Abstract: An inner conductor for a gas filled high voltage cable is constructed from plural elements arranged on a carrier tube in one or several layers. The conductive elements are either stranded around the carrier while remaining spaced from each other so that they can deform azimuthally in a wave-like pattern whenever their temperature increases, or alternatively, the conductor elements remain unstranded and are already contoured in a wave-like pattern whose amplitude excursion increases with temperature. In either case, length extensions of the elements are taken up by the wave pattern and do not cause overall length extensions of the conductor assembly as a whole.