Parry was working late again. The PC monitor cast large shadows on the walls of the otherwise darkened lab. One more set of data to process, and Parry could knock off, and hopefully catch last orders at the Red Lion. Perhaps he'd bump into Sandra there, who knows. Sandra had only recently started working at the labs, two floors down in Genetics. And Sandra was gorgeous.

The day had been particularly tiresome. Operating an automated ion chromatography system all day, running various sets of impinger solutions for anions. Hardly the stuff of scientific breakthroughs, but Parry felt that he had sold out. Following an aborted attempt at a Ph.D., he was now working for an also-ran commercial laboratory that was barely keeping afloat. More like a sausage factory than a lab. At least the automation gave him thinking time. Trouble was, he couldn't stop thinking about Sandra.

8:45 P.M. The last run ready to process. Calibration spot on. Correlation coefficient 0.9995. Blank showing diddlysquat. Aquacheck sample well within the accept/reject criterion. Still: another green spot on the control chart. Good, and only 10 samples to look at. Perhaps he'd get a couple of drinks in at this rate. He checked them all over. First nine all pretty clean. Must be ambient air samples. No NO_x or SO_x to speak of. No peaks of any significance, really. Another set of "less thans" to report. And a lot of happy clients knowing they weren't polluting the atmosphere. But damn. Sample number 10 had flagged up an error.

Parry mouse-clicked to pull down the ion chromatogram for sample number 10. Most of the chromatogram was way off scale. Way beyond the calibration range. He'd have to run a dilution.

9:45 P.M. Times 10 dilution still off scale. Some really strange chemistry going on here. Fortunately he'd had the foresight to load the carousel with a times 100 dilution after it. Peaks were now on scale, although not baseline resolved. Two whacking great peaks, about the same size, retention time 8.5 and 9.5 minutes, way beyond any of the retention times of the anions that this kit was meant to pick up. Parry heard footsteps in the corridor. Must be security.

The lab lights turned on, and for a while Parry was semi-blind.

"Haven't you got a home to go to, Parry? When I was your age . . ."

"Yes, I know," Parry said, interrupting his supervisor. "When you were my age, John, you used to use chart recorders, and cut out and weigh the peaks."

"We did, actually, but you know that's not what I meant. Hang, on Parry. Chromatograms never looked like that in my day either! Bill Gates has a lot to answer for. Anyway, go home. I'll lock up."

"I can't! Client deadline is 9 A.M. tomorrow. I can't miss any more deadlines. We'll lose this client if I do."

"Look, Parry, it could be carry-over, or the column's shot. Deadline or no deadline, you cannot release data from a chromatogram like that. I'll break the news to the client first thing tomorrow morning. What's the sample's provenance?"

"Duh?" John had swallowed a dictionary again.

"Where did it come from?"

Parry interrogated the laboratory information management system.

"Air Monitors Limited."

"No, dummkopf. Where did the samples come from?"

"Hang on . . . here we are . . . Flue Gas Survey, 10 June 2000."

"Well. Blow me down. With peaks like that, I hardly thought that it was an ambient air survey, unless they got the date wrong by about fifty years and it was essence of London pea-souper, circa 1952."

"Sorry," apologized Parry. "You know what this business is like. Clients are touchy about letting us know more than we need to. Looks like the Environment Agency will be interested, though."

"OK, OK, leave it to me. I'll ask the client in the morning when I break the bad news. Those peaks could of course be simple artifacts - ghost peaks - that will disappear tomorrow like so much morning mist. But go home, Parry. If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were angling after a merit award. Don't worry; I'll put in a recommendation. And I'll set the column to recondition overnight."

"Thanks, John," said Parry, hanging up his lab coat. "Let me know where the phantom flue is, won't you?"

"Eh?"

"Ghost peaks, phantom flue . . ."

"Parry, I make the jokes around here. Now scarper, and have one for me."

Parry got a couple of the best that the Red Lion had to offer that night. Following a couple of nightcaps at home, he slept like a log (dreaming of Sandra from Genetics).

Next morning, Sandra winked at Parry, on his way in to work. My luck's in, he thought.

John was already at the terminal when Parry bounded up the two flights of stairs to the chromatography lab.

"Well, Parry," he said. "Your ghost peaks just got bigger. And they've done something really weird. They've splayed out. It's almost as if this sample's literally putting two fingers up to us. We still can't release any data. In all my years of chromatography, I ain't seen nothing like this."

"Have you warned the client that they won't get their report out today, John?"

"Yes. I'm afraid I chickened, and emailed them before I shut up shop last night. And, before you ask, I did intimate the problems we were having with this particular sample, and requested further info."

"And?"

"Give me a chance, laddie. I haven't checked my email yet. Let's have a look. . . . Ah! Here we are. They must have been waiting for this data. Replied 8:05 this morning."

WE ARE DISAPPOINTED THAT YET AGAIN YOUR LABORATORIES WILL FAIL TO HIT A REASONABLE DEADLINE. THIS LEAVES US IN A PARTICULARLY EMBARRASSING POSITION WITH OUR CLIENT. HOWEVER, FOR YOUR INFORMATION, THE SITE (IN STRICTEST COMMERCIAL CONFIDENCE) WAS CALVERGOOLIE.

At this point of the proceedings, Parry interrupted.

"Calvergoolie is in the middle of nowhere! About as unindustrialized a place as this scepter'd isle can muster! There are no flues in Calvergoolie."

At that point, the monitor screen went blank and rebooted into DOS.

FATAL ERROR

FATAL ERROR

FATAL ERROR

FATAL ERROR

FATAL ERROR

"Yes there are, Parry."

"Where?"

"Calvergoolie Crematorium."