Raven's Gate

out with them. Not that I intend to hang out with you. As soon as we’ve found out what’s going on, it’s goodbye. No offence but there’s only room in this place for one.”
    “That’s fine by me.”
    “Anyway, I’ve been busy. While you were asleep, I made a few calls. The first one was to Sir Michael Marsh.”
    “The scientist.”
    “He’s agreed to see us at half past eleven. After that, we’re going to Manchester.”
    “Why?”
    “When you came to the newspaper office you told me about a book you’d found in the library. Written by someone called Elizabeth Ashwood. She’s quite well known. This will probably grab you, Matt. She writes about black magic and witchcraft … that sort of stuff. We’ve got a file on her at the
Gazette
and I managed to get hold of one of our researchers. She gave me an address for her. No phone number, unfortunately. But we can drive over and see what she has to say.”
    “That’s great,” Matt said. “Thank you.”
    “Don’t thank me. If this leads me to a story, I’ll be the one thanking you.”
    “And if it doesn’t?”
    Richard thought for a moment. “I’ll throw you back in the bog.”
    Sir Michael Marsh looked very much like the government scientist he had once been. He was elderly now, well into his seventies, but his eyes had lost none of their intelligence and seemed to demand respect. Although it was a Sunday morning, he was formally dressed in a dark suit with a white shirt and blue silk tie. His shoes were highly polished and his fingernails manicured. His hair had long ago turned silver but it was thick and well groomed. He was sitting with his legs crossed, one hand resting on his knee, listening to what his visitors had to say.
    It was Richard who was talking. He was more smartly dressed than usual. He had shaved and put on a clean shirt and a jacket. Matt was next to him. The three of them were in a first-floor sitting room with large windows giving an uninterrupted view of the River Ouse. The house was Georgian, built to impress. There was something almost stage-like about the room, with its polished wooden desk, shelves of leather-bound books, marble fireplace and antique chairs. And Richard had been right about the matchbox label collection. There were hundreds of them, displayed in narrow glass cases on the walls. They had come from every country in the world.
    Richard had given a very cut-down version of Matt’s story. He hadn’t told Sir Michael who Matt was or how he had arrived at Lesser Malling but had concentrated instead on the things Matt had seen at Omega One. At last Richard came to a halt. Matt waited to hear how Sir Michael would react.
    “You say that there were electric lights at the power station,” he began. “And the boy heard a humming sound?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “He saw a lorry. Unloading some sort of box?”
    “Yes.”
    “And what conclusion have you drawn from all this, Mr Cole?”
    “Matt couldn’t see very much in the darkness, Sir Michael. But he said that the people carrying the box were wearing strange, bulky clothes. I wondered if they might have been radiation suits.”
    “You think that somebody is trying to start up Omega One?”
    “It is a possibility.”
    “An impossibility, I’m afraid.” He turned to Matt. “How much do you know about nuclear power, young man?”
    “Not a lot,” Matt answered.
    “Well, let me tell you a bit about it. I’m sure you don’t want a physics lesson, but you have to understand.” Sir Michael thought for a moment. “We’ll start with the nuclear bomb. You know, of course, what that is.”
    “Yes.”
    “A nuclear bomb contains devastating power. It can destroy an entire city as it did, in the last war, at Hiroshima. In tests in the Nevada Desert, a small nuclear bomb blew out a crater so deep, you could have fitted the Empire State Building into it. The power of the bomb is the energy released in the explosion. And that energy comes from splitting the atom. Are you with me so far?”
    Matt nodded. If he had been at school his attention would have wandered already, but this time he was determined to keep up.
    “A nuclear power station works in much the same way. It splits the atom in a metal called uranium but instead of producing an explosion, which is uncontrolled, the energy is released gradually in the form of heat. The heat is fantastic. It turns water into steam, which then drives the turbines of an electricity generator and out comes