Chapter 5, a whip round for Mr Bond. Trudy escorted Bond to a small vehicle like a golf buggy, and they drove away down the gravel drive.

Bond had the impression that her eyes were watching him from behind the tall windows, but he could see nothing.

Trudy remained silent, and he sensed that she had been able to read his expression and knew that the interview with Drax had not gone well.

He considered questioning her

about a relationship with her employer, but decided that this was not the moment to invite such

confidences. Later, perhaps. The buggy crossed a bridge at the frontier of the Poplars and left the

French resistance behind. Across a stretch of open ground planted with shrubs that had not yet

reached maturity was the first of the enormous hangars. Trudy skirted it and arrived at a glass-fronted building that looked as if it housed offices. It reminded Bond of a three-story mouse cage he had owned when a boy. He almost expected to see a giant exercise treadmill beside the filing cabinets. "'This is where I leave you,' said Trudy.. You'll find Dr. Goodhead at the end of the passage

past the reception desk. I'll see you tonight, said Bond. This evening you mean? Trudy raised a hand

in farewell and glided away towards the chateau without looking back. Bond conquered a sigh and

wondered what Dr. Goodhead would be like, probably some dry as dust scientist talking incomprehensibly

in technical jargon.

The kind of man who could split the atom without discovering how to stop the dandruff that built

up on the shoulders of his white coat. Bond entered the building and walked past the empty

reception desk in the inevitable iced water dispenser. As he advanced down the corridor, a beautiful

girl in a black leotard approached him. Her skin matched the color of the

leotard and she had a woolen jacket around her shoulders. There were two small beads of perspiration

above her wickedly curved upper lip, and Bon guessed that she had just returned from a physical

workout with the astronaut trainees. She smiled winsomely and moved on her way, the muscles

rippling beneath the leotard.

Bond felt again a strange sense of unreality.

It was difficult to reconcile Renaissance chateau and beautiful girls with mannequin proportions with the ultra-modern technology of a space laboratory.

...