‘It’s out of control,’ said Fifeshire. ‘The technical expression for it is a “power excursion accident” – except it’s not an accident.’ Surprisingly, he did not look as grim as he might have done; something was up, but I didn’t know what, and I didn’t think that anything, right now, could be anything but bad. I thought about Gelignite again. I had tried three times to get her on the phone to tell her to head north and keep going north as far as she could go. I nodded at Fifeshire.

‘The way I understand it,’ he continued, ‘is that two of the four struts on which the pressure vessel containing the core sits, have been blown away; the coolant pipes have also all been fractured. The core has fallen upside down, breaking its outer pressure vessel, and therefore losing all of its coolant.

‘Being upside down has caused the control rods to fall out. They are situated at the top of the core, and normally in an emergency, if all other precautions and systems fail, would drop straight down into the core, under the force of gravity, and the reaction would stop. Being upside down has of course stopped this, and in fact, the reverse had happened: the rods having fallen out completely means that the temperature of the core is rising at a fantastic rate – no one ever figured that the control rods might be removed altogether.

‘The net result is that the containment of reactor number three is filling with steam, and the core is expanding this steam fast. All the escape valves and filtration systems have been jammed by Whalley, Tsenong and their chums, so the pressure is building up, and any moment there is going to be an almighty bang. Apparently, a very big bang is preferable to a small one. The boffins believe that if the bang is sufficiently big, it will blow the core to pieces rather than let it continue to heat and have a situation that Isaac Quoit described as – what was it … an Australia … no, a China Syndrome. If the core is blown to pieces, there will be a short emission of radioactivity, making a cloud that will be large, but which will be a once-only cloud. If the core stays intact, there will be stuff pouring out of the ground for days.’

‘Is there anything anyone can do to make sure it does blow to pieces?’

‘Yes. By just leaving everything as it is and not attempting to open any valves, or anything. They are ninety-nine per cent sure that the bang will be big enough.’ Fifeshire smiled broadly, and pulled a cigar from the box. ‘Mind you, if you think we’ve got a few problems, you want to thank your lucky stars you’re not in America: they’ve got five reactors down the West Coast doing exactly the same as this.’

‘What about the Canadians?’