The Night of the Triffids by Simon Clark

it was anyway at that height. The air moaned over the wings of the plane in a near-funereal dirge. One that gave voice to my own suddenly apprehensive feelings.
        'I don't understand,' Seymour said. 'The cloud lies below us. So where is the sun?'
        
***
        
        For half an hour we circled high in that sombre sky. Its profoundly muted redness gave forth little light.
        I glanced along the metal wings of the plane. Above the clouds in daytime sparkling sunlight would usually dance along its length from root to tip. Now the light turned the once silvery surface to the colour of rust.
        'So, it can't be ordinary cloud that's responsible for the darkness,' I ventured at length. 'At least, not thunderclouds.'
        'No,' Seymour agreed. 'They've exacerbated it, there's no doubt about that. But there must be another cloud layer even higher up that's obscuring the sun.'
        'But you said the cloud would probably be no higher than twenty-five thousand feet?'
        'Yes, that is true. But fly higher if you can.'
        I did take the plane up higher. In fact, right to its maximum ceiling of fifty-five thousand feet where no audible engine noise reached the cockpit through the rarefied atmosphere. Here the sky should have been near-black rather than blue. But there was only that gloomy red.
        Even if we'd somehow mistaken the time and flown after sunset we would have seen a brilliant display of diamond-bright stars. It was as if the gods themselves had grown weary of the Earth and drawn a red shroud across its face.
        For some moments I talked to HQ; I half fancied I could hear the Old Man in the background, growling instructions to the ground controller. Every so often a splash of static sounded in my ear as lightning played merry hell in the heavens above the aerodrome. Behind me, Seymour made his notes and took his photographs.
        I glanced at the fuel gauges. The needles indicated the tanks were a quarter full.
        Our time was up. I told Seymour to stow the camera. We were going home.
        I eased back on the power and allowed the plane to descend. Until the very last moments of approach I would be landing blind. The control tower would have to talk me in until I could see the strip's landing lights.
        Already in my mind's eye I could see the radar controller poring over his screen, watching the fat blip of light that was our signal.
        Behind me, Seymour was a little livelier and, although I imagine he was thinking aloud rather than talking to me, he was speculating about the cause of the loss of sunlight. 'Volcanic eruptions can fling out debris into the higher atmosphere, resulting in some sunlight blockage. But never to this degree - at least, not in living memory. The eruption of Krakatoa significantly reduced the amount of sunlight reaching the surface of the Earth: this in turn resulted in lower temperatures globally and that meant a succession of fearful winters and cool summers. But this is unprecedented. To go further, we might speculate that-'
        In my earpiece I heard ground control. 'Reduce altitude to fifteen thousand feet, continue your speed of four hundred knots, maintain course setting of-'
        Again there was a rush of static in my ear that sounded like a wave breaking against a sea wall.
        I waited for the return of the ground controller's steady voice.
        Static still hissed.
        '…Therefore,' Seymour was saying, 'clearly neither water nor ice particles are responsible for this acute diminution of sunlight. If volcanic eruptions aren't responsible then we're forced to-'
        'Ground control,' I said quickly. 'Am no longer receiving. Over.'
        A rush of static. But no voice.
        'Ground control. Do you read me? Over.'
        'The quantity of debris in the upper atmosphere must be phenomenal. One could-'
        'Seymour,' I said sharply.
        'Uhm?'
        'We've a