"I'll go and let him in, Mummy."
"All right, Dianne. Graham, you'd better go too."
The two children ran to the front door and opened it.
"Hello, John. What did you bring to eat?"
"Mum gave me a few cakes an' biscuits to take, seein' your Mum's makin' all the sandwiches. I swiped a few lollies out of the bottle, too. Oh, yeah, an' I've brought this haversack thing to put all the food in. We can take turns to carry it."
"Oh, Dianne will carry that for us."
"I will not!"
"You have to do what we tell you! You're lucky we're letting you come!"
"Come in, Johnny!" called Mrs Sargeant from the kitchen.
The three children went into the kitchen.
"Johnny brung us a haversack," said Graham.
"That's nice," answered Mrs Sergeant. "He brought a haversack!"
"Yeah, an' he brung us some more food too!"
At last all the food was packed away and Graham, Dianne and John were ready to set out for their picnic in the woods.
"Goodbye children," said Graham's and Dianne's mother. "And don't go too far into the woods. Only go to places you know."
What was the use of exploring places they already knew? The boys knew their way around and, although Dianne protested, they turned away from the familiar track to explore the woods.
"Don't worry, Dianne," said Graham. "I've brought a compass, so we can't get lost."
After a long walk the three adventurers came to a little clearing where they sat down to rest. They realised they were quite hungry so they decided to eat their food.
"Reckon we'd better start heading for home," suggested Johnny. "Hope you know which way to go, Graham.'
"No, I don't." said Graham. "But I'll get my compass out."
He took a little compass from his pocket and placed it on the ground.
"Well," said Johnny, "how do you work it?"
"I - I don't know. I guess you just follow that little blue pointer an' you get home."
"But I don't think we came from that way," said the little girl.
The other two children were looking on in terror, not knowing what to do, but knowing that what they were witnessing at that moment would later happen to them. Their friend was crawling around groaning like an animal. He scuttled towards Graham, then collapsed to the ground as his arms gave way, his hand flying off and hitting Graham's leg. Graham watched this hand as it lay twitching, its fingers falling off one by one. John's other eye fell out and bits of his flesh started dropping off. He was dead.
Graham and Dianne held each other tightly and cried. They had seen their own fate acted out before them.
A few minutes later they were running through the forest. If only they could find somebody, they could get to a doctor and he could fix them up - doctors always could.
Back at the bush of poisonous yellow berries, John's body was disintegrating completely.
"Graham," said Dianne, as they ran along, "I feel itchy."
"So do I, Dianne," said Graham.
And they sat down and cried, waiting for the end.
* * *
"I'm sorry, Mrs Sergeant," said the police chief. "All we could find was a haversack and an arrow on a tree. We followed it of course, but we didn't find the children. I'm afraid there's not much hope now, but we'll keep searching. We can't give up yet."
Mrs Sergeant sat down and wept. She knew she would never see her two children or their friend again.
* * *
Back in the woods, two children were starting to lose their hair.
* * *
"Good news, chief. You know that bush we brought here for some of our food? . . . Yeah, that's right - with yellow berries. Well, some humans ate some of them and they were completely destroyed - not just killed but totally disintegrated. . . . Of course, chief! I was just thinking that! We needn't look any further for a weapon against the Earth people. All we need to do is put extract of these berries into their food and water supplies and, in no time at all, the Earth is ours. We've won the war before any of the humans even knew there was going to be one!"