The meeting went on for another couple of hours before Starr stood and thanked everyone for attending. Half a dozen conversations broke out as Starr and Bromley walked out together, and Jeffcott sat in confusion, not knowing what he was supposed to to next. Fortunately the young Captain made his way over to him and Jeffcott stood to greet him.

  "Have you had a proper meal since you got here?" the Captain asked.

  "Just a few snacks from a vending machine," the physicist replied.

  "Typical," the Captain replied. His name was Daniels, Jeffcott remembered. "Come on, I'll show you the way to the canteen. We can have a proper meal together as we talk."

  He led the way out of the room and along a carpeted corridor to a flight of stairs up to the next floor. "We've missed the lunch rush so the place should be pretty empty," Daniels said as they walked. "My favourite table should be empty."

  "You've been stationed here for a while then," said Jeffcott as they climbed the stairs.

  "About a week," the Captain replied. "We've known for a week that we were going to be sending in a large armed force. Your expedition was just a reconnaissance mission, which succeeded splendidly. You have every right to be proud."

  "Even though I was the only one to make it back out alive," Jeffcott replied flatly. "The Sergeant mentioned something called VC Cannon, when the mission is considered a success even if only one person makes it back alive. Is that a real thing?"

  "It is indeed," Daniels replied, "but so far as I know this was the only time it's ever been put into practice. You'll go down in history, Mister Jeffcott. Military academies around the world will be telling their students about you for decades to come."

  "Was it VC Cannon right from the start? From the moment we entered the anomaly?" Jeffcott felt anger rising up within him as he remembered the people he'd gone in with. Lucy, Cheryl. Vincent Duffy. Private Seabreeze, who'd looked far too young to be out of school let alone a member of a veteran military force. Had they been callously sent to their deaths by indifferent Generals who saw them only as pawns on a chessboard?

  "We were expecting all of you to make it back," the Captain replied, ignoring the accusing tone. "We had no way of knowing there was a hostile agent at the heart of the anomaly. So far as we knew we were dealing with nothing more than the side effect of an experimental piece of scientific machinery. With the right protection, we didn't expect you to be in any real danger."

  Jeffcott looked across at his face as they continued to climb and saw nothing but sincerity in his expression. He nodded and continued to climb in silence.

  Conversation and the clatter of cutlery drifted from the door ahead of them as they reached the top of the stairs. The canteen wasn't as empty as the Captain had hoped, it seemed, but Daniels smiled to see that his favourite table was still empty and after they'd picked their food from the serving counter they carried their trays over to it. The table was beside the window, looking out over the military base, and as the Captain sat he looked out at the soldiers and service people below, moving busily around on the tarmac and neatly mowed grass.

  "I thought you might try some of the local food," said Daniels, looking at the lamb and roast potatoes Jeffcott had piled on his plate. Some gravy had spilled over the side and made a small puddle on the wood-effect plastic of the table surface. "The sonoran hot dogs are really good."

  "I'm afraid I'm rather unadventurous when it comes to food," Jeffcott replied. He cut a roast potato in half, dipped the exposed side in the gravy and popped it into his mouth. "It tastes a bit different to what I'm used to," he said, though. "I think they're using some local spices or something. I quite like it."

  "That'll be the parmesan and garlic I expect. You won't find much around here that doesn't have parmesan in it." He looked down at his own plate. "Look at this, for example. I asked for a New York steak and I'm prepared to believe there's a piece of steak in there somewhere if I dig down through the cheese far enough." He scraped off some of the sauce with his fork. "Ah, there it is."

  He cut a piece with his knife and ate it. "Ah, God! You have to try this. You can't leave Phoenix until you've tried it. God's own recipe."

  "I'll try some tomorrow," Jeffcott replied with a smile. "I promise."

  The Captain nodded and looked out the window again at the people moving around below. Somewhere a helicopter was landing. The sound came in through the open window and made conversation impossible for a while. The two men ate in silence until the engine shut down and silence fell again.

  "I envy them," said the Captain, watching where a pair of Privates had been collared by a Sergeant who was telling them something. He speared a small potato with his fork and popped it into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed before he spoke again.

  "They never have to make any really important decisions," he said. "Not unless something's gone really, seriously wrong anyway. They just obey orders, laugh and joke with their friends and collect a paycheck once a month. I, on the other hand, am about to lead a military force into enemy occupied lands. I am leading a hundred men into a situation I know almost nothing about and whether they live or die could depend on a decision I make. Maybe a decision that I don't think is important when I make it and that I therefore don't give enough thought to. That scares me, Mister Jeffcott. That's heavy. Do you understand?"

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  "I think I do," said Jeffcott. He looked down at his plate, his mouth watering with hunger, but the Captain's suddenly serious tone made him reluctant to continue his meal. "The burden of responsibility."

  "You don't," said the Captain, though. "You think you do but you don't. I've led men into combat before, in Somalia and Venezuela. I lost men many times. My superiors say I did nothing wrong but I can't be sure. I've spent every second of my life since second guessing myself. What if I'd done this instead of that? What if I'd done that faster? They say this mission's going to be a cakewalk. Just lead some APC's fifty miles down the road, blow up a building and come home. What can go wrong?"

  He cut a piece or beef and popped it into his mouth. "Not hungry, Mister Jeffcott?" He pointed a fork at Jeffcott's plate and the physicist obediently picked up a piece of carrot. The Captain watched as he ate it, then squashed some peas onto the back of his fork.

  "Something will go wrong, though," he said, jabbing the fork at Jeffcott for emphasis. "Something always does. All I can hope is that I react fast enough and correctly enough to keep anyone from being killed. What I can do is try to anticipate things that might go wrong and think up some contingency plans to cover them."

  "What kind of things do you think might go wrong?" asked Jeffcott.

  "I'm used to leading soldiers into combat," said Daniels, examining Jeffcott closely. "People who have been trained to deal with the unexpected. People who have been conditioned to obey orders. The men who have been picked for this mission are all combat veterans who have proved themselves time and again. I know I can depend on them."

  "But then there's me," said Jeffcott, guessing where the other man was going. He looked at the Captain and found that the other man was staring at him with an unsettling intensity. Daniels was looking at him as if trying to estimate exactly how much pressure he'd have to exert in order to snap his neck.

  "A civilian," Jeffcott continued. "A man used to making his own decisions. Worse than that, a scientist. A man with knowledge and, forgive me, an intellect superior to your own. An intellect that might lead me to think that I know better than you when a crucial decision has to be made. An arrogance that might make me think that my scientific knowledge trumps your military experience when deciding upon a course of action."

  "That's part of it," said the Captain without taking his eyes off the physicist, "but I know how to deal with insubordination. Come down hard on the offender. Make him wish he'd never been born. I'll have a hundred men under my command, Mister Jeffcott. One wrong word from you and I promise you won't ever think of doing it again. If I give you an order, I expect it to be obeyed. I know you're not military but I expect you to act as if you are. If I make a suggestion, it's not a suggestion. It's an order. I'm just being polite. I expect it to be obeyed. If you have a question, you ask it when you and I are in private. I don't want the men to think it's okay to question me."

  "I may have suggestions from time to time," said Jeffcott, trying to give no outward sigh of his sudden nervousness.

  "Suggestions are fine," Daniels replied. "Recommendarions are fine, so long as you word them as recommendations. I will consider them and you will comply with my decision. Am I understood, Mister Jeffcott?"

  "I understand," Jeffcott replied.

  "Good." The Captain cut another piece from his steak and put it in his mouth. "That's not what's really worrying me, though. What's really worrying me is that you're not a combat veteran. You're not trained to stand up under life and death pressure."

  "I fought the creatures on our way out of Maricopa," Jeffcott pointed out. "I killed one of them. I saw men killed in the most horrific way."

  "Which may have left you traumatised," the Captain replied. "What really worries me is that going back into that place might cause you to have a breakdown. Breakdowns are bad for discipline, Mister Jeffcott. One man starts crying for his mommy and it gets everyone else jittery. They start wondering what's lying ahead for them that might do that to a man."

  "That's not going to happen to me," Jeffcott assured him.

  "So you say," said Daniels. "And you might sincerely believe it. Embedding a civilian in a military unit is never a good idea, though. We had a war journalist with us in Somalia. Seemed a solid sort of guy. Level headed. Plenty of moral fibre. Got on well with the men. Then the bullets started flying, though, and the man started crying. Actually crying. That kind of fear is poisonous, Mister Jeffcott. It infects the people around him. Solid men lose their nerve, and if one fighting man ceases to be effective, others follow. I had to have the man restrained. Locked away where his fear wouldn't affect the others. I don't want to have to do that again."

  "You won't," Jeffcott assured him. "I promise."

  "I've read the transcripts of your interviews," said the Captain. "The incidents you mentioned happened while you were leaving. You left without confirming that all the other members of your expedition were dead."

  "Dustu made that decision. He decided that the overwhelming priority was to bring what we knew back here."

  "Which gave you an excellent excuse for running away. You don't have to be brave when you're running away. All you have to do is run. I ask myself what will happen if we see action while we're going into Maricopa. Will you be able to stand firm and do your part, or will you break and poison my men with your cowardice?"

  "I guess we won't know until we get there," Jeffcott replied.

  "Exactly," replied the Captain. "And that's what worries me. I've been ordered to take you with me. They say you may be an asset to us. I hope that will be the case, but if it isn't I won't hesitate to do whatever's necessary to protect the morale of my men. I hope I make myself clear."

  "As crystal," Jeffcott replied. The other man was staring at him. Jeffcott made himself meet his gaze eye to eye. They stared at each other for several moments until Daniels nodded slightly and looked away.

  "Your dinner's getting cold, Mister Jeffcott," he said. "Best eat it while it's still hot."

  The Captain cut off another piece of his steak and Jeffcott took a sip of water to ease his dry mouth. Then, his heart racing with nervousness and his body shivering with adrenalin, he forced himself to resume his meal.