we're in some sort of `spaceship' do you! You've got to be bullshitting us, Errol. - How did we get from there to here just by - stepping through that smelly old john of yours? Come on..!"

        "It's true," he insisted. "You in fact came through a sort of `gate' in space just behind the seat. I don't know how it works, may be even quite simple for all I know," he glanced at Estelle, "but it does work. There's quite a few of them on board this ship itself, you can try them out later on."

        "So when I stepped through it, my nose was in outer space while my backside was in your dunny where it belonged?" Johnstone laughed nervously.

        "In a manner of speaking, yes," Errol replied. "And there's no limit to distance so far as I know. You can quite literally get spaced out with these things."

        "I don't believe it," Carol said in a low voice.

        "You will," Errol grinned at her. "Just give it time."

         "And you're also saying this house, yard, everything," Johnstone asked him incredulously. "is all - inside - something that can fly through space? That's impossible. You'd need impossibly huge rocket engines."

        "It - if I can call it `it' at all - doesn't use anything like rocket engines - so far as I know," he glanced slightly bemused at Estelle, who quickly shook her head. "What we are in is a living being able to move through space - between stars and galaxies in fact. And Estelle here is a part of that, rather as our own brains are to our bodies. Indeed, she has the same kind of direct communication with her `greater self' if you like."

        "Holy Heaven..." was all Johnstone could say, staring at Estelle as if she was some sort of alien from outer space.

        "Aren't we forgetting something?" Carol screamed. "World War III's just broken out, our whole world's probably gone, and everything and everybody ... - Just what have you gotten us into, Errol? - You didn't actually cause that to happen by any slim chance did you, Estelle?" she pointed at the screen and fixed her with a level stare.

        "No, I did not," she replied. There was no emotion at all in that reply.

        "Perhaps we had better give Errol - and Estelle here - a chance to explain before we go rushing  to conclusions," Johnstone said to her calmly. "As a journalist, I know we aren't supposed to let the facts get in the way of a good story. But any good journalist also knows when he simply shouldn't do that."

        "First, as you can probably imagine already," Errol began, " there is much we simply cannot explain because the technology behind all this - and neither of us knows who created it," he indicated Estelle, " - is clearly way beyond ours. Second, although Estelle is as human as you or I, she just wasn't - born - the same way as you or I. As I say, she came into being as a part of this ship. She represents it in human form if you like - "

        " - We've got to get out of here..." Carol breathed.

        "As I said before, you can go back home or wherever you want to go right now," Errol said to them all. " - Have there been any further bombs dropped on New Zealand?" he then asked Estelle.

        "None so far, only that one on Hamilton." she replied.

        "Why Hamilton of all places," Johnstone asked in a way which in other circumstances would have been dead funny.

        "I have a nasty feeling I can answer that," Carol said. "I remember coming across this cheap and nasty painted tin globe of the world in Woolworths a month or so ago, in fact I think it was a pencil sharpener. I guess it came from Japan or somewhere like that. New Zealand was just two misshapen little blobs of red paint, and only two cities were marked on it, `Dunedin' in small letters, and `Hamilton' in very large capitals."

        "Jesus, Johnstone breathed. "That's just loony enough to have a grain of truth in it somewhere."

        Jamieson couldn't for the life of him see how. In his view selling rubbish like that in shops kiddies could go into shouldn't be allowed.

        "Have you been able to find out by now how the War might have got started?" Errol turned to Estelle.

        "I have been monitoring all communications worldwide since the first bomb was delivered - into Iceland by the way, but so far there has been no indication as to what may have triggered the War," she replied. "And that includes meteorites, volcanic eruptions, electric storms or anything of that nature. What I can say is that those parts of New Zealand not immediately downstream from the small hydrogen bomb Hamilton received have a good chance of survival. You can all go home if you wish, and I shall find some more friends elsewhere. Now that we have met however, I will be sorry to see you go."

        " - Tell you what," Errol suggested. "Estelle now has eyes at all your homes. You can see how your parents, brothers and sisters are all doing. These `eyes' by the way look identical to ordinary houseflies, so they can enter living-rooms and not be noticed - well, you know what I mean. - Can you show us one, Estelle?"

        She pointed up to the ceiling rose. As Jamieson watched, two flies flew out of it. The image on screen changed - and Jamieson could see that it was an image of the five of them as seen from above - in 3D. He nearly jumped.

        "As you can see," Estelle said, "the flies need not be facing towards you or even in the same direction to produce the stereo image you can now see on screen. Now, can you see any difference between these and ordinary houseflies even when you examine them closely?"

        One landed on Carol's knee while the other landed on Jamieson's hand. He couldn't help flinching because he knew it was alien. But when he brought it up to his eye, he could indeed not see anything more than an ordinary fly there.

        He glanced up to see his own face fill that huge screen.

        "Gee, that's amazing..." Johnstone said as the fly left Carol's knee and flew up to land on his outstretched hand. He peered at it closely, then held it up to Carol. Her face then filled the screen, eyes squinting through those thick glasses. Johnstone laughed as the two `flies' then took off and flew back up into the ceiling rose.

        "More tea, coffee, anybody? Cake?" Errol then offered incongruously. Everyone laughed nervously.

        Jamieson realized he had touched neither of his pieces of cake, in fact his fingers had become stuck to his slice of Pavlova. His tea was now probably cold too. Johnstone and Carol had obviously forgotten theirs as well. They all began to eat and drink quickly.

        "Ladies first - Carol..?" Errol asked her, indicating the screen when they had placed their empty cups and plates back on the table.

        "Okay..." she nodded reluctantly.

        Jamieson was shocked by what he then saw. It was clearly an upper middle class living room, he remembered she came from somewhere on Auckland's North Shore. He could see through an open door into the hallway. A middle-aged woman who Jamieson took to be Carol's mother was frantically dialing on the telephone and apparently receiving the engaged signal. But this was hard to hear, for in the center of the room was what was clearly a seventeen-year-old boy sitting legs apart on the floor sobbings his eyes out and wailing like a four-year old kiddie.

        "Danny..!" Carol shouted, and looked at Errol helplessly. Then she looked round at all of them with what appeared to be acute embarrassment.

        "We can get you there straight away," Errol rose from his seat and looked at Estelle. "We'll use the wash-house Gate."

        "No - please..!" Carol screamed. "It's - it's too horrible! There's nothing I can do! My brother had a nervous breakdown about a year ago while studying for his Bursary exams. Nothing has helped him, drugs, doctors, psychiatrists... Mother nearly went out of her mind - and so did I. There's just nothing..!"

        She looked desperately round at them all.

        Suddenly there was a flash of light from the screen, Jamieson noticed Estelle start visibly as he swung his head round to look. He caught a quick glimpse of what looked like a weird photographic negative of that ghastly scene he had just witnessed before it all went black.

        "I'm very sorry, Carol," Estelle said to her gently. "A very large hydrogen bomb has just been dropped on the center of Auckland."

        Carol just froze. Then she started to quiver. Suddenly she screamed, held her hands up to her ears, and burst loudly into tears.

        Johnstone tried to comfort her. Amazingly, Estelle got up from her chair and did the same. Carol seemed to respond to her rather than to Johnstone, indeed it was into her arms she then fell into. The three men looked at each other in surprise.

        "I'll take her to her room I think, Errol," Estelle then said to them both. "I'll have a chat to her, and we'll see what we can do. We may have to wait till the morning."

        Johnstone rose with the two women to lend a hand, but Estelle shook her head quickly. "We'll be all right," she said.

        They both then made their way into the hall. Errol rose to close the door behind them.

        "How did she do that, Errol?" Johnstone looked at him, puzzled.

        "I haven't the faintest idea," he replied. "Estelle is a lovely person. I don't know how considering her weird origins, but she is. I seems she can just - have that effect on people."

        "Even hard-nosed people like Carol."

        "Apparently so. - Now you will have lost a lot of friends back in the city too, won't you Johnstone."

        "Yes," he sighed, "several. Including the four I've been flatting with for years. - I wonder if they threw that End of The World party we all promised ourselves. - Jesus..."

         He put his head in his hands and rubbed them through his hair. Errol went over to him.

        " - I just remembered," Johnstone looked up at him. "Your parents were in England, weren't they?"

        "Yes, they were," Errol replied. " - What about yours?" He asked him after the briefest of silences. "You came from Waihi originally, didn't you? Anybody you want to look in on? - We can't talk to them unfortunately."

        He hesitated for a second. "I'd like to visit my mother. She's never been well."

        "Okay..." Errol looked at the screen.

        The inside of a very small and unpretentious woman's bedroom in what Jamieson instantly recognized as a railway workers cottage appeared on screen. It was very neatly kept with it's tied-back lace curtains, rose-petalled wallpaper, and paintings of little English thatched cottages. Somebody had once used the word `chintzy' to describe such rooms, but he didn't really know what the word meant. The bed over by the far wall was occupied by a Maori woman of late middle years with oddly wispy dark hair, indeed she had a very sickly look about her. It may have been the effect of the two candles on the dressing table near the head of her bed that lit the room, their holders were hard to see in amongst all the other porcelain knick-knacks on it.

         An elaborate mounted brass cross hung over the head of the bed. Two younger women, one light and the other dark, sat in low frilly-backed chairs beside the bed with their backs toward the `fly'. Small and skinny, they didn't seem in much better health than their mother.

        "My mum, and my two sisters, Jilly and Jeany," Johnstone explained. "Mum's obviously having one of her not so good days - hardly surprising now. It's just as well they can pop in and look after her. I s'pose Dad's out on the road somewhere. Guess the power's off - but then I s'pose it would be," he said grimly.

        Suddenly what sounded like a back door slammed shut, and heavy footsteps could be heard approaching.

        "That'll be Dad," Johnstone said with a bitter laugh. "Can't mistake those footsteps. `Forty years in the railways working me guts out to send you to school, and what do I get? A useless bloody tit like you.'"

        The man himself strode into the room and immediately filled it with his presence. He looked like Johnstone might look in twenty years or so, but much bigger, tougher and with an iron brutality about him which made the three women he now regarded visibly shrink.

        "Tolls can't get Auckland at all. Bloody line's out again somewhere as usual. So I s'pose bloody Johnny-boy can keep on enjoying himself as usual, never mind about us. Never done a day's work in his life. Useless bloody tit."

        Suddenly he stopped as if he had heard a sound behind him.

        "Oh boy, hope that thing survives," Johnstone grinned at Errol.

        The man crossed angrily to the little table by the wardrobe and picked up a half-folded newspaper there, nearly knocking the small vase of flowers over. Suddenly he turned on his feet and started to swipe vigorously at the fly with his newspaper. The viewpoint moved crazily, at one stage the man's face slid across the screen like a great big bum-boil about to burst. The view then suddenly jumped to another safely nearer the ceiling.

        Johnstone bellowed with laughter as his great hulk of a father kept swatting at the fly which, caught in the turbulence, apparently couldn't manage to move out of range. But finally, when one of Johnstone's sisters pleaded with him to stop, he paused just long enough for it to zoom out the door quicker than Jamieson had ever seen any fly move.

        "Seen enough, I think, Errol, thanks. Took me long enough to get out of that, no way I'm going back. Obviously they can't move Mum. Jilly and Jeany aren't going to move without her no matter what their husbands, poor sods, might say. So they are all going to get sick or even die there, they are beyond all possible help from anybody, and I don't feel like joining them. - Can I stay on here?" he asked Errol with a grin. Errol just laughed and grinned back at him.

        Jamieson couldn't understand that. You honor your parents no matter what. He had to admit that while his own father might have been tough on him, he was always fair, while Johnstone's might not always have been. But all the same. Honor your parents. That was the Fifth Commandment of God.

        Which meant he had to go home. He really knew that all along, but he had somehow allowed himself to get caught up with these people. Heavens, he didn't really know them at all. And as for this ship, or whatever it was supposed to be. And Estelle...

        "Your turn now, Jamieson," Errol looked at him. "Lucky last. - You've a lot of people back home, haven't you? It'll be a hell of a lot harder for you than - well, for us."

        Johnstone nodded his agreement.

        "No, not really..." he then said to them, standing up slowly. "Because I've already decided to go back. My duty is with them, with my family. You said we could go anywhere, not just back to where we were. I'd like to go back to my parent's farm please. Is that possible?"

        Errol looked at him in genuine disappointment. "That's all right. I knew that out of all of us you would be the most likely not to want to come. But Estelle insisted we at least try."

        " - Pardon?" Johnstone asked him. "Estelle decided who was to come along? I thought you did."

        "We worked it out together," Errol replied. "I mean, I could hardly bring along the people only I wanted, she had to like them too. I made suggestions, she sent her flies in to see if she liked you or not, you were my surviving picks out of thirteen, believe it or not. And by great good luck you and Carol just happened to have dropped by when - "

        " - She spied on us," Johnstone now looked like he was beginning to wonder if he had made the right decision after all.

        "How else could she get to know you? She wanted very much that my friends could be her friends too - in fact I sometimes wondered if finding friends wasn't the whole point of her existence."

        "I'm off," Jamieson said, moving towards the hallway. "I can find my own way back to the garage at least. What do I do from there?"

        "That's okay, I'll take you back," Errol reassured him. "First though we have to pick the best spot. Can't have you appearing out of nowhere - might frighten your family so much they won't want to know you."

        Jamieson suspected Errol had meant that as a joke, but realized while he was saying it that something like that could actually happen. And he was probably right.

        Out of the corner of his eye he could see the image on screen had just changed. It now showed a figure striding down the hill into the small valley where he knew his Dad liked to go to have a quiet smoke. Full of ferns and native trees apart from a few Aussie gums, it was a beautiful place when the sun shone through it, `like a cathedral' his Dad had said to him. But now it was raining heavily, the figure was wearing heavy oilskins. Old Pearl was trotting alongside him. At first he thought it was Dad, but then he realized it was Roy, his younger brother, and he had his gun with him.

        "That's Roy, my younger brother," Jamieson pointed proudly. "He's the brains in our family. First one to go to university - Massey. Comes back during the holidays. So what's he doing going down there this time of night? Should be getting the cows back after milking."

        What troubled him the most was that odd whine that came out of Old Pearl's throat now and then. She always knew when something was up. Well, of course something was up. But all the same, it troubled him. And that gun...

        Roy wasn't going to shoot old Pearl, was he? She still had a good few years of work left in her, she was one of the best little Border Collies in the district. Everybody knew that. And besides, right now we would need everything on our side we could get. Who knew what the future was going to bring now?

        Roy reached the spot where his father had always sat, and sat down there himself. Old Pearl sort of hung back when Roy put his hand out to cuddle her, but she relented. He rubbed her back until her tail wagged, then he pulled her down against him so he could rub her tummy. When she was all relaxed and floppy as she always became, Roy picked up his gun and blew her head off. Then he turned it on himself and blew his own brains out. Jamieson could only stare as the gun flew off into the trees and the two bodies twitched in a ghastly way for a few moments, then lay still.

        "Jesus..." He dimly heard Johnstone say.

        "Move to the house - quick," Errol commanded the screen.

        The viewpoint zoomed across field and paddock like a jetplane before reaching the house. It went in through the open back door, then moved slowly and carefully as if it was cautious as to what it might find. It entered Penny's bedroom first, and found her there, lying on the floor, blood everywhere, her head just a dark tangled bloody mass of hair and little else. She would have been getting ready for dinner.

        " - Kitchen..!" Jamieson himself commanded, and much to his surprise the eye went straight to it. Sure enough, his mother was lying on the floor, her head too was gone. He could see she had been trying to get the old wood stove going, she had come in to get some fat to help get the kindling started.

        "Bobby's room..!" he asked the screen before he realized it might not know where that was. But it did. All it found however was an empty room. Well, of course. He looked at Errol and Johnstone, who were now staring at him in shock and dismay. Suddenly the hall door came open and Estelle and Carol came in. He ignored them.

        "Milking shed, please..!" he commanded the screen.

        The viewpoint went out through the open window above the sink, up over the hedge, across the yard by the tractor shed and hovered over the milking shed railings. It was a complete mess, cows wandering everywhere, bellowing, flicking their tails, agitated that they had been left on their own and that they had not been relieved of their milk at their right time. As the viewpoint wandered over towards the shed itself Jamieson noticed the cows avoided the center of the yard where the two Huntaways, Toss and Flick, lay dead.

        When the fly reached the shed, it became clear that Dad and Bobby had been struggling to milk the entire herd by hand, obviously the power had gone off. They, too, had been shot.

        By Roy, no doubt. No doubt of that at all.

        "I'm very, very, sorry, Jamieson," Estelle had come up to him and sat on the arm of his chair. She put his arms around him and pulled him toward her so that he rested his head against her soft bosom. She stroked his hair in a way which almost made him want to sleep.

        They all gathered round to try and ease his shock and disbelief. He knew then that they were all good people, in spite of their city ways. Including Estelle. He couldn't deny that.

        "Another cup of tea, I think," Errol said, putting the tea things on the tray. "Though perhaps the rest of you would prefer to wait for dinner, which we'd better have fairly soon," he nodded at Estelle. He then took the tray out the hall door towards what Jamieson presumed was the kitchen.

        "I wonder what made him - Roy - do it?" Johnstone pondered as they all sat down and gazed at the screen, now showing a view out across the farm, misty with the rain. "I mean, sure, there's going to be a fair bit of radioactive dust heading that way, and power supplies and things might be erratic, but surely..."

        "It's worse than that, Johnstone, a lot worse," Carol said. "There would be no market for their milk anywhere in the country, or wherever. Grow their own food, sure, but that would eventually poison them. Petrol, fertilizer and things to run the farm, where would all that come from? And all their neighbors would be in exactly the same situation. I guess Roy could see total disaster, and no way out of it."

        "The Boer War, World War One. World War Two, we were all there," Jamieson said to her angrily. "Bobby was thinking of joining up to get to Vietnam. We wouldn't have given up. Don't you believe in God?"

        For once Carol was silent.

        "I wonder if what happened to the whole planet was - like that, but on an immensely greater scale, "Johnstone suggested. "Somebody wanting to save the world from itself. By destroying it."

        "Shut Up, Johnstone," Carol said to him.

        "I am afraid I have some more bad news, everyone," Estelle broke the silence that followed. "Three more bombs have been dropped on the North Island, one on Stratford, the other near Palmerston North, the third on Wellington, where it has also triggered a major earthquake. The three bombs in the country areas were smaller than the two dropped on the major cities, but they are all much dirtier, in fact it appears they were deliberately intended to contaminate as much countryside as possible. Much the same bombing patterns have occurred in Australia, Australia, South Africa and South America. The only significant territories not as yet hit are the South Island, Tasmania, and Antarctica."

        "Jesus..." Johnstone said.

        Errol returned to the living room with a single cup of tea for Jamieson, Jamieson was glad to receive it.

        "More bombs, I'm afraid," Johnstone said to him.

        Estelle repeated what she had just told everyone.

        "Can we just go," Carol said to Errol. "I mean, wherever it was you had in mind to take us. I don't want to stay here. Please. It's just too horrible."

        "We hadn't planned to go anywhere until the morning," he looked at Estelle. "After a good night's sleep - which you're really going to need after all this."

        Jamieson was aware that Errol had avoided looking at him.

        "And Jamieson must be wondering now whether he can go back," Johnstone turned to him. "You can't, surely..."

        "It's certain death," Carol agreed. "A long slow lingering death. You can't, Jamieson. You belong with us now."

        "There's my Uncle Bert in Thames whom I've been staying with over the last year. He's done a lot for me, taught me his trade, being a land agent. I can't just - walk away from him and his family. Save my own skin. There's always a chance. God always sees to that. - Perhaps if I could just take a quick look at Uncle Bert's. Help me make up my mind," he looked up at Estelle. "Do you have a fly there?"

        "Certainly," Estelle looked down at him gently. He could feel her breath on his face.

        The screen showed the inside of what Jamieson knew to be the most modern kitchen money could buy with its gleaming white paint, polished stainless steel, all the latest gadgets. But then the entire house was like that, everything in pastel shades, Knightsbridge carpet wall-to-wall throughout. Huge and palatial, Uncle Bert's implacable Christian honesty and fair dealing in a profession not much higher in the public mind than selling second-hand cars had actually brought him a fortune. But his other reputation was also well established. When the typesetter in the local rag was sacked for inserting the words `For The Best Bit of Dirt in Town' in his usual Land Agency ad in the New Year's edition one year, Uncle Bert not only insisted he be reinstated, but the same words be put in at the same time every year. That was the kind of man he was.

        The kitchen however was empty. The fly moved lazily from room to room as if it were somehow unconcerned, but they were empty too.

        "Can we look at the garage?" Jamieson asked.

        The garage was also empty; Uncle Bert's Mercedes had gone. Was the whole family, Charmaine and Violetta too, away in it?

        Jamieson could now hear the sound of a church bell tolling in the distance, the one he had attended with Uncle Bert and his family.

        "Think they might have gone out to visit you?" Johnstone suggested. "Perhaps even try and bring you back home?"

        "They knew I had my car - and would probably head straight back."

        "Would you have known about the bomb if I hadn't told you?" Errol asked him. "Did you have a radio?"

        "Only a little transistor that didn't pick up anything much," Jamieson replied. " - They could have gone to church," he then realized, listening to the church bells. "In fact that's where they could well be right now after what's happened. Everybody will be. Could you take the fly out onto the main street and toward the center of town?" he asked Estelle. "I can guide you from there."

        Suddenly what sounded like gunshots rang out in the distance. Jamieson froze.

        "No need, I know where to find it," Estelle said. "And we'll certainly look through the center of town," she added as more shots rang out, some of them shotguns.

        The fly went out onto the street, turned right at its intersection with Pollen Street, then flew quickly towards the middle of town, looking left and right down the side streets as it went. All were empty - except Sealy Street in the center of town. Here a large group of Bikies had confronted an equally large and growing group of citizens of all ages, even young kids. Both sides were armed, but nobody had moved yet. He couldn't see who had fired the shots. Could have been to attract attention - and help.

        "Oh no," Carol said under her breath.

        "Jesus," Johnstone said. "One of my flatmates reckoned Bikies and crims would pose a bigger threat to the country than anything else after any Third World War. But we all rubbished him for being prejudiced. We thought the Police or the Army would sort that out. But it looks like old Dickhead was right. Bikies One, Locals Nil before too long, looking at that lot. Hope your Uncle is out of town. Mightn't be too much of it left when he gets back."

        "Come on, Jamieson," Carol was now clearly becoming impatient. "Face the facts."

        "Like Roy did?" he shot back at her.

        "You are probably going to be the only member of that great big huge family of yours to survive that - filth," she pointed at the screen. "Estelle, can't you make him see sense?" she pleaded.

        "You know I can't influence Jamieson's decision in any way at all," she said to her. "If I were to, you or he might hold it against me at some later time."

        "All right, I'll come," Jamieson suddenly made up his mind. "I'm not going to hold you all up any longer. That's Kiwi versus Kiwi, and my Dad was really frightened something like this was going to happen. He thought it would be the finish of us. Just like your - friend said, Johnstone, bombs or no bombs. There really is no hope now."

        The others looked genuinely sad for him that he had had to come to agree with them in this way.

        "I'm sorry, Jamieson," Errol said to him.

        "Perhaps we ought now to have dinner," Estelle said after the silence that followed. "There is a screen like this in the dining room, in fact there are similar screens in all your rooms. You may wish to keep monitoring what is happening on your world, we may even discover what caused this war. However, I can only keep flies down there now for very short periods."

        "I'll bet," Johnstone looked sadly at the screen which showed what Jamieson only now recognized as the remains of Auckland City. It was now just one monstrous crater ghostilly outlined in a sea of burning suburbs. Even the waters around its coastline, what they could see of it, seemed on fire.

         "Dinner..." Errol said awkwardly as he got up from his chair.