Zukolev, of course, proclaimed his loyalty to Nikita Khrushchev, the current leader of the Soviet Union, but his heart belonged to Stalin. He had come of age at the height of Stalin’s personality cult, and now that he had a little nation of his own to govern, he took his cues from the true father of the Soviet Union. However, where Stalin had been one of the shrewdest minds ever to rise to power in the long history of Russia and inspired devotion across the nation, Zukolev was heavily deluded about his own competence and how much the people of Povenets B loved him.

Valera sat on the single, small chair pushed against the wall opposite Zukolev’s desk. She sat there for almost ten minutes while he silently pored over a stack of documents and fed himself from a large bowl of raspberries. It was a simple, childish power play, and one that Valera was extremely bored by after three years.

Argon is a noble gas,’ Zukolev finally said, his eyes still fixed on his papers.

‘Yes,’ Valera replied.

‘That means it doesn’t do anything.’ He scooped up a handful of berries and tipped them into his mouth. He insisted on getting the best of the summer fruits that grew wild around Povenets B delivered to him every morning. No one else was allowed to forage for them, because no one apart from Zukolev’s lackeys were allowed to leave the naukograd.

Valera hesitated for a moment. ‘Actually, it means that—’ she started.

But before she could correct him, Zukolev slammed the report he was holding down on the desk and looked up at her.

‘If it doesn’t do anything,’ he said. ‘Why do you want five twenty-kilogram canisters of it?’

It was clear from his tone that he thought he’d caught Valera out. He hadn’t. She tried to make her explanation for the supply request she’d put in a week ago as simple as possible.

‘Argon is inert,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t react to stimulation. However, it can cause a reaction in other things. It can, in certain circumstances, act like a catalyst.’ She could already tell he wasn’t following her. But he’d demanded she explain herself, so that’s what she was going to do. ‘It’s an atmospheric gas. It makes up less than one per cent of the air we breathe, but we don’t know exactly how much of it there is higher up. It doesn’t affect radio waves near the surface of the planet, but in larger quantities it might.’

‘You want to create different levels of the atmosphere?’

Valera, surprised that Zukolev appeared to have grasped the concept after all, nodded. ‘I want to try.’

‘Your job is to find a way to talk to space. Not go there, or bring it here.’

‘I simply want to—’