Lifting his feet high, MacConnachie stepped in after the suitcase and, by drawing his arms behind him and letting them fall, allowed the stalks to come together at his back. He had vanished completely. The stalks might never have been disturbed. The effect was of a stunning theatrical illusion.

Astonished, Ansell did the same, parting the stalks and stepping among them. The two men had disappeared.

Inside the field, they were in a different world. Ansell had had no idea the stalks grew so close together. It was just possible to find room for his feet between them, but his body was caged like a vessel in wickerwork, and every time he moved, as he did now to look about for MacConnachie, the crisp susurration of friction was set up between his shoulders and the dried-out stalks.

So close to his face, these had the appearance of rigid, soured bananas, immensely long and straight, with many brownish scars deeply ingrained in their cracked yellow surfaces, up and down which there hurried hundreds of minute creatures in disordered files. The sense of confinement, of oppression, was intense. He looked to the sky in an attempt to draw clear breath, but only a small patch of that colourless expanse was visible, directly above, between the reaching fingers of the stalks.

He needed desperately to have some contact with MacConnachie, even though he knew him to be close. He whispered: ‘Mac? Mac?’

There was no reply. His whole body began to prickle. He stared fascinated at the little creatures so close to his face, so busy, and the conviction grew suddenly in him that they were swarming up his legs, crawling over his stomach, working their way into his armpits and his crutch. When a tickle crept down his cheek, he nearly screamed; but it was a bubble of oily sweat, nothing more.

Voices came to him, faintly, and he realized for the first time how quiet their new world was; he hadn’t been aware of noise before, but now he was conscious of a filtering blanket of hush. And of a terrible smell that worked against his throat, creating an acrid, acidulous irritation that he was unable to swallow down. It seemed to weep from the stalks in a pungent, invisible vapour, pervasive and nauseating. He called again, louder, ‘Mac?’

‘Shut up!’

It was a harsh whisper, loaded with urgency. Ansell knew at once that something was wrong, and the next moment realized that, however distant the Goon voices might sound, they were in reality close, and MacConnachie was listening to what they said. Suddenly MacConnachie’s face burst through the barrier of stalks.

‘We’ve got to go farther in. We were seen. Swim!’

Ansell understood what he meant. By operating their arms as before, in the manner of the breast stroke, they could cleave a way through the forest of stalks, and close their tracks behind them.