Stig is silent.

‘If your mother had lived…’ his father begins, but pauses.

‘Yes, what then?’

‘No, it’s a good thing she didn’t.’

Stig looks at his father’s clothes hanging on him so loosely. ‘I must try to get you some more rations,’ he says abruptly. ‘You’re getting so thin.’

‘Don’t trouble yourself!’ replies the old man sharply. ‘I get what others get. I’m worth no more, sitting here as I do, incapable of anything.’

‘All right, I only thought….’

His father’s anger merely increases. ‘One ought not to be old at a time like this. One ought to help in some way. Is that all you can do – go round hunting for food on the sly?’

‘One has to now and then. But don’t let’s argue any more. Take care of yourself, Father. I’ll get by, you’ll see.’ His father does not answer.

‘Well, good-bye for now,’ repeats Stig as he goes towards the door. He cannot turn and meet those eyes which he knows are watching him.

Outside are the gilded arrows, gleaming against the darkness, pointing inwards towards their source. But they’re tunnelling beneath the centre, thinks Stig. The pointer is trembling on the wall. Every moment they are working on it, working so that the centre shall collapse into its own abyss – and all the time one or other of those working on that tunnelling is being struck down.

Stig has been part of it for so long that he has become hardened, but he still dislikes thinking about what is in there. About the ordeal. He prefers to push it away from him. And now the message has come, telling him to leave. So the cause is presumably best served if he obeys the warning from those in charge.

A wave of exhaustion engulfs him. Of relaxation. It is the thought that he will soon be out of the house. He’ll manage to find the way. It is well patrolled at the most difficult places. He can count on getting through. And then he will be able to breathe. I think I’ve done my share – another thought that pokes itself up, just a little, as far as it dare. He lets his exhaustion get a better grip. And I’m not taking the decision to leave. It’s easier that way.

Now all that’s left is to tell the other fellows in the group. He thinks first of Peter, but it’s really John he has to meet. Peter and Henry can’t be contacted at the moment, either. John is the one who has been selected as Stig’s successor. That was arranged a long time ago.

He goes through several side passages, then comes to a door on which he knocks in a particular way.

A young man comes out: John. He opens the door just wide enough to allow Stig to slip inside. John is alone. He looks at Stig tensely. Since he has come now, it must be something out of the ordinary. He asks at once in a muffled voice, ‘Has something happened?’