I felt a cord of tension that had been with me all that morning slacken, just a little.

He looked at me. ‘You should know,’ he said, ‘that depending on how my report is received, it’s possible the Authority might decide to bring in replacements for the Pathfinders who died – or some of them, at any rate.’

‘New people? Or . . .’

‘Alternate versions of the ones we lost,’ he replied, ‘with at least one exception. That’s not my decision, you understand. There may be others in the near future, as well. People from outside the Authority – possibly even from among the Soviets, if things pan out. There are still a lot of transfer coordinates we haven’t explored yet, and we’re going to need all the help we can get. We need either to find some way of programming our own destinations, if any of us are to have any hope at long-term survival, or hope to God we can at least find somewhere among all these dead worlds that isn’t completely inhospitable.’

‘I understand,’ I said, and Bramnik turned his chair to stare out of the window towards the sea. After a moment I got up to leave.

‘So did he believe you?’

Chloe and I had walked down to the old docks, near to where Nadia and Rozalia had restored the old lifeboat, where we could be reasonably certain of not being overheard.

‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully. ‘Even as I was telling him about Haden, Selwyn and Randall killing themselves, it sounded less than believable, even to my own ears. But maybe he did believe it. I just don’t know if I can ever be sure.’

‘Maybe we should have come up with a better story,’ she said, pushing her hands deep into the pockets of her coat.

‘There isn’t one,’ I replied. ‘Nothing that could explain the disappearance of all three of them.’ I reached towards her, and she lifted a hand out of one pocket, wrapping her fingers around mine. ‘Did you find somewhere safe to hide the field-pillars?’

She nodded. ‘There’s a well,’ she said, ‘not far from the fishing hut where we . . . you know.’ I nodded, remembering that first time we had made love. ‘We wrapped them all up in tarpaulins and dropped them down inside the well on a rope. If we ever need to get out of here fast, we can just pull them back up and set it all up in minutes. Winifred’s talking about a more permanent solution, though, maybe digging a hole beneath the fishing hut where we could hide all the equipment.’

She shivered as we walked along, the sea to one side and the almost deserted town on the other. ‘And you really mean what you said the other night? That Haden might be . . . one of them?’