‘Right,’ Ben says for lack of anything else to say. The whole of this is staggeringly awful. Guns. Wearing black combat clothes. Two idiots injecting them with God only knows what and a fucking hand dryer that’s meant to stop them causing inadvertent mass extinction. The despair comes back. That whatever sensation that makes him shrug and go passive.

‘Let’s go then,’ Safa says, seeing the change in him. ‘Do we stand under it or just walk through?’

‘Er, well, the manufacturer said you just need to walk through it, but me and Kon stood for a couple of seconds . . . you know . . . just to be sure sort of thing.’

‘Did the manufacturer know it was for the fucking Cretaceous period?’ Ben asks, switching back on for a second.

‘Er, no, no, we just read the instruction book,’ Konrad says quietly.

‘Sod it. Let’s just go,’ Safa says, once again taking the lead. She waits for Malcolm to pull the locking bar out of the clasp and slide the big bolts back on the top and bottom of the door, which he pushes open.

The sinking feeling of spiralling depression evaporates the second Ben steps through the door. The sheer wonder of the moment is of a magnitude too great to be dwelling on anything other than the instantaneous sensory overload. His eyes go wide and open a clear path to his brain that translates each visual spectacle with a rapidity that feels fluid and organic.

All three of them feel instantly alive and thriving. They see the grass is green but the stems are thicker, broader, and give resistance to each step they take.

Ben is walking on thick weeds that refuse to be cowed but fight back to hold him up. Horsetail is everywhere. So distinctive with the green stems intersected by black and white stripes at the joining segments and the small heads pushing up from the bushy foliage. They’re low and spread in every direction. Growing freely through the grasses that surround the bunker on the ledge on the side of the hill that forms one side of the valley.