Short nodded slowly. ‘Well, let’s hope so.’ He addressed Dr Kersh. ‘At a rough estimate, Doctor, how long will it take to bring them back? Bearing in mind they’ll have to be given complete freedom and that every TV and newspaper network in the world will interview each one a hundred times.’

Kersh chose his words carefully. ‘Obviously a matter of years, General. All the conditioning drills will have to be gradually rescored; as a stop-gap measure we may need to introduce a meteor collision… guessing, I’d say three to five years. Possibly longer.’

‘Fair enough. What would you estimate, Dr Francis?’

Francis fiddled with his blotter, trying to view the question seriously. ‘I’ve no idea. Bring them back. What do you really mean, General? Bring what back?’ Irritated, he snapped: ‘A hundred years.’

Laughter crossed the table, and Short smiled at him, not unamiably.

‘That’s fifty years more than the original project, Doctor. You can’t have been doing a very good job here.’

Francis shook his head. ‘You’re wrong, General. The original project was to get them to Alpha Centauri. Nothing was said about bringing them back’ When the laughter fell away Francis cursed himself for his foolishness; antagonizing the General wouldn’t help the people in the dome.

But Short seemed unruffled. ‘All right, then, it’s obviously going to take some time.’ Pointedly, with a glance at Francis he added: ‘It’s the men and women in the ship we’re thinking of, not ourselves; if we need a hundred years we’ll take them, not one less. You may be interested to hear that the Space Department chiefs feel about fifteen years will be necessary. At least.’ There was a quickening of interest around the table. Francis watched Short with surprise. In fifteen years a lot could happen, there might be another spaceward swing of public opinion.

‘The Department recommends that the project continue as before, with whatever budgetary parings we can make — stopping the dome is just a start — and that we condition the crew to believe that a round trip is in progress, that their mission is merely one of reconnaissance, and that they are bringing vital information back to Earth. When they step out of the spaceship they’ll be treated as heroes and accept the strangeness of the world around them.’ Short looked across the table, waiting for someone to reply. Kersh stared doubtfully at his hands, and Sanger and Chalmers played mechanically with their blotters.

Just before Short continued Francis pulled himself together, realizing that he was faced with his last opportunity to save the project. However much they disagreed with Short, none of the others would try to argue with him.

‘I’m afraid that won’t do, General,’ he said, ‘though I appreciate the Department’s foresight and your own sympathetic approach. The scheme you’ve outlined sounds plausible, but it just won’t work.’ He sat forward, his voice controlled and precise. ‘General, ever since they were children these people have been trained to accept that they were a closed group, and would never have contact with anyone else. On the unconscious level, on the level of their functional nervous systems, no one else in the world exists, for them the neuronic basis of reality is isolation. You’ll never train them to invert their whole universe, any more than you can train a fish to fly. If you start to tamper with the fundamental patterns of their psyches you’ll produce the sort of complete mental block you see when you try to teach a left-handed person to use his right.’

Francis glanced at Dr Kersh, who was nodding in agreement. ‘Believe me, General, contrary to what you and the Space Department naturally assume, the people in the dome do not want to come out. Given the choice they would prefer to stay there, just as the goldfish prefers to stay in its bowl.’

Short paused before replying, evidently re-assessing Francis. ‘You may be right, Doctor,’ he admitted. ‘But where does that get us? We’ve got 15 years, perhaps 25 at the outside.’

‘There’s only one way to do it,’ Francis told him. ‘Let the project continue, exactly as before, but with one difference. Prevent them from marrying and having children. In 25 years only the present younger generation will still be alive, and a further five years from then they’ll all be dead. A life span in the dome is little more than 45 years. At the age of 30 Abel will probably be an old man. When they start to die off no one will care about them any longer.’

There was a full half minute’s silence, and then Kersh said: ‘It’s the best suggestion, General. Humane, and yet faithful both to the original project and the Department’s instructions. The absence of children would be only a slight deviation from the conditioned pathway. The basic isolation of the group would be strengthened, rather than diminished, also their realization that they themselves will never see planet-fall. If we drop the pedagogical drills and play down the space flight they will soon become a small close community, little different from any other out-group on the road to extinction.’

Chalmers cut in: ‘Another point, General. It would be far easier — and cheaper — to stage, and as the members died off we could progressively close down the ship until finally there might be only a single deck left, perhaps even a few cabins.’

Short stood up and paced over to the window, looking out through the clear glass over the frosted panes at the great dome in the hangar.

‘It sounds a dreadful prospect,’ he commented. ‘Completely insane. As you say, though, it may be the only way out.’

Moving quietly among the trucks parked in the darkened hangar, Francis paused for a moment to look back at the lighted windows of the control deck. Two or three of the night staff sat watch over the line of TV screens, half asleep themselves as they observed the sleeping occupants of the dome.

He ducked out of the shadows and ran across to the dome, climbed the stairway to the entrance point thirty feet above. Opening the external lock, he crawled in and closed it behind him, then unfastened the internal entry hatch and pulled himself out of the sleeping cylinder into the silent cabin.

A single dim light glowed over the TV monitor screen as it revealed the three orderlies in the control deck, lounging back in a haze of cigarette smoke six feet from the camera.

Francis turned up the speaker volume, then tapped the mouthpiece sharply with his knuckle.

Tunic unbuttoned, sleep still shadowing his eyes, Colonel Chalmers leaned forward intently into the screen, the orderlies at his shoulder.

‘Believe me, Roger, you’re proving nothing. General Short and the Space Department won’t withdraw their decision now that a special bill of enactment has been passed.’ When Francis still looked sceptical he added: ‘If anything, you’re more likely to jeopardize them.’

‘I’ll take a chance,’ Francis said. ‘Too many guarantees have been broken in the past. Here I’ll be able to keep an eye on things.’ He tried to sound cool and unemotional; the cine-cameras would be recording the scene and it was important to establish the right impression. General Short would be only too keen to avoid a scandal. If he decided Francis was unlikely to sabotage the project he would probably leave him in the dome.

Chalmers pulled up a chair, his face earnest, ‘Roger, give yourself time to reconsider everything. You may be more of a discordant element than you realize. Remember, nothing would be easier than getting you out — a child could cut his way through the rusty hull with a blunt can-opener.’

‘Don’t try it,’ Francis warned him quietly. ‘I’ll be moving down to C-Deck, so if you come in after me they’ll all know. Believe me, I won’t try to interfere with the withdrawal programmes. And I won’t arrange any teen-age marriages. But I think the people inside may need me now for more than eight hours a day.’