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noise for the man looked round. The impression was of a pure and terrible malevolence and Malcolm's shoulders contracted as if ducking from a blow. Even when Kujavia glanced away, it took an effort to straighten from that spontaneous and uncontrollable reaction. Humiliated, he wondered if any of these bulky stolid men surrounding him had noticed. He took deep breaths of the clean air that blew warm against them and willed his heart to beat more slowly. He tried to imagine in what kind of business Mr Kujavia might act as a consultant to Heathers, whose voice dominated over the engine and the racket of the site as they bumped down towards the bottom of the saucer.
    '– like God. It helps those who help themselves. If you try to farm the top of Ben Nevis, what do you expect to harvest except bloody snow? Look round when you get down – bloody amazing – technology – that's the future –’
    It was a royal progress. Seated up at the front, Heathers nodded to left and right without at all interrupting the flow of his talk . Men lifted a hand in salute as he passed. There did not seem to be anyone who failed to recognise him. Malcolm remembered how on Saturday night he had said, 'I have a minute for everybody, even the brickies. They respect me for that . '
    'You don't mind going down into the tunnel?' Chalmers' voice broke into his thoughts.
    'Why should I?' Malcolm asked.
    'Some people do. You'd be surprised.'
    'I'm looking forward to it. I gather it's a new technology.'
    'New enough,' the site manager said . 'We don't handle that part of it. It's contracted to an outside firm, specialists.'
    As he spoke, they rolled inside the tunnel entrance to the Underpass. After the controlled confusion of men getting out of a crowded vehicle, they gathered in a group. Malcolm patted the chinstrap on his safety helmet, and noticed how many of the others went through the same reassuring ritual. 'We're going to walk down,' Heathers said. 'It gives you the feel of it better . And the exercise won't do anybody any harm.' Even just inside, voices echoed. As they went forward, the tunnel was lit from the roof with a white brilliancy that stretched black edged shadows beside them for company . The sense of descending was kinetic, a tightness at the front of the thigh with every step. Malcolm, looking over his shoulder, expected to see daylight, but it was gone, through the tunnel seemed so straight. Some people can't come underground, Chalmers had said.
    'Feel anything?' Heathers grinned back at them from under the helmet stamped with his initials in gold. 'Feel anything yet?' It was cold, and the group milled to a halt and Heathers was saying, ' – shamed the Government into the go ahead . Community cash. The most sophisticated transport link in any inner city in Europe,' the curtain of broad backs parted and the man behind Malcolm muttered, 'Jesus wept!' and sounded reverent .
    Heathers guffawed . 'That's the kind of thing you see in the real world when you come out from behind your desk, George.'
    'That's real?' George asked. It was a cavern of ice.
    'So cold,' Chalmers the site manager said, 'they've to stop every
    ten minutes to thaw out.' Ahead of them a trench ran the length of the tunnel floor. The earth beside it glistened. Pipes curved down into the trench and over a wheel on the nearest a workman bent, winding it down by slow turns.
    'After five or ten minutes, they go numb from the waist down,'
    Chalmers went on quietly as Malcolm, hardly conscious of what he was doing, moved forward until he was at the front of the group. He was in the grip of a powerful and unexpected emotion. The ice vault, the cold, the stillness, above all the movements of the men which were so slow and seemingly noiseless, produced this effect. Nothing in his experience, apart from sex, had taught him to imagine he might be lost and carried out of himself. 'Liquified nitrogen freezes at ninety-six degrees below zero. You can see why it's cold out there .