A convincing thunder rumbled through the words. He lifted another spadeful of earth.Why had Linda died? Why had she been allowed to become gradually less than human and at last … He shuddered.A good kissing carrion.He planted his foot on his spade and stamped it fiercely into the tough ground.As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.And yet that same Gloucester had called them ever-gentle gods.Besides, thy best of rest is sleep and that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st thy death which is no more.No more than sleep.Sleep. Perchance to dream. His spade struck against a stone; he stooped to pick it up.For in that sleep of death, what dreams? …A humming overhead had become a roar; and suddenly he was in shadow, there was something between the sun and him.He looked up, startled, from his digging,from his thoughts; looked up in a dazzled bewilderment,his mind still wandering in that other world of truer-than-truth, still focused on the immensities of death and deity;looked up and saw, close above him, the swarm of hovering machines.Like locusts they came, hung poised, descended all around him on the heather.And from out of the bellies of these giant grasshoppers stepped men in white viscose-flannels,
