Jeffcott made no further attempt to keep track of the passage of time. Instead he looked out for landmarks.

He saw a lone building with shuttered windows, alone in the desert. It looked as if it had recently been someone's home but it showed no sign of recent habitation except for two wheelie bins standing near the side door. Shortly after, they passed an irrigated field containing young crop plants of some kind that were already beginning to wilt with the failure of the irrigation system. He watched as each landmarks appeared, examined them curiously as they passed them by and then watched as they receded behind them; concrete proof that they were making progress despite the overwhelming impression that lifetimes were passing as they walked across the desert. He had to constantly fight the sensation that they had always been in the desert and would always be in the desert. That his memories of a life before were nothing more than a cruel illusion.

The sun did creep higher, though, and as it did he began to notice something strange about the light. The closest thing he could compare it with was a visit he'd once made to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, just outside London. The windows of one of the greenhouses had been treated with a thin layer of paint to filter out certain wavelengths of light, to protect the delicate plants growing inside. It had seemed perfectly normal and natural then, but now, under the open sky, it gave the arid landscape a strangely ethereal quality that disturbed him. What was more, the air felt humid. It felt close and suffocating, as if they were trekking through a rainforest, but his clothes were dry even though he was sweating heavily in the heat. Just an anomaly effect, maybe, he thought, but when he spoke to the others they told him that they felt the same way. As if there was something inherently wrong with the light, and with the very air they were breathing. No illusion, but something real that could be having a real effect on them.

As they passed more irrigated fields Gruber went over to the newly-germinated plants and pulled one up, examining it closely as he returned to the others. "Look at this," he said, sounding unhappy as he held it up for the others to see.

It looked like a root crop, as far as Jeffcott could see. A young seedling that would have become a turnip, perhaps. He knew what turnips looked like, though, and this one was different. The leaves were very slightly the wrong colour, with more blue than there should have been, and the slight swelling of the root appeared to be segmented, making it resemble a worm. Jeffcott almost expected it to move, to writhe in the doctor's hand, and couldn't keep himself from taking half a step away from it.

"It's horrible!" said Robinson with feeling. "What's wrong with it?"

"Cell Reversal?" suggested Duffy uncertainly. "The same thing that happens to animals in here?"

"Possibly," the doctor replied. "Embryonic development is different in plants than in animals, though. Also, plant cells have cell walls, which makes things more complicated. Plants get tumours just like animals, though, although they tend to be wild and irregular. This, whatever's happening here, looks more organised. The closest thing I can think of is certain virus infections that cause all parts of an infected plant to deform in the same way, but I've never seen anything like this. We should have brought a botanist."

"Get rid of it," said Bright with feeling. "Throw it away."

"I want to take a look at it under the microscope next time we stop," said Gruber, though, gesturing towards the equipment wagon. "See what a thin, stained section looks like."

"You can pick up a weed anywhere," said the linguist. "Throw that away. It'll be all shriveled up soon anyway."

Gruber nodded reluctantly and dropped the plant to the ground. Jeffcott looked at the fields of crops all around them, though, and found himself imagining all those tap roots reaching down into the ground. All of them slowly turning into worms, squirming restlessly and endlessly as if trying to pull themselves up out of the ground...

His mouth was dry and he took a swallow from the water bottle he'd been given. He'd been trying to conserve it but it was less than half full already. "We're going to have to forage for supplies soon," he said.

The Sergeant, who'd had the men on horseback scouting the way ahead, had evidently been thinking the same thing because he called out to everyone around him. "We'll stop for supplies there," he said, pointing to a cluster of buildings ahead of them. it was some kind of industrial complex, they saw, surrounded by a chain-link fence. A signpost identified it as Boswell Chemistry Solutions, for all your organophosphate needs. Arrows directed them to staff parking, visitor parking and deliveries.

"They'll have a staff canteen," the Sergeant added. "Look for bottled water and sealed food containers. Anything that hasn't been exposed to the air."

"It'll all have been tainted by the anomaly," said Duffy doubtfully.

"We can go without food for a while," said Jeffcott, "but we've got to drink. The water should be safe enough. I mean, I don't see what can possibly happen to it to make it dangerous. We can find some distilled water maybe. No dissolved chemicals, no micro-organisms. Just water molecules and nothing else. There's no way it can possibly harm us."

"The subatomic particles it's made of might have been partially unknotted," the other physicist replied. "Who knows how that might affect its chemical and physical properties."

"We've been breathing the air with no ill effects," pointed out Jeffcott, "and that includes living things. Pollen grains, fungal spores. If that hasn't done anything bad to us..."

"And we know very well what lack of water does to the human body," said Summers. "We've got no choice."

"How are you feeling, by the way?" Robinson asked him.

"Fine so far, but it hasn't been long, according to the sun, anyway," said the doctor, looking down at the magnet on his chest, once again protecting his body. "It's too soon to know if I've been affected."

"Distilled water then, if you can find it," Interrupted the Sergeant, sounding annoyed. "I don't know where you'll look for it, though."

"They'll probably have a chemical storeroom," said Duffy. "That's where I'd put it."

"Worth taking a look I suppose," the Sergeant replied. "I'll detail a couple of men to go with you."

He chose Privates Parkin and Dustu, a Native Americn by the look of him, and Jeffcott decided to go with them as well. The four of them headed for the main industrial area of the complex, therefore, while the others made for the staff recreation area, right next to the car park. Behind the buildings, the industrial complex was a maze of pipes, cylinders and towers labelled with strings of numbers that had presumably meant something to the people that had worked there. Here and there were pumps, valves and control boxes. Jeffcott expected that it had once been deafeningly noisy as chemicals were pumped around, mixed and heated, but now everything was still and silent, the only sounds being the wind whispering around the enigmatic sculpture of steel that towered around them.

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Then they saw a warehouse ahead of them and hurried towards it. The door was secured with a large brass padlock, but Parkin found a pile of iron bars stacked nearby and he used one of them to lever it off. It broke with a loud snap and the door swung open.

Jeffcott moved eagerly forward but Dustu put out an arm to stop him. "I will go first," he said. "In case there is danger inside. Parkin will bring up the rear." So saying, he brushed aside the cobwebs and stepped through the door

"What danger do you think might be in here?" asked Jeffcott curiously. "Everyone's dead."

"All the staff, maybe," said Duffy. "All the humans."

"You still think we're going to meet aliens in here?" asked Jeffcott, trying not to smile condescendingly. "Beings from another dimension?"

"Do not mock the existence of the unseen," Dustu said back to him without turning his head. "The world is filled with spirits, both good and evil. I have seen this myself. I know it to be true."

"What have you seen, exactly?" asked Duffy curiously.

"Things that you Europeans, with all your science and your logic, wouldn't understand."

"I'm not European," said Duffy. "I was born on this continent, just a little north of the border, and you might be surprised what I believe."

"Your ancestors were European," the soldier replied, "and you carry your materialistic, reductionist outlook down from generation to generation. There are mysteries that cannot be solved by looking down a microscope. Answers that cannot be gained by scribbling on a blackboard."

"Looking down microscopes and scribbling on blackboards is the only way to uncover the truth," Jeffcott told him. "Yes, there are mysteries we haven't solved yet. We're exploring one of them right now, but the answers will be gained by scientific investigation, not by dreaming in a smoke tent. You can spend your life guessing and dreaming, or you can do an experiment and find out."

"And what if the answers are not to your liking?"

"They're the answers nonetheless. The universe is the way it is, not necessarily the way we'd like it to be."

The soldier turned his head and looked at him, smiling. "Finally, you show wisdom," he said. "Maybe there is hope you you yet."

"Well, that's a turnup for the books," said Parkin from behind them. "You don't often hear Tonto say something nice about us pale faces."

"Are you sure you should be using that kind of racist language?" asked Duffy disapprovingly.

"Oh he don't mind. You should hear some of the things he says about us sometimes. Hey, Tonto, what was it you said about Curly that day? You know what I mean."

"I said nothing that wasn't true. The man is a racist and makes no attempt to hide it. He once told me I should go home to my own country, that immigrants who invade another person's country should be thrown back out. I told him that I agreed completely."

Parkin laughed out loud. "It went right over his head," he said. "He didn't get it at all. And he reckons he's genetically superior. He looks like he's descended from five generations of married cousins."

"We cannot be sure it was five generations," Dustu replied. I could see him smiling from the set of his shoulders. "He cannot count that far."

Both men then laughed. "And he really loved his guns," said Parkin. "I mean, really loved them. Ginny told me once he couldn't have sex unless he was holding a gun in his hand. It was the only way he could get it up. It went off once, Ginny said. Right at the crucial moment. The idiot had his finger on the trigger. Good job it wasn't pointed at her head. No woman would have anything to do with him after that, but I don't think he missed it. Not so long as he had his guns to jerk off to."

"We should keep the humorous anecdotes until we have time for them," said Dustu, though. "We are on duty and should be alert for any danger that might threaten."

"Yeah," said Parkin regretfully. "Right. It was funny, though, wasn't it?"

"It was indeed funny," the other man agreed.

It was dark in the warehouse. Some light was filtering in through small windows high up in the walls but they were grimy and covered with cobwebs. As their eyes adapted to the darkness, though, they saw that it was divided into aisles, like a supermarket, with high shelves on which steel drums and plastic bottles were stored, some marked with hazard symbols. They were also grimy and cobwebby, but one aisle was cleaner than the rest and they went to look at it first.

"We're not going to find what we want here," said Parkin, looking disappointed. "Look at all thus stuff. Harmful, hazardous, corrosive. Sometimes all marked on the same bottle."

"What's that?" said Jeffcott, though.

He pointed to the end of the aisle where there were a number of large plastic bottles, three feet on a side, each sitting on its own wooden pallet. He hurried over to the nearest and read the label. "De-ionised water," he said happily. "Perfect."

"Is that safe to drink?" asked Parkin doubtfully. "They put it in batteries, don't they?"

"It's perfectly safe," Jeffcott replied. "And it's even better than distilled water."

"Tastes horrible though," said Duffy.

"Who cares what it tastes like? Let's go tell the others."

The others had found a couple of dozen bottles of mineral water in the canteen, but the workers had evidently been happy to get most of their drinking water from the mains supply. When the Sergeant turned it on water came out, but no-one was very keen to try it. The discovery of the de-ionised water came as a great relief to everyone, therefore.

"How are we going to transport it?" asked Gruber, staring at the huge containers, each of which must have weighed around a ton.

"There were plenty of two litre soda bottles in the canteen," the Sergeant replied. Empty 'em out, wash 'em out and fill 'em up. We can carry a couple each. That'll be enough to get us to the lab."

"Will they have more de-ionised water there?" asked Bright.

"Plenty," Jeffcott replied. "They use it to clean the equipment. No salts in it to build up on surfaces, you see." The others just nodded blankly, though, apparently happy to take his word for it.

He looked at the nearest thousand litre tank proudly, but then stared in shock. The water was foul, he saw. The sides of the tank were transparent, and through it he could see that it was cloudy and brown with lumps of excrement floating in it. "Oh God, no," he said in disbelief. "What happened to it?"

"What do you mean?" asked Duffy, looking concerned.

"The water. What does it look like to you? I think I'm suffering an anomaly hallucination."

"What are you seeing?" asked Robinson.

"The water looks like sewage. There's shit floating in it."

"Looks fine to me," said Duffy. He turned on the tap at the base of the nearest tank and a thin stream of water poured out of it. To Jeffcott, the warehouse immediately filled with the foul stench of a septic tank and he jumped back to keep the stuff from splashing on his shoes.

He watched in fascination as the other physicist stared at the stream of water. "Looks clean to me," said Duffy. "Smells fine." To Jeffcott's horror the other man then extended a finger into the water and let it splash over his hand. To Jeffcott, it was brown and stank of filth. Duffy raised his finger to his mouth, though, and Jeffcott had to restrain himself from stopping him.

"Tastes fine," he said. "I mean, it's flat and horrible, but it tastes like de-ionised water is supposed to taste. I see nothing wrong with it."

"What about the rest of you?" asked Jeffcott.

"Looks fine to me too," said Robinson. The others nodded their agreement.

"Then it's probably me who's suffering the hallucination," said Jeffcott. "Not you."

The water still looked foul to him, though. He wondered whether he could bring himself to ignore the hallucination and drink it knowing, intellectually, that it was clean and pure. Perhaps when he was thirsty enough.

"The hallucination will end soon," Robinson assured him. "In the meantime, let's get these bottles filled up."

She held the first empty soda bottle under the tap and Jeffcott watched as it filled with the foul, stinking liquid.