"Take care of yourself, boy," Dr. Hallam said as they shook hands.
We turned away, leaving him alone with Polly. In a few minutes she rejoined us, chattering brightly in her usual animated fashion until the plane moved out to the runway and Harry could no longer see us. Then her composure cracked and she cried. Pat and I took her to our place where the two girls buzzed around making breakfast and keeping themselves busy until the shock of parting had worn off a bit for Polly. Over our second cup of coffee she started to talk about it.
"It's a strange thing to say but I'm glad Harry's gone. I just know he never would have been happy with me if he hadn't done it."
"Why do you think that?" I asked.
"He never did tell me much about his people ... no more than he told you-all. I knew he was holding out on me but it wasn't any of my business. These English people don't brag much about themselves and their families. Anyway I knew he felt real bad when he got the S-Flu because as soon as he knew he was sterile he tried to tell me to go find somebody else. He seemed to think because he couldn't give me children I wouldn't want him. I told him I didn't hanker to marry a stud horse but it didn't do much good. I guess having no mother and father and then losing his chance to have kids of his own made him feel low. Maybe this will get it out of his head and he'll be OK," she paused, "that is, if he ever comes back. Somehow I feel deep down that he won't."
"Oh, don't be silly, Polly," Pat shut her up. "You got up too early this morning. Here, have some more hot coffee."
With the coming of spring across the cold northern continents, the big counter-offensive had begun. For years the agricultural scientists had prepared for such an occasion and now they went into action. Naturally it was all top secret but we were among the privileged few, since the border-line between the world of plant pathology and the diseases of man and animals had grown increasingly vague. It was essential that we know of their work and they of ours. Many of the original discoveries in virology had been made by botanical scientists and the first virus to be crystallized, the tobacco mosaic, was a disease confined to the plant world.
Since the Geophysical Year of 1958 and the advent of the space satellites, the meteorologists had made tremendous advances. Using information derived from the weather globes circling the earth, with their data on sun-spots and radar maps of storm centers, plus the mass of information now available through the weather stations in the polar regions, at sea and on land, the weather predictors had become extremely accurate. With seeding techniques, electronically controlled, they had made a start at changing the weather, although, up to now, little of this had been done because of a lack of international agreements. Now they were free to try out their ideas. It was interesting to follow in the newspapers the results of their work, and even more interesting to see how the peoples of the world tried to explain the various events. The great pandemics raging across the earth had resulted in a rush to the churches and the rise of all sorts of weird sects, prophets and calamity howlers. This frantic search for security renewed itself when the new wave of disaster began. To avert suspicion, for a while at least, and also because these great forces could not easily be localised, our NATO allies had to suffer with the Communists. Only the heads of the British Government knew, and they, with their usual courage, had agreed to endure, with the promise of American aid.
The first attack was a weather offensive. Using the jet streams which flowed swiftly to the east, swarms of tiny balloons were released by planes from the American Navy supercarriers in the Atlantic, and from the bombers of the Strategic Air Command cruising in the stratosphere above them. By the use of timing devices these deadly little toys destroyed themselves and dropped the new electronic seeders into the moisture-filled clouds rolling from the Atlantic across Europe. The wettest spring in recorded history was the result. Fields were almost untillable and the hay and grain crops that were planted were never harvested. The wet weather favored the growth of fungus and the rusts and blights so carefully cultivated by our agronomists and seeded into the winds that blew over Europe and Asia, thrived on what remained of the harvest. Further to the east the winds, now emptied of their moisture, sucked water from the steppes of Siberia, where the great new collective farms ordered by Khrushchev had torn up the grasslands. Dust storms scoured off the topsoil. No plants could grow. No animal could survive, lacking both food and water. The greatest migration in living memory was the result. The trek of the Okies out of the dust bowl of the early thirties was a mere trickle compared to the flood of refugees that poured east into Russia or south, down into the desert lands of the Middle East and over the Himalayan barriers. Many died before they got to the borders of India and the other Islamic lands. Many were killed by the reinforced border guards determined to prevent the spread of disease and famine in their own ravaged territories.