It was on Tuesday, May 7, that Earth's orbit passed through a cloud of comet debris. At least that's what millions of people believed at the time. News bulletins reported that odd bolts of bright green light had been seen in the skies of California the night before. From all over the world came accounts of brilliant green meteor showers. In London, stuck in a hospital, William Masen listened ruefullyas the man on the news advised everyone not to miss the phenomenon. With his eyes bandaged, he felt as if there were a party for the whole world going on, and he was the only person not invited. But by morning the party was over. Masen knew that something catastrophic had happened almost as soon as he awoke. Instead of street noise there was silence outside his window. Nurses should have been by with breakfast . . . the doctor was due in to take off his bandages -- but no one came. He waited nervously, then finally removed the bandages himself and went to investigate. It didn't take long to learn the turth: everyone who'd seen the mysterious fireworks -- 95% of Earth's population -- was now stone blind! Sightless men and women groped through the streets or milled in terrified confusion. And there were the triffids. Bizarre products of biological engineering, triffids were huge carnivorous plants that could pick up their roots and walk. They had been farmed for years -- their economic value compensating for less desirable traits -- and various methods had been employed to control them. Those controls were gone now. Triffids roamed freely -- showing disconcerting signs of intelligence as they sought out prey and killed it with perfectly aimed strikes of their whiplike, poison stingers. The blind had no defense against them; even those who could see did not always escape. It seemed only a matter of time before triffids took over the world.