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front door. She fussed him as usual, and he accepted it as usual, but refused her offer to make him a snack. She was a great believer in nourishment, and seemed to regard the day in school at Rye as roughly equivalent to an ascent of Everest. In the end he escaped on the double plea of not being hungry and having heavy Physics prep to do. She believed in prep as well, though she thought he worked too hard.
    That wasn’t true, in fact; he was still coasting for the most part, after Dulwich. He worked away steadily, though, glad to have something to occupy his mind so completely but undemandingly. Apart from Physics, there was English and History . . . witches putting the frighteners on Macbeth, Judge Jeffreys decorating the west country with gibbeted rebels. Violent death was something you might as well get used to; it had been around a long time. And only a fool looked for explanations of justifications.
    When he had finished he sat for a time, looking out. His room was at the top of the house and quite big. It ran from the front of the house to the back; his bed was under one window, and the desk at which he sat under the opposite one. This looked over the street, if anything so green and flowery could be called a street. Someone drove a car up, and parked it. Mrs. Mellor from over the road passed slowly along his field of vision, and disappeared. A tabby cat succeeded her, and all was quiescence again.
    Below and faintly he heard the theme music of BBC television news. He might as well go down and watch as not.
    In the sitting room his grandfather and grandmother were in their accustomed armchairs, with the third between them left empty for him. Neil stopped in the doorway, to see if there was anything interesting on. It was only something about the Calcutta Plague starting up again, this time in Karachi.

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    I T WAS STILL CALLED THE Calcutta Plague after it had spread south to Sri Lanka and leapt across the Indian Ocean to a new foothold in Mombasa. Sources of infection were next confirmed in Cairo and Athens. By that time, in recognition of the fact that airlines provided the main channels for its advance, strict checks were being applied to intending travellers.
    But however stringent the controls or co-operative the passengers, it would probably have made little difference. There was a period of some days, it appeared, prior to the fever which was the first symptom ofillness, during which the disease was present in latent form; and in that time the victim was infective. A person conscientiously observing all the regulations could still have unwittingly had a contact, and be a carrier. And not many were scrupulous. Apprehension turned to fear and fear to panic as the hold of the virus spread and tightened.
    The Calcutta part of the name was dropped and forgotten. It was simply the Plague now, and people fled blindly from it, or tried to. The fact that it was the old who were attacked only made matters worse. The old who were poor were helpless, of course; but by and large the old were richer than the young, and were ready to use their money to escape the invisible death. The risk of carrying the disease to places still free of infection did not weigh too heavily with them.
    When its presence was admitted in Frankfurt, the Prime Minister made a speech on television. His manner had the right combination of concern and reassurance. The situation was tragic, but the medical resources of the world were concentrated on seeking a cure. Could anyone believe that science, which had overcome so many of man’s afflictions,would fail in this? No effort or expense would be spared; and Britain, with such names as Jenner and Lister and Fleming as proud a part of her tradition as Nelson or Churchill, would make her full contribution to the common task.
    Meanwhile we must thank God this little island had been spared the scourge. But thankfulness needed to be matched by vigilance. He paused, impressively, his expression