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It lay open, the hatch itself long gone, a dark curving invitation to explore within. Although the rain was coming down harder than ever, it was an invitation Lin would have happily foregone, but Bobby was already climbing through. "Come on," he called. "It’s drier inside. Get in here before you both catch pneumonia."

Lin stooped through the hatch after Mon. Outside there had been some light, but inside it was almost pitch-dark, and he stumbled immediately. His hand struck the curve on the other side of the fuselage and it felt as if the whole cylinder trembled.

"Watch it," said Bobby from his left. "It’s a narrow squeeze." A shaft of light sprang up from his hand, from the little torch he had refused to use the previous night. The beam flickered. "Batteries are screwed," Bobby muttered. He shook it and the beam brightened, and steadied. "There’s a sort of step through the middle of the thing. The wing must have gone through there. Be careful." Lin found the step and negotiated it. Bobby had swung the torch forward again, to explore the environment. "There’s a lot of leaves and stuff. And some cobwebs, but no garbage. I think we’re the first ones to have found it since it crashed."

The sound of the rain crashing down on the metal seemed to redouble, but it was mostly dry inside. Lin shivered involuntarily. "What do you think happened to it?" he asked. "Was it shot down, or crashed by accident? And what happened to the crew?"

"How should I know? I suppose they all escaped," said Bobby irritably. "But…you said this was a bomber? Have a look at this."

The interior was so narrow that Lin and Mon could only with difficulty look over his shoulder. He was pointing the beam at the floor. The metal was broken here and a curve of yellow showed through. There was a black band painted around the blunt nose.

"That’s a bomb!" gasped Lin. He struggled back. "We’ve to get out of here!"

"Don’t be a nit," said Bobby, sharply. "If it hasn’t gone off in over sixty years it’s not likely to go off just now. We could probably salvage the explosive for the organisation. That would be a sort of windfall. Then this whole fiasco wouldn’t have been a dead loss." He played his torch around and illuminated the firing handles of a machine gun. "I don’t suppose this beauty would still fire?" He squeezed it experimentally and the grip broke off in his hand. "No," he said regretfully. "Maybe it’s got some more guns, though."

"Who cares about guns?" said Lin nervously. He could no longer see the bomb, but kept well back from where he thought it was. "I say we step very carefully unless we want it all to blow."

"It didn’t burst in the crash, Lin" said Mon. Lin realised despairingly it was two against one. "You won’t set it off if you touch it, you know."

"Anyway," said Bobby as thunder crashed overhead, "we aren’t going anywhere yet."

For a moment, he switched off the torch. The bulge of the glasshouse overhead had let in a little light, but now everything was totally dark. Then he switched it on again. "Let’s see what we can see," Lin heard him mutter. He made his way cautiously further forward, but the others made no attempt to follow. Not, that is, until he called back to them.

"I was wrong about the crew escaping," he said. "Well, at least not all did. You’ve got to see this."

The panels of Perspex had largely blown out towards the front of the aircraft, and it was much wetter there. Bobby was crouched on the floor. He had taken his M16 off his shoulder, and leaned it on the fuselage side. "Look at this," he said. "I very nearly didn’t notice it at first."

Bobby was squatting in front of a little niche formed by the curve of the fuselage and an oblong projection from the roof that might once have been a fuel tank. Just in front, there was an opening above and faint reflections of torchlight shone off the windshield and thick joysticks. They were just below the cockpit.

The object on which his light was focussed lay in the niche, legs drawn up in a foetal position, looking so much like a wooden statue that Lin did not realise what it was until he saw the white glimmer of teeth. The skin was blackened and shrunk over the skull, the eyes collapsed, sunken into empty sockets, the lips long gone.

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