As they reached a crossroads in the walkway, Langstrom gestured right and then left. ‘We need to cover the other entrances.’

Sergeant Jack raised a fist, held up three fingers, twice, then also gestured right and then left. ‘Three minutes,’ he added. ‘Let us know when you’re in position.’

Breaking into long loping strides, twelve troops went right and twelve went left. This confirmed for Saul that the men were organized in units of four, below the sergeants. Langstrom now slowed his pace, gazing up at three robots moving through the scaffolds above.

‘They ain’t moving the same,’ remarked Jack.

‘Yeah, I know,’ Langstrom replied.

Saul was surprised but a brief analysis provided the reason: the programs that he’d put in place – almost completely displacing their previous programming – displayed his own particular coding quirks, and the robots moved more like living creatures now.

Soon the soldiers reached a point where new wall and ceiling construction extended out from the cell block.

‘Top and bottom,’ said Langstrom. ‘The four blind wings.’

Two fingers up from Jack, then a thumb stabbed up and down. Eight men detached their gecko boots from the floor, propelled themselves up on to the top surface of the tubeway and set off. A further eight men headed over one side of the walkway and began making their way across the scaffolding underneath. Saul again checked a schematic of the complex, and immediately saw what Langstrom meant. Four diverging corridors possessed only one conventional way in, and finished up against the exterior walls. However, temporary airlocks were positioned above and below each end to facilitate future installation of vertical shafts. Perhaps waiting for when further levels of cells needed to be added, which indicated the way Smith and his kind thought.

Soon they entered the tubeway into the complex, at which point he lost sight of them, since the staff inside had disconnected the cam system.

‘There’s about forty prisoners over there,’ Langstrom reported eventually. He paused for a moment. ‘Are you watching, Saul?’

‘Certainly,’ Saul replied, though it had taken him a moment to realize he could. Via the barracks, he keyed into the feed transmitted from thirty-five pincams, each fitted at the temple of every soldier and connected to their fones. Langstrom was currently pointing to a doorway above which hung a big blue sign proclaiming: ‘Adjustment’. Now another view: Peach turned out to be the big blonde and, noticing she had removed her suit helmet, Saul decided they must have already passed through an airlock in the tubeway. She and the other three of her unit were approaching Admissions, where four guards were crouching behind a makeshift barricade composed of tacked-together sheets of bubblemetal.

One propelled himself out as Peach and her men approached. ‘Good,’ he said peremptorily. ‘It’s about damned time.’

‘Time for what?’ Peach asked, still moving forward.

‘About time we were relieved,’ he continued. ‘You had no problem getting through?’