Jeffcott looked at his watch.

It was an electric digital watch and it was showing gibberish. Every now and then the seven elements of each digit would come on in a pattern that showed a number, and occasionally they would even count seconds, but most of the time they went on and off seemingly at random. Even when the display seemed to show a sensible time he had no way of knowing if it was the right time. The thing was useless.

He saw Chery looking at him with amusement. "They told you electrical devices didn't work in here," she said.

"I hoped the magnet would protect it," said Jeffcott. "The same way it's supposed to be protecting us."

"If it did, they could just strap a magnet to a drone and we wouldn't need to be here," the other physicist replied.

Jeffcott nodded. "I'm part engineer on my father's side," he explained. "He always told me that, no matter what the theory says, an engineer doesn't accept it as true until he's done the experiment and found out." He looked down at his watch again. "And now I guess I've found out."

"I bet you're wishing you'd brought an old fashioned clockwork watch," said Rahul Bhatt, pushing up the sleeve of his robes to show off a large instrument whose electroplated silver finish had rubbed off in places to reveal the nickel beneath. "Belonged to my grandfather," he said smugly, but then he frowned when he looked down at it himself. "No, that can't be right," he said.

"What can't? asked Jeffcott.

"It says it's eight fifteen. It's been longer than that, surely."

"Yeah," said Robinson. "It feels like a couple of hours since we left the observation post. Your watch must be slow."

The mathematician wound the winder. "It's fully wound," he said. He held it up to his ear to listen to it ticking.

Jeffcott looked at his own watch again. He couldn't have said why. "I was thinking we should be getting close to Sweetwater village by now. They said it would take two hours."

"They said around two hours," Duffy pointed out. He looked ahead down Interstate Ten, which was still empty except for the occasional abandoned car. "It's just taking a little longer, that's all."

"According to my watch we only set out forty five minutes ago," insisted Rahul Bhatt. "Clockwork doesn't lie."

"Humans are not very good at judging the passage of time," said Dennings. "It's very subjective. Depends on how much stimulation there is in the environment."

"Time flies when you're having fun," said Jeffcott, smiling.

"Exactly," the psychologist replied. "We're feeling the opposite of that. Time creeps when you're bored, bereft of stimulation. It makes us think more time has passed than really has."

Jeffcott frowned, though. It was a very plausible, very sensible explanation, but it just didn't sit right with him, and looking around at the others he could see that it didn't sit right with them either. Even the wagon driver, young Private Seabreeze, looked doubtful. It definitely felt as if more time had passed than that. He looked down at the half-empty bottle of mineral water lying on the bench beside him. Other experts had finished their bottles and started on a second in an attempt to replace the fluids they were sweating out. And yet none of them had been guzzling it. They had been taking the occasional swallow as necessary, to keep their throats moist. Surely it had been more than forty five minutes.

He looked up at the sun, trying to see if it had moved since they'd left the command post, but as far as he could see it was still in the same place. He sighed. Maybe Dennings was right. Maybe it really had only been forty five minutes. It was the most logical explanation after all, but if so, it was going to seem a long time before they got to Maricopa. He settled back in his seat, pulled his baseball cap low down over his eyes to keep out the sun and tried to take a nap.

The gentle rocking and swaying of the wagon on the smooth tarmac of the road, and the low voices of the two doctors as they discussed the anomaly effects on the human body, lulled him into a rather pleasant in-between state of consciousness that he only roused himself from to take the occasional sip of water. Then, some time later, he became aware that the wagon had stopped. He looked around and saw that the Sergeant and some of his men were gathered around the second wagon, the one carrying all their equipment, and were unpacking something.

The activity had attracted the attention of all the experts, and people who had slipped into a light doze were rousing themselves back to full consciousness. Rahul Bhatt, at the back, was climbing down off the wagon, followed by Lisa and Bright. The rest of them, not wanting to be left out, followed and then they all set off in a group to see what the soldiers were doing.

"Look around," said the Sergeant in reply to Bhatt's question. Jeffcott took a quick glance. They were still in the desert, surrounded by the same barren emptiness. "It's been around four hours by my reckoning," the Sergeant continued. "We should have been in Sweetwater Village an hour ago. Either we took a wrong turn or there's something hinky going on."

"We can't have taken a wrong turn," the mathematician replied. "Sweetwater's where we turn off the interstate. All we've got to do is follow it."

"Could we have gone past it?" asked Dennings. "I had a look at the place on Google Streetview last night and there's no actual village there. It's just a place where roads come together. We've all been zoning out, dozing off. Not paying attention..."

"Soldiers on duty do not zone out," said the Sergeant sharply. "We didn't pass through it. Our journey is taking us longer than we thought."

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"The anomaly is affecting electronic watches," said Jeffcott. "We noticed it some time ago. Less time has passed than you think. Bhatt here..." He beckoned the mathemarician forward. "...is wearing a mechanical, clockwork watch. It shows how much time has really passed."

"One hour thirty since we left the command post," said Bhatt, raising his wrist and letting the sleeve of his robes drop away to reveal it.

"I know what four hours feels like," said the Sergeant, though. "I'm thirsty, the horses are thirsty. We need to stop to water them anyway. We're taking the opportunity to talk to the command post. See how much time they think has passed."

His men had removed the signalling lamp and were setting it up on a stand to point upwards. Another man was composing a morse code message, jotting down dots and dashes on a small notepad while consulting a laminated, printed sheet. Bhatt gathered up the rest of the experts and took them a short distance away. "Best let them get on with it," he said. "They'll figure out the truth for themselves."

"Are you sure he's wrong?" asked Mark Summers, frowning with concern. "It really does seem we've been out here a lot longer than just an hour and a half."

"Look at the sun," said Bhatt, pointing upwards. "It was seven thirty when we set out. If four hours had passed the sun would be almost overhead by own. It's not. It's still quite low. The sun doesn't lie."

"Then what the hell's going on?" demanded Summers. "There's no way it's only been ninety minutes."

"The simplest explanation is that the anomaly is affecting our minds," said Dennings, coming forward to stand with the two men. "It's affecting our perception of the passage of time. Only ninety minutes has passed but it seems longer because the anomaly is doing something to us."

"These magnets are supposed to be protecting us," said Jeffcott, feeling scared.

"It's clearly not providing complete protection," the psychologist replied. "It's affecting our electronic wristwatches even though they're inside the magnetic fields generated by our magnets. Now it looks as though it's affecting our brains as well."

"So what can we expect in the future?" asked Jeffcott. "What else is it going to do to us?"

"Our perception of reality is likely to be affected in other ways," Dennings told him. "There are certain drugs that have the same effect. People under their influence can be terrified by mundane objects. A hat, for instance, or a teacup. The person perceives them as horrific for no reason he can identify. He loses the ability to recognise familiar faces. He perceives a six inch step to be the top of a thousand foot cliff. It's possible to overcome these effects with strict mental discipline, though. You simply tell yourself that it's just a hat, that it's nothing to be scared of."

"We should turn back," said Duffy earnestly. "If it's affecting us mentally, it could be affecting us physically as well. We might suffer the same symptoms as those poor sods in the hospital."

"The anomaly is growing," Jeffcott reminded him. "We have to stop it."

"At the cost of our own lives?"

Jeffcott carefully kept himself from looking in Robinson's direction. "If necessary, yes. We have a responsibility to the world."

"Well I didn't sign on to be a hero. We were told these magnets would keep us safe. If they were wrong then we need to leave. We can't save the world if we're dead."

"Why don't we wait to see what reply they get from the command post?" suggested Bhatt, looking back at where the soldiers were still fussing with the signalling lamp. "Maybe they'll order us to turn back when they find out what's happening."

People nodded at the suggestion. It meant they could delay, or even avoid, a nasty confrontation with the soldiers, and so they drifted back to where two of the Sergeant's men were hooking up the signal lamp to the generator with two thick cables. Private Costanzo then turned the igniton key to preheat the generator and waited a moment for the engine to warm up. Then he turned the key the other way and the generator, inside its tent of magnetic gauze, started up with a cloud of black smoke from the exhaust pipe. Then it was running, though, and Costanzo adjusted the throttle until it was running at a steady rumble.

"Nobody look at the light while it's on," said the Sergeant. "Turn your backs just to be safe."

They did, and Jeffcott had to imagine the Sergeant beckoning Private Bernstein, who was wearing what looked like welding goggles, forward to operate the lamp. When the light came on, it was more intense than Jeffcott had ever imagined, as if someone had detonated a nuke behind them. He had his eyes closed, but it was still painfully bright as it reflected from the white robes worn by the other experts and the tarpaulin covering the supply wagon. He threw his arm across his eyes and could still see the blood vessels in his eyelids even though most of the lamp's light was being directed upwards by the mirrors around the plasma emitter. Even the horses were startled, despite the hoods that the soldiers had placed over their heads. They whickered with alarm and pulled against the ropes tied to the posts the soldiers had hammered into the ground. Soldiers patted their necks and tried to reassure them.

The light flashed on and off as Bernstein sent the dashes and dots of the morse code message, and then it was done. The experts lowered their arms gratefully and turned to see Costanzo turning the generator off. Smoke was rising from the signal lamp, and Jeffcott was startled to see that one of its metal sides was glowing a dull red with heat.

"And now we wait," said the Sergeant as his men disconnected the cables and packed them away. He consulted the look-up tables he'd brought with him. "If we assume that Mister Singh's clockwork watch is telling the truth, then the reply satellite is currently low to the west, but let's keep our eyes on the whole sky just in case. Everyone look out for it and yell if you see a light flashing."

"It'll take time for the people back at the command post to get word of the message," mused Duffy to himself. "Then they have to compose a reply and send it to the people controlling the satellite. It might take several minutes."

Jeffcott nodded. They weren't too worried when time went by without any of them seeing anything, therefore, and they were all very much aware that they might be misjudging the passage of time again. "Five minutes since we sent the message," said Rahul Bhatt, looking at his watch. "I assume they'll send a reply saying they got our message even if they take a while to compose a proper reply."

"They'll send an R for Received," the Sergeant replied. "That's a dot, a dash and a dot in morse code. That's what we look for. They'll send it five times."

They squinted up into the sky, their eyes beginning to water as they drank in the brightness. "Could we have missed it?" asked Bright when Bhatt announced that ten minutes had now passed.

"Maybe," said Duffy. "Looking for a flashing light in all that brightness... Or maybe none of us was looking in the right direction."

"Or maybe time really is messed up," said Summers, "and the satellite's below the horizon."

"The satellite drops below the horizon an hour before sunset," replied the Sergeant.

They all nodded in growing apprehension. The sun was still fairly low in the sky. It seemed to have hardly moved since they set out. There weren't any clouds in the sky either. Nothing that might have blocked out the light. What the hell was going on?

"If only an hour and a half has passed since we set out," said Dennings, "maybe they just weren't expecting us to send a message yet. Maybe they weren't looking."

They all nodded hopefully. It seemed the most sensible and reasonable explanation. "We'll try again when we reach Maricopa," said the Sergeant. "Until then, we carry on. Everyone climb aboard. This damned desert is creeping me out."

Jeffcott waited to see if anyone would suggest turning back, but no-one did so the eight experts returned to the wagon and climbed aboard. Then young Private Seabreeze slapped the reins and the wagon lurched back into motion.