Charles and Pet are travelling home on horseback, returning from a special salt trip to Cheshire. They stay overnight in some outhouses.They have visitors - a couple of wanderers - and let them share their fire and shelter. The couple had been 'seen off' as
undesirables by another community about five miles away.
Overnight, the other couple become violently ill. Charles and Pet take them back to the settlement they'd mentioned. They are 'greeted' by a uniformed guard at the gates, who recognises the two from the previous day and tells them to go away. Charles and Pet barter for assistance using the salt they'd collected. The four are put into a quarantine hut at the edge of the settlement, which is an old
army camp.
The settlement is run by a committee, but has a leader, Max Kershaw, and a deputy called Joy Dunne. The settlement is well stocked with drugs and medicines. They investigate the travellers' cart, and discover some of their own stolen grain there - it had been sprayed with a fungicide, lethal to humans.
The girl traveller dies, and the guard puts the man out of his misery under the pretence of his attempted escape. Charles and Pet are moved to
other quarters. They are treated well.
The settlement is run along military lines - there is total discipline, and they march to and from the fields to work. Their idea is total self-sufficiency, with no interest in outside contact or trade. They practice euthanasia and eugenics, and show no compassion, weakness or tolerance of failure. They believe the death was the result of a communist plot. They are also very religious, seeing the death as a Holy
Plague to purge the world, and themselves as the Chosen Ones.
Charles wants to speak to Kershaw to sound him out on communication and co-operation, so he is taken to talk to the committee. He finds no common ground with them. Dunne suggests that Charles puts his ideas to the whole community at the next morning's assembly, and Kershaw agrees.
However, Dunne has seen a way to use Charles in the power struggle between herself and Kershaw. When they are
alone, she advises Kershaw to go to Charles that night and tell him to leave immediately, claiming she doesn't want the community unsettled by his subversive ideas. Kershaw does this, telling Charles that he can't guarantee his safety if he speaks next morning.
Later on, Dunne herself visits Charles, telling him to lock himself in as Kershaw is setting a trap, and he will be killed if he tries to leave. Charles and Pet do she advises.
The next morning,
Charles is introduced to the assembly. He is questioned on his ideas, but the session turns into a harsh cross examination, and eventually a trial for subversion - he is accused of endangering the community by bringing the ill travellers back to it. Dunne turns the questioning round on Kershaw, saying he has lied to them, and using the previous night's events as evidence that he was going to kill Charles and Pet off-hand. She also reveals that some
runaways from the community who had returned, claiming to prefer life there than on the outside, had been organised by Kershaw as a deception.
Dunne gets the community onto her side, and they back her to take over the leadership. As proof of the clemency of the new regime, she does not punish Kershaw.
As they leave, Pet and Charles muse on the events and realise Dunnes' motives. Apart from the obvious fact that the regime was becoming too extreme, they
realise that most of the young women in the camp were pregnant, and Dunne, in middle age, realized she may be surplus to requirements and become a victim of their euthanasia policy.
