Or it was simple misjudgement. I knew there was time and I was clear across the road and lurching among frosted mole-hills when the big horn boomed again. Then there was the other sound, of something soft being hit, and I slowed my run, relaxing.

It looked ugly on the ground.

Ferris had called it adaptable, versatile, flexible, sophisticated. On the ground it looked humped, bow-legged, sinister, obscene. Sexual.

Down here at Linsdorf they called it the Widowmaker.

I had telephoned Ferris.

The sun was directly behind it, a flat orange disc two diameters high in the mist It squatted there, black. Why sexual? I had to think about it.

Ferris had ordered me down here to Linsdorf. Herr W. Martin Aviation psychologist attached to the Ministry's Accidents Investigation Branch. Walter: another name that could be English or German, whichever was the more convenient at any given time.

Because the wings drooped. They were held spread open and drooped like the wings of a crow in the act of copulation. That was why.

They were running the engine up. The kerosene haze darkened the sun, dirtied it.

The pilot was walking across from the crew's quarters, clumsy in his boots and anti-g suit, his oxygen helmet dangling.

Ferris had ordered me to Linsdorf for his own reasons. I didn't ask what they were. He was my director in the field.

'I told you you should have picked something up in Firearms.'

'I didn't need anything.'

'What happened?'

'We finished up playing "Last Across" and he cut it too fine.'

'You could have avoided a situation like that if you'd had a — '

'Oh for God's sake what do I want to shoot at them for? We want to send them to Parkis alive, don't we, so he can watch them do what Lazlo did after he'd bled them. Don't we?'

The black haze smothered the sun's disc, fouling it. There wasn't much sound: the acoustic irradiation was spreading away from where I stood. Only half-visible, only half-audible, the plane existed and didn't exist. You could believe you imagined it, that it was something out of a hangover, a black tumour on the sun.

'You don't have to be upset,' Ferris bad said.

That's good.'

I'd started out on a routine flush-and-follow exercise. Objective: find where they were based or who their contacts were and then signal Ferris like a good boy. I'd finished up without an overcoat and out of breath like a bloody fool. Of course there was no need to be upset.

He wasn't too jolly himself. If I'd stopped one in the lung all he could have done was signal London and try to wipe up the mess.

'You'd better get down to Linsdorf.'

I asked him to tell the car-hire people to keep their shirt on till the police found an abandoned 250 SE. That was what he was for, that kind of thing.

The pilot stood watching the plane, then suddenly turned round and trotted back to the crews' quarters and I thought: Surely he's not got the wind up already.

After I'd talked to Ferris I went round to Avis and picked up another one for the drive down to Linsdorf: a good-looking N.S.U. RO-80, the one with the rotary engine. I couldn't resist it because it was an engine I'd never tried. London Accounts would put up a bleat: The type of motor-vehicle selected for routine transport in Hanover, West Germany, 1 November, appears excessively expensive in view of the fact that no Special-Uses form was filed in retrospect.

The half-noise of the half-thing that stood there against the sun was dying away and I saw the silhouetted head of the flight mechanic prodding out of the cockpit looking for the pilot.

Signal to London Accounts: Reference your observation concerning the hire of I N.S.U. RO-SO in Hanover. I would respectfully suggest you go and stuff your cucumber up the Old Kent Road, Then the pilot came trotting across from the crews' quarters again, calling something to one of the ground staff. The flight mechanic climbed down from the plane and the pilot checked his report sheet and nodded and swung up and the mechanic passed him his helmet. The sun was clear now and beginning to dazzle.

Of course you can pick up a 260 k.p.h. Lamborghini and file a Special-Uses application in retrospect on the grounds that you'd had to chase someone in a Concorde before it got airborne. They'll believe anything: all they understand are the mechanics of parsimony.

The chocks were away and the thing was turning. It looked even worse broadside on with the wings flexing to every bump in the ground. I'd only seen them in the air before, once through the binoculars over Westheim and once at Farnborough Air Show eleven months ago: there'd been three of them and they'd looked pretty enough with the R.A.F. roundels and polished-metal finish and everyone cheering like mad. That was before they'd started dropping out of the sky all over Germany.

The N.S.U. wasn't the only thing. I couldn't go back for my stuff at the Carlsberg or they'd have made sure of me with a distance-shot so I'd bought the bare necessities at a supermarket on the edge of Am Kropcke — toothbrush, shaving-gear, so forth — but I'd gone to town on the overcoat: it was a sheepskin job and a perfect fit except where the bandage was, right upper fore-arm. High collar and full lapels and extra length, right down over the bum and beautifully warm. It was a pleasure to stand here inside it watching that bloody aeroplane. The type of overcoat selected for winter wear in Hanover, West Germany… Cucumbers.

He was rolling faster and turning towards the end of the runway with the wings rising and falling and the recognition lamps winking, easier to see now because the sun wasn't behind him any more, then he was gunning up on tower permission and rolling again with the wings lifting and holding and the power piling on and the wake of dark gas streaming behind and then he was airborne so fast that the legs were folding before he came abreast of where I stood on the perimeter road already craning my neck. The sound hit me with a kind of protracted slam and indicated better than anything else that a mass of ten tons was being pulled upwards at forty-five degrees through an element that wouldn't support a feather.

He made one circuit and was lost within nine seconds. The airbase couldn't have been in his track because there was no sonic boom as I walked round the perimeter to the main buildings. The sky was totally silent.

They were stowing the chocks in the bay.

'Why did the pilot run back?'

'Who are you?'

'Martin, British A.I.B. group.'

'Have you shown your papers to Security?'

'I couldn't be here if I hadn't.' '

'You must ask the Herr-Direktor of Operations.'

I went on towards the hangars. There was a pilot pumping up his bicycle outside the crews' quarters.

'It was a nice take-off.'

'What?'

'I was watching his take-off. Very neat.' I didn't know their slang: it wouldn't be in any dictionary. The correct use of slang is like an accepted accent and can open doors that are shut to printed credentials.

He laughed briefly, undoing the pump and stowing the extension. 'Oh, they go up all right.' He was older than a boy and younger than a man, notably handsome, careful in his movements and speech.. The strain marking this face would show on all of them: it was part of their identity.

'Did he forget something?'

'Who?'

The chap who's just taken off.'

He clipped the pump back and looked at me uncertainly. 'What like? I'm sorry — I don't seem to be quite with you.'

The pilot ran back for something. I was worried.'

He laughed again. 'We're all worried. No, he'd only forgotten his sea-horse. He often does that.'

The Striker was in the circuit again, much higher, much wider. We heard it faintly.