He found the door he was seeking, one he would never have noticed under normal circumstances, and went through it into a short corridor which had three more doors on each side. The most distant bore the initials N.R.R.D. in stencilled lettering, a combination which meant nothing to Mathieu, and again he wondered how Solly Hume had chanced upon the troublesome computer in the first place. A junior architect in the City Surveyor's office, Hume was a self-styled "electronic archaeologist" in his spare time and was currently trying to have the machine declared obsolete and redundant so that he could buy it on behalf of some like-minded enthusiasts. It had been pure coincidence that Ezzati, the salvage officer, had mentioned the subject to Mathieu during a meeting, thus alerting him to the imminence of disaster.

Mathieu used his master key to open the door and quietly stepped into the fusty little room. The ceiling globe pinged faintly as it came on, throwing an arctic light over a plain metal table which supported the department of Supply computer, it looked more like a strongbox than a complex electronic monitor, with only a plate engraved with chains of serial numbers to indicate its true nature. In a volume not much greater than that of a shoebox were sensors which could track the incredibly faint signals emitted by product identity tags, plus a computer which converted the signal variations into geographic locations and stored them in its memory. Millions of freight movements had been recorded, going back to before Mathieu's birth, but he was solely concerned with those of the last three years — the evidence of his grand larceny.

He stared at the box for a moment with resentment and grudging respect, and then — feeling oddly guilty — drew the Luddite Special out of his pocket.

He aimed its bell-shaped muzzle at the machine and squeezed the trigger.