Inside of thirty seconds, an American drawl with a heavy German accent came down the telephone. ‘This is Sleder. Who are you? I don’t know you, Mr Flynn.’

‘If you want to find out, I’m going to be boarding the Rail Canada Vancouver to Montreal express, eastbound, in Winnipeg, at 6.00 p.m. tomorrow evening.’

‘Is this a joke? You want me to travel across Canada? On a train?’

‘I have a fuel element, manufactured by your firm. I am being met in Montreal by a senior representative of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. I intend to give him your fuel bundle. Its serial number is 546B/98066/31. If you don’t believe I have it, go and check North American Fossilized’s store room.’

‘So that makes you a thief.’

‘Call it what you like, Sleder.’

‘Do you want money?’

‘I don’t want money, Sleder. I want a fuel bundle that isn’t faulty. I’ve promised to give one to the Canadians, and I’d hate to give them a dud one. Why don’t you bring a nice one, in perfect order, and we can make a little swap?’

‘I’m not sure that I understand you, Mr Flynn.’

‘Well, you’ve got plenty of time to think about it. The train leaves shortly after eighteen hundred hours, Winnipeg time. Maybe I’ll see you on it.’

‘One moment, I want to know—’

I didn’t hear the rest of what he said, because I hung up.

To my right in the carriage was a man who had spent the whole of the last twenty-four hours – except for some times during the night when he tried to sleep – with his head buried in a succession of intellectual magazines, with the occasional incursion into James Gavel’s Tai Pan; he was reading Tai Pan at the moment, and was making slow progress. In the last hour and a half he had read only nine pages.

To the left of Sparrow was a human gorilla. He was about thirty, with straight greasy hair brushed forward, and traces of sideburns running straight down both cheeks. He had several large and raw-looking spots on his face, a yellowy complexion, and a set of teeth that looked like the door sill of an abandoned car. He belched frequently and privately, and sniffed loudly and not so privately, occasionally wiping drips from his nose on his dirty tweed sleeve. He wasn’t the sort of person it would be wise to sit next to if you had an open wound.