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population that had ostensibly brought Harkman to Wessex.
    Ever since the catastrophic earthquakes and land subsidence of the previous century, what had formerly been south-west England had been separated from the mainland by the narrow but deep channel that was known as Blandford Passage. Wessex-men had been left to fend for themselves for many decades, until the Westminster government had realized the potential of the island as a tourist resort, since when it had been administered and developed and taxed in the same way as the other regions of England.
    Harkman’s interest, as a social historian, was in what had happened in Wessex during the years of isolation. There were still people alive on the island who remembered those days, and there were records scattered about - mainly in Dorchester, Plymouth and Truro - relating to conditions at the time, and Harkman intended to compile an exhaustive and definitive documentary account. It would probably take him many years, and he was prepared to treat it as his life’s work. This was his ostensible reason for the move to Dorchester, and it was the one which had obtained him his permission. But in his heart he knew that it was not the sole motive.
    There was Wessex itself. From the day that he had conceived of the project, Harkman had felt that there was some indefinable insufficiency in his life. It wasn’t just that his work at the Bureau of English Culture was unsatisfying - although in many respects it was - nor that he felt a sense of inadequacy about his life in London; more directly, it was an instinctive knowledge that Wessex was a spiritual and emotional home.
    It had started with something he’d read about the community at Maiden Castle; it had interested him, and in trying to discover more about it he had sensed a growing involvement with the-Castle and the island on which it stood. He simply hadn’t understood it, and the need to understand had compelled him with more force than anything the intellectual challenge of his social research could muster.
    So as he had arrived in Dorchester the previous evening, he had not only seen that day as the first on which his life’s work began, but also as the last on which he had awakened with the feeling of separation from a place that had dominated his thoughts and actions for two years.
    Then too, almost incidentally, there was the fact of the tidal bore through Blandford Passage.
    Many years before, as a young man, he had had the chance to sample the terrors and excitements of wave-riding. He had had only three weeks in which to learn the elemental violence of the tidal wave, but it was a violence which, once experienced, always enthralled one.
    Wave-riding was undeniably a young man’s sport - and one for the rich - but over the years Harkman had kept himself in physical trim, and he’d been saving his wages all his life. He had the opportunity, the money and the will to ride the Blandford wave again, and he was determined that he wouldn’t waste them.
    It was a fine, bright morning in Dorchester, and Harkman relished the lightness and cleanness of the air, the decadence of the architecture, the narrowness of the streets. It was a town with a sunny hangover; the night-clubs and bars of Dorchester catered to the tastes of the visitors late into the night, and the shutters and louvred doors of the villas and apartment-blocks were closed against the freshness of the morning. Even so, there were many holidaymakers already about, strolling through the streets to do a little concessionary shopping before departing to one of the beaches outside town.
    Impossible to believe that London was less than two hundred kilometres away!
    When he reached the street where the Commission building was situated, Harkman made an instant decision and walked on past. He had an appointment to see Commissioner Borovitin, but there were still a few minutes in hand. He remembered having seen a skimmer-shop by the harbour when he landed the