rue, there were hereandthere individuals or whole
families or even entire communities obstinate enough to scorn flight,
but in the opinion of most they were like pigheadedly trustful peasants
who cling, in the face of all warning, to homes on the slopes of an
active volcano.

It was generally thought the government itself, in creating the
saltband, was making no more than a gesture. Whatever the validity of
this pessimism, the work itself was impressive. Viewed from high in the
air only a month after the start it was already visible; after two
months it was a thick, glistening river winding over mountain, desert,
and what had been green fields, a white crystalline barrier behind which
the country waited nervously.

When the salt had been first proposed, batches had been dumped in
proximity to the grass, but the quantity had been too small to
demonstrate any conclusion and observers had been immediately driven
from the scene of the experiments by the grass.

Nevertheless, the very inclusiveness of these trials confirmed the
doubts of the waiting country as the narrow gap before the salt was
closed and the weed rolled to it near Capistrano. I would like to think
of the meeting as dramatic, heightened by inaudible drumrolls and
flashes of invisible lightning. Actually the conflict was pedestrian.

Manipulated once more by my tyrant, I was stationed, like other
reporters and radiomen, in a captive balloon. For the utmost in
discomfort and lack of dignity let me recommend this ludicrous
invention. Cramped, seasickened, inconvenienced--I don't like to mention
this, but provisions for answering the calls of nature were, to say the
least, inadequate--I swayed and rocked in that inconsiderable basket,
chilled, blinded by the dazzle of the salt, knocked about by gusts of
irresponsible wind, and generally disgusted by the uselessness of my
pursuit. A telescope to the eye and constant radioreports from shuttling
planes told of the approaching grass, but under the circumstances
weariness rather than excitement or anxiety was the prevailing emotion.

At last the collision came. The long runners, curiously flat from the
air, pushed their way ahead. The salt seemed no more to them than bare
ground, concrete, vegetation, or any of the hundred obstacles they had
traveled. Unstutteringly the vinelike stolons went forward. A foot, two,
six, ten. No recoil, no hesitation, no recognition they were traversing
a wall erected against them.