Floyd stood out on the back porch and stretched his arms and yawned.

Then he took a close look at the weather and he scratched his ribs. Down the street a woman called the family dog and in a little while I heard the flat snap of a screen door shutting and I knew the dog was in.

It was strange, I thought, that there'd been no alarm. Perhaps it was because few people as yet knew about the barrier.

Perhaps the few who had found out about it were still a little numb.

Perhaps most of them couldn't quite believe it. Maybe they were afraid, as I was, to make too much fuss about it until they knew something more about it.

But it couldn't last for long, this morning calm. Before too long, Millville would be seething.

Now, as I followed it, the barrier cut through the back yard of one of the older houses in the village. In its day it had been a place of elegance, but years of poverty and neglect had left it tumbledown.

An old lady was coming down the steps from the shaky back porch, balancing her frail body with a steadying cane.

Her hair was thin and white and even with no breeze to stir the air, ragged ends of it floated like a fuzzy halo all around her head.

She started down the path to the little garden, but when she saw me she stopped and peered at me, with her head tilted just a little in a bird-like fashion. Her pale blue eyes glittered at me through the thickness of her glasses.

"Brad Carter, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes, Mrs Tyler," I said. "How are you this morning?"

"Oh, just tolerable," she told me. "I'm never more than that. I thought that it was you, but my eyes have failed me and I never can be sure."

"It's a nice morning, Mrs Tyler. This is good weather we are having."