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earlyin the next century, only giving us a few years use of it as an invulnerable deterrent. As a nation, Britain cannot really afford defences against Russian missiles, so not only could we not defend ourselves against nuclear attack; we soon wouldn’t have been able to deter one either.
    â€˜Well, faced with all this, the Government, as you remember, took a crucial three-pronged decision. The first factor was to cancel Trident as being a waste of money. The second was to launch a new investigation into what form of nuclear deterrence might still be feasible in the twenty-first century. And the third – and this is where I came in – was to instruct Aldermaston to make further modifications to the old Polaris missiles to enable them to penetrate Soviet defences for the next decade or so. And to do that as cheaply as possible.’
    Michael Hawke glanced at his ministerial colleagues and winced, knowing full well that Skydancer had been anything but cheap. The expenditure of hundreds of millions of pounds on the project had been the source of constant complaint from other ministers in the Cabinet.
    â€˜So we set up the Skydancer programme,’ Joyce continued firmly, ‘to design and build a new front end for the Polaris rockets, which would be clever enough to get through the Russian defences.’
    â€˜I think we all know the history bit, Mr Joyce,’ the Prime Minister interjected impatiently. ‘Perhaps you would get to the point now. What we want to know is how much of the project may have been compromised.’
    Peter turned to the PM and nodded. He smoothed back his hair and continued.
    â€˜Very well, then. The Russian defences consist of a mixture of technologies, both missiles and high-powered lasers. The key to those defences lies not in the weapons themselves, but in the radar andelectro-optical detection systems used to spot the incoming missile warheads, and to track them accurately so that the defending weapons can attack them. Our task with Skydancer was to devise new gadgets that would deceive, blind or mislead those Russian detection systems.’
    He paused to scan the faces of his audience, to see if they were still following him.
    â€˜Skydancer itself is what we call a “space-bus”, something that sits on the front end of the missile and separates from the rocket part after it’s been launched from the submarine and gets outside the earth’s atmosphere. This “bus” can manoeuvre in space and change course in a way which makes its future path difficult for observers on the ground to predict, hence its name “Skydancer”.
    â€˜Now, into that “bus” fit the re-entry vehicles, the six objects that will eventually plummet down from space towards the target on the ground. Some of those RVs are warheads with nuclear bombs inside them, but the others carry an assortment of electronic and mechanical devices designed to help make the warheads themselves “invisible” to the scanners on the ground. Once released from the space-bus, those re-entry vehicles are in free fall; they just drop straight down. So, as you can imagine, the accuracy of the weapon depends entirely on the position and attitude of the space-bus when the RVs are ejected from it. And the plans that seem to have been stolen describe with mathematical precision the pattern for the ejection of those RVs.’
    He paused there and waited to see if there were any questions.
    It was the Home Secretary who was the first to speak. He harboured a deep suspicion of scientists in the defence industries, always suspecting them of inventingnew problems in an effort to suck more money out of the public purse for their projects. He half suspected the Aldermaston men of setting up this whole spy scare for their own ends.
    â€˜Are you trying to tell us, Mr Joyce,’ he whined sarcastically, ‘that all these clever inventions of yours have suddenly become worthless