Somewhere a bell sounded, and a laboratory assistant leaned down from the gantry with a boathook and separated the two ethical machines. Other men in dinghies hauled them back to opposite corners of the tank and set to work on them with spanners and screw-drivers. A little battery acid was trickling out of one of them, Goldwasser noticed.

‘Six to four on the boy in the blue corner!’ shouted a man on the far side of the tank, marking up the odds on a blackboard. ‘Three to one against a knockout! Come on, now, gentlemen. Who are the sports?’

Goldwasser found Macintosh putting a couple of pounds on the favourite.

‘It may seem a little irregular,’ he said, ‘the promoter betting on his own fight. But I think it’s important, in an ethical conflict like this, to be committed. Do you see? Because I think what we have here is the essential ethical situation in all its pity and terror. I hope it meets the objections you made to the earlier systems?’

‘Listen, Macintosh,’ said Goldwasser. ‘I’ve been appointed chairman of the Ethics Wing Utilisation Committee.’

‘Congratulations,’ said Macintosh.

‘I mean, it’s not my idea.’

‘A damned good appointment, all the same.’

‘Look, I don’t want to tread on your toes.’

‘Oh, I welcome it, I assure you.’

‘You’re certain?’

‘Of course. As you know, I didn’t want to do it myself.’

‘No. Well, I don’t really want to do it either, of course. I mean, I’m busy enough as it is.’

‘Nevertheless, you probably have a certain duty, don’t you, Goldwasser?’

‘Do I?’

‘I imagine if you introspect a little you’ll find you have a sense of obligation of some sort.’

The bell went for the next round. Goldwasser pushed his way gloomily back to the door, prising apart unknown shoulders, elbow­ing strange stomachs, treading heavily on a plimsolled foot.

‘Jolly good,’ said the owner of the foot, chuckling bravely, and squeezing Goldwasser’s elbow. It was Nunn, who had a sporting fiver on the machine in the red corner. He watched Goldwasser thoughtfully as he pushed on, wondering who could possibly have put him in charge of the politically sensitive Ethics Wing Utilisation Committee. In an organisational set-up as complicated as this one, of course, it seemed a profitless speculation. Surprising, really, that it wasn’t Macintosh’s responsibility to install the experiments in the new wing. After all, he was the Head of the Department. Didn’t seem to be anything to do with him, though. Odd, that. Perhaps somebody was keeping it away from him because they had something on him. It was unlikely with someone as sound as Macintosh. Still, one never knew. In security no one could be trusted. One was completely on one’s own.