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came on, followed by a clicking sound. Heat flowed into the room. Those who were standing on Eskimos got off Eskimos. I said, ‘Johnson.’
    Johnson blinked. ‘I told you,’ he said, ‘that I’d got you a free pass till midnight. Naturally, when your Huskies all went to meet you and found the coach gone, they did the right things. There’ll be an engine along in a minute.’
    ‘The lights?’ I said. ‘The heat?’
    ‘Joanna,’ said Johnson sadly. ‘My glasses were cracked. If there was a switch, I must have missed it.’
    ‘You saw the Snowmobiles,’ I said. It had become a private, and embittered dialogue. Behind us, hysterical laughter was breaking out. I said, ‘You scaremongered all the way through. You created panic. You flunked out of everything. You risked that bloody brat’s life. Why?’
    ‘I didn’t,’ he said. ‘Honestly. In fact, I’ll tell you a secret. I’m the guy who got the train stopped. The telephone wasn’t out of order at all. I knew all the time we’d be rescued.’
    ‘It wasn’t,’ I repeated. After a bit, I got my teeth apart. ‘And who coupled the carriage on to the train in the first place? The Huskies again?’
    ‘No,’ said Johnson. ‘No. In fact that is a mystery. A railway mistake, one might venture. An act of the Lazy Three Fairies. Does it matter? It threw us together. Have a whisky.’
    He put one in my hand, topped it smoothly with water, and passed on his hospitable way. It was Natural Unplucked Nutria, I believe, who laid down his sporting rifle and gave the first howl. ‘What the hell are you drinking?’
    ‘Whisky,’ said Johnson, surprised. ‘We’ve been drinking all night.’
    ‘Well,’ said Natural Unplucked Nutria, ‘have you seen what you’re drinking?’
    We hadn’t. Held in the hand, our glasses contained what appeared to be an attractive straw-coloured whisky.
    Held up to the light, it still looked like whisky. Except that, coursing briskly around it was a large pack of frilly grey foreign bodies filled with intent, and for all I know, winking. I said, ‘Sea Monkeys.’
    I was the centre of attention. Everyone said ‘What?’
    I said, ‘They’re Sea Monkeys.’ I was furious.
    One of the Professors left the room quickly.
    I said to Johnson, ‘That sugar.’
    ‘In your anorak pocket,’ he said. ‘I got it. I tipped it into the water. You remember. Then we couldn’t make the toddy because we’d no boiling water.’
    I dipped my hand into my anorak pocket and came up, in silence, with an untouched pack of airline sugar. Johnson dipped his hand into his mac and came up with a torn pack of something else that he laid on the table between us.
    Instant Life it said, in yellow and red. Ready-to-hatch Sea Monkeys, with a Supply of Special Growth Food. See them HATCH ALIVE. When fully-grown, they can be bred for even MORE adorable pets.
    ‘Murderer,’ I said to Johnson coldly.
    The other Professor left the room. Vladimir said, ‘What is this? Monkeys?’
    ‘Brine shrimps,’ I said, ‘there’s no need to fuss. Fish eat them with no ill effects whatever.’
    Until you put them in water, brine shrimp eggs look like dust. It would be perfectly possible, if your glasses were broken, to mistake them for sugar. Unless you were Johnson.
    Simon Booker-Readman said, ‘What in God’s name were you carrying these about for?’ He looked, blessedly, more entertained than revolted.
    Johnson picked up my anorak. ‘You’d be surprised. You don’t mind, do you, Joanna?’ And without waiting, he turfed out my things on to the table. The sugar, which I’d saved from the airport. A picture postcard of a plane and two cocktail stirrers. A miniature pepper and salt. A pack of fruit gums, a box with a Mexican bean in it, a Matchbox tractor and three very poor cracker mottoes.
    ‘I’ve got nephews,’ I said. Simon Booker-Readman was looking at me in a very odd way.
    ‘You have no nephews,’ said Johnson precisely. ‘I, personally, am going to