We walked inside, past the security desk. I stopped and turned to him. ‘I’ll tell you what I mean. They’re about to blow your fucking power station up, that’s what I mean.’

Tenney led, I sprinted behind him, and Quoit did his best to keep up. We ran through several doors, past a massive tank of water, past stacks of barrels, radiation warning signs, vending machines, men in overalls, and then came up to a door with a large sign: Danger. Authorized personnel only. Protective clothing must be worn beyond this point.

Tenney opened a cupboard door, and pulled out a handful of clothing. ‘Got to put these on – none of us would last thirty seconds without them.’ It took several minutes for us to get dressed: first, black knee-high boots, then a white one-piece suit, complete with hood, visor and breathing apparatus. We stepped into these, and zipped them up; even the gloves were part of the suit.

‘Same material as they use for astronauts’ suits, for when they go out of their spacecraft – that’s what they were developed for originally, the moon landing,’ said Quoit, shouting through his visor at me.

‘I think the moon’s a lot more hospitable place than where we’re going now,’ shouted Tenney.

‘I wouldn’t disagree with you,’ said Quoit.

I was busy trying to get my gloved trigger finger in through the trigger guard. Tenney eyed the gun with a frown. ‘Don’t forget to wash that when you come back out – it’ll be contaminated.’

‘I think it already is,’ said Quoit distastefully.

Tenney strapped large watches onto our wrists. ‘We have one hour’s supply of oxygen. The buzzer will go in fifty-five minutes and if you hear it, just get the hell out. But we shouldn’t be in there anywhere near that long. Okay?’ I nodded through the visor and gripped the Beretta tightly. We walked through the door and Tenney shut it firmly behind us. We were in a small room with a massively thick porthole window. I looked through the porthole, expecting to see Dante’s Inferno, or worse. Instead, I saw a vast cavern, dome-shaped ceiling all around, and a massive blue steel structure, looking like a giant windowless space capsule, in the middle. This was the pressure vessel, inside which was the core. A mass of thick pipes ran from the side of it into a much smaller capsule, and from that into a tall, thin cylinder, about twenty-five feet high. The core itself was about thirty feet high, and sat on four massive hydraulically sprung struts.