The grazing dinosaurs they saw from the window are there too. A herd of them off to the right and more herds at the lakesides, by the glades and wading through swamps, and yet more further down to the left. Different sizes and makes too, or species, or subspecies, or whatever they’re called. Some are just gigantic, but those are fewer in number. The bigger herds seem to be of smaller ones, which are still big but just not as big. They’ve all got long necks, small heads and long tails, but they differ in thickness of body and the length of the tail and height too. Some are eating from the ground while others stretch those necks up to reach low branches. They look mostly grey but Ben spots areas of darker and lighter shades amongst them and some that border more on browns and greens, but all natural and subtle.

‘This is unbelievable,’ Safa states, tutting and shaking her head. ‘I mean, no warnings, no lists of what is dangerous or what could hurt us, no idea of the time of day or how far we can go. No instructions. It’s bloody awful. Harry? Don’t you think it’s bloody awful?’

‘Aye,’ he says simply and slides the rifle from his shoulder. He takes one of the huge bullets, pops it in the rifle and operates the bolt to make the weapon ready. He lifts the rifle to stare down the scope towards the plains below, using the magnification to gain a closer view.

Words and phrases like ‘ecosystem’, ‘microclimate’, ‘biology’ and ‘hereditary traits’ swim through Ben’s mind. His history, geography and biology teachers would be wetting themselves right now. He moves off down the side of the bunker, which is nestled perfectly into the hillside and painted shades of green and brown to make it blend so well. No sharp edges either, everything is rounded and seemingly organic in design and he guesses from a distance you’d struggle to even see it. He passes the bit where Roland’s office must be, then the main room, and works out that the next section is the corridor leading to their rooms.

Past the bunker, the ground remains flat from a natural ledge that tapers off hundreds of metres away. The first thing that springs to Ben’s mind is a roof garden with a safety balustrade and white-shirted waiters serving chilled drinks to people sitting in bamboo chairs enjoying the view down below. Instead, he spots more cypress trees, plants, weeds, ferns and rocks of a world that has already been forming for hundreds of millions of years and is forever continuing to form. Time has no meaning at this point. It is nothing. Time does not exist. Just the sequential transition of the sun following the moon as the planet rotates and spins through space.