Номер 5, страница 79 - гдз по английскому языку 8 класс (starlight) учебник Баранова, Дули

Exercise five.

Page seventy-nine.

The day of the triffids, by John Wyndham.

I wish, I told Susan irritably, you'd not keep on saying they hear. As if they were animals, they're not. They don't hear. They're just plants.

All the same, they do hear somehow, Susan said.

Well, anyway, we'll do something about them, I promised.

As time went on, the numbers collected along the fence continued to increase in spite of our traps.

They didn't try anything or do anything there. They simply settled down, riled their roots into the soil and remained.

At a distance, they looked as inactive as any other hedge. But if one doubted their alertness, it was only necessary to take a car down the lane. To do so, you had to battle through such viciously slashing stings that it was necessary to stop the car at the main road and wipe the windscreen clear of poison.

Early one morning, Susan came running in to tell us that the things had broken in and were all around the house.

The sky outside her bedroom window was gray, but when she went downstairs, she found everything there in complete darkness. She realized that should not be so and turned on the light. The moment she saw leathery green leaves pressed against the windows, she guessed what had happened.

I crossed the bedroom on tiptoe and pulled the window shut sharply. Even as it closed, sting whipped up from below and smacked against the glass.

We looked down on a group of triffids standing ten or twelve deep against the wall of the house. The flamethrowers were in one of the outhouses.

I took no risks when I went to fetch them. In thick clothing and gloves with a leather helmet and goggles under a wire mask, I hacked my way through the triffids with the largest carving knife I could find. The stings whipped and slapped at the wire mask so frequently, that the poison began to come through in a fine spray. It misted the goggles, and the first thing I did in the outhouse was to wash it off my face. I didn't dare use a thrower more than once to clear my way back, for fear of setting the door and window frames on fire, but it moved them enough for me to get back unharmed.

Two more days passed before Susan and I could be sure that we had searched every corner of the enclosure, and accounted for the very last of the intruders.

Four months later, they broke in again.