He wanted her to tell him that they must die but, even though she knew they did not deserve to live, she could not bring herself to make that pronouncement. In her eyes it wasn’t right. No one should be forced to make such a harsh decision.

‘They will remain in Arcoplex One,’ she pronounced, with as much firmness as she could muster. ‘Their task will be to feed the corpses into the digesters.’

‘And then?’

‘Surely there is a way they can be dealt with?’

‘Yes, I am sure there is a way,’ he said, staring at her while something hardened in his expression. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Food first,’ said Hannah quickly.

He paused. ‘Yes . . . of course.’

Hannah suddenly wanted to rage at the unfairness of it all, but instead she merely turned away. She found a fresh elasticated undersuit in one of the wall-length cupboards, then picked up her discarded one and just stood staring at it helplessly. Saul turned away from the fridge and pointed to a little door set in the same wall. Hannah pulled on the handle, hinged out a hopper, and tossed the soiled undersuit inside.

‘Where does it go?’ she asked, prepared to talk about anything but the previous subject.

‘Ultrasound and gas cleaner,’ he replied succinctly. ‘All clothing worn here is made of material suitable for that kind of cleaning.’

‘One more job the bureacrats can’t do,’ she muttered as she pulled on her VC suit. Meanwhile he placed the two ceramic trays into a microwave cooker, and shortly she joined him to eat bean stew, followed by some sort of treacle pudding. A drinks machine provided frothy coffee and chilled bottles of flavoured water. It all seemed so very domestic, though the coffee had to be sipped through a spout, and the emptied trays went into the ultrasound cleaner, along with their dirty clothes.

‘Now,’ said Saul, leading the way out after they had finished.

A different shift of staff occupied the control room now, though Le Roque remained in charge. Meanwhile, a crew of technicians was gradually replacing the plastic office chairs with the kind of acceleration chairs found aboard space planes.

‘Good thinking,’ observed Saul, as Le Roque wearily turned to face them.

‘We could take more out of the planes, but I wasn’t sure if that’s what you’d want.’

‘The chairs from the one space plane you’ve selected should cover your present needs.’

After a momentary look of surprise at this, Le Roque said, ‘I don’t suppose I’ll be needing to make a further report to you then?’

It was something they would all have to get used to. Saul might stand amongst them like a normal human being, yet his mind could range throughout the Argus Station with the omniscience of a demigod.