Kerans and Bodkin paddle to the testing station.

Kerans lets slip that they're leaving in three days, which makes him feel like he's losing control of his motives. He tells Hardman how to operate a set of alarm clocks and Hardman insists that he has begun dreaming even when he’s awake. Finally, Bodkin stops the record player and turns the heater off. Bodkin is running a heater and Hardman is listening to drumming on a set of headphones. Bodkin and the bedridden Lieutenant Hardman are in a private room.

He leaves the armory for the sick bay, where Dr. He studies the weapons and explosive gas but steals only a broken compass. Later, Kerans returns to the base and sneaks into the armory. He studies paintings by Delvaux and Max Ernst and tells Beatrice that if they stay, they stay for good. When Riggs leaves, Kerans remains for the afternoon. She brushes off Riggs and Kerans's attempts to convince her to leave. Kerans and Riggs take the elevator up to Beatrice's top floor apartment, where she's lounging by the pool. Now, people only inhabit the Arctic and Antarctic circles. Bodies of water expanded as the ice caps and glaciers melted, entirely altering the landscape of the globe. The planet warmed rapidly, and plants and animals mutated due to the radiation. Seventy years before the present, solar storms damaged the earth's atmosphere, leaving is vulnerable to solar radiation. Bodkin, is old enough to remember living in the cities.

Kerans is uninterested in the contents or the history of the cities. Kerans says he slept fine.Īs Kerans and Riggs float through the lagoons that cover the city, Kerans watches the giant iguanas in the windows. Riggs asks for help convincing Beatrice to leave the city and asks Kerans how he's been sleeping. As they drink, Riggs tells Kerans that the unit has received a command to move north to Camp Byrd permanently. He dresses and runs down to the dock where Riggs invites himself up for a drink. He wonders if he should contact his commander, Colonel Riggs, but remembers that his radio's battery is dead. It's already hot and he's spent the morning dawdling instead of working. Kerans stands on the balcony of the Ritz Hotel and watches the sun, which is an ellipse, rise.

The drowned world by jg ballard