On the west side of Aldershot he swung south from the Bath road and made the shorter trip to Salisbury where he mailed a sheaf of envelopes. It was not until he was almost back in Crymchurch again that he appreciated the significance of having consigned the antibomb specification to Her Majesty’s mails. Until that moment he had retained the option of backing out and returning to sane, normal life.

The first irrevocable step had been taken.

Andrea Knight came slowly into the bar, her black hair caught inside the collar of her suede coat, a sling-type handbag almost trailing on the floor. Hutchman, who had arrived a little early, watched as she walked the length of the room. He asked himself what it was about her which caused the male drinkers to fall silent as she passed by. Did the slinky-slovenly gait, that chalky and pouting lower lip, suggest something to their minds? The archetypal woman of the streets, composite of Dietrich and Signoret and Hayworth? He gave up the attempted analysis as she reached his table, sat down, and shrugged off her coat without speaking.

“Good to see you.” He spoke quickly. “Glad you could come.”

“Hello, Lucas. My God, this takes me back more years than I care to remember.”

“I guess it does,” he said, wondering what she was talking about.

“Yes. Did you know the Pack Horse has been demolished to make room for a motorway?”

“No.” Hutchman felt a growing unease.

“Of course, we only had one drink there.” She smiled reproachfully.

Hutchman smiled back at her as the ground seemed to shift below his feet. The Pack Horse was a pub he had used when at university and he had vague memories of having taken girls there — around the time he met Vicky — but surely Andrea had not been one of them. And yet she must have been. It dawned on him that his years with Vicky had conditioned his very thought processes. (A full year of marital hell-heaven had passed before he had learned always to put his briefcase beside him on the front seat of the car when going home from the office. Vicky, watching like a sniper from the kitchen window, assumed if she saw him remove the case from the rear seat that he had had a passenger. And on the days when he had given a lift but forgot to mention it she spun the delicate but ever tightening webworks of questions, culminating in ghastly midnight confrontations.) He had learned to blot out other women from his memory. A new thought: Could it be that the monogamous, slightly undersexed person I always imagined myself to be is not the real Lucas Hutchman? Am I a creation of Vicky’s? And, in this revenge kick that I’m on, how big a part is played by coincidence and how big a part by subconscious motivation? I saw Andrea at the Jeavons while I was working on the machine. I read about her in the Newsletter and they say the subconscious never forgets details. Details such as the dates of her Moscow trip. Dear Jesus, could it be, could it really be, that the deadline for the operation of my sacred megalife machine was timed to bring me to this table to meet this woman?

“…quite thirsty after the walk,” Andrea was saying. “My car’s in for repairs.”

“Forgive me.” He signaled to the waiter. “What would you like to drink?”

She asked for a Pernod and sipped it appreciatively. “A girl with my socialist convictions has no right to order such an expensive drink, but I think I’ve got a capitalist stomach.”

“That reminds me.” He took the envelope from his inside pocket and handed it to her. “It’s addressed, but you’ll need to put a stamp on it for me over there. Do you mind?”

“I don’t mind.” She dropped the white rectangle into her handbag without looking at it. Her careless acceptance of the envelope pleased him, but he became worried in case she should be too casual and forget to bring it with her.

“It isn’t really vital, but it is rather important to me, personally, to have the article delivered soon,” he said.

“Don’t worry, Lucas.” She placed her hand on his reassuringly. “I’ll look after it for you.”

Her fingers were cold and he instinctively covered them with his free hand. She smiled again, looking directly into his eyes, and something threw a biological switch in his loins, producing a small but distinct thrill as if she had touched him there. Time itself seemed to distort from that moment — individual minutes were fantastically drawn out, but the hours flicked by. They had several drinks, a meal in the adjacent dining room, more drinks, then he drove her to her flat which was the top one in a four-storey building. As soon as the car had crunched to a halt in the graveled drive she swung out of it and walked to the door, searching in her handbag for a key. At the steps to the door she turned and looked back at him.

“Come on, Lucas,” she said impatiently. “It’s cold out here.”

He got out of the car and went with her into the small lobby. The elevator door was open and they walked into the aluminium box hand in hand. They kissed during the ride up and her mouth was as soft as he had thought it would be, and her thighs — closed around one of his — were as responsive as he had hoped they would be. Hutchman’s legs felt slightly shaky as he followed Andrea into her apartment which was pleasantly but sparsely furnished. It smelt faintly of apples. Just inside the door she dropped her coat on he floor and they kissed again. Her body was fuller than Vicky’s and her breasts, when he cupped them in his hands, felt heavier than Vicky’s. The automatic and unwanted comparison produced a painful churning sensation behind his eyes. He put Vicky out of his mind and drank from Andrea’s mouth.

“Do you want me, Lucas?” Her breath was warm on the roof of his mouth. “Do you really want me?”

“I really want you.”

“All right then. You wait here.” She walked into a bedroom and he waited without moving till she reappeared. She was wearing nothing but a black peep-hole brassiere, her nipples angled upward through the apertures on extruded blobs of milky flesh. Breathing noisily, Hutchman removed his own clothes, closed with Andrea, and bore her down onto a flame-coloured rug. Now, he thought, right now, my darling Vicky.

An indeterminate time went by before he made the shocking discovery that he could feel… precisely nothing. It was as if the whole region of his genitals was flooded with a deadening drug, destroying all sensation. Baffled and afraid, he waged a battle between his body and Andrea’s, surging and grasping and crushing…

“Give it up, Lucas.” Andrea’s voice reached him across interstellar distances. “It isn’t your fault.”

“But I don’t understand,” he said numbly. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“Sexual hypesthesia,” she replied, not unkindly. “Kraft-Ebbing devotes a whole chapter to it.”

He shook his head. “But I’m always all right with…”

“With your wife?”

“Oh, Christ!” Hutchman pressed his hands to his temples as the pain in his head became intolerable. What have you done to me, Vicky?

Andrea stood up, walked to the door where her suede coat was lying, and put it on. “I’ve had a very pleasant evening, Lucas, but I have an awful lot to do tomorrow and I must get to bed. Do you mind?”

“Of course not,” he mumbled with senseless formality. As he struggled into his clothes he tried to think of something intelligent and unconcerned to say, and finally came out with, “I hope you have good flying weather tomorrow.”

Her face betrayed no emotion. “I hope so too.”

“Good night, Lucas.” She closed the door quietly. The elevator was still at the landing and he rode down in it, staring at his reflection in the scratched aluminium.

Incredibly, after all that had happened, it was only a little after midnight when he got home, and Vicky was still up. The comfortable old skirt and cardigan she was wearing suggested to him that she had not been out and that no stranger had been in the house during his absence. She was watching the late movie on television and as usual the colour control was turned down too far, producing a faded picture. He adjusted the colour and sat down tiredly without speaking.