December 21, 1940 INVASION MAY BE BY AIR Despite three months of Nazi bombings, it seems many people in Britain have become lulled into a false sense of Christmas security. The forces of the Third Reich are still only separated from us by twenty-two miles of water. There is growing evidence to support the belief that Hitler may be planning a new attack over the Christmas period. The threat of invasion is still very real. Chapter One Tonight is the darkest night of the year. It is so dark, you can barely make out the stone cottage sitting in front of you. It is the only building in the valley. A path runs right from the fields to a red front door, framed by the remains of a rosebush.

In summer, when the days are long and warm, the roses flourish. But there are no roses now. It is the dead of winter and the dead of night. The door is surrounded by thorns. The cottage is dark inside, even darker than outside. The windows are hung with heavy curtains so that no light can escape and none can get in. There is a fireplace in the corner, but it has been a long time since anyone has lit it. The cottage is bone-cold, frozen from the inside out; even the floor stones are coated with frost.

It is silent, and it is dark, and it is dead. But not completely. From somewhere in the attic, a light is glowing. It comes from a single candle that rests in the center of the floor. The light gleams off the junk packed high to the rafters: broken boxes, old rugs, furniture, all of it left and forgotten. The glow is small but strong--it feels like it could light the whole house if it tried. Three figures sit around it. They have been waiting for some time.

"This is stupid," says the first. It's a knight in shining armor. He is much smaller than you'd expect--no bigger than a child. The candlelight shimmers off his breastplate and catches on the edge of his lance. A mustache pokes from his visor and dances when he talks. "He's not coming! We're going to get in heaps of trouble and it'll all be for ." "Quiet, Rogue." The knight turns to the figure beside him--a badger.

But this is no ordinary badger. He's smoking a pipe. He carries a club and wears a tweed vest. Also, he can talk. "I told you not to call me that," says the knight. The badger bristles. "Oh! Your name! I can't call you your name now?" "It's not Rogue," says the knight. "It's the King of Rogues.

I've told you a thousand times! I don't call you Noakes, do I? I call you Mr. Noakes, because that's what he named you, so ." "Quiet, both of you." The knight and the badger turn to the third figure--a Bengal tiger, towering over the room around them. Her head is lost to the gloom of the ceiling; her whiskers catch the cobwebs in the eaves. "Col will come," she says. "Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow, but he will come. We just have to keep calling him, that's all.

" She shuffles. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd rather not do it while listening to you two squabble like a pair of old ladies." The badger grumbles and puts his club down. The knight sighs. "Oh, Pendlebury . how can you be so sure that Col's coming?" The tiger gives him a look that seems at first like anger. But it's not anger; it's fear. She is very, very scared.

"Because," she says, "he's the only hope we have.".