Armored Division should have chosen that moment to attack.
Ah! Seventy-six telepathic vegetable intelligences simultaneously registered a giant surge of relief. Lunch!
The armyâs battle plan was simple. Lay down an artillery barrage guaranteed to extinguish every trace of life in a thirty-square-mile area. Then another one. Then one more for luck. Then send in the tanks.
For the next ten hours it was noisy in that part of Florida, and visibility was poor because of the smoke. When the noise had subsided into a deadly silence, and the breeze had cleared away most of the smoke and fumes, there was nothing to be seen except desolation -
- and seventy-six enormous flowers towering over a nightmare scrapyard of twisted metal.
Better? asked the primroses.
A bit , replied the forget-me-nots, spreading well-fed roots among the debris that had once been a complete armoured division and burping. But you know how it is. You quickly get tired of all this tinned food .
Â
With a sonic boom that shattered windows and played merry hell with television reception all over the state, Philly Nine flew over Miami, heading for the pall of smoke.
Swooping low, he turned a jaunty victory roll over the straggling column of refugees that clogged the interstate highway in both directions for as far as the eye could see. A ragged cheer broke out at ground level. The poor fools! If only they knew.
The wildflowers werenât hard to find; they were, by now, the tallest things in Florida. Spread out in a loose column, they were lurching at an alarming speed along the deserted tarmac of a ten-lane expressway. Huge lumps of asphalt came away each time their roots moved. Behind them the earth was a glistening muddy brown.
Philly Nine skirted round them in a wide circle, easily evading the outstretched tendrils of the forget-me-nots. As he flew, he hugged himself with joy. This was going to be fun!
He was, however, still in two minds. His original plan had been an unquenchable wave of fire that would shrivel up the flowers and then sweep irresistibly onwards, north-east, until the entire continent was reduced to ash. On mature reflection, however, he couldnât help feeling that that was a waste of the opportunity of an eternal lifetime. America is, after all, only one continent, surrounded on all
sides by oceans. As he studied the column of marauding flora weaving its grim course, he couldnât help reflecting that this lot would probably be more than capable of having the same net effect if left to their own devices. What he wanted was something a bit more universal in its application; something that wouldnât grind to a jarring halt as soon as it hit the beaches . . .
Philly Nine stopped dead in mid-air and slapped his forehead melodramatically with the heel of his hand. Of course! Heâd been looking at this entirely the wrong way round.
He accelerated, heading due north. In a quarter of an hour he was over Alaska; at which point he slowed down, rubbed his hands together to get the circulation going and looked around for something to work with.
At the North Pole he alighted, materialised a roll of extra-strong mints, popped the whole tube into his mouth and chewed hard. Then he took a deep breath, and exhaled.
The ice began to melt.
Â
A word, at this stage, about Insurance.
There are your big insurance companies: the ones who own pretty well everything, who take your money and then make you run round in small, frantic circles whenever you want to claim for burst pipes or a small dent in your offside front wing. Small fry.
There is Lloyds of London: the truly professional outfit who will insure pretty well any risk you choose to name so long as youâre prepared to spend three times the value of whatever it is youâre insuring on premiums. As is well known, Lloydâs is merely a syndicate of rich individuals who underwrite the risks with their own massive private fortunes. Slightly larger fry, but
Ah! Seventy-six telepathic vegetable intelligences simultaneously registered a giant surge of relief. Lunch!
The armyâs battle plan was simple. Lay down an artillery barrage guaranteed to extinguish every trace of life in a thirty-square-mile area. Then another one. Then one more for luck. Then send in the tanks.
For the next ten hours it was noisy in that part of Florida, and visibility was poor because of the smoke. When the noise had subsided into a deadly silence, and the breeze had cleared away most of the smoke and fumes, there was nothing to be seen except desolation -
- and seventy-six enormous flowers towering over a nightmare scrapyard of twisted metal.
Better? asked the primroses.
A bit , replied the forget-me-nots, spreading well-fed roots among the debris that had once been a complete armoured division and burping. But you know how it is. You quickly get tired of all this tinned food .
Â
With a sonic boom that shattered windows and played merry hell with television reception all over the state, Philly Nine flew over Miami, heading for the pall of smoke.
Swooping low, he turned a jaunty victory roll over the straggling column of refugees that clogged the interstate highway in both directions for as far as the eye could see. A ragged cheer broke out at ground level. The poor fools! If only they knew.
The wildflowers werenât hard to find; they were, by now, the tallest things in Florida. Spread out in a loose column, they were lurching at an alarming speed along the deserted tarmac of a ten-lane expressway. Huge lumps of asphalt came away each time their roots moved. Behind them the earth was a glistening muddy brown.
Philly Nine skirted round them in a wide circle, easily evading the outstretched tendrils of the forget-me-nots. As he flew, he hugged himself with joy. This was going to be fun!
He was, however, still in two minds. His original plan had been an unquenchable wave of fire that would shrivel up the flowers and then sweep irresistibly onwards, north-east, until the entire continent was reduced to ash. On mature reflection, however, he couldnât help feeling that that was a waste of the opportunity of an eternal lifetime. America is, after all, only one continent, surrounded on all
sides by oceans. As he studied the column of marauding flora weaving its grim course, he couldnât help reflecting that this lot would probably be more than capable of having the same net effect if left to their own devices. What he wanted was something a bit more universal in its application; something that wouldnât grind to a jarring halt as soon as it hit the beaches . . .
Philly Nine stopped dead in mid-air and slapped his forehead melodramatically with the heel of his hand. Of course! Heâd been looking at this entirely the wrong way round.
He accelerated, heading due north. In a quarter of an hour he was over Alaska; at which point he slowed down, rubbed his hands together to get the circulation going and looked around for something to work with.
At the North Pole he alighted, materialised a roll of extra-strong mints, popped the whole tube into his mouth and chewed hard. Then he took a deep breath, and exhaled.
The ice began to melt.
Â
A word, at this stage, about Insurance.
There are your big insurance companies: the ones who own pretty well everything, who take your money and then make you run round in small, frantic circles whenever you want to claim for burst pipes or a small dent in your offside front wing. Small fry.
There is Lloyds of London: the truly professional outfit who will insure pretty well any risk you choose to name so long as youâre prepared to spend three times the value of whatever it is youâre insuring on premiums. As is well known, Lloydâs is merely a syndicate of rich individuals who underwrite the risks with their own massive private fortunes. Slightly larger fry, but
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