17201 CC by davidandrew12

The Matter of Dark Book 2

Strangers and Adventurers

Colin Stewart

Elsbury Books

IIlustrations by Rachel Labovitch

First published in 2025 by Elsbury Books, Studio 108820

PO Box 4336, Manchester M61 0BW, UK elsburybooks@belerion.co.uk

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means without the prior permission of the publisher

The right of Colin Stewart to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-7392291-2-2

Typeset and printed by Beamreach Printing, Cheshire, UK

My Thanks to Tim Wilson

Tom Jacobson

Sarah and Oscar Fitzharding

Neil Hall

Rachel Labovitch

David Exley

for all their kind help with this book

One

Awg was getting madder and madder. He couldn’t stand much more of it.

There was a five minute break before the next class and Hamilton Crutchley was bragging on about his holiday. His parents owned a large yacht and had taken him sailing around the Greek Islands. They had even paid for a professional guide to accompany them. The Crutchleys were not short of money.

‘It was just so wonderful. You have absolutely no idea. We saw all the sights. You wouldn’t believe that Minoan palace at Knossos.’ He went on and on.

Awg had had enough. ‘Other people do stuff as well,’ he muttered. ‘Other people go to places and see stuff.’

Hamilton Crutchley leered at Awg. ‘Yeah. I’m sure other people do lots of things. Other people have loony dads who think birds can read. And then other people fall out of trees so their kids get packed off to hovels in Wales and have wonderful holidays digging potatoes and feeding chickens.’

Unfortunately for Awg, every word of this was true and he hadn’t the heart to tough it out and say it wasn’t. His dad was an inventor who didn’t always get things right. He really had fallen out of a tree and broken his arm, and Awg had been sent away to stay with his grandmother in the Welsh mountains.

Hamilton had won the argument. But he was stupid enough not to know when to stop.

‘I expect you had a lovely time with the sheep. You must have had some great conversations:

“Would you like a guided tour of this crappy little field?”

“Baaaa, Baaaa.”

“There are some really fascinating cow-pats you might like to tread in.”

“Baaaa, Baaaa.”

‘Not quite the same as being taken around the remains of a three thousand year old civilisation, though, is it?’

Awg snapped.

‘That’s nothing! I saw a civilisation that was a lot older than that. While you were pissing around on your precious yacht I was stuck in another Universe. There were virtual cities and hyper-intelligent spiders and eight-foot tall aliens with silver skins. I only ever managed to get home again ’cos they can send stuff through time and space.’

Unfortunately for Awg, every word of this was also true and he really shouldn’t have said anything about it. The response was predictable.

‘Bog off, Allardyce! You’re as screwy as your nutty dad.’

Awg’s real name was Allardyce Wentworth Gilhooley Bradley, after three obscure inventors that his dad admired. He wrote it as AWG Bradley, so everbody called him Awg.

Quite a circle of people had formed around Awg and Hamilton Crutchley because things had been hotting up and it looked as if there was going to be a fight. Now, with Awg’s ridiculous outburst, it had all fizzled out and the crowd melted away.

All except for a boy called Robo, who gave Awg a very funny look, and stared at him for a long time before finally walking away too.

Two

Robo’s real name was Jonathan Robertson but his mates called him Robo. Or they would have done if he’d had any. But he didn’t; he was a loner. He’d joined Awg’s class in Brayhill Secondary after Easter and had only been at the school for a term. The other kids in the class just started calling him Robo and he didn’t seem to object. He didn’t react one way or the other.

Robo’s father was an archaeologist. He moved about a lot and Robo had been to five different schools in three different countries. With all the travelling and changes of scene he’d soon learned to look after himself. He wasn’t particularly big or muscular for his age – but he was tough, and it showed. Nobody was going to try anything on Robo. One look at that firm, angular face and those steel-grey eyes stopped them in their tracks. He was, in fact, more than slightly scary.

Robo always arrived at school on time and he left as soon as classes were over. He never spoke to anyone unless they spoke first. Then he answered – briefly and to the point. In class, he worked steadily and got excellent marks. He never volunteered information, but if a teacher asked him a direct question, he nearly always knew the right answer. On Wednesday afternoons when they played football he was a deadly attacker. Once he went all out for goal, no one got near him and the ball was as good as in the net.

The teachers knew that the other kids called the new boy Robo. They thought it was ‘Robbo’, short for Robertson. But it wasn’t. It was Robo, short for Robot.

On the day after the Hamilton Crutchley incident, Awg was walking home from school with two of his friends when he got the feeling someone was following them. He turned, but could see no one. A few minutes later the feeling was still there and he wheeled round again. Again, the street was empty. Apparently.

‘What you so jumpy for?’ said Matt. ‘An’ why did you come out with all that garbage about other universes and silver monsters. People’ll begin to think you really are a nutter if you start saying stuff like that.’

‘I – I just did it to shut Crutchley up, that’s all,’ said Awg. ‘I couldn’t stand any more of his banging on about how much money they have and how he’s got a Rolex watch and three TV’s and all that shit.’

They went into their favourite café and ordered burgers and chips. Awg got a double cheeseburger and extra chips because he knew this was likely to be his only meal of the evening. It wasn’t that his parents neglected him, exactly. They were quite kind to him when they remembered he was there at all. It was just that this didn’t happen very often. His father lived in the dreamland of his inventions – and his mother’s life was completely taken up with fussing round his father, whom she regarded as a neglected genius. Cooking for Awg didn’t figure very highly on her agenda, so he usually had to get his own meals.

Out of the corner of his eye, Awg could see someone in a doorway across the road. They seemed to be watching the café. He manoeuvred himself around until he could see a reflection in the café window, but, try as he might, he couldn’t see who it was.

They finished their meal. Outside the café, there was no one about on either side of the street.

‘ ’Night, Awg. See yuh!’

‘ ’Night, Matt. Cheers, Pete.’

Something moved. Across the road, there had been a fire.

The house was boarded up. Something had moved behind the broken slats. Maybe a cat had got in.

Awg decided not to take his usual route home. If someone really was following him, then he would lead them a bit of a dance.

He went into the park. Awg had played there when he was a little kid and he knew every nook and cranny of it. He made for the bit where the gardens were. There was one part where there was a small maze. Awg dived inside and began to walk rapidly along the paths between the high, neatly-clipped bushes. He’d worked out how to get into and out of the maze a long time ago but anyone new to it would almost certainly get lost. He waited for a few minutes, dodging in and out between the hedges, and then quickly made his way out. If anyone had been following him, he’d be certain to have shaken them off now. However, he decided to check.

Awg walked very quickly through the children’s play area and on to the place where there was an ornamental pond under some trees. Just around a corner, he shinned up a leafy beech tree and wedged himself in the V where the trunk divided. He was about twenty feet from the ground and out of sight.

After a few minutes, a boy of about his own age came and sat on the seat under the tree on the opposite side of the path. There was no one else about.

The boy spoke. Quietly, but loud enough for Awg to hear.

‘It would be easier to talk if you came down,’ said Robo.

Three

Awg climbed down.

‘Hello Awg.’

‘Hi Robo. How did you get out of the maze?’

‘I never went into it.’

‘What?’

‘When I saw you go in, I walked all around the outside. There’s four exits but if you look at the gravel on the paths it’s hardly disturbed. At the place you went in, it’s all scuffed to hell. Obviously, stacks of people have walked there. So I guessed the other paths were dead ends, put there to confuse people, and you’d have to come out the way you went in. I followed you here, waited until you were nicely settled in your tree, and then strolled along myself.’

These were the most words Awg had ever heard Robo say at one time.

‘But why were you following me at all?’

‘I wanted to see you on your own, without all the others around.’

This sounded ominous. For a moment, Awg wondered if he was going to get beaten up. He’d seen what Robo could do in the gym and it was fairly awesome. Then he relaxed. Robo might be a bit scary but he didn’t seem the sort who’d give anyone a kicking for no reason. Besides, Awg himself had been in some very tight spots and had the confidence to stand up to most sorts of threat.

‘Do you want to be called Robo?’

‘Same difference. I don’t like ‘Jon’ much, anyway.’

‘It’s better than Allardyce.’

‘No contest.’

‘So, like – you wanted to talk about – what?’

‘About the stuff you said to that arsehole Crutchley.’

Awg was immediately on the defensive. ‘He’s a pain. I only said that to shut him up.’

‘No you didn’t. I think you meant it. It sounded wild enough to be true.’

‘So do you actually believe I could have travelled to another Universe?’

‘Why not? There’s plenty of real things on our own planet that no one would believe if you made them up.’

‘Like?’

‘Like the things that live deep in the ocean trenches, miles down. Fantastic weird-shaped creatures that can stand the huge pressure. Bacteria that live around submerged volcanic vents and live without oxygen. Their life chemistry is totally different from ours. It’s odds on there’s even more amazing things out in space somewhere. There’s got to be.’

‘And other Universes besides our own?’

‘Why not? My dad told me that some systems of mathematics actually require them to be there, and that there are other dimensions besides the four we experience here. It’s just that we can’t understand their significance yet.’

‘I thought your dad was an archaeologist.’

‘Yes, but he’s more than that. He trained as a physicist and biologist before he got interested in archaeology. He’s an expert on preserved life forms: flies in amber, mammoths frozen in glaciers – that sort of thing. That’s why he went off to Norway last month.’

‘To look at a frozen mammoth?’

‘No – not a mammoth, exactly …’

‘What, then?’

‘Another sort of creature. Perhaps a man. Perhaps something else.’

‘Something else? You mean an ape?’

‘I don’t know. He didn’t tell me, before … he went away.’

Robo looked at his watch and got up from the bench.

‘D’you always eat in that café after school?’ he asked.

Awg didn’t like to admit the number of times he’d resorted to self-cooked meals of beans on toast. Cafés, even cheap and cheerful ones, cost money.

‘Not always – but quite often. Sometimes my mum remembers to cook something for me.’

‘OK. Look – tomorrow, come to our place. You’ll get a decent meal and we can talk some more. I can show you some stuff, too. I think you’ll be interested.’

‘Where d’you live?’

‘You know that block of flats by the Marsh Lane swimming pool?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Number 24. I’ll go home as usual. Give it an hour and then come over. I don’t think we should go back together. I try to keep a low profile. You’ll understand why after we’ve talked.’

Four

The next day went slowly. Awg and Robo ignored each other. They didn’t speak to one another normally and weren’t going to attract attention by doing so now. Awg wondered what Robo’s mother was like. She seemed to look after him pretty well. Awg was sometimes a bit of a disaster area in the clothing department. Not only socks, but sometimes shirts, got recycled when the supply of clean ones ran out – and his games kit only got washed if he remembered to do it himself. Robo always looked OK – not super-smart OK, but cool OK – and his games stuff wasn’t stuck together with dry mud that made a pile of dust on the floor of the changing room when he pulled it out of his bag. Awg wondered if Robo’s mum was a good cook.

Awg didn’t hate school like some of his mates did. He could see that some of the things the teachers did were going to be useful one day, and anyway you had to pass exams to get a job and stuff like that. But somehow it all seemed so artificial, like you left the real world behind when you went in through that gate. The real world was altogether a more exciting place. A dangerous place. A place where, if you weren’t too careful, you could get catapulted off into another Universe.

After school, Awg went home. There was no one in. Awg felt secretly relieved, because he wouldn’t have to make any excuses for going out again. Not that his mum or dad were likely to miss him, anyway.

Awg had made a decision about Robo. He was going to tell him everything. The whole story of what had happened to him

in the Summer. About setting out for Wales and landing up on Planet Zero. And Awg was going to show him the proof. One of the two things he had brought back from his amazing journey: something that, besides himself and his grandparents, no one else on Earth had seen – or ever would see, if Awg could help it. He kept it in his bedroom, at the back of a drawer, carefully wrapped up inside the fabric bag he had been given by an alien helicraft pilot. He slipped it into his pocket and set out for Robo’s.

Marsh Lane Apartments weren’t exactly at the best end of town. Curtains of black mould decorated the concrete walls of the ugly, grey block. The surrounding grass was unkempt and littered with an assortment of dead supermarket trollies, refuse and a burnt-out car. Despite this, some of the flats were obviously well-kept, with curtained windows and smartly painted doors. However, others were ramshackle, and a few were boarded up.

The apartments with the 20-something numbers were two stories up. Awg took a careful look around the dark stairwell before venturing inside. It looked the ideal place for a mugging. No. 24 was about half way down the front of the building, along a passage that was tidier than the others he’d seen. Awg rang the bell. After a few moments, Robo opened the door and beckoned him in. There was a delicious smell of cooking.

The flat was neat and tidy but very sparsely furnished. In the main room were just a table, two chairs, a sofa and a small TV. The cooking smell was coming from an adjacent kitchen. Awg waited for Robo’s mum to appear.

Robo went into the kitchen and came back with two cans of Coke.

‘This OK, or d’you fancy a beer? Dad and I often share a can together.’ A shadow passed across his face, then cleared. ‘Just the one, though,’ he added, with a grin.

‘Coke’s fine, thanks.’

‘He let me get really drunk once. I made a complete pillock of myself and threw up all over the sofa. Next morning he just

said “How d’you feel?” and we both laughed.

‘I was like this.’ Robo held his head in his hands and rocked to and fro. It was Awg’s turn to laugh. Robo seemed pleased. He needed a chance to relax.

‘Make yourself at home,’ he said. ‘Put on the TV if you want. Meal’ll be ready in about fifteen minutes.’

A quarter of an hour later, Robo came in with two steaming plates.

‘Chilli con carne. That OK? It’s on rice but I’ve done a plate of chips as well. And there’s a bowl of salad. We’d better eat something green or we’ll die of some deficiency or other.’

He grinned. Today was the first time Awg had ever seen him with anything other than a look of grim determination on his face.

‘I’m afraid the chips are oven chips. I had a bit of a disaster with a chip pan. Nearly a Fire Brigade job. Been a bit wary ever since. The salad’s a bit basic – just lettuce, tomato and a few slices of onion – but it’s OK. Good antidote to the chilli, especially if it comes out a bit hot. This one’s not too fierce though. Hope you like it.’

‘You cooked all this?’

‘Yep.’

‘So, is your mum out?’

‘You could say that.’

Robo opened another door and disappeared for a moment. He came back with a photo in a frame. It was a wedding photo.

‘That’s my parents. Don’t they look great?

‘They had just four years together.’ His face clouded over once again.

‘Mum checked out when I checked in. Undiagnosed heart defect. The doctors thought she’d just fainted with all the exertion of giving birth. They managed to save the baby, though. Me. Tough old world, isn’t it?’

He took the picture back to his room. He was gone long enough for Awg to know that this Robot wasn’t made of steel.

Five

They finished their meal with a bowl of fruit and tub of ice cream.

‘So you live here – by yourself?’

‘Yep, at the moment. Normally, Dad’s with me. Except now he isn’t.

‘He taught me to cook and generally do stuff. When you’re on your own a lot, the rule is: work to a routine and look after yourself. Once you get into the habit of not washing, not eating properly and generally arsing around, you’re on the slippery slope. Especially round here. I could get you any drug you care to name within five minutes. Most of it’s shit. Cut to hell with everything from icing sugar to wall plaster. No wonder people die. If the junk itself doesn’t get you, the junk that’s in it will.

‘A year ago we lived up near York. Dad moved down here to be near the labs and stuff he needs for his research. Then he went off to Norway. And that’s where you come in. What do you know about Bog Bodies?’

‘Not much. But Matt Hargreaves did a project last year on the one they found near Manchester. He let me read some of it. Gruesome. This poor sod had been murdered in some ritual yonks ago and then dumped in the bog. But the boggy stuff had worked like a preservative and stopped the body decaying, so it just stayed there until workmen found it.’

‘Yep. That was Lindow Man. He was a bit shrivelled up but a lot of the body was intact. That’s the sort of thing my dad works on: how the pickling process works and what you can find out from the remains. Now, what about this – how many other bog

bodies d’you think have been found?’

‘I dunno. Half a dozen, maybe?’

‘Way out. It’s nearer two hundred.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘Nope. They’ve been found all over northern Europe. Mostly in the same sort of boggy areas as Lindow man, and nearly all of roughly similar date – around two thousand years old. But this find is different, and that’s why my dad was so keen to go. First off, it’s in Norway, which is unusual, so the bog is more tundra-like, and frozen for part of the year. And then there was this rumour that the body parts were unusually large.’

‘Parts?’

‘It’s on a construction site. They were putting in an oil pipeline when one of the diggers unearthed part of a limb. Then they found a section of torso. All the oil work was suspended so that the site could be properly excavated. Experts were brought in from all over. But now everything’s stopped, because half the team’s gone missing – including my dad.’

‘So, what the hell …?’ Awg was dumbstruck.

‘I told you you’d be interested,’ said Robo. ‘Come through and have a look at this stuff.’

Awg gasped. They’d gone from the spartan bareness of the living quarters to Robo’s own room. The walls were covered with maps. Books lay about everywhere. Two state-of-the-art computers sat side by side on a desk by the bed. On a small table were notebooks and a pile of computer printout. Robo picked up the top sheet and gave it to Awg.

‘What d’you make of this?’

Awg looked at the marks on the page:

7yphmle9nto95e8gebxpaamix2l5ksyeldivje03xfjs7h5lspeniamr …

Line after line, all in the same manner.

‘I can’t make anything of it at all. What is it?’

‘It’s an email from my dad. There’s only the two of us, so there’s not much we don’t tell each other. Except perhaps about

girlfriends.’ He grinned again, as if to signal that he didn’t spend all his time alone.

‘Some of his work’s secret and he always writes to me in code. He invented the encryption algorithm himself and it’s very difficult to break. I’ve got the deciphering programme on a separate computer that’s not connected to the internet, so there’s no chance anyone can hack into it. I’ve printed out a few translated bits for you.’

Awg took the second sheet.

August 27

Arrived Trollheim 10.30 and went straight to site. Ground very disturbed and topsoil removed. Subsoil still semi-frozen. Shown area of first find. More seems likely. Examined limb in mobile lab. Well preserved. Possibly human but unlikely. Too large and bone structure very unusual. Trying for rough carbon-date. Excavation continues.

September 1

Press coverage has brought visitors. Damned nuisance, delaying the work. Also, load of American climatologists unexpectedly arrived and poking their noses into everything. More delay! Got rough date today but don’t believe it. Lab result says 1150 AD ±150 years. Must be error or contamination. Expected at least a thousand years earlier. Managed to remove small piece of skin tissue. Quite shrunken and badly stained. Going to try soaking in saline with touch of sulphite and surfactant. This sometimes removes tannins which cause peat-stain.

‘Now, this is the one I really want you to see.’

Robo handed Awg another page. Awg saw that his face was even more intense than usual and his hand was trembling.

September 4

Amazing day! Carbon date confirmed. And saline wash has removed much of staining on skin. Very curious. Epidermis seems

silver coloured – a bit like a fish but without obvious scales (photo attached). Also, odd occurrence: asked one of Yanks about effect of ice-age climate cycles on subsoil. More or less knew answer myself but thought I’d get expert to confirm it. You know what? Not only did he NOT know answer - but seemed hardly to understand question! If that’s level of their knowledge, then what the **** are they doing here?

‘Did you get the photo?’ asked Awg. ‘Yep. That was encrypted as well but I sussed it. Have a look. Now you’ll see why I wanted to talk to you about what you said in class.’

The picture came up on the screen. In colour. Awg looked at it. Inside his head, a domino fell over. It clicked into the next domino. And then the next. And the next. And about a thousand others.

Six

‘Are you OK?’ asked Robo, in alarm. He looked startled. Perhaps he had underestimated the effect his photo would have on Awg.

‘Eh?’

‘I said are you OK. You’ve gone a funny colour, like you’re going to faint or something.’

‘Yeah … I’m OK,’ said Awg, slowly. ‘It was a bit of a shock. Like if you saw one of your mates in an accident.’

‘So it was something you recognised?’

Awg nodded. He recognised the piece of skin all right. But he’d only ever seen it on people who were still alive. Or, to be exact, on aliens who were still alive.

‘Then you’d better look at this.’ Robo handed Awg a sheet of paper. Awg expected another of the emails but it wasn’t. This is what he saw:

Act normally

We’re going to say you’re leaving now

Go out as if you were going home, along Town Lane

But then turn right into Wessex Road

Opposite Hatfield Street there’s a path on your right

Go down it towards the swimming bath

About half way along, cut across the grass to the back of my apartment block

Climb the fire escape and wait outside No. 40

Awg took a second or two to recover from his surprise. Then he was ready.

‘I thought you’d be interested,’ said Robo. ‘Let’s meet again next week and I’ll show you some more stuff.’

Awg took the bait. ‘OK. I think I’d better be getting back, or my parents’ll start worrying about where I am.’ (Fat chance of that, thought Awg.) ‘Thanks for the meal. It was great.’

Robo went to the door and let him out.

‘Bye, Robo.’

‘Cheers, Awg.’

Awg had memorised the instructions. He didn’t want to be seen walking along uncertainly, with his head stuck in a piece of paper. He set out like it was something he did every day. Awg wasn’t at all sure what this was all about, but he was beginning to guess.

Turning in from the path, he made his way across the littered grass to the back of the block of flats. They looked even worse from this side, with graffiti in blue and grey spray paint all along the ground floor. The fire escape was a rusty zigzag of steps at the corner of the building. Awg checked that there was no one about and clambered up. Alarmed at the clanging of his feet on the metal, he slowed down and kept as quiet as possible.

No. 40 was the last flat on the top floor. The windows were boarded up. Awg wondered if he’d made a mistake and remembered the wrong number. But then the door opened and Robo grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him inside.

After shutting the door, Robo stuck his hand in his pocket and took out a key.

‘Before I forget, you’d better have this. It’s the spare for my apartment. And if I need to leave you a message, it’ll be somewhere on the cooker. Somewhere not too obvious.’

Awg found himself in a flat with exactly the same layout as No. 24. It was completely empty of furnishings, but two large cardboard packing cases had been beaten into rough chairshapes. There was just about enough light from the boarded-up windows for them to see.

Robo squatted down on one of the packing cases.

‘Now you can tell me about that piece of skin.’

‘Why all the secrecy?’

‘Can’t you guess?’

‘You think the flat’s bugged?’

‘Can’t take the chance. Tell you later.’

Awg took a deep breath. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you the whole story – on one condition.’

‘Which is?’

‘That you don’t tell anyone else. Not a single soul.’

‘You don’t have to ask that. Besides, I’ve got more stuff to tell you, and you won’t want to spread that around either. Mostly because it’ll scare the shit out of you. I’m probably not the safest person to hang around with at the moment.’

Robo opened a small rucksack and pulled out a multi-pack of crisps and two more cans of Coke.

Awg made himself as comfortable as he could on the other packing case and began his story. It started in Wales and quickly went out of this world. To another Universe, in fact.

At the end of his tale, Awg felt in his pocket and fished out something wrapped in tissue paper: one of the two things he had brought back from planet Zero. He carefully unfolded the paper and handed Robo a small disc of black glass.

‘Hold it to the light and look inside.’

Looking through from one side, Robo saw a threedimensional picture of a tall girl. Only the detail of the unusually long, narrow face betrayed her origins: the browless eyes set just too high in the head to be believable; the ears almost level with the eyes.

‘That’s Asa,’ said Awg. ‘She rescued me from prison. Then a lot later I rescued her when her plane was shot down.’

Robo turned the disc over and looked through from the other side.

‘Wow! That’s seriously scary. Do you mean to say you were friends with that?’

Awg could almost hear Zert’s voice saying OK, OK, you just gotta get used to it!

‘You wouldn’t speak like that if you knew him. He’s clever, and funny, and brave, and kind.’

Awg fought with the lump which had unexpectedly come up in his throat.

‘I’d give anything to see him again. He just happens to look like a big spider, that’s all. You soon get used to it. Really.’

Robo looked a bit subdued. The reality of walking and talking with aliens – and actually finding your way home again across time and space – was only just beginning to sink in. He regarded Awg with a new respect.

‘I thought the stuff you’d tell me would be pretty hairy, but I never thought it would be quite as wild as that. So, there’s three races of people on planet Zero: ones who are quite human-like …’

‘Native Zeroians. They were the original inhabitants,’ said Awg.

‘ones like giant spiders …’

‘the spyridi’

‘and eight foot tall aliens with grey skins.’

‘Yep, the zwnerbas.’

‘And you think the skin in that picture looked like it came from a zwnerba?’

‘I think so.’

Secretly, Awg already had a strong suspicion not only about where it had come from but also how it had got there. But he wasn’t going to say anything more just yet.

‘That’s what I thought you’d say,’ said Robo. ‘So now I’ve got to tell you the rest of my story, and why people disappeared – or at least why I think they disappeared.

‘To explain, I’ve got to check something out with you first. Am I right in thinking that these zoo…’

‘Zwnerbas,’ said Awg.

‘ … these zwnerbas are roughly human shaped except that they’re very tall?’

‘No,’ said Awg. ‘There’s other things as well. Like they have just about no hands. There’s four fingers, but they seem to grow out almost directly from the ends of the arms. But the biggest difference is …’

‘DON’T TELL ME! I want to tell you. To see if I’m right. Because I think it’s got a lot to do with what’s happened to my dad.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘You’ve seen the messages – well, a few of them anyway. Up to about September 4, they’d got this limb that was a bit peculiar and they’re just beginning to wonder if they’re on to something really big and weird. But nobody’s sure.

‘Then, on September 10, my father disappears, along with three key scientists. All the people who really know what’s going on.’

‘So, what happened on September 10? Where did they all go?’

‘No, not September 10. The key date is September 9. Because that’s the day they found the head.’

Seven

‘I am right, aren’t I? There’s something about the head, isn’t there? Something really seriously, massively weird. So that now they know for certain they’ve found the big one. A Monster. An Alien. Whatever. And immediately, the team goes missing.’

The room went very quiet. One of those long silences that says a lot more than if the space was filled up with words. The sort of silence where your mind goes racing on, hunting down all the possibilities, until you’re left with certainties. And it’s the moment when you look at someone and realise that you both know exactly the same thing.

‘One eye.’ Awg spoke very softly.

‘They’ve only got the one eye. You couldn’t mistake the head for human in a million years, no matter how decayed it was.’

‘I knew it. I just knew it. So I’d better show you the last two messages I got from Dad.’

September 7

Delayed awaiting further excavation – removal of next layer of subsoil. Milroy (chief biochemist) found one of the Americans in sterile sample area. No gloves, no mask. So much for quarantine rules! When challenged, said he’d entered by mistake. Impossible (secure locks). What was the lying b*****d up to? Milroy suspects he was taking photographs.

September 9

Major find. Decayed and damaged but appears to be HEAD. If so, definitely non-human. Awaiting cleanup before detailed

examination. Also strange metallic object in same layer. Will x-ray it tonight. Chance to try out the new high-intensity kit I’ve been developing! Wish me luck!

‘That’s it, Awg. A week later I got a letter from the support team in Cambridge saying that my father and three of his colleagues had been reported missing. No details, no explanation – and nothing since. What d’you think?’

‘CIA?’

‘That’d be my guess. Could be some other lot but the CIA’s the most likely. Security forces get a whiff of possible extraterrestrial involvement and send in the troops, undercover. As soon as it looks definite, they pounce.’

‘So your dad and the others were kidnapped?’

‘I’m just hoping it’s no worse.’

‘But surely they’re not going to kill the guys with all the experience and knowledge?’

‘Not at first. But what about when they’ve been bled dry of all they know – and then they represent the only witnesses to the finds? The four who’ve disappeared were the only ones who actually saw the body parts, close-up, for themselves. Nobody else had direct access. And now the authorities have closed the site permanently.’

‘What!’ Awg was shocked.

‘They’ve put out a story that unusually high levels of natural radioactivity have been detected at the site. It’s been closed to all workers, and the excavated material has been moved to “a secure location” so that it poses no risk to the public. It looks as if the Norwegians have been leant on.’

‘And you, Robo?’ asked Awg, not really wanting to hear the answer.

‘Best case scenario: everything’s fine and above board. No one’s in any danger. The disappeared people will re-appear and there’ll be a sensible explanation.’

‘And the worse case?’

‘In the worst case, we’re right, and I’m not a good person to

know if you want to stay healthy.

‘Look at it this way. They’ve got the main players but they’re worried about not being able to keep the whole thing dark. There’s this guy who has a son in the UK and has been sending him coded emails. How much does this boy know?

‘Or again, the guys they’ve got are not being too co-operative and they need to put some pressure on. What about this kid in Britain? Can we use him to get at his dad?

‘Either way, I’m in deep shit.’

‘Do you think you’re under surveillance at the moment?’

‘Probably, but I haven’t seen anything. And I’ve kept a look out, I can tell you. It’s the same with the apartment. It could be bugged but I can’t find anything and there’s been nothing suspicious since Dad went away. No break-ins, no workmen calling to do “safety checks” or “inspect the wiring”. I put telltales on the window catches and stuff like that, but nothing’s ever been disturbed.

‘The thing is, if they were going to try and get me, surely they’d have done it by now. It’s more than three frigging weeks, for chrissake.’

Robo ran a hand through his hair, then pulled a face; then grinned, apologetically.

‘Sorry. It gets to me a bit sometimes, that’s all.

‘I’ve kept a low profile but I haven’t hidden myself away. These guys wouldn’t have much difficulty finding where I am. The very worst case scenario is that they’ve already wiped out the Norway team and are just waiting to add me to their list.’

‘What do you think they’d do?’ asked Awg.

There was that sort of silence again. Then Robo answered, very quietly.

‘Most likely break in, stick me full of heroin, rough up the apartment and plant drugs everywhere. Then tip off the police, so you’d see in the papers Dead Schoolboy was Secret Junkie.’

‘Holy shit!’

The look of grim determination was back on Robo’s face.

‘What I’m hoping is this: If they’ve got Dad and they’ve

decoded the emails, they’ll know that there’s nothing new here. There’s nothing in those emails that they won’t have found out by other means.’

Robo shuddered as he thought what other means might have been used.

‘Nothing new here. Until now. Until you came along.’

Awg sat bolt upright. The temperature in the bare apartment seemed suddenly to have dropped ten degrees. He’d always known that he had to keep the stuff about Planet Zero to himself. But he had been afraid only of disbelief – of ridicule. He’d never before considered that the knowledge he’d picked up on his journey across the Universe could be dangerous.

Robo saw the look on Awg’s face, and went on:

‘That’s why we’re in good old empty No 40 and not in my flat. You know a lot of stuff they don’t. I can’t put you in the same danger that I could be in. So I’m assuming that my flat is bugged and we shouldn’t discuss your stuff while we’re in there.’

‘But what are we going to do?’

‘I’ve got the beginnings of a plan, but I need your help. Are you in?’

Awg nodded. ‘But if you’re right – completely right – what can we possibly do against all the stuff the security forces have got? They’ve got billions of dollars and all the most sophisticated kit in the world.’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t know. But I do know one thing.’

He grinned again. This time, a really wicked grin.

‘We’ll give those muckers a run for their money!’

Eight

In snatched conversations over the next few days, Awg learned that Robo’s plan was to travel to Norway himself, by as indirect a route as possible. He would go to Trollheim and try to pick up some information from local people. It wasn’t much of a plan and it relied heavily on luck. A lot would depend on how effectively Robo could keep out of the limelight and avoid attracting attention. He was hoping that heading straight for the danger area was the last thing that anyone would be expecting. Awg’s part would be to cover for him so that his absence would go unnoticed, or at least uninvestigated, for as long as possible.

That was the plan.

It was never put into practice – because on Wednesday morning, a week after Awg’s visit to Marsh Lane Apartments, Robo didn’t show up for school.

Awg had a horrible sick feeling in his stomach. Robo hadn’t missed a day since he started and he was never late. Awg sat through maths, feeling gradually worse. Double geography nearly finished him, but he hung on, desperately hoping that Robo would turn up.

By mid-morning, when it was obvious that Robo wasn’t going to appear, he couldn’t stick it any longer. After break, he waited until most people had gone to their classes and there was hardly anyone about. Then he slipped out of the school gate and walked off rapidly down the road. Not too slowly, in case he was seen; and not running so that it was obvious he was bunking off. He took off his school jacket and stuffed it in his bag. At least he was then a less recognisable truant. He kept to the quieter

side streets but otherwise went as directly as he could towards Marsh Lane.

He was even more cautious than before on entering the stairwell and then making his way along the second floor passageway. Awg paused for a moment outside No. 24 before trying the door. Everything looked normal. With his heart in his mouth, he fished the key out of his pocket, turned it in the lock, and went in.

The front room was exactly as before. Bare walls; table, chairs, sofa, TV. He remembered the cooking smell from his first visit. Now there was nothing, a non-smell. At least no smell of trouble, like burning.

Awg knew only too well that this episode might end badly. Very badly. But he was absolutely determined not to let his friend down, no matter what. Awg imagined the things Robo himself would do. Search around methodically, but calmly. Keep the panicky feeling bottled up. Try not to think about that worst case scenario.

He checked everything in the room carefully, but found nothing out of order. Awg decided to do the second-worst thing next, and went into Robo’s bedroom. All OK there – no surprises. It was just as he remembered it: maps, books, the two computers. The bed looked as though it had been slept in, but the duvet had been rolled back neatly. Robo probably did it like that every morning. No indication of intruders, or of a struggle. However, there was also no sign of the notebooks or the computer printout. Had they been put away – or had someone taken them? No sense in speculating. He could hunt around later if he needed to. Not yet. Not while there was something more important to do. The thing he most dreaded. Awg had one more place to search.

He knew that if there was going to be anything bad, this was where he would find it. His heart pounding, Awg tried the bathroom door. It wouldn’t move. Was it locked? Why? Don’t panic, it’s probably just sticking. He gave it a good shove and the door flew open. Nobody inside. No body inside. Just a normal

bathroom, smelling of shower gel and toothpaste. Thank you, God. Awg almost wept with relief.

He thought he’d better check the kitchen. Nothing there, either. Good.

Except … … on the cooker, a saucepan half-full of cold porridge. Nothing unusual about that in the kitchen of a boy who was living on his own. You’d expect a mess.

But not if you knew Robo.

There it was: a great, congealed gob of porridge. It was really gross, so out of Robot character.

Awg took a spoon and poked about in the glutinous mass. The spoon met with resistance. Awg fished about with its tip. The corner of a folded plastic bag stuck up from the mass. Awg rescued it and washed off the gunge under the tap. He opened the bag and took out the note.

Hi Awg

Hope you get this. I’m OK but have to leave in a hurry. Milroy has a message for me about Dad. I don’t think it’s a trap. Not sure when I’ll be back. Make some excuse at school.

So long Robo

Nine

Robo was just about to leave the house for school. He went through his usual security routine. Certain objects left in exact positions, so he could tell if they’d been moved, however slightly. Doors a measured distance open. Hairs stuck across the window catches. Two movement detectors: one hidden in the main room, the other in his bedroom. They were set at silent but retained a visual warning if activated. Miniature digital recorder turned on and set to maximum sensitivity: this would register any sound for the nine hours that the batteries lasted.

Before going out he checked, as he always did, that there was no one hanging about outside. By looking carefully from the corners of the front window, you could see along the passageway in both directions.

There was someone there. Down the far end, past No. 29, in the recess where the bins were. There was definitely someone there. Waiting.

Robo went to the door of the flat and opened it about a foot. He made as if he were just going out, rattling the handle and dropping his keys on the concrete floor. He made as much noise as he could. Then he shut the door again and bolted it. He went to the window and stood at the side, with his back pressed against the wall. He could see along the passage, and yes, the person had come out of the shadows and was standing about half way along, watching his door.

The person looked an unlikely assassin. It was an old lady, dressed in a smart brown coat and wearing a navy blue hat. She

was obviously waiting for him to come out. What was she going to do? Would she stab him with a poisoned hat pin? Strangle him with her knitting? Bore him to death with stories about how cute her grandchildren were?

Perhaps she wasn’t an old lady at all. Perhaps she was a Chinese assassin, a contract killer from one of the Hong Kong Triads. Cunningly disguised, perhaps even by cosmetic surgery.

Perhaps she was a harmless old lady, collecting for the dogs’ home. At 08.15 in the morning.

Robo opened the door and stepped out into the passageway. Immediately, the old lady plunged her hand into her handbag. In 0.1 seconds Robo had got back inside, slammed the door and thrown himself flat on the floor. Quite a small gun will make a serious hole in your head, especially when fired from about five paces.

After about half a minute, he edged along the floor, sat up, and squinted through the side of the window. The old lady was standing exactly where she had been before, but with a look of shock on her face. She was holding a photograph.

Robo crept back to the door and cautiously opened it a few inches. The old lady called out.

‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. Henry said I should check to make sure I had the right person.’ She looked at the photo, then at Robo, and then again at the photo. ‘You are Jonathan Robertson, aren’t you?’

Robo felt a bit easier but remained very wary. His heart was still doing about 120 to the minute.

‘Yes – but who are you?’

‘My name is Violet Milroy. I have a message for you from my son Henry. I’ll leave it outside your door. I’ll wait for you downstairs, on the edge of the grass. You’ll be able to see me quite clearly if you look down. There’s no one with me.’

Robo waited until she had gone and then cautiously retrieved the envelope and opened it.

Dear Jonathan

I need to talk to you about your father. The situation is dangerous and very complicated. Follow my mother’s instructions. DON’T TELL ANYONE WHERE YOU ARE GOING. Don’t worry. It is quite safe.

To prove I am your father’s friend, I enclose something you will recognise. The photo my mother is carrying came from the same place.

Henry Milroy

Inside the envelope was one of the two photographs his dad always carried in his wallet. This was the one of Robo’s mother.

How did Henry Milroy have these pictures? Did it mean his father was dead? Anyway, what was Milroy doing writing letters to him – he was supposed to be one of the four from the Norway team who had disappeared. Nothing made sense at all.

Robo thought for a few moments. Here was at least a chance that he’d find out what had happened to his father. But it was a risk, a big risk. Dare he take the old lady at her word?

He went to the fridge and took out a plastic bag. He ripped off the top and emptied the contents into a saucepan. Then he scribbled a note to Awg and hid it in the middle of the sticky mass.

He quickly reset his alarms and locked up the flat, carefully jamming in the door a tiny flake of plastic. Next time the door was opened, the flake would drop out. So if it wasn’t there when he returned, and in exactly the same place, he would know that someone had been inside.

Robo paused at the top of the stairs and looked across to the edge of the grass. There was Violet, just as she had said. He checked around, then descended the stairs and walked across to the path.

‘OK,’ he said, softly. ‘What are the instructions?’

‘You’re to come with me to meet my son. It’s not safe for him to travel far. We live in Bristol. It’s about three-quarters of an hour’s journey by train. I’ve bought the tickets already. Henry thought it would attract less attention if we travelled together.

People might remember a boy travelling on his own. I can be your auntie for the day.’

She looked at the serious, angular face and the mass of fair hair swept across his forehead and smiled. ‘If that’s not too much of a stretch for you, then I think I can manage with having a new nephew for a while.’

They walked together to the station. Robo was gradually feeling more comfortable about his unexpected visitor, but he didn’t let himself relax. Perhaps the woman was what she claimed, perhaps not. She looked harmless enough. But maybe she wasn’t the main player, just a decoy – fooling him into coming along with her so that someone else could attack him later. He also realised that the farther he got from home – the places he knew, the streets he was familiar with – the more danger he was in. He knew he must constantly be on his guard. He watched particularly for any sign that his companion might be communicating with someone else.

The journey was uneventful. Robo sat opposite Violet but didn’t feel like talking very much. She bought him a soft drink from the trolley when it came along, and had a cup of tea herself. The attendant came along to check the tickets. Neither he nor the other passengers gave the two of them a second glance.

In Bristol, they walked down from the station and caught a bus to the southern suburbs. They got off in an area of steep streets lined with rows of Victorian houses and walked to a small park. Violet left Robo on a seat and promised to return with Henry in about ten minutes. She said that they lived nearby but it was safer to meet here.

From where Robo was sitting, there was a clear view across to the main part of the city. He didn’t know Bristol very well, but he could recognise the University tower at the top of Park Street, and way over to the left he could see the Suspension Bridge. From this distance it looked like a model, hardly real.

After ten minutes, Violet still had not returned and Robo was beginning to get seriously edgy. He was alone in a place he didn’t know and there was masses of cover where someone

could be concealed. There were a few people about in the park but mostly in the distance. Certainly no one was near enough to help him if he needed it.

Then he saw the two men coming up the path to his seat. One was about twenty, thickset and muscular, in a bomber jacket and jeans. The other was in his thirties, with a narrow, sallow face, and dressed in a long, dark coat. They looked up to where he was sitting. The younger man said a few words to the older one, who nodded. Now they were coming directly towards him. Striding towards him, very quickly. The older man thrust his hand inside his coat.

Robo was petrified. He couldn’t take his eyes off the two strangers, now only a few yards from him. A bitter taste flooded into his mouth.

So it had been a sham after all, the old lady and the note from Henry. To get him away from anywhere he knew and anything that might give him a chance. He’d been a total sucker to believe all that crap. For the first time in his whole, short life, Robo felt completely helpless. There was nothing he could do and there was nowhere to run.

Robo gripped the seat. His knuckles whitened.

Ten

The sallow-faced man pulled his hand from his coat. Robo looked for the glint of metal, waited for the roar of the shot, expected to feel the hammer-blow of the bullet. He hoped it wouldn’t hurt too much. Not that it would matter.

The man was holding a map and a scrap of paper.

‘Bainrigg Road. Where’s Bainrigg Road?’

‘It’s not on this map,’ said the younger man. ‘We bin tryin’ to find the soddin’ place for hours.’

‘I don’t know.’ Robo was breathing so hard he found it difficult to get the words out. ‘I sorry but I don’t know.’

The two men turned around and walked away.

Robo felt sick. He took in great gulps of air. He stared out at the city that remained, unbelievably, spread out before him. The shapes of the houses, the lines of the streets, the colours of the trees, struck him with a new and stark reality. He had not expected to be alive.

He was still shaking when Violet reappeared. She was accompanied by a short, balding man in his forties. He held out his hand to Robo.

‘Hello Jonathan. Henry Milroy. I’m sorry about all the mystery stuff but we’ve got to be careful. I’ve only been back a few days but contacting you’s been my second highest priority.’

‘And the highest?’

Henry gave a hollow laugh.

‘Getting myself some “insurance”. Now, what we’re going to do is walk around the park like a family group out for an afternoon’s relaxation. We stopped at the fish and chip shop on

the way, so here’s your lunch.’

He lobbed one of the three packets he was carrying towards Robo, who caught it deftly.

‘As we walk around, I’m going to tell you about what happened to us all. Then Mother will take you back to the station and you’ll make your way home. It’ll be rush hour so the trains will be busy and you shouldn’t be too conspicuous. After that you must never try to contact me again. Is that clear? I’m already risking my neck to help you, because of your dad. OK?’

‘OK,’ said Robo.

‘Now, I know your dad sent you stuff, so some of what I tell you may not be new. But some will be. We’ll start at the ninth of September.’

‘The day you found the head.’

‘Christ! You did know about that, then?’

‘Only that it was found. I just guessed that it was unusual.’

‘You can say that again! It wasn’t in a good state, but when we’d cleaned it up there was absolutely no doubt that it wasn’t human. Up to then, we’d not been sure. Of course, word got around that something was up and I suppose that was how the Yanks picked it up. We’d been suspicious of them from the start. Did your dad tell you about finding that guy in the Clean Room?’

‘Yes, he did.’

‘Well, it was all worse than we thought, and I’m sorry to tell you that your dad was the first to cop it.’

‘You mean he got killed?’ said Rob, in a shaky voice. He was still numb from his first shock and felt he couldn’t take much more.

‘No. No, thank God. But he got taken. It was like this:

‘In the trench with the head, we also found a peculiar metal object. Your dad thought it was important and wanted to X-ray it to see what was inside. You probably know he’d been working on a new high-power source and it was obvious he was itching to try it out. That was what he was doing when they struck.

‘Our labs were in a series of portacabins and he was working

in the one next to mine. All of us were working late, as usual. All of a sudden, his cabin was lit up with this intense white glare and then it went completely dark, as if the electrics had fused. Of course, I thought he’d had an accident, so I hammered in there to help. But when I got inside, the cabin was empty. The X-ray module had been broken open. The metal object was gone and so was your dad.’

Henry paused to stuff a few more chips into his mouth.

‘I couldn’t understand what had happened until I chanced to look out through the window. Your dad’s lab, where I was, was in darkness and I could see several men creeping up towards mine. Mike Brooks and Ray Chalmers were working in the biochem room at the far end, and in the next instant they’d been grabbed, taken outside, and bundled into a helicopter. Other men seemed to be stripping the stuff out of the specimen store, and that was all taken too. I was scared stiff. I knew I’d only escaped because they’d already been in your dad’s cabin and thought there was no one else there.’

‘So how did you get away?’ asked Robo, who was still suspicious.

‘Your dad’s dark jacket was on the back of his chair, so I chucked off my white lab coat and put it on. Then I got out of the toilet window, crept across the compound on all fours and legged it as fast as I could across country to the coast. No way was I going to risk asking for any official help. I got a lift on a fishing boat to the Faroe Islands, then with some workmen to an oil platform, and finally back to the UK via Aberdeen.

‘I eventually crept back here and did a deal which I hope will keep me safe. The Norwegians have acted as go-between. They’re very embarrassed about what happened at Trollheim but are obviously under enormous pressure from somewhere or other.’

‘Do you think it was the CIA?’

‘No idea, and I don’t want to know. But whoever it was had a lot of clout in official circles.’

‘And what makes you think they’ll not come after you here?’

‘If they do, everybody’ll know. I’ve made a sworn statement about all that happened at Trollheim and left copies with three different lawyers. There’s a lot of detail, with names, dates, and photographs that I took with my own camera. If anything happens to me, they get sent to the national press. Those guys know this – they’ve been told. So the deal is, I keep quiet and they leave me alone.

‘Out of respect for your dad, I’ve made an exception with you. You deserve to know the truth. But you must say nothing.’

Henry glanced at Robo, who saw the fear in his eyes. He was obviously not completely convinced that his deal would work.

‘But my dad – and the others – where are they now?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve tried to find out but there’s just a wall of silence. I can only hope they’ll eventually be released unharmed.’

He looked furtively around before going on, as if expecting someone to jump out from the bushes at any minute.

‘There’s just one odd thing though. When I asked the Norwegian embassy man about the others, the message that came back said there is no information about your two colleagues.’

‘Two?’

‘Yes, two. I don’t know what it means, but the official clearly didn’t realise he’d said anything surprising.’

Robo’s heart sank. Perhaps his dad was dead after all. Robo knew he would have put up a terrific fight. Perhaps he’d been gunned down.

‘Henry,’ he asked. ‘When you got to my dad’s lab –immediately after you saw the flash of light – was there any sign of fighting – or of … blood?’

‘No, none at all. Just no one there. I only had the light from the window but the room looked no different from usual – except for the special X-ray machine, where the sample chamber had been broken open. In fact, it looked almost as if it had burst open, from the damage to the fastenings.’

‘And this metal thing he’d been X-raying – that you found in the trench – had disappeared?’

‘Yes – no sign of it at all. Not even pieces.’

‘Could you draw it for me?’ asked Robo.

Henry tore a piece from his chip paper and made a little sketch in ball-point pen.

‘Thanks,’ said Robo, and slipped it into his pocket. ‘And from what you saw of the animal finds, what d’you think it was?’

‘It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Either it was some evolutionary quirk which has left no evidence elsewhere, or …’

‘Or?’

‘Whatever it was came from somewhere outside our own planet.’

Robo stared out of the train window. It was raining steadily, and long, watery streaks were running diagonally across the smeary glass. The world outside looked grey and indistinct.

He wondered if Henry Milroy would survive. And whether their meeting had been observed.

Eleven

Awg locked the door of Robo’s flat and trudged back to school. He was starving. With a bit of luck, he’d just have time to get a bit of lunch.

A couple of his mates asked him where he’d been but no one else remarked on his absence. Big schools with large classes did have some advantages. Some things went unnoticed. He sat through the afternoon in a daze, puzzling over Robo’s note.

Milroy? Who was Milroy? And then he remembered the email Robo had shown him. Milroy worked with Robo’s father and was the one who’d found the intruder in the Clean Room. So did it mean that Robo’s father was safe and Robo was going to meet him?

Awg forced his mind back to the present. How long had this English lesson been going on? He glanced at his watch for about the twentieth time, convinced that time had come to a stop. It said 1.17.

1.17 ?

The last time he’d looked it had said 3.15.

What the hell? On top of everything else, his watch was playing up.

Awg was gutted. Although it was just an ordinary watch from a local shop, it was very special to him: it was the one he’d taken on his journey to planet Zero. In fact, it was largely due to this watch, and to a small stone from the top of a Welsh mountain, that he had ever managed to get back to his home on Earth at all.

He looked again. The watch said 4.36.

When watches go wrong, they usually just stop, or lose time. They don’t hop about from one hour to another. What was going on?

Then Awg’s eyes stood out on stalks. As he watched, the second hand began to move at an astonishing speed, zooming round and round so fast that in less than a minute the hands of the watch had moved on eleven hours until the time showed 3.29.

Awg leant forward until he could see Matt’s watch across the table: 3.29, nearly 3.30. As if to confirm it, the bell went for the end of school.

Awg began to walk home, but then changed his mind. At some point Robo was going to get back, and he might need help. Awg made for Marsh Lane. He’d give it until dark, then go home if no one had appeared. He looked down at his watch: 12.18. When he got to Robo’s apartment a quarter of an hour later, it said 12.05.

Awg went through to the kitchen, hunted out a loaf of bread, and began to make himself some toast. He found a wellthumbed book of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons and began to read. It was good to find someone who evidently liked them as much as he did. He checked his watch: 12.20.

A spiral of smoke from the toaster alerted him to trouble. He popped up the slices and scraped off all the black. He glanced at his watch again. At first he thought it had stopped, but then he saw it was 12.21, not 12.20. As he watched, the hands clicked back to 12.18 again. This was ridiculous.

He took the watch off and put it on the table in front of him. He spread some butter and marmalade on the toast and got a can of Coke from the fridge. As he chomped at the toast, he continued to flip through the book, but also kept an eye on the watch. It seemed to have stopped at 12.18 but, before long, it moved back to 12.14. Things seemed to happen about every quarter of an hour.

Awg was waiting to see where the hands would go next when

there were sounds from the passageway outside.

Panic. A visitor for Robo was not good news.

Awg immediately realised he had acted very stupidly. Going to Robo’s flat in the first place had been risky, but the business with the watch had put him off his guard completely. Not only had he failed to secure the door with the steel bolts which Robo had fitted, he had also totally neglected to check out any route for escape if trouble should arise. Now it was too late. Someone was at the door. No. Worse. They were opening the door.

He looked wildly around for somewhere to hide.

There wasn’t anywhere.

‘Hi Awg!’

Awg swallowed several times before he could reply.

‘Hello Robo. How d’you know it was me?’

‘I saw the lights were on, so I guessed it was you. Then I squinted through the gap in the curtains and saw your school bag. Pheeeewww! I wasn’t looking for a fight: I’ve had quite enough hassle for one day.’

He dropped a paper carrier on the table.

‘I got this on the way home. Do you like Indian?’

‘My favourite – especially Jalfrezi.’

‘You got it.’

They took the food into the main room. Robo threw off his jacket and sank into a chair.

‘Hey, man – what a day!’

While they wolfed down the curry, Robo gave Awg a rundown on his trip.

Awg tried to imagine himself on the seat in the park when the two men came up.

‘Did you really believe you were a goner?’ he asked.

‘No. I thought they’d come to offer me a fairy cake.’

??????

‘Awg – I thought I was going to get my effing head blown off. I was scared shitless.’

Awg remembered his own adventures on Zero. The flesheating rats. The torture chair. Having to fly an alien helicraft

with no one to help. He hadn’t felt at all brave at the time but had forced himself to face the dangers. Robo was definitely no coward, and his honesty made Awg feel a whole lot better.

‘D’you think Milroy was telling the truth?’ he asked.

‘No reason for him to lie. I think he was doing me a favour, maybe to ease his conscience about being the only one to escape.’

It was getting late. Out of habit, Awg glanced at his watch, and then jumped. With his friend’s sudden arrival, he’d forgotten about its crazy behaviour. He showed Robo.

‘So this is the watch you had when you were on Zero,’ said Robo. ‘And since then it’s worked perfectly normally?’

‘Yep. It’s just been an ordinary watch.’ Awg was glad he could talk to Robo like this. Adventures in another Universe were not things you could tell everybody about. Especially now.

‘So, what’s different?’ asked Robo. ‘Something must have changed to make it behave like this. It’s not just gone wrong, it’s responding to something that wasn’t there before.’

‘But what?’

‘No idea. Check it out. Make a note of what it does and where you are when it does it. Maybe your journey did screw it up after all. Perhaps it’s started to pick up stray magnetic fields, or something.’

When Awg got home, he went to the drawer in the shed where his dad kept an old wind-up watch he used for gardening. Awg strapped it on his wrist beside his own. Then he found a small notebook and pencil. Now he was ready.

Twelve

By the time he got to school the next morning, Awg had already found out quite a lot about his watch’s behaviour. The job was easier than he’d expected because the strange movement of the hands did seem to occur at regular intervals – exactly every 15 minutes – and it didn’t seem to depend on anything else. He’d tried sitting with the watch in different rooms. He’d even taken it off and put it on top of the television and beside a radiator, none of which made any difference at all. But during a maths lesson in the morning, he made a discovery. However, he nearly got found out.

‘WOW!’ he blurted out. In the quiet classroom, everyone turned and looked at him. He felt a complete dummy. The teacher regarded him with a pained expression.

‘What did you say, Allardyce?’

‘I said “Wow!” sir.’

‘And why did you say that?’

‘Er – I discovered I did know how to solve this equation after all.’

‘Very good, Allardyce. Now just get on with it – quietly.’

Awg breathed a sigh of relief. What he had really discovered was that the movement of the hands on his watch wasn’t completely regular. When both hands stopped on the 12, they stayed there for thirty minutes, not fifteen.

During French, he managed to slip a piece of paper into Robo’s pocket. This is what he’d written:

When he’d looked at it, Robo seemed to be mouthing something back. It looked like “Keep Going”.

At lunch, Awg had the next set:

‘You missed one, then.’

‘What?’

‘It looks as if the pattern repeats, but perhaps you missed the 12.05 between the two sets. Keep checking.’

After school, Robo took his usual route home, alone. Awg did the same at first, but then cut through the side streets towards Marsh Lane. Together, in Robo’s apartment, they looked at the sequence of numbers. Awg read them out:

‘12.01

and then it all repeats.’

‘And there’s always fifteen minutes between the changes, except for the 12.00, when it’s half an hour?’ asked Robo.

‘Yep, that’s right.’

‘And before this regular stuff started, the time jumped about all over the place?’

‘Yeah. And once, the hands zoomed round and round so that it changed eleven hours in about a minute. And there might have been other stuff I didn’t see because I didn’t happen to be looking at the time.’

‘OK – good point.’ said Robo. He thought for a moment. ‘Then perhaps all that early stuff was to attract your attention, so you’d be taking notice. In that case, I think it’s a warning. It’s a

message saying that something’s going to happen at these times and you’d better look out.’

Awg wasn’t convinced. ‘But there’s lots of different times. Is something going to happen at each one? And they’re in a funny order.’

‘Maybe it’s different days,’ said Robo. ‘On the first day, it’s at 12.01; on the second, 12.14; and so on.’

‘OK, but when’s it all start, then? Which day is Day 1? And what is going to happen?’

Thirteen

Awg went cautiously down the stairs and began to walk home. There was a raw wind and he pulled up his grey hoodie against the cold.

He had gone only about a hundred yards when he heard a shout behind him. He turned to see someone in the distance calling out and waving their arms. The reason was not difficult to spot. A large dog was running away towards Awg trailing a long lead. Obviously, the person in the distance had lost control of it. The dog was not running particularly fast and Awg easily grabbed the leash as it dragged past him.

Immediately, there was a piercing whistle from somewhere in front and the dog took off like a rocket. The animal was massive and Awg’s arm was almost yanked out of its socket as he was pulled along behind.

The dog was fairly flying along. Awg tried to let go of the leash but found that he couldn’t. Some sort of glue had been smeared on the lead and his hand was stuck fast. Suddenly, the whistle sounded again and the dog left the path. Awg was dragged through some bushes and on to a patch of waste ground.

The dog stopped. Awg was lying face down in a tangle of mud and bits of broken twig. Before he could get up, a boot was placed firmly on his back. He squirmed and tried to get up. The pressure from the boot increased very painfully.

‘Keep still! Stay where you are. Jacko! Find, Jacko!’

Growling and barking, the huge dog lumbered over and stuck its muzzle into Awg’s ear. Its hot breath stank and the ferocious snarls, delivered at point blank range, were deafening.

Awg could feel the dog’s saliva dribbling over his face.

‘Good dog, Jacko!’

Awg heard someone else come up. Presumably this was the one who’d done all the shouting and let the dog loose.

‘Now listen, you!’

The boot dug into Awg’s back. He listened.

‘We got friends who want some information off you. And jus’ in case you feel a little bit tongue-tied, I’m goin’ to tell you about Jacko here. He’s very well trained. In fact, he’s an ex-policedog. But he got retired – on account of bein’ a bit too … enthusiastic. If I say K-I-L-L …’

He spelt out the word.

‘That’s exactly what he’ll do. He’ll rip your bleedin’ throat out. So now, listen carefully and answer up.

‘Where’s your dad?’

‘He’s at home,’ gasped Awg, wondering why they wanted to know. ‘He works at home. I expect my mum’s there too.’

‘Liar! Your mother’s dead – we know that. And we know where your father was. What we want to know is – where is he now?’

The penny dropped. Awg at last realised what this was all about. Robo had said he wasn’t a very healthy person to know at the moment and Awg was proving him all too right. He’d been seen leaving Robo’s flat – and the men thought he was Robo.

Awg realised he had only a second or two to decide what to do. And he had to get it right. He must tell enough of the truth that he didn’t provide a fresh meat supper for the dog – but he must protect Robo as well.

‘I’m not Jonathan,’ he gasped. ‘I’m a mate of his from school. I just went to visit him, that’s all.’

‘What?’

The pressure from the boot eased, then got worse again.

‘You little liar! We’re not fallin’ for that.’

‘It’s true. I’m a mate of his from school – but I can tell you what you want to know.’

The pressure eased once more.

‘Jon told me his dad had gone to work in Norway – and he got messages from him saying the work was going well. But about two weeks ago the messages stopped – and then he got a letter to say his father was missing. There’s been nothing since. Jon’s got no idea where he is. He’s worried sick about him.’

‘He told you that?’

‘Yes. It’s the truth. I swear.’

‘Back off, Jacko!’

The boot was removed and Awg was rolled over on to his back. He looked up at two dark figures. They had black balaclavas pulled over their faces with slits cut for the eyes. One of them bent down and pulled back Awg’s hoodie.

‘He’s right. It’s the wrong kid. He’s supposed to have fair hair. This kid’s hair’s as black as soot.’

‘Perhaps he’s dyed it.’

‘What?’

‘They do, they dye their hair.’

‘Who do? Who’s “they”?’

‘Teenagers. Mostly they bleach it. But perhaps this one’s dyed his, to be different.’

‘Why?’

‘They do it to look trendy.’

‘Do you, then?’

‘Do I what?’

‘Dye your hair.’

‘Piss off!’

‘Excuse me …’. Awg was getting tired of this. ‘If you’re going to discuss fashions, do you think I could go now?’

This was unwise.

The taller man put his hand to his belt and took out a knife.

‘I think you oughta show a little more respect.’

He crouched down and brought the knife to within a few inches of Awg’s throat.

Then, with one slash, he cut through the dog’s leash and stood up. He swung his boot back and gave Awg a vicious kick in the ribs.

Awg doubled up in pain and rolled over, protecting his head with his arms.

But no more blows fell, and after a few moments silence Awg stretched out and opened his eyes. There was no one around. Men and dog were gone.

Fourteen

Awg hammered on the door. The person inside was not going to open it.

‘It’s me – Awg. Let me in.’

Robo slid back the bolts and opened the door.

‘Holy Jeez! What happened to you?’

‘If you’d gone out first, it would’ve happened to you!’

Awg fell into the room. Robo locked and bolted the door.

‘You gotta get out of here, Robo! Now, before it’s too late!’ Awg told him what had happened.

Robo looked shaken. ‘It must be because of Milroy. They know he’s back and they think my dad’s hiding out somewhere too. But it proves that what Milroy said was true. They’ve only got two of the team. And Dad’s not one of them!’

He looked at the mess Awg was in.

‘You badly hurt?’

Awg pulled off his tee shirt and they both surveyed the damage. Ugly purple bruises were already beginning to show.

‘Hold still.’ Robo saw the look of alarm on Awg’s face as he spoke. ‘Don’t worry – I know what I’m doing.’

Robo felt each rib carefully.

‘Did that hurt?’

‘Yes it soddin’ well did!’

‘But did it hurt the same all over?’

Awg nodded.

‘That’s a good sign, and there’s no bits sticking out or in. So, hopefully, nothing’s actually broken.’

Awg sat down and tried to get the end of the dog leash off his

hand. He couldn’t. He stared in despair at Robo.

‘What the hell are we going to do? You can’t stay here.’

‘I’ve sort of been prepared for this. I’ve got a rucksack already packed. But I never worked out exactly where I was going to go. I s’pose I hoped it would never actually come to it.’

That was one problem Awg could do something about.

‘Come home with me. Now. Then at least you’ll be safe tonight and we can work out something else later.’

They shut up the apartment. No way were they going to walk out the front in plain view. So they ducked down and crawled along the passageway to the end, then made their way around the back and down the fire escape. They crept across the grass to the side entrance of the swimming pool, then went through and out the main entrance and down the road. It looked like two boys had just come out from having an evening swim. They walked across the town to Awg’s house, keeping to the larger and well-lit streets.

‘What’re you going to say to your parents?’ asked Robo.

‘If they ask, I shall just say you’re a mate from school who needs to stay for a night or two.’

‘If they ask?’

‘They’ll probably not realise you’re around. But don’t get up tight about it: they often don’t notice me, either.’

This sounded very strange to Robo, who regarded his dad as his closest friend and ally.

Awg got an old camp bed down from the attic and set it up in his bedroom.

‘It’ll be a bit of a squash, but at least you’ll be OK here. I’d better go and have a shower and patch myself up a bit.’

Awg turned the shower temperature up as high as he could bear it and let the hot water cascade all over him. It was gloriously warm and wet. As the mud and grime got washed off, he felt the pain in his chest gradually easing away as well. After a few minutes, he also found he could pull the dog leash off without taking his skin with it.

He began to wonder if his watch’s weird behaviour had been

a warning of the dog attack. No. It didn’t make sense. That was something quite separate and the 12 o’clock times were way out anyway.

The warning must be about something else. Perhaps it wasn’t actually a warning at all, just some sort of message. But who from? He knew the answer immediately. That watch had been carefully dissected and re-assembled by a trainee technician who was unusually clever even by Spyridi standards. Awg strongly suspected that the urge to tinker and modify had not been completely resisted. Whatever was going on, his friend Zert was at the bottom of it.

Because planet Zero was in the Dark Universe, direct communication with Earth was almost impossible. Almost. Light beams and radio signals couldn’t pass between the two, but Xurog, master scientist of the Spyridi, had devised a method for relaying information via gravity waves. Awg made a private bet with himself that Zert had put some gadget into the watch which could respond to the same system.

Awg knew by heart the times the watch had clicked out. He began to write them on the steamy glass of the shower. They were all 12-something, so there was no need to keep writing the 12:

1, 14, 7, 5, 18, 0, 26, 0, 18, 5, 20, 21, 18, 14, 0, 19, 20, 18

A few seconds later, Robo was startled to see a semi-naked Awg come hurtling into the bedroom and sit on the side of the bed, scribbling on a notepad. His hair dripped on to the paper as he looked up, a broad grin on his face.

‘It’s not times at all. The 12’s don’t matter, only the numbers after. It’s some sort of code. There’s four 18’s, so perhaps that’s E. That’s the most common letter, isn’t it?’

‘You need a longer message to be sure of stuff like that,’ said Robo. He looked at the list of numbers.

‘You think this comes from your spider friend on planet Zero?’

‘Got to. He’s the only one who’s ever tinkered with the watch.’

‘Any reason it should be hard to work out? Most codes are there to disguise things.’

‘No. He’d just want to get the meaning across. I think he’d make it as simple as he could.’

‘Then maybe it’s important that the highest number’s 26!’

‘Hell! The alphabet. It was sooooo obvious! But what are the noughts, then?’

‘Spaces. It’s just a way of showing where the words begin and end. It was 12.00 where the watch stopped for thirty minutes instead of fifteen, wasn’t it? That was to mark it out as different.’

The page was getting rather soggy, but Awg drew a grid to work out the letters and handed it to Robo:

‘It’s only like that because we began at the 12.01 when we thought they were times,’ said Robo. ‘The loop could start anywhere.’

‘The Z could be for Zero but I bet it’s actually for Zert,’ replied Awg. ‘So that goes at the end.’ He took the sheet back and re-arranged the letters:

RETURN STRANGER Z

‘So that’s Zert’s message. But why has he sent it, and what does it mean?’

Fifteen

They talked until late. Awg drifted into a fitful sleep with the words of Zert’s message going round and round in his head. After a few hours, he awoke. His chest hurt like hell. He sat up, slowly, pleased to discover the movement wasn’t as painful as he had expected.

Awg got quietly out of bed and padded over to the window. He opened the curtains and looked out into the night. The sky was clear, and bright with stars. Awg remembered how, on his first night on planet Zero, he had looked out from his prison cell and seen the night sky of the Dark Universe ablaze with unfamiliar stars and with its eerie moons. He had seen the two worlds. Out there somewhere, strangely invisible to him now, that other world was waiting. People lived and breathed their separate lives, each oblivious of the other’s existence.

The faint light from the window shone across the room to where Robo was fast asleep. His jeans and leather jacket were on a chair beside the bed. Awg saw that there was a scrap of paper sticking out of the jacket pocket. He remembered something that Robo had told him – something he’d kept meaning to ask about and had always forgotten. Too many things had been happening since Robo’s trip to Bristol.

Awg had been puzzling over the metal object that Robo’s father had been working on. Both his own description and Milroy’s suggested that it was out of the ordinary. Could it be something valuable, like an ornament or item of jewellery? Perhaps it was a weapon of some sort? Assuming that it was associated with the zwnerba remains found in the same trench,

neither of these seemed likely. The down-to-earth zwnerbas didn’t go in for much decoration of any kind, as far as Awg had seen, and ordinarily they were never armed. And where had Robo’s father gone, if the kidnappers hadn’t got him?

Hoping that the piece of paper was what he thought, Awg crept softly across the room and retrieved it. The paper was crumpled, and rather greasy with chip fat. Awg smoothed it out on the windowsill where the light was strongest. The sketch was very rough but quite clear. Milroy had even marked a rough scale on it. It showed three spheres joined by a rod. The central sphere was much larger than the outer ones and was about three inches across: the size of a cricket ball.

Awg stared at the drawing until his eyes hurt. His heart was beating very fast and his spine seemed to have turned to ice crystals. The lines on the paper grew blurred and began to swim about. Awg was struggling with the huge idea that was ballooning up in his mind.

He’d gained a lot of information during his time on planet Zero. Now he was remembering many things told to him at different times – and putting it all together. He hardly dared to believe the result.

If he was right, he understood Zert’s message. He understood what had happened to Robo’s father. And he understood what they were going to have to do.

There was a sound of movement behind him. He turned round to see Robo sitting up in bed.

‘What’s up, Awg? Is there someone out there?’

Awg smiled wryly. Robo didn’t realise how truly he spoke. ‘Yes … yes there is,’ he said. ‘But don’t worry! Not in the sense you mean. We’re not in any danger. But I think I know what happened to your dad.’

‘Where is he? Is he OK?’ Robo’s words punched into the corners of the room.

Awg put his finger to his lips and came to sit beside Robo’s bed. He carried on as calmly as his excitement would allow. He could see the wild look in Robo’s eyes.

‘I woke up and found Milroy’s drawing – and I recognised what it was. I think those finds in Norway – the body parts and stuff – are the remains of an expedition from planet Zero. I heard about it when I was there. Years ago, adventurers tried to get to Earth, but they disappeared and were never heard of again. Nobody on Zero knows what happened to them or where they ended up. There’s Memorials to them, and stuff like that.

‘That metal thing your dad was working on – I think it was part of the plasma transport system that got them here – and should’ve got them back again. Only something bad happened to them and they never made it. I guess what your dad was doing reactivated it. He wasn’t taken by the CIA men because he’d already been whooshed off – just like I was when I burgled the clock.’

Robo sat in silence, dumb with shock.

‘And think about that message from Zert,’ continued Awg. ‘Return – Stranger. What if it means he wants me to go back because there’s been another arrival from Earth? Of course, he can’t possibly realise we already know who it might be.’

‘But – but if Dad’s gone there by mistake, why can’t they just send him back again?’

‘No idea, but I guess they can’t. Look how hard it was for them to get me and Grandpa back.’

Robo was having difficulty taking all this in. He’d just about come to terms with Awg’s adventures, but when things began to happen to your own dad it all felt very different – and much more scary.

Awg could guess what he was thinking from the horrified look on his face.

‘We’ll get him back. I don’t know how, yet – but we will get him back. We’ve got to go to Llangarreg.’

‘Both of us?’

‘Yes. You’ve got to disappear for a while because it’s not safe for you to be around here. And if I’ve got to go back to Zero, Llangarreg’s the only place I’ve any chance of doing it.’

He paused. ‘There’s just one thing. We’re supposed to be at school.’

To Robo, desperate to help his dad, this was a minor detail. ‘Leave that to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll think of something.’

Sixteen

The next day was a Friday. Awg and Robo went to school as usual, but by separate routes and five minutes apart. During the day, they kept as low a profile as possible. Then, they skipped the last lesson and left early, not meeting up until several streets away. Robo slept over at Awg’s house, as before. It was too dangerous to risk Marsh Lane.

Awg packed up his stuff and got ready for their journey. He took a small box from the back of a drawer and put it in his pocket.

The following morning, they got up early and made for the station. On the way, Robo posted two envelopes. They caught the first train to Shrewsbury, travelling in separate carriages. Robo seemed to have enough cash for them both, which was fortunate as Awg was almost broke. His parents were two months behind with his pocket money.

Robo kept a diary of his time in Wales. This is how he described their journey and what happened afterwards:

29th September

Awg and I kept apart at first, because you never know. It’s terrible to be always looking over your shoulder. I’m not usually like this, but since Bristol I’ve been as jumpy as a scared rabbit. Sad case. When we got to Shrewsbury we had nearly an hour’s wait, so we got a sandwich and drink on the station. The train down into Wales was only a single coach, so we thought sod it and sat together, and I enjoyed the next bit a lot more. Awg’s fun company and the scenery got better and better. I didn’t realise it was so rugged. Dad would like it. He’d

soon have us both up the mountainside!

Awg phoned his grandparents last night, so we are expected. He told me when he came the first time his gran knew nothing about it and came to the door with a poker. She must be quite a character.

We got out at a place called Pontrhyd. Awg’s grandad was waiting. He’s quite distinguished-looking with a neat grey beard. Funny to think he was lost in space for ten years. He has one of those old Morris Travellers and it made a tremendous noise as we ground up the mountain to Llangarreg. The road was very narrow and full of potholes. Awg pointed out the place where he took the path across the fields and got lost. He ended up in a ruined priory in the dark. Scary.

Awg’s grandparents’ house is amazing! It’s a round tower, part of a medieval castle. All the rooms (actually there’s only three, one on top of the other, plus the kitchen at the back) are completely circular, and the walls are several feet thick. In fact, the staircase you go up is inside the outer wall. The front door is MASSIVE and wooden and covered with iron studs. ‘Bryn Castell’ – it means ‘the castle on the mound’.

Our bedroom at the top of the castle is actually Awg’s grandad’s workshop. He’s a clockmaker, and there’s bits of clocks everywhere and a clean smell of oil and wood.

30th September

Awg said his gran was a good cook and he wasn’t kidding. I haven’t eaten a meal like we had last night for years, and breakfast this morning was just as good. I think I’m going to like it here! Awg’s gran is rather stern, but kind, with beautiful silver hair. She’s quite small and reminds me of a blackbird, always bright-eyed and busy. I admire her for keeping going all those years without her husband, hoping – and somehow knowing – he would come back. I shall have to be the same about Dad, but I hope it’s not ten years. I think that would kill me.

Big shock this morning. Awg and his grandpa showed me the case with the Iridonium Resonator in it. It was actually up in the workshop where we’d slept. Until then, Awg hadn’t let on that there was one here and that was how they’d got home from Zero safely. No wonder Awg threw a wobbler when he saw Milroy’s drawing!

After lunch, we had a big session with Awg’s grandparents. Not

surprisingly, they wanted to know the whole story about why we’d come and what it was all about. They were pretty shocked when we told them. Awg’s gran said we should have told the police but his grandpa could see that would have made things worse. They quickly agreed to help us as much as they could. It’s good to have someone who knows all the stuff about the Dark World is true.

Nobody has much of a clue as to how we should get back to Zero. Awg’s idea is we take the Resonator on expeditions to all the places that are especially connected to planet Zero and see what happens. We’ve got to be prepared to be zoomed off without warning, so I’m going to take my rucksack with me all the time. Awg told me about the green shirt and pink pantaloons and I don’t fancy it. I’m going to have my own gear.

Awg seems to be in less pain today. On the train he kept shifting himself about so it was obvious his top half was still hurting. I wonder how far it is to the nearest medic?

In the evening, I asked to see the clock that started all the trouble. It got damaged but Awg’s grandad has rebuilt it. They call it the ‘Old Curiosity’ and they keep it up on a high shelf. You don’t normally need to get to it because it never needs winding. It’s like a big black triangle with a round eye in the middle, and it gave me the creeps. I’m glad it’s in the living room and not up here where we sleep.

1st October

Today we started on our ‘expeditions’. Awg’s gran made us both say goodbye before we went out in case we didn’t come back. I thought she looked quite white in the face but she wasn’t saying anything. She’s tough.

First off, we went to the Priory, because that’s nearest. Awg took me into the chapel where he first met Benedict, the monk. It was spooky. Awg went to look in a place by the altar where he’d left a note for him but it hadn’t been touched.

The next thing was much better. We went way up the valley to a place called Ty Nant. We went across fields and down into a cave. At the front, you come out behind a waterfall. You can stand in the spray and watch tons of water cascading down just a few feet away. It was

magic. Awg showed me the spot where he’d appeared when he got back from Zero. He was bloody lucky he didn’t go tumbling down into the throat of the falls which he easily could have. We waited in the cave for about an hour but nothing happened.

Then we went further up the valley and climbed Gellyn mountain itself. We started along an old forest road, then over a bridge and by a stone sheep pen. Soon we were cutting across the hillside, past a place with rows of old tree stumps, and then along a ridge to the summit. As we got near the top it got more rocky, and Awg showed me where the medieval monks had cut a cross to mark the way.

At the top was the big white boulder Awg’s grandfather was sitting on when he disappeared. On its far side were the remains of a white card where Awg had tried to send a message about his safe return. If we get to Zero, perhaps we’ll find out if they ever got it.

Awg and I took the Resonator and stood together on top of the rock. We held it between us. We must’ve been up there for over an hour. Then our arms were so tired we gave it up and got down. After a bit, Awg took the Resonator again and jumped up on the rock. Then he did a sort of war dance waving his arms about and shouting. Sometimes, Awg does completely mad things. Anyway, it must mean he’s feeling better. We stayed on the mountain until it was getting dark but nothing happened.

During supper (fantastic again), Awg’s grandfather quizzed us about school and stuff. I told him I’d fixed things so it would be OK. He gave me a funny look, as if he knew it was a scam. I said I’d written a letter to school saying I’d had to go away with my father for a while. Luckily just then Awg’s gran brought in a giant plum meringue pudding and he didn’t get around to asking me what I’d said about Awg. I’m beginning to think it wasn’t one of my better ideas, but it was all I could dream up at the time.

2nd October

Something terrible has happened. It’s done my head in and I’m totally gutted. But Awg’s grandparents are being really great. They say they’ll have me at Bryn Castell for as long as I want. If I can’t do anything to help Dad, then I want to stay here and unwind. Maybe I’ll do some

rock climbing to get my confidence back. I need to chill out for a bit and get my head sorted.

It was last night. Awg was already asleep. I finished writing this diary and put the light out. I must have been asleep for a couple of hours when I was suddenly awake again. For a minute, I couldn’t think where I was because everything looked different. I can’t describe it except to say it was like being in a glass bubble, or inside an electric light bulb. At first I thought the brightness was coming from outside the room but I soon realised it was coming from the windowsill where the Resonator was kept. I turned towards it but the light was so dazzling I couldn’t look at it. The walls of the room seemed to dissolve until I could see the sky outside, and the moon and stars. That was scary. But the next bit was by far the worst. I looked across to where Awg was sleeping. His body was burning with a weird blue-green light, like it was coming from inside him. I could see his bones shining through his skin, so he looked like a glowing skeleton. It was absolutely gross. Then the outline of his body faded until only a shadow was left, and then nothing at all. Everything was dark again. When I turned on the light, I was alone in the room. Awg had gone. And so had the Resonator. But I hadn’t.

Seventeen

‘Mabhixn pefwoqd xyluvd?’

Keeping his eyes firmly closed, Awg fumbled for the box: the second thing he’d brought back with him from planet Zero. It had been in his jeans pocket until he got to Llangarreg. Then he’d fixed it to his leg with sticky tape so it was there when he needed it. And he needed it now.

Inside were two identical blue pills, a bit like big aspirins but covered in dozens of tiny holes. Like big blue aspirins – but rather more high-tech. Translocution modules. He pressed one securely into each ear. Now he would understand what was being said.

‘Watcha dressed like this for?’

A wave of joy ran down Awg’s spine. On the way it encountered some very painful bits of his body. Awg knew the symptoms well by now. Zonking headache, leathery tongue, body like it’s been put in a can and shaken by a giant. But he didn’t care. He knew that voice.

Awg opened his eyes. To anyone but Awg, the resulting sight might have proved rather unnerving. Perhaps a more accurate description might be ‘terrifying’. But Awg had seen more terrifying things in the last year than most people do in their whole lives. And, as to what he now saw, he had got used to it.

He found himself lying on a rubbery couch in what appeared to be a metal tomb. A creature resembling a three foot high black spider was crouched at his side.

‘Zert! Oh, Zert! I’m sooooo pleased to see you!’ Awg tried to sit up. ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaggggggghhhhhhhh!’

If his chest had hurt before his journey, the plasma transport process had magnified it all by X.

‘You better jus’ lie quiet for a bit. I’ll getcha somethin’ to drink so’s your body’ll recover prop’ly.’

Zert sidled across to the entrance. He waved one of his arms in front of a sensor and the door opened. A pale yellow light brightened the dull green glow of the chamber.

Awg tried to get his brain working. It didn’t want to. He knew he must be back on planet Zero, because Zert was here. In fact, the chamber Awg was lying in appeared to be identical to the one he and his grandfather had left from, many weeks previously. That had been extremely scary, because no one really knew how to make the journey to Earth. They’d taken a huge risk. But, with some unexpected help, it had worked.

So Awg knew he was on planet Zero, but he couldn’t work out how he’d got there. What had happened? He remembered tramping around the countryside with the Resonator, trying to get to Zero, and there being no sign of success. Then, before they’d gone to bed, they’d sat at supper with his grandparents, and Robo had been saying how he’d fixed things with the school … Robo.

Where was Robo?

Awg forced himself to his feet and staggered to the door. He almost collided with Zert, who was coming back with some sort of drink.

‘Robo. Where’s Robo?’

Zert clicked in exasperation. ‘Awg, you gotta sit down. You needs a lotta time to recover. You bin out cold for four hours. An’ I don’t know nothin’ about no Robo. What’s a Robo?’

‘It’s not a what, it’s a who. My mate Robo. He’s the reason I’ve come. Where is he?’

‘Awg. There’s no one else. The reason you’ve come’s we set the machine to pick you up – an’ here you are. It wa’n’t easy, but eventually we done it.’

Awg was devastated. He’d made the journey alone. But then

a wave of panic took him. Where was Robo if he wasn’t on Zero? Was he still in Llangarreg or had he been caught in the plasma field and sent to some unknown destination. Awg was well aware of the vagaries of matter transport.

‘Zert, I was with Robo in the room. He was only a few yards away from me. What’s happened to him?’

‘Can’t tell. We had your body-cell profile an’ the coordinates o’ the Resonator. That way we could getcha if you was close enough. Don’t know if anythin’ else got affected. Could’a done I s’pose. Hard to say. Where was your friend – in relation to where you was?’

‘My bed was right under the window where the Resonator was kept. Robo’s was over the other side, about 30 feet away.’

‘How far’s that?’

Awg looked around. ‘About three times the distance across this chamber.’

‘Then I guess your friend’ll be OK. He’ll not have shifted from where he was. Lookin’ at you, I’d say we’d managed to localise the field ’round the Resonator pretty well.’

Awg glanced down at himself. Zert’s first words came back to him. What was he talking about? Then he realised. All he had on were his night things: a black short-sleeved top and an old pair of blue boxers with pictures of Formula One racing cars all over.

Still, it could have been worse. In the summer he’d just worn the boxers. Or nothing at all.

Eighteen

Awg slept for almost 24 hours following his journey. He awoke at last, feeling nearly back to normal. He vaguely remembered being taken from the plasma transfer building into the college area of the city. But where was he now?

Gradually, he recognised his surroundings. He got up from his bunk and crossed the room to the dimly-illuminated rectangle in the wall. Rotating the small sphere at the side caused the glass to clear and let the full daylight in.

The window looked out over a green, park-like area which, apart from the peculiarity of the plants growing there, could almost have been taken for a scene on Earth. But Awg knew that the whole landscape was an artificial creation, its fertility maintained only by the network of underground pipes which provided the parched earth with its water supply.

Awg was back in his old room in the student village. It was on the top floor of the Zeroian students’ block. The college buildings were constructed in a varied mixture of styles and were of widely differing sizes. This was because they had to accommodate a similarly varied selection of students. Awg was familiar with the spider-like spyridi and the tall, silver-skinned zwnerbas but he knew that there were many other types of being in the Zero galaxy. He had caught glimpses of some of them when he had looked in the picture-glasses of the Hall of Memory where pioneer astronauts were commemorated. Fortunately, the native Zeroians were very similar to humans in general shape, size and number of limbs, so Awg fitted quite well into one of their rooms.

On the table beside the bed was something that had not been there before. But Awg recognised it. It was a communicator module like the one Zert had taken on their trip to rescue Asa. He picked it up. Immediately, a blue light came on.

‘Hi,’ said Zert’s voice. ‘Howya feelin’?’

‘Much better,’ replied Awg. ‘But I’m starving. Can I get breakfast in the Students’ Hall, like I used to?’

‘No need. I figured you’d wanna see Garik again, so I fixed it for you to have somethin’ with him. Anyway, I ’spec you’re still a bit shook up, an’ his home-made things’ll be better for your insides than the stuff you’d get in the Hall.’

Until that moment, Awg had forgotten exactly how weird the food was in the students’ Hall. He remembered the mixture of strange smells and his stomach turned over. Even to look at some of the things on offer … . After his plasma-transport journey, Awg felt queasy just thinking about it.

Like the buildings, the canteen had to serve many different needs and tastes. Awg had been especially warned to avoid the items set aside for the Twfarians. They needed a high-sulphur diet, the effect of which on humanoid life forms was usually rapid, spectacular and highly embarrassing.

Zert’s voice again.

‘We’ll meet up later, ’cos you an’ me’ve got stuff to talk ’bout. I gotta explain things ’fore the Boss gets to you.’

‘Xurog?’

‘Yep. It was him that gotcha here. He wants your help – but it’s very dodgy.’

The blue light went out, and Awg was left wondering what Xurog was going to say to him this time.

Xurog was the leader of the Spyridi scientific community. He was a huge spider-being and mind-bogglingly clever. Awg had been terrified at their first meeting. Especially when they had looked out into space and Xurog had told him that the Earth wasn’t there. He’d misunderstood and thought Xurog meant it had been destroyed. That was the first time Awg had heard about Dark Matter. He learned how the two worlds

existed together, neither conscious of the other’s existence except through the pull of its gravity. Light from the one world was invisible to its phantom neighbour. Each to the other was a Dark Universe.

Three humans were known to have made the journey from Earth’s Universe to the Universe of Zero: Benedict, nearly a thousand Earth years ago in Zero’s past; and, much more recently, Awg and his grandfather.

Three – or was it now four? What about Robo’s father?

Time to get going. There was so much to find out. Awg jumped up – and immediately realised there was a problem. He picked up the communicator. The blue light came on again.

‘Zert, I can’t go to see Benedict – sorry, you call him Garik –dressed like this,’ (or, rather, undressed like this, thought Awg).

‘Perhaps Garik’d like to see them little pictures o’ cars. He’s prob’ly not come across stuff like that before. Did monks have cars?’

Zert was obviously enjoying himself.

‘No, I don’t think monks had cars,’ said Awg, with a touch of impatience.

There was the sound of much amused clicking from the other end.

‘Jus’ look in the cupboard!’

Awg went to the panel in the wall and prepared to open it. He had a horrible idea that he was going to find the clothes he’d been given on his last visit. He hated the puke-green shirt and the baggy pink pantomime trousers and never wanted to see them again. Besides being highly uncool, they reminded him too much of the time he’d been picked on by a gang of young humanoids and had nearly got lynched.

He slid open the panel and breathed a sigh of relief. The clothes were in the same style as last time – all the humanoids wore stuff like that – but the colours were a lot more to his taste. There was a khaki-coloured shirt made of a dense, soft cloth and a pair of dark blue trousers that were a bit like chinos. Awg put them on and was fairly satisfied with the result. The

things were comfortable and at least they made him look like the other students so he didn’t stand out. And this time he didn’t feel a complete booby wearing them.

Nineteen

Awg wondered if he was supposed to leave the communicator in the room. In the end, he slipped it into his pocket and set out for Benedict’s house. This was easy to find because it stood on its own and was quite unlike any of the other buildings. Surrounded by a neatly-kept garden, it had the appearance of a small monastic dwelling from Earth. The people of Zero had followed the monk’s own design as a token of thanks to their guest. Awg knocked on the door and went inside.

Benedict rose to greet him. ‘Awg! I couldn’t believe it when they told me they were trying to get you back. I’m so relieved that you have arrived safely.’

‘Hallo Benedict – or should I say Garik!’

‘Benedict will do very well, thank you. Would you like some breakfast? Zert mentioned that you might well be hungry. It’s only my usual simple fare: I make most of it myself, as you know.’

The room was very plainly furnished, with walls bare of decoration, and rough matting covering the stone floor. On the table were a plate of brown, wafer-like biscuits, a bowl of a sweet, honey-like substance, and a jug of purple fruit juice with two drinking vessels.

Awg tucked in gratefully, wondering what to ask Benedict first. There were so many things he wanted to know. But suddenly he realised that since his arrival on Zero one name had not been mentioned. One very important name.

‘Benedict – how’s Asa? Is she safe now that she doesn’t have to live a double life any more? It must be great to be working with her father instead of behind his back.’

Awg could see from Benedict’s face that all was not as it should be.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked in alarm. ‘She’s not been attacked again, has she?’

‘No,’ said Benedict. ‘Asa is perfectly well. But things between Asa and her father are not.’

Asa was the daughter of the Patrician – the ruler of Zero and President of the Galactic Council. For years he had resisted change, stubborn in his belief that the long-established systems of government and law were flawless. Asa courageously set out to prove that there was now a growing mafia-style underworld whose activities were officially unsuspected, undetected – and out of control. Eventually, an attempt on his daughter’s life had forced the Patrician to face the truth.

‘But I thought they understood one another now and were working together,’ said Awg. ‘They both want the same thing –to make life on Zero open and fair again.’

‘Unfortunately, it has not turned out like that. Once the Patrician had got over his shock at the helicraft crash, he started an enquiry into the whole business.’

‘Great! That’s exactly what everyone wanted, isn’t it? –everyone of course except the thieves and swindlers like Mayor Sharibvdl.’

‘Yes – but we did not anticipate what would happen. The Patrician trusted Asa’s word and called an emergency meeting of the Council. He allowed her to make statements and accusations. Some of the Council members were among the accused, and of course they were outraged and demanded proof of her charges. But when Asa presented her evidence, it was dismissed. The Patrician was humiliated in front of everyone and afterwards had a terrible row with Asa. Relations between them are so bad that they barely speak to one another. And of course, her enemies are delighted.’

Awg was mortified. ‘But Asa and her team have been investigating these scams for ages. She must have loads of proof by now.’

‘You forget we are dealing with very cunning opponents,’ said Benedict. ‘This is what they did. I know – I was there.’

Benedict took out a bundle of papers from a drawer.

‘Excuse me – I still take notes by making marks on paper: the people here find it very amusing. I won’t trouble you with all of it, but you’ll be interested in the first three items.

‘First, the accusation that someone attempted to kill Asa by shooting down her helicraft. They dismissed this because Asa was flying the plane herself (the Patrician was livid when he found this out, by the way) and she is not a qualified pilot.’

‘What!!!’ Awg swallowed a large chunk of biscuit and nearly choked.

‘It’s true. She was taught by Berjga, who is not a qualified instructor, and she has never even applied for registration. The fact she is highly expert counts for nothing. The Council concluded that she lost control and crashed due to her lack of experience, and then, as an unqualified pilot, made up the attack story to save face.’

‘That’s total bullsh… er – nonsense.’

‘Prove it! The wreckage of the plane was examined and found to have no damage attributable to the use of outside force.’

‘That’s because they got her with a plasma cannon! It wouldn’t leave any mark because it just shifts your position in the air. That’s why she crashed – because she was shoved right up close to the mountainside and couldn’t avoid hitting it. No one could have avoided it!’

‘I know, I know. But we can’t prove it! And don’t forget that those types of weapons are outlawed and so in theory do not exist. Therefore, it is no defence to argue that you have been attacked with one.’

Awg could see the way things were going. He could imagine the scene at the Council, with Asa increasingly losing their confidence and her father getting increasingly incensed. Benedict took up his papers again.

‘Second, the accusation that strategic water supplies are being systematically stolen from the desert convoys. The

Council obtained unrestricted access to all the records of the Water Transports and found no evidence that any water had been misappropriated. All the documents were found to be in order. In reply, Asa stated that in two cases her own investigators had broken open the seals of suspect vehicles and taken pictures showing that their tanks were empty. The Council would not admit this evidence as it was obtained illegally. Those concerned are also being prosecuted for violation of government property.’

Awg groaned. He wasn’t sure he wanted to hear any more.

‘Third, the accusation that mayor Sharibvdl was by his own admission guilty of multiple offences of bribery, theft, corrupt business practice and being an accessory to murder. All charges dropped because the admission was obtained whilst the mayor was in a drugged state, the dose probably having being been maliciously administered by a visiting alien (that’s you, by the way). The “confession” was judged as being nothing more than the ramblings of an unfortunate victim suffering drug-induced hallucinations.’

‘I just don’t believe this!’ Awg sagged in his chair. ‘I just don’t believe it. So, even Zert’s secret recording of Sharibvdl bragging about all his scams didn’t convince them! Or, at least, they were able to hatch up an excuse to ignore it.’

‘Yes, indeed. And there’s more, but every charge was thrown out and Asa herself reprimanded for abusing Council time. The Patrician had to sit through all of it. It was a full Council meeting, with representatives from across the galaxy. So you can imagine how he felt and why he isn’t going to listen to Asa any more. In many ways, the situation on Zero is actually worse than it was before!’

Twenty

Awg walked slowly back across the green. He had not expected this. When he left Zero the first time, he had imagined that a new era was about to dawn: the likes of Mayor Sharibvdl would be purged away and prisons like Tukzadryk swept clear of innocent victims. Now it seemed that the crooks were not only going unpunished but were increasingly in control.

He fished Zert’s communicator out of his pocket. A red light came on and the set made a beeping noise. Rather alarmed, Awg stopped for a moment, wondering whether to press any of the buttons. They all had symbols on that he didn’t understand, so anything might happen. However, when he stopped walking, the beeping stopped as well. He turned around. The light on the communicator changed to white.

Awg began walking back the way he had come. When he reached a division in the path, he went off to the right, towards Benedict’s house. At once, the red light came on and the beeping started again. Awg retraced his steps and turned down the left path. The noise stopped and the colour flipped to white.

It seemed pretty clear what was happening, so Awg let himself be guided through the college grounds by keeping to the directions that gave a silent white light. Soon, he found himself entering a tall rectangular building with an array of antennae on its roof. He recognised it at once. Down in its depths was the communications centre where he had sat with Zert to chart the progress of Asa’s helicraft. Except there was no progress because it had crashed. They had been the first to find out.

Awg went down in one of the cylindrical lifts he knew so well from his adventures in the desert prisons. It gave him a bad feeling and he was very glad to get out of it. He made his way to the huge room where dozens of spyridi, zwnerbas and native Zeroians were working at rows of desks and consoles. As he had expected, Zert was waiting for him.

‘Got here all right?’

‘Yeah. I soon got the hang of it.’

‘I bin experimentin’ with minimal guidance systems. New project. Tryin’ to find out what’s the least info I can send that does the job.’

‘Is that what you did with the watch?’

‘Ha! That was harder. I stuck a cell inside that works same way as the beacons. Guessed it might come in handy sooner or later! Trouble was, I han’t thought it out prop’ly. Couldn’t find a way of accessin’ it that didn’t screw up the nearest beacon signal. First time I tried to contact you I turned off three of ’em! Xurog gave me hell over that. Got it right in the end, though.’

‘How did you do the thing with the alphabet. I didn’t think you knew anything about our written language.’

‘We got ways o’ gettin’ to an image we can understand. You’ve used one y’self.’

‘You mean that machine in the Town House at Gexadkydubm? That was scary. I sort of saw words inside my head.’

‘Yep. It shows the user the symbols they’re used to. Matter o’ fact, though, I din’ use anythin’ like that. I cheated.’

‘You cheated?’

‘I told Garik what I wanted. He translated the word-sounds into letters an’ then letters into numbers for me. Soon as I got numbers, I was OK.’

‘Well – now you’ve got me here, you’d better explain what the message was about. Return – stranger. It’s a bit short. What’s it mean?’

‘A bit short? You dunno what an incredible sweat it was to send that! An’ it means ’xactly what it says. That we think a stranger’s arrived on Zero an’ that we needed you to come back

an’ help. ’Cos it looks like it’s another human from your own planet.’

‘So, who is this stranger and why d’you say you think he’s arrived? Don’t you know? And why d’you need me?’

‘It’s sort o’ difficult to explain. We’ll have to show you. Tomorrow.’

‘So is this stranger hiding somewhere, so you can’t find them or see them properly?’

‘Sort of. The children found him – at least, we think it’s a ‘him’. They didn’ know what it was. Only that somethin’d got trapped inside.’

Twenty One

Early next morning, Zert collected Awg from his lodging. They headed away from the college green towards a geometric pattern of low, domed buildings connected by tubular walkways. This was the district where most of the spyridi lived and worked. It was also the area of the city where the transporter terminal was situated. At the nearmost edge of the circular space, a helicraft was standing fuelled and ready.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Awg, puzzled. Up to now he had assumed that, whatever the problem was, it was here in Auyvhasdh.

‘Chykideyh,’ said Zert.

‘That’s the big receiver station, isn’t it? – where grandad was found.’

‘Yep. It’s our information highway, where all the signals from beacons an’ special transmitters gets picked up.’

‘So – this person who’s arrived – has he appeared in the middle of Chykideyh like grandpa?’

‘Like I said, sort of. But not like your grandpa.’

As they approached, a zwnerba got out of the plane to meet them.

‘You are … Mr Awg and Mr Zert, passengers for Chykideyh terminal?’

‘That’s right,’ replied Zert.

‘Please come aboard.’

They boarded the plane, strapped themselves into their seats and prepared for the first part of the journey.

‘You have travelled out of Auyvhasdh before?’ asked the pilot.

Awg nodded, and Zert clicked impatiently.

‘It is the rule that I ask the question. Some passengers may be disturbed if they do not know what to expect. I realise that you are experienced travellers. Please prepare yourselves for exit.’

Awg knew the reason for these instructions. It was not only the gardens in Auyvhasdh that were maintained artificially. The entire city was a virtual creation, generated inside a large volume of interstellar space that had been condensed down and contained. The city was connected to Zero by hyperspace links and in real terms was not located on the planet at all. They were about to emerge from the virtual city on to the actual surface of Zero itself.

A transparent globe on the post beside their vehicle was showing a soft yellow light. This now changed to an intense iridescent blue, warning that the plasma field had been energised.

Almost at once, Awg sensed a slight vibration throughout the aircraft. Then the light began to fade and the outlines of objects outside the windows became blurred. As it grew darker, it seemed that the space above them was expanding outwards, then dissolving completely. The blackness closed in above and around them. Then there came a brightening, with thousands of reflections of their vehicle receding into the distance in all directions.

As the light grew stronger still, vast sloping walls appeared above them – but they passed through, breaking out into daylight as if emerging through the surface of water. And suddenly they were out on the bright silver platform of an open space, in the centre of which was the huge, shining, ebony-black pyramid from which they had emerged. On each of its sides was the sun-like spider symbol of the Spyridi.

Awg had first seen that symbol on a clock’s face in Llangarreg. A clock very like a miniature version of the towering pyramid behind them. The clock that had started him on his first journey in time and space.

The helicraft pilot taxied over towards the white metal rail which ran in a circle around the edge of the platform. Awg expected that he would now take off to begin their normal flight, but instead he brought the vehicle to a halt and switched off the engine.

Awg was immediately on his guard and darted an anxious glance across to Zert. They’d nearly got killed in a helicar once before and weren’t looking for another fight now. What was going on?

The zwnerba pilot got out of his seat, bowed, and beckoned to a very surprised Awg.

‘Mr Awg and Mr Zert, you are famous among my people. Without you, the lady Asa would not be alive. My name is Jebku and I am the brother of Berjga, Asa’s friend. She tells me Mr Awg is a pilot.’

‘N-no,’ stammered Awg. ‘I just managed to fly the plane for a little while when we were attacked.’

‘But you landed the machine safely.’

‘Yes, but that was mostly good luck.’

‘If you take the controls now, I will teach you properly. It is against the rule – but it seems we have to learn new rules now.’

Awg wasn’t at all sure he should be doing this, although he desperately wanted to. He looked questioningly at Zert, who clicked vigorously. He knew that Awg could be trusted.

Awg strapped himself into the pilot’s seat with the zwnerba

in the place beside him. He was just about to start the engine, when Jebku gently laid a finger on his arm.

‘Before you begin, you should check the fuel level and make sure that all the power controls are in their rest positions.’

He showed Awg what to do.

‘Now it is safe to fire up.’

Awg turned the hydrogen release up to full pressure and dabbed the ignition button. The engine roared into life.

With Jebku at his side, Awg set the rotor pitch at maximum lift and wound up the engine revs. Everything shook and vibrated. The cabin seemed to ring with the noise.

But now they were lifting off, rising into the air and swinging round to the north. Once airborne, the sound level fell away and only their soft, rhythmic scud-scud-scud disturbed the still of the sky. Below, the flat-topped hill with its black pyramid began to recede into the distance as the expanse of barren scrub and semi-desert opened out beneath them. At about three hundred feet Awg flattened out, set a north-easterly course towards Chykideyh, and notched up his forward speed.

It was still early in the day and Zero’s huge red sun was low in the sky. Darts of crimson light flickered across the transparent dome of the helicraft. Way below, rocky outcrops and the occasional stunted bushes threw long shadows, the smouldering sun picking out every shade of yellow, red and ochre. Awg was spellbound.

He forced himself to concentrate on his training. He made small, exploratory changes to height and direction and was thrilled to feel the machine respond faithfully to his touch. His confidence grew by the minute. Awg grinned, closed his eyes for a second, and then opened them again to make sure it was all real. If there was anything better than this, he didn’t know about it.

Twenty Two

‘Jebku … ’

‘Yes, Mr Awg?’

‘This helicraft – what sort of engine does it have? Most of the vehicle engines on Earth work by pistons moving up and down in cylinders.’

‘It is a rotary engine. The design is by zwnerba engineers and there used to be many difficulties with wear and leakage. But then the spyridi helped us to improve it. They developed a metal alloy with a slightly plastic quality and this solved the problems. The new engine needs much less maintenance and is very reliable.’

‘And it runs on hydrogen?’

‘Yes, with this engine we can run directly on hydrogen gas.’

‘Look where we are!’ Zert’s voice cut into their conversation. They had been flying for about two hours and the landscape below them now was painfully familiar. It was the area of rock towers and mesas known as the Stone Forest, and was where they had rescued Asa after her helicraft had been shot down.

‘This is just ’bout where we threw the bomb out,’ shouted Zert, ‘so we’ll soon be over the place where Asa crashed.’

They easily spotted the blackened hillside and, guided by the ever-watchful Jebku, Awg got in some useful practice at circling over a fixed point.

About an hour and a half later, Jebku told Awg that they were nearing Chykideyh and he should put the plane on autopilot. They then changed places and Jebku took over.

‘You are doing well,’ said Jebku, ‘but we should not fly in with

you at the controls. That would mean trouble for both of us!’

Awg glowed with pleasure at Jebku’s words but knew that he should keep very quiet about his part in their flight. He moved back to sit beside Zert for the remainder of the journey. It gave them time to talk, and Zert had things on his mind.

‘When you got here, you spouted a load o’ stuff ’bout this Robo – an’ like it was ’cos o’ him you’d come. But we got you here an’ we didn’ know nothin’ about no Robo.’

‘You know that message you sent?’ said Awg.

‘The return – stranger … ’

‘Yes. We did guess what you meant – that you’d found someone – because we’d just lost someone.’

He told Zert the whole story about Robo and his dad.

Unusually, Zert was very quiet. Eventually, he said, ‘You’re gonna have to say all this to Xurog. There’s implications I can only guess at. I jus’ don’ know enough.’

‘So, now are you going to tell me where this stranger is?’ asked Awg.

Zert shuffled uncomfortably in his seat.

‘Like I said, it’s sort o’ difficult to explain. We’ll show you.’

Before very long, another forest, this time of aerial masts, appeared on the horizon, announcing their approach to Chykideyh. As they got near, the extent of the installation became apparent.

Awg stared open-mouthed at the size of it. He had expected a big place but nothing had prepared him for the acres of columns, towers, spheres, wire arrays and other structures that met his gaze.

‘Told you – it’s our information highway,’ said Zert. ‘There’s loads o’ kit here. It took years to build an’ it’s bein’ added to all the time.’

To the west of the aerial farm was an extensive area of buildings – virtually a small town, complete with a transporter

terminal. At this they landed and made their way to the HQ block.

Jebku had resumed his official manner. They thanked him and said goodbye, and Awg was careful to behave like an ordinary passenger. During their flight Jebku had not always been quite so polite, especially when Awg had been tempted to fly rather too low over one of the Stone Forest peaks!

Awg was surprised to learn that they were to join Xurog in the airport control tower. It seemed an odd place for a meeting. He kept wondering if Xurog was really quite as scary as he remembered.

He was.

It wasn’t actually the fact that he was an ebony-black spiderbeing over six feet high, with red eyes. It was more the feeling that here was someone so ballistically, stratospherically clever that your own brain was just a bit of a joke. But the red eyes didn’t help.

However, Xurog greeted them quietly enough and Awg was relieved to find that a selection of food and drink had been laid out for them. You couldn’t exactly relax, but at least you could be less hungry.

After they had eaten, Xurog took them across to the window of the control tower.

‘I thought it might be useful to meet here because it gives the best view of Chykideyh.’

He turned to Awg.

‘Do you remember our very first conversation, when we talked about the early days of plasma transport?’

Awg remembered it very well indeed. The terror of the moment had never quite left him. But he was determined to keep his cool now.

‘Yes – about how difficult it all was until Garik appeared and you discovered the Earth’s Universe.’

‘That’s right. And do you remember me telling you about that last plasma transport machine, before the revolution in design?’

‘You said it was enormous – that it would have taken me an hour to walk from one end to the other.’

‘Excellent. You remember well! What I did not tell you was that the machine was not built at Auyvhasdh. In fact, Auyvhasdh had hardly been established at that time. It was built here. Chykideyh was then the centre of our operations. And that huge machine – the last of the giant prototypes –occupied most of the area now covered by the aerial arrays you see in front of you.’

‘But that’s vast – acres and acres.’

‘Exactly. I wanted you to appreciate just how big it was. Because it was still that same machine which was used when the Adventurers set out to visit your planet Earth.’

‘The ones who were lost?’

‘Yes, the ones who were lost. And it is the story of their journey that concerns us now. You see the building at the corner of the aerial farm nearest to us?’

Awg could make out a long, low building standing on its own.

‘That is where we are going now,’ said Xurog. ‘That is the Adventurers’ Museum.’

Twenty Three

They descended the control tower and walked across to the museum building. On the walls inside were pictures of the Adventurers – zwnerbas, spyridi and native Zeroians –representatives of the Great Alliance of the Three Peoples. There were descriptions of the repeated attempts that had been made to find a small, blue-green planet in a previously unknown Universe. In transparent cases around the hall were examples of the equipment and clothing that would have been used at around the time of the expeditions. It was all rather gloomy and there was a musty smell.

Xurog paused as he led them through the Hall.

‘You will appreciate that the events described by these exhibits took place a long time ago – around a thousand years, in Earth reckoning. What you may not realise is that many of these exhibits are themselves nearly as old. They were set up not long afterwards in commemoration of the Adventurers’ brave deeds, and have been left largely unchanged since that time.’

They passed out of the main Hall and into a circular lecture theatre. There were tiers of seats all around, looking down on to the centre of the space where a large white dish was set into the floor.

Xurog sat them about half way up the rows of seats.

‘Young people from our houses of learning visit the museum to find out about the exploits of their ancestors,’ he explained, ‘and it was one of these schoolchildren who made the discovery which brings us to this room. Since then, our own investigations

have revealed a number of further mysteries. We are hoping that you, Awg, may be able to help us solve them.’

Awg wondered what he could possibly do to solve mysteries that someone like Xurog could not.

‘First of all,’ Xurog continued, ‘you shall watch what the young students were supposed to see.’

The room was darkened and light beamed down from a projector high up in the ceiling. A moving picture appeared on the bowl-like screen. It was brilliantly clear and seemed almost three-dimensional. First there were views of the vast building that had housed the plasma transport machine, and then closeups of power generators and banks of equipment. Then the picture showed the Adventurers entering the transfer chamber. Awg noticed that it was cylindrical rather than like the spherical one he had experienced, and also that it appeared to be much smaller. Next, the Adventurers were shown being strapped into their very cramped bunks. Then the scene shifted to show an old man standing on a platform in the centre of a huge control room. (‘That was the Patrician o’ the time,’ whispered Zert. ‘He’s got the job o’ sendin’ ’em off’.)

The old man rested his hand on a small metal sphere: the transfer process had begun. Now something so huge and bright filled the screen that Awg thought it was the sun – until he saw the racks of cables leading away from it, and the glare slowly fading from the transfer chamber of the great machine. Then the chamber itself was opened again and shown to be empty. Finally, there was a sequence taken outside the building of the Patrician raising his arms to the sky in a token gesture of farewell.

Xurog turned up the lights.

‘Those pictures of the Adventurers being sent on their way were what the children normally see. Thousands of our young guests have watched the same thing on previous visits. Afterwards, the children leave this room and go around the main part of the museum. There they can see for themselves some of the objects they have just been shown on the screen.

‘Now, on this particular occasion, one of the young persons

got bored with the exhibits and decided to have another look at the film show. It was, I regret to say, one of our own spyridi children – a particularly inquisitive, fidgety and disobedient character. If it had been a few years earlier, I could probably have put a name to someone who might have acted in just such a manner.’

He looked very hard at Zert, who squirmed with embarrassment (although Awg had a very strong feeling that Xurog was not being too serious).

‘He appears to have begun fiddling with the controls of the media projector. The first thing anyone knew about his activities was when a piercing scream was heard from this room. The attendant ran in to find a very frightened young spyridon huddled in the corner with his arms over his head. That was when we made our first discovery.’

Awg and Zert both looked up. ‘What sort of discovery?’ asked Awg.

‘Remember what I told you earlier. The equipment in this museum is very old. People used it for years without thinking about it. It had never gone wrong so there was no reason to investigate. Everyone assumed that the video system ran from the ancient projector in the ceiling, fed by an image store of some archaic type. Our first discovery was that this was not true. There was no data storage of any kind that we could discover. But information is reaching the projector from somewhere, and – as the young spyridon found – it is not limited to what we have just seen. Look again!’

The lights were dimmed once more and new pictures appeared on the screen. At first, there was an expanse of desert. Then, building work could be seen. The excavations seemed to cover an enormous area. Eventually, the new building took shape. And then Awg recognised it.

‘It’s the plasma transport building – the enormous one that used to be here – the one the Adventurers left from. But we just saw it being built!’

‘Yes,’ said Xurog. ‘We saw it being built; and before it was

built. Before anything here existed – including, of course, the image projection system itself. And now look at this.’

The huge building was gone. They were now shown the outside of the museum as it existed at present; and in the distance, the airport terminal. And they saw three figures coming across from the control tower. Two spyridi: one very tall and black, one about half his size. And between them, walking on two legs, a young human.

It took a few moments for Awg to register what he had just witnessed. It seemed impossible to believe.

He had just seen himself – and Zert and Xurog – walking over from the airport to the museum. Something which had happened about half an hour ago.

‘It’s a time machine,’ he said at last. ‘It can see things that happened hundreds of years in the past and things from just a few minutes ago.’

‘Yes,’ said Xurog. ‘It is a time machine, if you want to call it that. It is able to generate images from the past: the recent past as well as the distant past. But I have one last thing to show you.’

The screen showed the cylindrical transfer chamber again. But as they watched, it melted away until nothing was left on the screen except a faint grey rectangle.

Straining his eyes, Awg peered fixedly at the hazy image, trying to discern some detail or structure. Suddenly – so suddenly that Awg jumped backwards and hit his head on the back of his seat – a figure appeared in the space. It was a human-like figure, thrashing and rolling around as if in agony. The figure got up on its knees and its face came closer and closer. Finally, the face filled the whole screen – a terrible face, contorted by pain, blood running from its eyes and nose.

Awg knew then what had scared the young spyridon so much. It scared Awg too, even though he was used to seeing human beings and was not frightened on that score. Awg was scared because he recognised the face. He had only seen it once before, in a wedding photograph, but he was totally certain that it was Robo’s dad.

Twenty Four

‘Is that him?’ said Zert. ‘The one you told me ’bout?’

Awg nodded. Xurog regarded him intently.

‘You know who this is?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Awg. ‘It’s the thing that links this all together – the Adventurers, and me coming here again.

‘They did get to Earth, and that man found their remains. He also found the Resonator.’

Awg repeated the story he’d already told to Zert. Xurog seemed genuinely impressed. Awg was secretly rather pleased that, for once, he was the one who was calling the shots.

‘So, that is the link between the Adventurers and your friend’s appearance!’ exclaimed Xurog. ‘At last I am beginning to understand what has happened. We have become so used to thinking of it all as history, and played out long ago. Now it springs to life again and takes us all by surprise! Of course, the Resonator is the key. I really should have guessed. But until quite recently we had so little information about its nature.’

‘But wasn’t it made here, as a result of Benedict’s – I mean Garik’s – appearance?’ said Awg, much surprised. ‘I thought you must know every detail.’

‘Not so, unfortunately! Not everything in science is as orderly and logical as you might suppose – or we might wish it to be. Remember that only two resonators were ever made, because of the rarity of the iridonium needed for the core and the exceptional intricacy of the design. The two devices were built a long time ago and there is much that was not documented.’

‘I ’spec the guys at the time was bein’ pushed to get it all done,’

put in Zert, ‘so they only noted down the really basic stuff.’

‘Zert is probably right,’ replied Xurog. ‘And if much of the detail of the construction went unrecorded, then even less is known about the manner of operation. The first resonator was hardly past the testing stage before being sent on the third Earth expedition – and, as we believed, lost. The second instrument had for centuries been locked up in the Patrician’s palace. However, when we learnt of Asa’s plan to use it again, we took advantage of the opportunity.’

‘It made all the difference,’ said Awg, who was certain he and his grandfather owed their lives to Asa. She had sacrificed her own security to get them back to Earth alive.

‘Time was short,’ continued Xurog, ‘but we managed to set up a whole series of experiments monitoring the progress of your journey. From this, we began to rediscover many things about the way in which the resonator works.

‘One of these is the astonishing accuracy of its space-time registration. When we brought you back here, we allowed the destination coordinates to be determined solely by the memory function of the resonator. In the event, it guided you back to almost exactly the same spot from which you and your grandfather departed. We also strongly suspect that the timelapse in the two worlds has been the same.’

Awg had lost the plot by this time and cast a desperate glance across to Zert for help.

‘It’s like this,’ said Zert. ‘There’s no link between time in Earth’s Universe an’ in Zero’s. But if you travels using the resonator, it seems to make one.’

Awg thought about this. ‘So – since my first visit you’re exactly the same amount older as me, even though we’ve been living in the two different worlds.’

‘Yep, but without the resonator you might’ve arrived two hundred years later, an’ Yours Truly’d jus’ be a smudge somewhere.’

‘So, Awg, you see the significance of this for your friend’s journey … ?’ Xurog looked at him questioningly.

‘If the Adventurers had used the resonator and got back safely,’ replied Awg slowly, ‘they would have returned here … exactly where they set out from … ’

‘And in their own time – just as much later here as the time they spent on your planet,’ said Xurog.

‘But they didn’t get back safely,’ said Awg. ‘Something went wrong and they never left the Earth.’

‘But at least we know now that they did get there originally and were not “lost” as we believed. So their resonator has been on your own planet since that time, until your friend’s father activated it just recently, by accident. On Earth, hundreds of years have passed.’

‘And the same amount o’ time’ll have passed here,’ said Zert.

‘So Robo’s dad got to Zero now, in our own time,’ said Awg.

‘And arrived back at exactly the same place the Adventurers left from,’ replied Xurog.

‘But that was here, on this spot,’ said Awg, ‘from a machine that doesn’t exist any more in a building that’s been knocked down.’

‘ ’xactly,’ said Zert, ‘but we knows he’s here somewhere. We’ve jus’ seen his picture. So where’d the picture come from?’

Xurog leant over them. ‘I think it’s time to show you our second discovery,’ he said.

Twenty Five

Xurog led them down to the base of the circular lecture room.

‘When I spoke earlier about the old imaging system, I told you that we could find no data bank: nowhere the pictures might be stored. Instead, we found that the connections to the projector were exceptionally complex. We tracked them back across the ceiling, through the wall and under the floor. Come with me.’

On the lowest level of the lecture theatre, a section of the seating had been removed and a hole knocked in the base of the wall. Temporary lighting, strung up on hangers, revealed a hollow space and a lot of what Awg took to be the Zeroian equivalent of scaffolding. Supported by this, a set of steps disappeared downwards. After a lengthy descent, the three found themselves in a cavernous, cellar-like space.

In the dim light, Awg thought at first it was completely empty. Then with a shock he realised that the whole of the central area was taken up by a featureless, rectangular black structure. It wasn’t a perfect rectangle. Towards the far end, the walls tapered together, like this (from above):

Awg thought it looked like a gigantic black coffin. He immediately went over to get a closer look.

‘Keep back!’ Xurog’s voice was sharp and insistent.

‘Keep away. Do not approach the walls. Watch.’

He extinguished the lights.

As their eyes grew used to the darkness, Awg became conscious of a pale blue phosphorescence. It came from the coffin.

‘That is what drives the projector upstairs,’ said Xurog. ‘The structure is protected by an electric field – at least a hundred thousand volts. But if you try to approach the wall, the potential seems to increase at that point.’

‘You mean it senses the presence of people – that it knows … we’re here now?’ said Awg.

‘Looks like it,’ said Zert. ‘Scary.’

‘But what is it?’ asked Awg.

‘We do not know,’ replied Xurog. ‘It is of a technology unknown to us. We have tried to use probing beams to determine what is inside, but most of the output seems to get blocked or scrambled. What we have discovered is that the interior space is not uniform. Around the edges there appears to be a shell of control equipment, and towards one end there is a very dense area which we think is a power source.’

‘If all these things are around the inside wall,’ said Awg, ‘what’s in the middle?’

‘It appears to be empty space. There is nothing that we can identify. But now come along to the other end. Remember to keep well away from the wall.’

They reached the narrower end of the giant structure. From a safe distance, Xurog spoke again.

‘There are no marks or structures of any kind on the outside of this container – for a container is what we believe it to be. No structures – except this one.’

Awg gasped.

Towards the base of the end wall was a gold ring, perhaps ten feet across. But it wasn’t the circle of gold itself that Awg was

staring at. It was what lay at its centre.

Darkness. A void. A space so unbelievably, darkly, menacingly black that the other black things in the room – including the ebony Xurog himself – looked grey in comparison. Awg knew instinctively that he was looking at nothing.

‘What the hell’s that?’ asked Awg, unable to take his eyes off it.

‘We believe it’s the way in.’

‘The way in to what?’

Xurog’s answer was not what Awg expected.

‘That’s what we would like you to tell us. We are hoping that you will go in and find out.’

‘Me. Go in there?’

‘That’s what we would like.’

‘So that’s why you brought me here!’ ‘Yes.’

‘Why don’t you try it?’ said Awg, forgetting in his indignation that he was speaking to the Master of the City of Auyvhasdh, Head of the College and Chief Spyridi advisor to the Patrician.

‘We have,’ answered Xurog, calmly.

Zert wriggled uncomfortably. ‘There’s a bit o’ the picture stuff we din’ show you. At the end. You don’ wanna see it, I’m tellin’ you.

‘There was a group of us technicians workin’ here for Xurog. We found there’s no electric field at the door. It’s shielded off. Contained. Tha’s what the gold ring does. So a mate o’ mine goes an’ sticks one o’ his arms into the hole. Just did it ’fore we could stop him. He din’ feel no pain – not at first, anyhow. But he couldn’t feel no arm, neither. That was ’cos it wasn’t there. He’s in hospital recoverin’.’

‘So his arm got burnt off?’

‘No, not burnt. Jus’ removed – as if it’d never bin there. There’s no wound or anythin’. Jus’ no arm. But you can see it in the projector. Hangin’ there, like in Space.’

‘And you’re asking me to go in – and get … eaten up, like that arm did? Perhaps I should test it out myself the same way.

ZZZaaappppppp! “Found in projector: one arm, believed human. May be collected at owner’s convenience”.’

‘It’s a risk, we admit,’ said Xurog. ‘But there are reasons for believing that you may be able to go in safely, whereas we cannot.’

‘A risk!’ Awg was hopping mad. ‘And what sort of reasons?’ There were going to have to be some colossally convincing ones.

‘The first reason is a very practical one,’ replied Xurog. ‘It looks as if your friend from Earth is in there, injured but apparently alive. If he can survive, perhaps you can also.’

‘The second reason follows from the first,’ he continued. ‘You remember what I told you about the separation of the two worlds, how this depended on a tiny difference in atomic structure?’

‘The neutrinon that was slightly different?’

‘Neutrino. Yes. What work we have been able to do suggests that your body may be able to survive inside this chamber for a similar reason. The machine will allow you to pass in because it does not recognise you as part of Zero’s Universe.’

‘And if you’re wrong?’ asked Awg.

‘Nobody is going to force you to enter, but at present we have no other ideas for getting your friend out. He appears unable to escape, and will remain trapped inside unless he is rescued.’

Twenty Six

‘I can see why you didn’t want to tell me where Robo’s dad was!’ said Awg, pacing up and down. ‘There was just the faintest possibility that I might have been just a teensy-weensy bit put off. You must all think I’m a complete sucker. A mug. Expendable.’

Zert looked very hurt.

‘It’s not like that at all! Siddown a minute. Look, I’m not s’posed to tell you this – an’ we really do care ’bout your friend’s dad – but there’s another reason why we gotta find out more ’bout that machine. An’ it’s really important. An’ it’s only you can help us. You remember what Xurog said?’

‘ “It is of a technology unknown to us.” ’

‘Yep. We dunno who built it, or why, or where the know-how come from. An’, most importantly, what else it’s doin’.’

Xurog had left them in a small room leading off from the main hall of the museum. Zert shut the door.

‘Awg – think ’bout it. You knows the story. They builds this huge plasma transport machine. It’s so vastly, massively powerful they’re not sure they can control it. But they presses on an’ uses it all the same. It seems to work. Relief all round! But then what? A Being mysteriously appears from a previ’sly unknown second Universe.’

‘But Xurog said that was a good thing. It enabled them to make a big discovery and invent a whole new method for matter transportation.’

‘Yes, fine. All hunky-dory. Garik pops up, an’ everythin’s wonderful. But it was unexpected. Unpredicted. It was a fluke.

Even now they don’ understand it.’

‘OK, so Garik shows up out of nowhere. What’s so bad about that?’

‘Nothin’. But what if somethin’ else got in as well. Somethin’ else we didn’t expect. Somethin’ we couldn’t see an’ never detected? Somethin’ that’s been quietly workin’ away ever since?’

‘Doing what?’

‘We dunno – but the signs ain’t good. Y’see, after Garik, things seem to’ve settled down for a long time. All the new technology worked, an’ Zero stayed peaceful an’ rich an’ a good place to be.’

‘And then?’

‘And then – years later – you arrive, by an auto-imprisonment route that ain’t supposed to work outside our own galaxy, let alone outside our Universe.

‘Then very soon a third human arrives – your grandad – not by the same process, but somehow hitchin’ a lift on the beacon signals, which’re s’posed to be entirely sep’rate an’ nothin’ to do with transport at all.

‘An’ by this time Zero ain’t so peaceful an’ quiet any more. Crooks like Sharibvdl do bad stuff an’ don’ get caught. Somehow they gets ’round the automatic system an’ don’ get whacked into jail.’

‘Well, it’s not my fault!’ said Awg indignantly. ‘You can’t blame me for screwing up your entire planet just because I fiddled around with an old clock!’

‘Nah, nah! We’re not sayin’ that. All we’re sayin’ is that the chances are it’s all connected – all part o’ the same thing. Somethin’s messin’ with our high-tech stuff.’

‘Look,’ he went on, ‘Sharibvdl couldn’t invent his way out o’ a paper bag. No way is he bright enough to bust a complex policing system that’s been ’round for hundreds o’ years. Someone has shown him – an’ others – how to do it.’

‘If your scientists hadn’t made that soddin’ great engine in the first place, none of this would have happened!’ said Awg, in exasperation.

‘Well they did, an’ it has. An’ now, underneath where it used to be, there’s this machine that nobody knows anythin’ about. It’s protected by zillions o’ volts an’ we gets our limbs melted off if we tries to get in.’

‘So why is there an entrance if nobody’s supposed to use it?’ asked Awg.

‘Pr’aps there was origin’ly someone or somethin’ there an’ they’re not around any more. Or pr’aps they are, but now they just live inside?’

Awg shuddered. At least he could see now why Xurog was so desperate to get a fix on that machine.

‘You’re prob’ly the only person with a chance o’ gettin’ in,’ continued Zert. ‘Added to which you got your own reason for goin’, ’cos one o’ your own folk’s got stuck in it.’

‘Zert – Xurog called it a container. What do you think’s inside it?’

‘What we’re ’fraid of is it’s a container with open ends – a back door to a wormhole in space. That’d explain the way the projector works. It’s a joke played on us by whoever built the big black box. A tiny clue to what’s goin’ on inside, where it’s secretly gettin’ on with its main business. We’re not seein’ a recordin’ o’ the things it shows, we’re bein’ shown the actual event, in its own time. The machine can get to places where it captures light from the past.’

‘So it’s like back on Earth when we look at distant stars. We see them as they were years and years ago, because it’s taken that long for their light to reach us.’

‘Yep – an’ the wormhole’s the short cut to whatever place you gotta look from to get the time right.’

‘So, you mean that what’s inside the box isn’t actually inside the box – and if you go through that door you could land up anywhere?’

‘You gottit. At the very least it’s a gateway ’tween here an’ somewhere else.’

Twenty Seven

Awg lay on his bunk in the airport terminal building. Xurog had given him until noon the next day to decide. He pulled up his knees and wrapped his arms around them, making himself into a ball. He knew the room wasn’t cold, but he felt as if it was.

This wasn’t what he had expected when he’d talked with Robo about going to Zero. Now he was there, without Robo, and facing a total unknown in a giant coffin full of darkness.

He’d been trying to psych himself up enough to begin to think about the possibility of going in, but the more he learnt the more terrified he’d felt. Even if you didn’t get melted at the door it looked as if you might get zapped by some monster lurking inside.

Or maybe you’d just vanish into nothingness. For ever.

He got up and went into the day-room he shared with Zert. He was surprised to find Zert sitting at the table, staring out of the window. The cloudless night sky of Zero, brilliant with stars and its two moons, flooded the room with light.

‘Couldn’t you sleep either?’ he asked.

‘ ’Course not. Thinkin’ about you. An’ how could you say that bit ’bout me not caring ’bout you, after all the stuff we done together?’

Awg had been feeling bad about it ever since. He’d let his anger and fear spill over. He went to sit beside Zert.

‘Sorry. I’m really sorry. I got mad at Xurog, thinking he’d brought me all that way just to be a tame laboratory animal for his experiment.’

‘It’s bigger than that, like I told you. More important. Anyway, we don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘Sleep. Spyridi don’t sleep. Not like you or zwnerbas, anyhow. We jus’ take little rests every so often. You wouldn’t notice. So –whaddya goin’ to do?’

‘What happens if I don’t go in?’

‘We sends you back to Earth. You can jus’ carry on with your life there.’

‘But what about Robo – and his dad – and all the stuff going wrong here?’

‘I dunno. Tough. I s’pose somethin’ll work out.’

Awg sat in silence. But then Zert said something else.

‘Asa’ll be sorry. She was hopin’ you’d give her a break. The Patrician’s givin’ her a hard time.’

Awg gulped. He’d forgotten about Asa. If it would help her, then that was another reason to give it a try. A very strong reason.

‘What d’you think of my chances?’

‘If you go in? I dunno. There’s nothin’ to go on. I can tell you one thing, though. If you do decide, Xurog’s gonna give you a big send-off. Cameras on you, medical teams at the ready, all that sort o’ stuff. Partly to make you feel better ’bout it an’ partly to make him look good.’

‘It sounds awful,’ said Awg. And in a single second he knew what he should do. He grabbed one of Zert’s arms and squeezed it.

‘I want to go – now. Can you get me into the building?’

Zert looked aghast.

‘Xurog’s goin’ to be mighty furious.’

‘Can you take it? I shan’t be around, so you’ll catch all the flak’.

‘If you got the bottle to face the black hole, I can handle Xurog.’

Awg packed his few possessions into the small rucksack Benedict had given him. He was almost ready to leave when

Zert came in. He handed Awg a small silver cone.

‘I guessed you’d end up goin’, so I made somethin’ for you. It might help.’

‘What’s it do?’

‘Not sure. It’s an experiment.’

Zert saw the alarm on Awg’s face. There were enough unknowns already.

‘OK, OK. Relax! You remember my sentient tape?’

‘The stuff that got me up that cliff?’

‘Yep. Well, the control had to switch it ’tween sticky an’ notsticky, so it got me thinkin’ ’bout surfaces an’ how to change ’em. What you got there’s a lot more way out. I can’t be sure ’cos there’s not much to practise on, but I think it’ll help get through boundaries.’

‘Even wormholes in Space?’

‘Pr’aps. It goes in steps, so youc’n try things out a bit at a time. Be careful, though – I di’n have time to finish the data storage prop’ly, so if you fills up all the memory it just wipes everythin’ an’ starts again.’

Awg had in that moment been told just about the most important thing he would ever hear in his entire life, and it was unfortunate that he had no time to let its significance sink in.

The two friends slipped out of the airport building and across the deserted landing area towards the museum. Zert got out his communicator and fiddled with the controls. There was a click and the door rolled open.

They made their way into the lecture theatre and climbed down into the basement. Away from the dim light of Zert’s lamp, the ominous blue glow from the coffin filled the space. They walked to the far end and stood looking at the huge gold ring. It did not look warm and comforting. It looked hard and cold, but also somehow watchful, like a dead eye. Fear flowed out from the black emptiness at its centre. The total silence made it even worse.

‘You better go in quick,’ said Zert, shivering. ‘Before we both bottle it.’ He gave Awg a bristly hug.

Awg wasn’t going to poke an experimental finger into the hole, or crawl through it slowly. If this was to be his exit from life, he was going out in style. He gave Zert another hug. A last hug. Possibly the last ever.

‘ ’bye Zert. Thanks.’

‘ ’bye Awg. Good luck!’

Zert suddenly felt utterly wretched. He knew he couldn’t go with Awg without throwing his own life away. But maybe that was exactly what they were asking Awg himself to do.

Awg squared his shoulders and stood up very straight. He fixed his mind on Robo’s dad. He went back a few paces, then ran at the circle of darkness and dived headfirst through it.

Twenty Eight

9th October

Awg’s been gone a week now. At first, I was thinking about him the whole time. About him and what he was doing and whether he’d found Dad. I feel so useless stuck here and unable to help them. But gradually I’ve relaxed a bit. There’s nothing I can do, and in a way that’s a relief. It sort of takes the responsibility away.

10th October

The weather cleared up today. It does rain a lot in Llangarreg. I suppose that’s why everything is so green and growing. Where we lived in France everything dried up in the summer. When I say ‘nothing’, there is actually something I could do, and I’ve thought about it a lot. I could do what Awg did.

11th October

I did a brilliant walk today! Awg’s gran packed me up a lunch and Joseph slipped in a couple of apples off his best tree. They are both so brilliant. Joseph is much more fun than he looks, which is rather distinguished and formal. Actually, he’s got a wicked sense of humour and told me a joke about a forgetful nun that I daren’t write down.

I decided I’d do a walk that combined all the places I’d been to with Awg (so you can guess I don’t go long without wondering how he’s doing). I waited until the weather looked fine and clear, which was today. I started out very early towards Ty Nant, and went to the cave by the waterfall. There was a lot of water coming down and it was awesome. It made me think of that bit in ‘Lord of the Rings’ where Faramir takes Frodo and Sam to his secret hideout. (I have to admit

that I did look pretty carefully in the pool at the bottom in case there was anything slinking about.) Then I went down to the cottages and then up on to the top of Gellyn mountain. So that was the path Awg followed the day he came back – when he didn’t know at first whether he was in his own time, or somewhere in the future, or if his grandad had survived the journey. Amazing, scary.

The mountain’s not that high but the view from the top is fantastic. I did wonder about leaving a message for Awg by the white rock, but in the end I couldn’t think of anything to say that was short enough but still meant something. The Ordnance map showed a path going down the next valley but I couldn’t find it at first. So I just followed the stream down and then cut across towards Pontrhyd. Then I walked up the road to Pen-y-gwyn and back along the field path and through the Priory to Llangarreg. Sixteen miles, by my reckoning. Great!

12th October

I’ve thought a lot about burgling the clock, like Awg did. But I’m not going to, for a whole raft of reasons. Here are the main ones:

(1) Too likely to make things worse. There’s no guarantee that it would work. Even if it did, where would I end up? Assuming I got to one of the prisons on Zero, how would I get out again – and how would I find Awg or my Dad, without anyone to help? With wolves like Sharibvdl on the prowl, it’d likely be a one way ticket to oblivion. And that’s no help to Dad at all.

(2) Respect for Joseph and Annie. If I asked their permission, they’d never allow it. If I took the clock without asking, it’d be a really bad thing as I’m a guest in their house. And I love them too much to hurt them in any way at all.

13th October

I did think of one thing I could do. And that was to find out more about the place in Norway where Dad was working. Joseph took me down to the library in Pontrhyd and I did a search. There wasn’t much on Trollheim. Just local bits about population, altitude and stuff like that. Except one thing. It was only in Norwegian but the Librarian said she’d do a bit more work to see if there was a translation. It came in the post

this morning and I think it explains a lot. (Actually, it’s a translation of a translation.)

The Legend of Trollheim

The small northern village of Trollheim has a remarkable claim to fame. Originally a cluster of houses known as Jotundal, it is believed to be the location for the adventure described in the 13th century ballad Magnus Grovsmeden. It is one of the earliest tales in which the word ‘troll’ appears and it also contains the first known description of a cyclopean troll.

The narrative is in verse and very repetitive, but the following rough translation from the Old Norwegian (gamle norske) conveys its essential flavour:

Old Geirr the shepherd drank too much beer. He lay down his head by the gravemound, The gravemound where it is forbidden to slumber. For to sleep by the sacred hill is to anger the restless dead.

Old Geirr heard a sound. He awoke with a terrible headache. Four trolls were standing over him.

Two were like men but their faces were fey, And two were monsters, one-eyed giants.

Geirr jumped up and fled. His shouts and screams roused the village folk from their labours. Some ran off, some stood and stared, Rooted to the earth by fear.

All would have gone ill Were it not for Magnus the smith. He was a fierce and mighty man Who was not afraid of trolls.

Magnus raised his axe. He split the giant’s head in two. He swung again, and a man-troll fell. Two trolls lay dead upon the ground And their companions fled.

The people now lost their fear. They chased the trolls through bog and fell Until a greater peril lay ahead, The quaking mire of Jotundal.

Knowing the danger, the villagers held back. But the trolls were heedless of their doom. They rushed onwards and tumbled in, And the black mud took them.

They struggled and screamed But that only made the sucking bog more hungry. Its vapours oozed and belched Until the trolls were swallowed up.

Then the village folk took Geirr the shepherd. They tied him to a tree And left him for three days and three nights To teach him a lesson.

For he had slept by the gravemound And brought down the wrath of the ancestors Who cursed the village and its people And loosed the trolls upon them.

Twenty Nine

Awg couldn’t open his eyes. Gradually he managed to squint through almost-closed lids; then look for a little longer; then a bit longer, then longer still.

The glare.

He’d read of people going snow blind, because everything was white and there was just too much light for the eyes to cope with. This was what it must be like.

He thumped his fist against the white surface he was lying on. It seemed solid enough. He tried to scratch it with a fingernail. Peculiar. Glassy and smooth, but slightly flexible, like hard rubber.

Awg sat up. He looked at the pink of his hands, the blue and khaki of his Zeroian clothes, the green and brown of his small rucksack. He ran his hands through his shock of jet black hair and pulled down a few strands in front of his eyes.

He was the only thing with colour and form. The white surface on which he sat had no feature or blemish and seemed to spread out without limit in all directions – until perhaps it met the totally white sky. Or was it not a sky but just a folding over of the white plane as it came back towards him from infinity?

There was no sense of direction because everywhere looked the same. You could look to one side and then to the other but there was nothing to tell you where you had looked the first time.

Was the surface flat or did it slope? It was impossible to tell. Awg took a few steps. His feet moved effortlessly and made no

sound. How far had he travelled? One yard? Ten yards? Again, impossible to tell. He put down his rucksack and walked away from it. One pace. Two paces. Five paces. Ten. Twenty. He turned around to look back at his rucksack. It was not there, “there” being the place where he judged he had left it. He turned round through 360 degrees. The rucksack was nowhere.

Then he looked down and found it by his feet, in exactly the same position as it had been before he started walking.

He repeated his walk and found that, wherever he tried to move, his position relative to the rucksack did not change.

He looked down at his watch. It was still going.

Awg put his hand inside his shirt. He could feel the heartbeat. He checked it against his watch. Nearly 80 to the minute. That seemed about right. Phew!

I’m not dead. I’m not like that spyridon’s arm, floating in Space somewhere, like a piece of meat.

I can see things, I can think. I can move. No. Perhaps I can’t move, not in the normal sense of getting from one place to another. So perhaps I can’t really see things or think either. I’m only imagining that I can.

Sod this. If I think I can move and think I can think, then I’ll DO something.

He took his notebook out of the rucksack, ripped out a page and tore it into tiny pieces.

The page stayed ripped out and the tiny pieces stayed tiny pieces, scattered around his feet on the peculiar white floor.

OK, so I’m alive and I can do stuff. I didn’t get eaten by a monster. No sign of one – not yet, anyway. I’m in some sort of time bubble.

But where’s Robo’s dad? He should be here too. And how do I find out things about the black coffin machine? I must be somewhere inside it.

It was at this point that Awg remembered Zert’s parting present. It was a cone, made of some shiny metal and about four inches high. On the side, and towards the base, was a small control pad. There were two arrow keys pointing in opposite

directions. Above them was some sort of indicator. There were two small windows with numbers in, like this:

Presumably the right arrow key had something to do with going forwards or onwards, so this looked like being the one he should try first. Awg picked up his rucksack and slung it over his shoulder.

Well, here goes.

He pressed the right key.

Everything went black. Awg suddenly felt very cold. Then everything went white.

Again, Awg shielded his eyes from the glare. When at last he was able to look, he saw that the bleached expanse on which he stood spread out without limit in all directions. The peculiar surface around his feet seemed exactly the same as before.

Except there were no pieces of torn up paper.

Awg pulled his notebook out of the rucksack and flipped to the back where he had ripped the page out. The shredded ends of the torn sheet were still there. That was a relief. Benedict’s rule about time always going forwards was at least one thing to hang on to. There certainly wasn’t much else at the moment.

So, wherever I am now, it’s different to where I was a minute ago.

Awg looked at the indicator on Zert’s silver cone. It now said [07] [03].

Thirty

Awg tried to remember what Zert had said about the silver cone.

“It’ll help get through boundaries … it goes in steps.”

So, although it looks the same, I’m somewhere different from where I was. I’ve gone through some sort of barrier, and the counter on the cone has logged it. This is a different place.

If the thing worked in stages, perhaps one press didn’t do enough. Awg was just about to try again when something moved. He didn’t know what or where, but somewhere out of the corner of his eye he had sensed a movement.

Now when he looked around him, the white expanse was no longer uniform. Some areas were a little bit less white than others and they were changing.

Awg stood watching for a while. He wanted to be sure. No, he wasn’t dreaming. Areas of white got ever so slightly darker and then lighter again. There were hints of patches, lines, dots. It was like walking across a frozen lake and seeing the faint outlines of stuff through the cloudy ice, deep beneath your feet.

There seemed to be a whole lot of dark lines all in one area that didn’t change, so that gave some sense of direction. Awg began to walk towards them.

And away from his rucksack, which was still lying open with the notebook sticking out.

Awg had gone about five paces before he realised. He glanced down, expecting it to be at his feet. It was not at his feet. It was not five paces behind him. Turning around, he could just see it, in the far distance.

Panic.

What the hell was going on?

Very slowly and carefully, he walked backwards, a step at a time. After the first step, the rucksack appeared to be very much closer. After the second, it was only twenty yards away. With the third, only ten feet. The fourth, within grabbing distance. By the fifth step, it was at his feet.

So I’ve learnt two things: (1) the time bubble I’m in now doesn’t work like the first one did; (2) in this one, distances get telescoped.

Awg shouldered the rucksack and, slowly, set out towards the dark lines again. So he wasn’t too surprised when he found that something very strange was happening. The lines were getting closer. Much too quickly. It was like moving his eye up to a magnifying lens so he first got a big blurred image but then, just a bit closer, zoomed in to see a clear view of a small part of it.

Awg found himself on one side of a vast three-dimensional window which seemed to spread out below and somehow around him as well. Everywhere he looked there were things on the other side: colours, shapes – it was impossible to say what they all were. He homed in on the group of dark lines. As he approached, they seemed to race towards him. And then suddenly they were in focus and he could see them for what they were – the aerial arrays of Chykideyh. He walked towards one of the largest masts – and within a few paces he was seemingly only a few feet away.

Awg backed away, and the mast receded into the far distance. The rapid change of proportion made Awg feel dizzy. On a weirdscale of 1 – 10, this was about eight thousand three hundred and ninety six.

A few minutes experimentation showed Awg that he could get a view of any part of the Chykideyh settlement. Looking out from his goldfish-bowl perspective, he could see the aerial farm, the buildings of the receiver station, the air terminal – even the Adventurers’ Museum itself, where he had entered the black coffin. So was he now inside the museum, or was he somewhere

else entirely? Did the question have any meaning for the space where he now stood?

He could see vehicles on the airport road, people moving about. As he walked forward to get a better view, his foot struck something on the ground. Since there had appeared to be absolutely nothing anywhere in this unearthly white space, he assumed that something had fallen out of his rucksack and reached down to get it.

But it wasn’t something out of his rucksack. It was a small, round, white pebble. Or something that looked like a pebble. Awg wondered why he hadn’t noticed it before. He looked around to see if there were any more of them. Apparently not. Then he bent down to pick it up – and couldn’t see it.

He felt carefully around the floor and eventually found it again. It was exactly the same colour as the white surface he was standing on, the surface that was all around him. Same colour. Same peculiar, slightly elastic texture. It was made of exactly the same stuff. That was why he hadn’t seen it before.

Awg picked it up and examined it carefully. At first he had thought it was absolutely pure white, but now he could see it was not. Like the surface of the zone he himself was in, the material was translucent. And deep within it there was something darker in colour: a tiny stain, barely discernible, like a shape glimpsed in fog.

Thirty One

Awg wondered what he should do with the pebble. He didn’t know what it was or why it was there. Perhaps he should put it down and leave it. But then, if it turned out to be important, he’d probably never be able to find it again. On the other hand, if he took it with him, the effect of moving it from its position in the bubble might be serious – like causing some sort of spacetime calamity.

It was only a small pebble, so he thought he’d risk a small calamity. Awg wrapped it in a piece of tissue and put it in one of the small side-pockets in his rucksack.

Awg looked around his white, translucent, goldfish-bowl space. It seemed both vast and very small. Perhaps that was what infinity was like.

But he couldn’t spend the rest of his life gazing out at the daily life of Chykideyh. He had a job to do. It was time to move on.

He knew he needed a marker so he could tell if things had changed. He tore another piece out of his notebook. Not a whole page this time, just a strip from the bottom of one. Awg only had the one small book and he didn’t know how long this sort of thing was going to go on. He tore the strip into three equal pieces and laid them out in a line by his feet. Just so that they looked different from the first ones and you could tell if you had gone backwards rather than forwards.

Then he made sure his bag was firmly over his shoulder, took hold of Zert’s silver cone and pressed the right arrow key again.

Darkness. Cold. Light.

No pieces of paper.

Awg looked around at the white surfaces. This time there was no hint of lighter and darker areas. Everything seemed uniformly white. He looked at the indicator on the silver cone. It now said [06] [04]. So both the disappearing paper and Zert’s cone told him that he had passed another boundary. But where was he now?

As there seemed little else for it, Awg fixed his gaze on an imaginary point in the featureless white distance and started to walk towards it. (If you have ever been out in a really, really dense fog you will have some idea of what this was like.)

After walking (or at least placing his feet one in front of the other and appearing to move forwards) for about half an hour, Awg thought he could see some slightly darker patches in the surface ahead. In another ten minutes, he was certain of it. As before, the detail then swept towards him at dizzying speed.

And here was something he recognised, because it was the city of Gexadkydubm. There was the outline of the dried-up river and he could just make out the bridge. He had first seen the city from the air, as he was being flown in from his short but eventful stay in Tukzadryk prison. His present view was not so very different, although the weird perspective meant that a few paces carried him hundreds of yards forward into the city precincts.

Awg took himself on a virtual tour of the city. Yes, there was the Patrician’s palace in the far south, on the west bank of the river. Northwards took him into the Old City with its square, flat-roofed houses and narrow streets. There was the black pyramid that he knew to be the Records Office and then, farther north, the observatory hill he had climbed the morning he had been chased by a street gang.

These reminders of his previous journey gave Awg an idea. Nothing that had happened so far seemed to have got him

any further towards rescuing Robo’s father or discovering the purpose of the black coffin. But at least he might be able to help Asa in her fight against the Zeroian mafia. Perhaps he could use his knowledge of the city to find out more about Mayor Sharibvdl.

Awg zoomed through the streets to get a view of the Mayor’s residence. At first, he kept watch on the main entrance, waiting to see if Sharibvdl came out. After a while, Awg grew tired of waiting and tracked around the building, trying to get a view inside.

And then, through a window on an upper floor, he saw Sharibvdl. He appeared to be on the point of going out. Awg followed his footsteps down two flights of stairs and out of the back door. Awg set off in virtual pursuit. Sharibvdl made his way into the Old Town, keeping to the back streets. Clearly, this was not official business.

As they passed other people in the streets – zwnerbas, native Zeroians – Awg became aware of something very odd. It was always very easy to follow Sharibvdl’s progress, just as if he had been marked with a highlighter pen to make him stand out. In comparison, the other inhabitants appeared rather indistinct and slightly out of focus. By no means invisible or transparent; but greyer, somehow. Awg found himself thinking of them as shadows.

Sharibvdl stepped off the street down a narrow alley and into a secluded courtyard, where he took a seat at a table in the corner. He was soon joined by three others. Awg was fascinated to see that two of them were as luminously visible as Sharibvdl himself, whereas one was a shadow. A zwnerba brought a tray with some drinks on it.

It was the shadow who appeared to be the centre of attention. The others were arguing with him. Finally, he seemed to give in. The others got up and left. He remained talking to Sharibvdl. It looked to Awg as if money were changing hands.

The two then walked out to the road and got into one of the helicars that Awg knew so well. Awg tracked its journey towards

the north of the city and into an area of fine gardens and large houses – in one of which (the government Town House) Awg had stayed on his own, memorable visit.

The helicar stopped at a mansion two streets away from the Town House and the two Zeroians went inside. Sharibvdl reappeared almost at once and was driven away in the helicar. Much later, his companion emerged.

But he was no longer a shadow. His features were as crisply and clearly visible to Awg as if freshly rubbed down and given a bright new coat of paint.

Thirty Two

All this stuff I’m seeing isn’t real. I can’t touch the things I see, or communicate with them. The events seem to be real, but I’m just seeing a picture of them. A very high-tech sort of picture. And when the camera, or whatever makes the picture, sees people, it doesn’t see them as all the same. Some stand out more than others. And that can change, because I saw a shadow change into a … a ‘supershape’, like Sharibvdl. And whatever’s going on, he’s totally mixed up in it, so it’s got to be something really dodgy.

If I’m somehow still inside that black coffin machine, the space must be divided up into bits. And the bit I started in seemed huge but was really very small, with just me in it. And the next one was bigger and could see into the whole of Chykideyh. And the next, where I am now, is bigger still and can see into Gexadkydubm. I think it’s like bubbles within bubbles, so I keep breaking through into the next largest bubble. So I could draw it something like this:

Chykideyh

Gexadkydubm

When I was in the second bubble, I looked around a lot, and all I could see was bits of Chykideyh. But in this third bubble I walked for ages before I found anything at all. So what’s in it beside Gexadkydubm?

Thirty Three

Awg took a virtual walk up to the observatory hill in the north of the city. From here he could look west over the strange tankfields, where crops were grown under piped irrigation. To the east across the dry river was the ugly sprawl of the New City. Beyond that, Awg knew, lay a wide stretch of droughtwithered jungle and then miles of savannah-like plain. Eventually, you would reach the wasteland of the eastern desert where Tukzadryk prison and the Old Fort were situated. That was about seven hours away in one of the helicar transporters.

But what would happen if he tried to do the virtual journey on foot? Would he run into some sort of boundary at the edge of Gexadkydubm, or would the vista roll on and on? There was only one way to find out.

But first he had one more job to do in the city itself. So far, he had seen four ‘supershapes’. How many more were there and did they have anything else in common?

Awg looked first amongst the large houses in the observatory hill area. There were not that many people about but amongst them Awg did score one more hit. A Zeroian coming out of one of the mansions and getting into a zwnerba-driven heli-vehicle was clearly a ‘supershape’.

Scanning the crowded streets in the centre of the Old City revealed only large numbers of the normal ‘shadows’.

Next, Awg went to the square surrounding the Records Office, as he knew that this was something of a commercial centre. Here, he scored seven more hits, and then got an unexpected bonus as he recognised the Director of the Records

Office leaving the building. He decided to write down his findings:

* So far, 11 supershapes discovered

* This is a very small proportion of all the people seen

* Sharibvdl is one of them

* All but one were male

* All except the one from the big house were part of groups (two or more together)

* All looked very prosperous

* The Director of the Records Office is NOT one

* There were no zwnerbas

Then Awg stashed away his notebook, shouldered his rucksack and set out for his long trek east.

It took him seventeen minutes to reach the outer edge of the jungle, where the stunted trees and bushes gave way to an expanse of rough grassland. Awg proceeded cautiously, realising he had not been watchful enough on his earlier walk to Gexadkydubm. In a largely featureless terrain, important changes might go under your feet unnoticed unless you stopped every so often to home in on the detail. In another half an hour he had crossed the plain, and after an hour and a quarter could make out the shapes of the Old Fort and Tukzadryk in the desert beneath him.

So what would happen if he just went on and on? Awg had a very strong suspicion that he would come back to his starting point. It seemed that this bubble contained not just the city of Gexakydubm but also a very large chunk of the surrounding countryside, and possibly the entire planet. This was a sobering thought – but what was even more worrying was the Idea that was gnawing away at the edge of his mind, despite his frantic efforts to ignore it.

What would happen if I pressed the forward key again? Is there another bubble and, if so, what does it contain? And after that? And after that?

He tore a strip of notebook into six and laid the pieces in a line by his feet.

He pressed the key.

Darkness.

Cold.

More darkness.

He couldn’t see his feet, but he felt around them and couldn’t find any bits of paper.

Gradually, his eyes got used to the blackness. He began to walk. Pinpoints of light appeared. He approached the brightest one. It grew into a star. A red star, with many planets around it. The nearest one had two moons, and one of them was green.

Thirty Four

Awg knew that he was looking down at planet Zero.

I can’t really believe this, but I think I’m out in Space. I mean, not actually out in it, because it’s a vacuum and I’d burst in some horrible way, but looking out. Looking through the most incredibly mind-boggling image system ever invented.

And as Awg gazed out in wonder at the fantastic vista before his eyes, he began to get the strange feeling that he was part of it all – a tiny piece of Zero’s Universe, floating about in Space. Planet Awg. Nothing could touch him, nothing could hurt him. He was invulnerable.

It was the Idea working away at the edge of his mind, trying to penetrate more and more deeply. It whispered to him, insistently, powerfully. Suggesting. Tempting. Eroding.

WHY DON’T YOU PRESS THE KEY AGAIN? GO ON. JUST THINK WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO SEE. THINGS THAT NO BEING FROM EARTH HAS EVER SEEN BEFORE. WONDERFUL THINGS. AMAZING THINGS. BEAUTIFUL THINGS. THINK ABOUT WHEN YOU GET HOME. EVERYBODY WILL WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT. YOU’LL BE FAMOUS. YOU’LL BE ON TV. GO ON. YOU ONLY HAVE TO PRESS THE KEY. IT’S SO EASY.

I’m not sure this is really me thinking all this. I’m Awg. Who are you?

JUST AN IDEA.

Awg was still holding the cone in his hand. His finger slipped on to the forward key.

He hesitated.

Somewhere else at the edge of his mind was the memory of another voice. It was Zert’s voice, and it was saying Be careful, though – I din’ have time to finish the data storage prop’ly, so if you fills up all the memory it just wipes everythin’ and starts again.

Awg had an uncomfortable feeling that this voice was telling him something really important. He tried to work out what it was by imagining what Zert might say to him now:

Zert. Jus’ think for a minute how you got where you are now.

Awg. I used your silver cone to get through the boundaries of the bubbles.

Zert. An’ how d’you think you’re goin’ to get back again?

Awg. I suppose I use the left hand button to cross the boundaries in reverse.

Zert. An’ how you goin’ to do that if you runs outa memory an’ all the boundary addresses is lost?

Awg. I don’t know. How do I?

Zert. You can’t. An’ there’s nobody nowhere can help you. Ever.

Awg’s panic circuits went into supercharged overdrive.

But he did not yet realise the full extent of his danger. His grip tightened on the silver cone. The indicator said [05] [05]. He forgot to do the thing with the paper. He pressed the reverse key.

Darkness, cold. Light.

The indicator, dimly luminous, changed to [04] [06]. And now he did.

Thirty Five

Awg closed his eyes and fixed his mind on a moment from the past. He was with his grandfather, struggling to get Asa out of a burning plane before they all got blown to bits. They had worked calmly together and carried Asa to safety, seconds before the fuel tanks went up. They had survived.

Now there was no ticking clock. He had plenty of time to work out whether he was still able to escape. It was called Eternity.

Awg at last properly understood what the counter on Zert’s silver cone did. He had assumed, correctly, that the second window counted the number of boundaries passed and the first window showed the number of memory files available to deal with them. What he had not realised was that one file was required for every boundary, regardless of which way it was crossed. To cross and return from a single boundary used up two files, and the counter alerted you to this. There seemed to be a total of ten files available, so at the eleventh crossing the memory was wiped and the cone began again. Only there was now no data available on the first ten transits.

Awg opened his eyes and stared at the cone. The counter said [04] [06].

So I should be back in the bubble that’s got Gexadkydubm in it (though it might actually contain the whole of Zero).

He wandered around the white surface, peering through into the weirdly distorted perspective beyond, trying desperately to find something he recognised. All he could see were endless stretches of barren scrubland with a few spiny bushes dotted

about.

I’m not in Space any more, and I know that an awful lot of Zero is desert and scrub, so with luck that’s where I am now. So if I press the reverse key again, I should get to the zone where Chykideyh is. And then I’ve still got three more files left to get out with. That’s got to be plenty.

Awg pressed the reverse key again. The counter said [03] [07]. Awg caught sight of the Chykideyh aerial masts and gave a huge sigh of relief.

Now, only one more to go.

Awg hit the back-arrow key.

Darkness, cold.

Light.

[02] [08] on the counter.

A seemingly vast, white space.

Awg tried the trick with his rucksack. Wherever he moved, or thought he had moved, the rucksack remained obstinately at his feet. Awg guessed that this zone was actually very small. All that he was doing was appearing to move on a surface that was joined up to itself in such a way that you were always back where you started. Like walking around the inside of a very small bubble.

Scarily weird.

But what now? This was where he had started out – the first place he had got to after he dived into the black hole. How could he get out? He couldn’t undive. There was no exit from the space he was in. It was a perfectly sealed time capsule, in which he might remain for ever.

Would remain for ever.

WAS MEANT TO REMAIN FOR EVER.

Awg was beginning to have a very strong suspicion that this was indeed the future that somebody, or something, was trying to line up for him.

Nuts to that! I am getting OUT of here.

He looked at Zert’s silver cone. [02] [08].

Enough for two more transits. And all he had to do was get out. Then he remembered something. When he had first used the cone, the counter had said [08] [02].

Not [10] [00].

Not [09] [01].

What had it said originally, when Zert had given it to him? He hadn’t looked. Had it said [08] [02] then? Perhaps Zert had used up two of the memory files in testing it out. That didn’t seem likely. Zert would have given him the best chance he could – and that meant starting at [10] [00].

So if neither Zert nor Awg had consciously used those two units of memory, did that mean the cone had done it on its own? It had detected the passing of two boundaries and registered the coordinates in its memory.

Two boundaries? Surely there was only one between himself and the outside world?

And that was definitely where he was going. The outside world. And as soon as possible.

Awg gripped the cone tightly and pressed the reverse key. Once.

It was a mistake.

Thirty Six

It wasn’t completely dark. There was a dull glow from the walls. But the walls were black. Black and smooth and slightly shiny. And soft. The blackness came off on your finger if you rubbed it along the surface. And not completely black, either. White veins of another rock, if it was rock, ran through them here and there. That was where the light was coming from.

Awg stood up and gazed around, straining his eyes to search out the extent of his surroundings. As his vision adjusted to the gloom, Awg could sense a huge space, a soaring roof, labyrinthine passageways, gaping entrances.

Slender black stalactites hung from the roof. Beneath them, black stalagmites grew from the floor in grotesque, bulbous shapes. The stalactites were smooth and shiny, but the squat black shapes on the floor were rough and had white bits sticking out of them.

The white bits were a puzzle. They didn’t look like stones, or fragments of rock. They varied in size from small, angular pieces to long, club-like shapes with rounded ends.

Awg sensed a change in the light. He turned just in time to see a pulse of brightness ripple along one of the white veins of rock. And then another, a few feet away. And another, high above his head.

Veins of rock. Slender, branched, interconnected: they looked much more like the veins in his own arm. Awg reached out his hand to touch one. Perhaps he expected it to feel warm, or even cold. He didn’t expect it to move.

Not much. Just a twitch, nothing more. Like the way someone’s skin might react if touched unexpectedly. Something was alive – and it knew he was there.

Spat. The silence was broken by a gentle noise.

Spat. Spat.

Spat. Like the first low sounds of a shower of rain. Awg turned back towards the stalagmite he had been examining. A face grinned out at him.

Not a living face. A dead face. A skull.

It was just the most recognisable bit of all the bones. Awg could see it now. The whole thing was made up of bones, or bits of bone, all stuck together in the black, gluey rock. If it was rock.

The place was a graveyard, the first line of defence of the huge machine and its shadowy guardian. This was what was inside the black hole. The remains of all the beings over the centuries who had dared to approach too closely. The skeleton of that spiridon’s arm was probably around somewhere.

Awg felt sick. This was where he was supposed to have arrived when he dived in. But somehow he’d been saved. Moved on. Wrapped up in that first time bubble. Why? And how? Had Zert’s cone done it, on its own – to protect him?

But now he’d ended up here anyway. The silver cone had skipped this place, so maybe it had no power over it, or inside it. Like with a radio receiver where there’s no signal to pick up.

Spat. Spat. Spat spat spat.

There were a lot more of the rain sounds now. A black drop fell from the stalactite above Awg on to his hand. He felt a stinging, burning sensation. He shook the drop off but it left a red sore on the skin. He saw that another drop had already fallen on the silver cone. Where it had landed, the metal was discolouring, blistering and bubbling. The counter display was clouding over, already almost illegible. Awg could still just read [01] [09].

Two drops fell on his shirt. Within seconds, they had burnt through to his shoulder. He felt the pain immediately.

The stuff was splashing down all around. It didn’t take much

imagination to see how the piles of bones got there. They were the only bits that hadn’t got dissolved. One life left. He just had to use it. Would it work, and would it be enough?

Frantically, Awg dabbed at the reverse key. It broke off and fell to the floor. Underneath was the little peg it had been fixed on. It was flaking and going black. Awg fumbled with the peg, struggling to press it in. Darkness.

Thirty Seven

There were stars. Millions of stars in a gloriously bright sky. And the air was fresh and clear.

Awg staggered about. His eyes were stinging and he couldn’t make out where he was. There was no one around and there seemed to be towers and overhead wires everywhere.

In the control room at Chykideyh receiver station, alarms were going off all over the place.

Searchlights quickly picked up the presence of a small figure blundering about in the prohibited area around the aerial arrays.

‘Sorry ’bout this! I’ll getcha out soon as I can.’

A mechanical arm lowered a plate of food to the table where Awg was sitting. A sealed tube of water slid down from a chute to land in the same place.

Through the transparent walls of the enclosed cubicle in which he had been placed, Awg could see Zert sitting at one of the external observation ports. He could hear him only through the wired-in sound system. Otherwise Awg was totally isolated from the outside world. He spoke into the microphone device on his table.

‘Yeah – but when will that be? I’ve already been in here for two days.’

‘Xurog says you gotta be totally quarantined till all the tests is finished. When they got the results they’ll decide if you’re any

sort o’ health risk. If you’re clear, then you can come out.’

‘And if not, what then? I might as well still be inside that bloody machine! I thought you’d be glad to see me, and instead of that I get wrapped up in a plastic bag, flown out to Auyvhasdh and then stuck in here like a zoo animal.’

‘I said I’m sorry. It’s not my fault. Xurog’s paranoid ’bout that black box – an’ anythin’ that comes out o’ it’s gotta be treated like it might be lethal. Think ’bout it. You could be crawlin’ with superbugs or somethin’ an we could all get wiped out.’

‘Oh yes! Or I might have been metamorphosed into some sort of changeling creature and when I come out I might eat the planet. Get real!’

‘D’you feel different?’ asked Zert, with just the slightest tinge of alarm in his voice.

‘Yes. I feel ultra pissed off with the whole thing. I go and risk my neck to help Xurog, and look at the thanks I get! He quizzed me for hours. I wasn’t even allowed to get any sleep first.’

‘That was in case you died ’fore you could be de-briefed. You gotta admit it was real urgent we checked out your story soon as possible. You mighta just frizzled away soon as you got out in the air.

‘We was all glad you didn’t, though,’ he added.

‘Thanks a lot! I’m quite pleased as well.’

‘Look – soon as we can getcha out, we’re all goin’ to meet up an’ talk prop’ly. We’ll be with Benedict, an’ Asa’s comin’ too.’

Awg stopped short. His two main reasons for going into the black coffin at all had been to find Robo’s dad and to bring back any information which might help Asa. He’d totally failed on the first count – there had been no trace at all. So perhaps he might be able to do better on the other one. Maybe there was something in what he’d found that Asa could use against the Zeroian mafia or in the struggle with her father.

Xurog himself had shown little interest in the details of Awg’s journeys. His main concern had been with anything he could learn about the structure and purpose of the machine. From this point of view, Awg’s experiences had told him virtually

nothing. He wanted details of structural units, electrical and mechanical components, control mechanisms. Awg hadn’t seen anything remotely like a power unit, or a machine hall, or electronic circuitry, or a control room. He had only experienced their effects.

But at least if he was going to get together with his friends, that was something to look forward to.

‘Yeah, that’ll be great,’ he said. ‘But when?’

‘It looks like the medics’ll have the last results by tomorrow, so if they’re all OK you can come out then.’

That sounded hopeful. Awg said goodbye to Zert and settled down to get some rest.

But he couldn’t sleep.

Lying marooned in this hermetically sealed capsule felt too much like being inside that first time bubble. Something he didn’t want to be reminded of. In a sense he had got eaten by a monster – swallowed up by the black coffin. Like Jonah and the whale. And just like Jonah he’d got coughed up again into the outside world. He tried to remember how long Jonah had been in the whale. Three days and three nights? To Awg, it seemed that he’d been in the black coffin for less than a day. But he had a very uneasy feeling about it.

And here he was, still some sort of prisoner. He couldn’t get the tests out of his mind. He told himself it was stupid to worry. He couldn’t do anything to influence the results and they’d be certain to be OK. He felt fine. What could go wrong?

He’d get a decision tomorrow. The medics and the security staff would have done all they wanted.

But what would happen if they didn’t like what they found?

Thirty Eight

‘They won’t let me out?’

Awg stared out at Zert, who was again sitting at the observation port – and looking very uncomfortable.

‘Nope. They’re worried ’bout one o’ the tests. They thinks you’re carryin’ a bug.’

‘But I feel fine. I haven’t got spots or anything. Not even a runny nose. Do they think I’m infectious?’

‘No. It’s not that sort o’ bug. Not a microbe. A device. Maybe a micro-transitter or somethin’ like that. It’s in your head.’

‘What!!!’

‘They done all sorts o’ tests. They din’ find no toxic chemicals nor bad bio-stuff, an’ your cell metabolism’s normal – at least for a human. They compared you with Benedict an’ found you both matched up pretty good.

‘But then they scanned for embedded devices an’ it come out positive. Seems you got three foreign implants in your head.’

‘Three?’

‘Yep – an’ the heavy metal content’s high, so they thinks they’re semiconductor devices, prob’ly with advanced microcircuitry.’

‘But that’s horrendous! What’ll they do to me?’

‘Dunno. Don’t seem to be life-threatenin’, but we gotta find what they’re for. Prob’ly they’re either probes, transmittin’ information ’bout you an’ where you’re at, or they’re neurotrones, put there so’s others can control your behaviour.’

‘So I’d be like a cyberman? Someone somewhere would press a button and I’d throw a punch at you.’

‘Could be like that. Or p’raps it’d just be mental, where they

gets to change what you thinks.’

Awg was horror struck. This was desperate. But at the same time it made no sense. The facts just didn’t add up.

‘OK, so whereabouts in my brain are these metal things?’ he asked indignantly. ‘And how did they get there? No-one’s been near me.’

‘We dunno how they was implanted. It’d usually take specialised surgery. No-one’s ever heard o’ it bein’ done remotely.

‘An’ they’re not in your brain. They’re in your mouth.’

‘In my mouth?’

‘Yep. Siting’s bin chosen real careful, so though there’s access to blood supply an’ nerves, the actual devices is protected inside the bone structure.’

‘Zert – are you telling me that all this fuss is because they’ve found implants of metal in three of my teeth?’

‘Yeah, that’s right. Very cunnin’ bit o’ camouflage.’

Waves of relief flooded over Awg. And for the first time in a long while, he laughed.

‘Zert, I think I need to explain about fillings.’

He explained.

‘So you means they sticks a load o’ metal in your teeth if the nat’ral bony stuff gets faulty? An’ this is normal?’

‘Perfectly. It’s not always metal. Sometimes they use a white goo that they harden afterwards. I think it’s some sort of plastic. What do they do here?’

‘Regeneration. O’ course, what’s actually regen’rated depends on who or what’s on the receivin’ end. But the basic principle’s the same. We re-grows whatever was there in the first place.’

‘It sounds a lot better than our sort of repairs. But isn’t it very hard to do?’

‘Not when you got the right technology. I dunno much about it, but I think they uses special biochemicals to start the regrowin’ an’ then the rate’s controlled electrically. Wounds can be healed, an’ even whole organs re-grown if you want. The Sabqveli discovered how to do it, and now everyone uses it.’

‘The Sabqveli?’

‘Yeah. They got fed up with the accidents in the food factories, so they invented the re-growth process. They’re really good at medical stuff.’

‘But how come they kept getting hurt? Were they very clumsy or something?’

‘No, they’re very neat an’ tidy. Norm’ly, they just keep ’emselves to ’emselves. You never see ’em. But sometimes they got chopped in half.’

‘You mean these people fell into the machines where they worked?’

‘No, they din’ work there, or fall in. They were put in – by mistake.’

????????????????

‘They live in fruit.’

‘You mean they make their houses from fruit?’

‘Nah. They just burrow through it. That’s watcha do if you’re a worm.’*

* The Sabqveli are an unusual life form. Small and worm-like, they spend most of their lives burrowing through the fruit of the tomelac tree, which thus provides both nutrition and shelter for their kind. They are individually of low intelligence and aware only of simple stimuli, such as the need for food and warmth. However, at certain times of year, or if they sense danger, a strange and unique transformation takes place. Many thousands rapidly congregate together in a knot-like mass, and in this state they are able to bring about a union of their diminutive brains into an integrated neural network. In this condition, they represent one of the most powerful cognitive forces in the Universe. It is fortunate that they have never shown any tendency to use this superintelligence in the acts of aggression and domination that have proved so popular with other advanced civilisations. Rather, they have contented themselves with the more local objectives of protecting the tomelac trees from damaging blights and avoiding getting themselves cut in half by Zeroian food processing machines.

Thirty Nine

A row of hieroglyphs, but Awg had learnt what the symbols meant. “Setting: + 3 units”. He moved the time control for the window along several divisions. That way, he wouldn’t get woken up too early. He wanted a good long sleep. It was a relief to be back in his own room rather than being exhibited like a laboratory animal. He’d even got an apology from Xurog for the misunderstanding about his teeth.

It was late the next morning before the darkened glass automatically cleared to let the daylight in. Awg got up slowly and went through the ritual with the spray can and cloth that passed for washing on Zero. Hot showers back on Earth seemed a distant memory.

Awg had got most of his clothes on when a low-pitched alarm note told him that there was someone at the door. Holding his remaining sock in one hand, he hopped across to open it, expecting Zert to be waiting outside.

It wasn’t Zert. It was a humanoid in a loose grey tunic, with a scarf-like garment wrapped around the head. Only the eyes were visible. They were penetratingly bright.

‘Can I come in? If people recognise me out here, there’s likely to be some excitement.’

‘Asa!’

Awg quickly closed the door and stood there awkwardly. He pulled on the sock, which somehow made him feel slightly better, but he was still at a loss for words. It wasn’t every day you got up to find the future Ruler of the Planet waiting on your doorstep.

‘Asa …’

He hesitated again as she unwound the headscarf and stood there, just as he remembered her from their first unexpected meeting in the desert prison. Awg had forgotten how amazing she looked.

‘Are you completely recovered now?’ he asked, eventually.

‘From the helicraft crash, yes. But not from what followed it.’

‘Benedict told me that things had not gone as you hoped.’

‘No. I had a vision of such a bright future – and now I’m just fighting the same battles all over again.’

They sat down together on the couch by the window. Asa frowned and seemed momentarily lost in thought, but then she turned towards Awg and her face brightened.

‘But you’re a reminder to me that good things do happen. There’s always the unexpected. I must keep fighting. So, thank you.’

‘What for?’ said Awg, surprised.

‘For returning to Zero, and then agreeing to undertake Xurog’s mission. Both ventures were hazardous, the second extremely so. And yet once again you risked your own safety to help us.’

Awg didn’t like to say, especially to help you.

‘I wanted to do something for the people of Zero – but I did have my own reason for going in.’

‘To find the father of your friend?’

‘Yes – and I failed.’

‘And it seems that Xurog was also disappointed with your report.’

‘He thought I’d see a lot of technical stuff inside the black box, and get clues about what it was for and how it worked. But I didn’t find any of that. I never got to see the control room. It only let me look out of the window. The whole thing was a bit of a disaster. I didn’t achieve anything.’

Asa looked at his dejected face. She smiled, then leant over and punched his arm gently. It was another gesture he remembered from their past adventures.

‘Don’t be too sure. We need to make the most of what you did see. We will meet at Benedict’s house and you shall describe very carefully what you found. Your information may be more valuable than you think.

‘And you were brave to make the attempt. Xurog was relying on a theoretical prediction that you would not be harmed. He could not be certain, and it is only good fortune and your own courage that has brought your safe return.’

Awg was silent for a while. Then his reply was so very quiet and so very strange that Asa was left puzzling, feeling she must have misheard.

‘No, those things weren’t enough,’ he said. ‘You’re forgetting Zert. Without him, I would have been lost. I’d have been inside the whale for ever.’

Forty

Benedict had prepared a simple meal for them, and it was in a relaxed atmosphere that they afterwards settled around his table to hear Awg’s story.

‘When I went through that hole, I thought it would be black inside, like diving into a pool of ink. But it wasn’t dark, it was light – so bright I couldn’t open my eyes at first. So I thought I’d got to the core of the thing, and I’d see fantastic machines and dials and screens and stuff like that. Everything that made the black box work and Xurog wanted to find out about. And maybe Robo’s dad would be there, and not injured too badly. But when I did manage to get my eyes open, it wasn’t like that at all. There was nothing. Just me, in a big white space. At least, it looked big at first. Later, I worked out it was actually quite small.’

He explained about trying to walk away from his rucksack.

‘And then I used Zert’s cone for the first time, and got to a place where I could look out on Chykideyh – and I could see people moving about, and everything.’

‘Did the people look like when you saw ’em for real?’ asked Zert.

‘Yes, it was like when we were with Xurog up in the airport control tower. I could look out just the same as that.’

‘So it’s like the projector showed us. The box’s full o’ stuff ’bout the present as well as the past. Scary.’

Awg went on.

‘And then I used your cone again and got to an even bigger place where I could do giant strides and walk across the planet

– and that’s how I got to see what Sharibvdl was up to.’

‘You used your experience well,’ said Asa. ‘I’m wondering very much about these supershapes. What was so special about them?’

‘Don’t know. There weren’t very many. Most people seemed to be ‘shadows’, and I didn’t see any supershape zwnerbas at all.’

‘The ones you saw, would you recognise them again? I’ve got a very particular reason for asking?’

‘I think so.’

‘Later, I’ll explain. But you did not stop in the city – you went on further?’

‘That was the most amazing bit of all. I seemed to be out in space and looking right across the galaxy. I knew I was looking at Zero because of the two moons.’

Benedict was astonished.

‘That is truly wonderful!’ he said. ‘In all my travels, I never myself had such an experience. How fantastic to walk in the sky!’

‘And there was …’ Awg hesitated. He didn’t want to sound foolish.

‘There was … a voice. In my head. It kept tempting me to go further. It said how easy it was, and what fantastic things I’d see. It wasn’t like an ordinary thought. It was like a real voice and it wanted me to do what it said. It tried really hard.’

Benedict looked up sharply.

‘Did you tell this to Xurog?’ he asked.

‘I – I’m not sure. I think so.’

‘And yet, you resisted it and turned back?’

‘I wanted to go on – to see the wonderful things. I really wanted to, but I remembered what Zert had told me – that the cone had limits. And I didn’t know what they were. I thought I was going to get stuck where I was and never get back. I got scared.’

‘There is no shame in that,’ said Benedict, gently. ‘You were alone and exploring the unknown. There is no greater challenge. All is uncertainty, as you soon found. For you expected to escape

back into our world – and did not.’

‘No, I got to a place I hadn’t seen before. It was awful.’ Awg told them about the black labyrinth, and the pulsing white veins in the rock, and the terrible rain.

There was a long silence.

Asa was the first to speak.

‘I think in that last place you came near the heart of the machine. Maybe it does somewhere have structures that we would recognise – power sources, electronics and so on – but its real heart is something that is new to us. You said you felt the black chambers were alive. Perhaps somewhere within them there is a being – or at least an intelligence. But we do not know if it has a purpose or plan, or why it is there.’

Zert shuddered. ‘Seein’ as it tried to dissolve Awg into a black puddle, I wouldn’t wanna walk very far with it on a dark night! Assumin’ it’s got legs, which it prob’ly hasn’t.’

‘Zert is wise to be cautious,’ said Benedict. ‘But we do not know the extent of its power or how it seeks to interact with us. It may yet prove to be benign. The only knowledge we have of it is what Awg has seen and what it has shown us through an ancient projection system.’

It was at this point that Awg remembered.

‘Um … there is something else.’

He felt very awkward as everyone stared, wondering what he was going to say.

‘There’s a thing I forgot to tell you. Something very odd. I didn’t tell Xurog, either. I only just thought of it.

‘You know I told you that the white space I got into had a peculiar surface – sort of glassy and smooth, but not really hard?’

They nodded.

‘Well, while I was in the place where I could look out on Chykideyh, I found a small piece of it – like a pebble. It was just on the ground by my feet. I found it by accident. I just felt something there on the surface, and then I could see it was made of the same stuff.’

Zert snorted. ‘Good job you din’ tell Xurog, then – he’d ’ve had a fit if he’d known you’d touched somethin’ like that. You’d probably be in quarantine for ever. Jus’ think what contamination you might’ve bin exposed to.’

‘Zert’s right,’ said Asa. ‘It might have been something especially nasty, cooked up by your friend of the Black Chamber. A bio-bomb, or something like that.’

‘But you don’t understand. I didn’t just touch it. I picked it up. I brought it with me. I’ve got it here, now.’

Forty One

There was a stunned silence as Awg undid the pocket of his rucksack and took out the small, white object. It lay there in the palm of his hand.

Peculiar. Its surface glassy and smooth, but slightly flexible, like hard rubber.

Translucent, and deep within it something darker in colour: a tiny stain, barely discernible, like a shape glimpsed in fog.

At least, that’s how it looked to Awg.

‘I … I didn’t really think much about it – about the risk. I only found it by accident. You couldn’t actually see it against the surface it was on, because it was the same. I knew I’d never find it again if I put it back. I just thought it might be important.’

Asa was the first to react. She spoke calmly, but her face was deathly white.

‘Awg, I know you meant no harm, but I believe that what you have there is desperately dangerous. It is a pan-object. I only know of such things from what I have been taught about the construction of our city.’

Awg looked crestfallen, and more than a little frightened. Anything that rattled Asa was seriously scary. Picking up that pebble had been far more hazardous than he had imagined. He had a tiger by the tail. A pandimensional tiger.

‘I know that Auyvhasdh is a virtual city,’ he said. ‘It was constructed from a chunk of Space and isn’t really on Zero at all.’

‘That is correct. Most of it exists in dimensions to which we normally have no access – until an entry point is found.’

‘Like it’s in a parallel world,’ put in Zert.

Asa continued. ‘Awg – tell us what you see when you look at the object in your hand.’

‘I told you, it’s like a white pebble, only the surface looks a bit shimmery and weird.’

‘And you, Benedict? What do you see?’

‘I see a shape like a flower – a blue rose.’

‘And you, Zert?’ pursued Asa.

‘I don’t see nothin’ – ’cept I can see right through his hand!’

‘And I myself see something different again. I can only tell you’re holding something because there’s a dark shadow on the centre of your hand. Whatever you have there, it is distorting the visual field around itself.’

‘What you got’s like the end of a bit o’ string,’ said Zert. ‘Most o’ it’s hidden away someplace else – in other dimensions. Whole thing might be big or small. P’raps another whole Universe. Could be somethin’ real bad – like supergerms, or a hadron bomb.’

‘Well, as long as the rest stays hidden, isn’t that OK?’ said Awg. ‘The bit sticking out into our world isn’t going to do much harm, is it?’

‘Nah. You don’ geddit. First, this bit’s in communication with the rest o’ it, so anythin’ bad can leak out into our space. Second – an’ worse – some o’ these pan-objects is dynamic, meanin’ they can change the dimensions they inhabits. The whole thing can concentrate itself into one sort o’ space – like ours, for ’xample – so, suddenly, we got all of it. Or it can slink away an’ live completely somewhere else. So what we got here? We dunno, right?’

He turned to Asa.

‘You’re the boss, so you gotta decide. Whadda we do?’

Asa had already made up her mind.

‘There is only one course of action,’ she said. ‘Neither you nor I have sufficient knowledge to deal with this. We must tell Xurog and let him assume full control. You shall take Awg back to the quarantine facility, and he must remain inside – with the

object – until Xurog decides how to proceed. I shall go to him at once.’

As the door clicked shut behind her, Awg looked at his two friends in despair.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any harm. It was the only thing I ever found inside those bubbles, so I though it was worth picking up. Now it looks like it was just like them, with stuff hidden inside.’

Zert sat bolt upright, the black hairs on his limbs quivering.

‘Eh? Whaddya say?’

‘I only said the pebble was just like one of those bubbles I got into.’

‘Holy Moly! Why din’ I think o’ that before! What a targa!*’ Benedict put his hand on Awg’s shoulder.

‘I am only just catching up with our friend’s thinking, and I do not yet understand the consequences. For the present, you should do as Asa has asked. Go along to the quarantine room. At least you and your object will be safe there, should anything happen.’

Unfortunately, he was wrong.

* targa: a primitive Zeroian life form, now extinct

Forty Two

Zert grabbed Awg’s arm and hurried him out of Benedict’s house. They made towards the laboratory building where the quarantine room was. But they didn’t go to the room. Instead, Zert spoke to one of the technicians and then pulled Awg into an empty office and closed the door.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Awg. ‘I’m supposed to be getting back inside that isolation chamber.’ He shuddered at the thought.

‘We gotta wait a bit. We gotta have time to think ’bout this. An’ anyway, it’s too late. If that thing really is supercontaminated, it’s prob’ly got out already. An’ Asa’ll have spread it even more by goin’ outside herself. We shouldda all stayed where we was. Anyhow, I don’ think it’s that kinda threat.’

‘Then what sort of threat is it?’

‘Can’t tell. It’s an unknown. But maybe it ain’t a threat at all. Think back to your time in the black box. Your idea ’bout the bubbles seems to make a lot o’ sense. Maybe the reality’s way different but we can’t tell. The bubble thing’s a model we can use.

‘An’ I agrees ’bout the size o’ the first space. You was shut up inside a monosurface – like a bubble – so wherever you moved you’d come back to the start. An’ you couldn’t seem to move far, so it musta bin very small.

‘Now, that second space – the one with Chykideyh in it –was the same, but much bigger.

‘So let’s think like this. Say a ghost or somethin’ floated into that space an’ nosed around while you was still in your first

bubble – an’ it come to the place where you got that pebble. Whaddya think it mighta found?’

Awg was beginning to understand. A huge wave of excitement spread over him.

‘Two pebbles?’

‘’Xactly. So you see why we gotta hang on to the one you got!’

‘And not just hang on to it. We’ve got to open it!’

‘Yeeeaaah – but go easy! Eventually. We gotta be real careful. Just think what’d happen if we was wrong an’ it was a megabomb after all. Ker-BLAM! So long, planet Zero!’

Awg was horrified. In his wildest dreams, he hadn’t imagined that the pebble would turn out to be like this. He had regarded it as an interesting curiosity, perhaps a valuable clue to the workings of the black coffin. Now it seemed that it could be much, much more. It might make his whole journey to Zero worthwhile.

Or destroy the entire planet.

They both jumped as Zert’s communicator let out a long bleep.

Awg knew that note. He’d heard it before, when they were flying high above the desert and their helicraft was under attack. It was a warning signal.

Zert listened to the message.

‘It’s bad. Xurog’s on his way here with a bunch o’ Government Officials. I was reckonin’ he’d try to learn stuff from your object. You know – isolate it for safety, then probe an’ test as much as he could. That’s the way he always works.’

Awg clutched his rucksack close to his side. He felt down to check the side-pocket was firmly fastened.

‘Well, that’s OK. As long as he keeps the thing safe for a while.’

‘Yeah – but it’s not like that. He’s bin overruled by the Patrician. His orders are it must be destroyed. The Officials say it has to be got away from Zero – put in a space capsule an’ fired into a distant sun. It’s to be burnt up. Totally annihilated.’

Forty Three

‘Come on, Awg. We gotta be real quick!’

The two of them leapt out of the office and pounded along the corridor. They were almost at the outer door when it burst open to frame the towering figure of Xurog. One look at those blazing red eyes was enough. They dodged back along the corridor and down a flight of stairs into the basement.

Zert made for a small metal door at the end of the passageway – but before they could reach it all the lights went out and a fusillade of clicks told them that every lock in the building had snapped shut. They blundered along to the end of the passage and Awg heard Zert fumbling with his communicator. It took him several precious seconds to get the door open and doublelock it behind them.

Awg had no idea where they were, except that the space seemed cold and damp, and full of echoes. Zert was still busy with his communication module, eventually allowing a faint light to escape from it.

Awg found they were in a small service room. Pipes snaked around the walls to control-boxes and meters.

‘We’re not going down there?’ he said, looking in alarm at the narrow tunnel from which a tangle of pipes and cables emerged into the space.

His question was answered by a furious hammering on the door.

‘It’s that or Xurog,’ said Zert, simply. They fled down the passage.

‘Are there any … er … dangerous things that might be living

here?’ gasped Awg as he stumbled along in the near-darkness. He was thinking of the deadly and terrifying flesh-eating balerids that infested parts of the desert. Animals could be gnawed to the bone in minutes, and he himself had been attacked.

‘Nothin’ as bad as Xurog, if he catches us!’

Zert scuttled along at a great rate and Awg, bent almost double and tripping over cracks in the floor, could hardly keep up. Suddenly, he caught his head on something sticking out of the roof and fell to the ground. He got up, rubbing the painful bit, and looked to see what he had run into. To his horror, he found himself staring directly into a ball of dull metal with something glinting brightly from a hole in its centre. It was obviously a camera and he was staring directly into it. He was probably looking straight at Xurog on the other end.

Zert had heard him fall and was back at his side in a moment. Awg just pointed at the device in despair.

Zert was unperturbed.

‘ ’s OK. Maintenance camera. We passed three others already. Simple system. They’re all on the same circuit. I turned ’em all off at the start.’

‘So that’s what you were doing!’

‘ ’mongst other stuff, yes.’

As he stumbled on, Zert way out in front, Awg found that the tunnel constantly split and divided. He was uncomfortably reminded of the time he had got lost in the labyrinth beneath the Old Fort prison. That adventure had ended badly. This time he hoped they would avoid being captured. And no matter how much the passageways branched and forked, Zert always seemed to know which way to go. Awg had found before that spyridi had an extraordinarily good sense of direction.

All the same, he wondered where they were heading. He didn’t have long to wait. Zert brought them to a stop in a space very like the one from which they had started, but enormously larger and with many exits.

‘Where are we?’ asked Awg.

‘Under the transporter terminal.’

‘So, are we going to steal a helicraft and fly out to safety?’ He was secretly thrilled at the thought of getting to fly a plane again.

‘Could do. How far d’you think we’d get?’

Awg thought about Xurog.

‘Not very far.’

‘Make that the square root o’ nowhere an’ you’d be about right. Remember Auyvhasdh’s a virtual location. We’d have to pass out o’ the entry port into the real surface o’ Zero for a start. Every helicar journey’s monitored an’ logged. We’d never even get out o’ the city.’

‘So are we going to hide down here? Didn’t you tell me once that Xurog’s just about the most intelligent being on the planet?’

‘Yep – in the galaxy, prob’ly.’

‘Then don’t you think it might just possibly occur to him that we’re hiding in these tunnels – and so he’ll just get them searched?’

‘Sure thing. Happenin’ at this very second.’

‘Then, he’ll find us.’

‘Nope. Didya count the number o’ times the ducts divided ’tween here an’ where we started?

‘Um … no.’

‘It was nineteen, with between two an’ seven branches each time, so by my reck’nin’ there’s at least 46 different ways we couldda gone for a start, not even beginnin’ to count the next set of places we mighta got to.

‘So that’ll take him a while to sort out. An’ he won’t come straight here ’cos though it’s the obvious escape route he knows we can’t use it without gettin’ found out. An’ there’s another thing. He’ll be beginnin’ to wonder why we’re runnin’ away. He’ll know there must be somethin’ wrong somewhere ’cos we’re not stupid. It’ll slow him down a bit trying to figure out what it is.

‘An’ anyway, by the time he does get here we’ll be gone. There’s one place even Xurog won’t think o’ looking.’

Forty Four

Zert was staring at the roof above them. Sensing direction. Judging distance.

‘We gotta get over to that side, an’ towards the back – furthest from where we come in. Now wait here. I gotta check out I’m right.’

Zert very cautiously opened a door and crept out. He came back carrying a grey tunic.

‘Mostly it’s zwnerbas here, but there’s a few native Zeroians as well – so you’ll just have to stand up as tall as you can an’ hope no one’ll notice. Now this is what you do. Go up an’ get a trolley – an’ find a big empty box – an’ bring it all back to the entrance door. Hope the owner o’ this tunic don’t miss it too soon!’

Awg wondered why Zert wanted the box, but there was no time to ask. He put on the tunic. Fortunately, it was too big for him and rather baggy, so the small rucksack at his side was well concealed. He pulled the collar up to hide as much of his face as possible. Proceeding warily through the door and up a flight of stone stairs, Awg emerged in a gigantic warehouse.

Huge frames, on which were stacked goods of every description, stretched from one end of the building to the other and from floor to ceiling. Robot cranes roamed the shelves, some of them extracting items from the store, others loading goods from a series of conveyors. Between the lines of shelving, zwnerbas were moving goods about using small trollies.

Awg didn’t dare hang about, in case he attracted attention. Looking around for a trolley for himself, he soon spotted a

spare one leaning against the side wall. He began to trundle it away, and at once discovered why it wasn’t being used. One of the wheels was damaged and the trolley would only limp along, the broken wheel wobbling violently. A native Zeroian spotted him and strode over at once.

‘Don’t use that. Get one of your team to fetch a replacement from the store.’

The Zeroian eyed him suspiciously.

‘Are you new here?’

Awg was petrified. The translocution modules in his ears meant that he understood perfectly. But he could not reply. As soon as he made his own speech sounds he would be discovered. Keeping his face expressionless, he jigged about and pointed to his mouth, then crossed his arms over his stomach, hoping that this would convey some sort of message. The Zeroian looked surprised and pointed to a nearby door. He was even more surprised when Awg went inside still pushing the trolley.

Fortunately, there was no one else in the lavatory. And Awg now had a major stroke of luck. Beside the row of cubicles was another trolley on which was perched a large box. Looking inside, Awg found it full of the ‘cat litter’ stuff which he knew was used instead of water in the mechanical toilets.

Awg exchanged his faulty trolley for the new one and, with as much confidence as he could muster, strode back into the warehouse, pushing the trolley and its box. He hurried to the door by which he had originally entered and disappeared thankfully through it. Zert was waiting just inside, hopping up and down with impatience.

‘What did you want the box for?’ asked Awg.

‘How many spyridi did’yuh see inside the goods hall?’

‘Er – none.’

‘Well then!’

Zert attempted to pull the box off the trolley.

‘Hey – I said an empty box.’

‘I couldn’t get an empty box. I was bloody lucky to get one at all!’

Zert began to tip the contents out on the floor.

‘Uuuuggghhh! This is washroom stuff.’

‘So?’

‘I’m NOT getting into that box.’

‘It’s that or Xurog,’ said Awg, simply.

They tipped the rest of the cat litter into a corner. Zert curled himself up into a ball and, grumbling violently about humans in general and Awg in particular, squeezed into the box. Awg manoeuvred it back on to the trolley and then picked up an armful of the cat litter.

‘Whaddya going to do with that?’

‘Well, we can’t let anyone see you, can we?’

‘Don’t you dare!’

‘Remember Xurog.’

A minute later, Zert was hidden from view and a series of muffled threats and swearwords were emerging from the pile of pellets.

‘◊◊◊◊◊◊ !!! ₪₪₪*** !!! You ****er! I’ll get you for this!’

‘Just shut up and tell me where we’re going. Anyway, think yourself lucky.’

‘Whaddya mean, lucky?’

‘Well – at least the stuff hasn’t been used.’

Forty Five

Pushing the trolley with Zert on board was hard work. Awg kept his head down and went as fast as he could. That was why he collided with the Zeroian who stepped out suddenly from one of the loading bays. And of course it was the same Zeroian who had noticed Awg earlier. This time it was more than suspicion. Seeing anyone except a zwnerba handling a trolley in the goods hall was unusual. Seeing it happen twice meant quite definitely that something was going on. Struggling to his feet, the Zeroian pulled out a communicator and began shouting instructions into it.

Awg didn’t wait to see what would happen but looked around wildly for a means of escape. At that moment, a train of linked trolleys passed along the gangway between them. Awg ducked down the far side and clung on to a trolley in the middle of the chain. In a few moments, he was carried many yards down the hall. He dropped off the trolley and rolled under one of the long conveyors.

Awg held his breath. There were no sounds of pursuit, so he cautiously crawled out and stood up. The Zeroian was nowhere to be seen – but neither was the trolley with Zert’s box on it!

Awg looked around desperately, and eventually spotted his trolley being pushed away by a zwnerba. They were heading towards a large hatchway in the far wall where several other zwnerbas were already queuing up.

To Awg’s horror, the zwnerba at the front of the queue picked up an enormous basket full of rotting fruit and emptied the contents into the hatch. The zwnerba behind him did the

same with a bag of floor sweepings. One more person in the queue – and then it was the turn of Zert’s box to go the same way. Being emptied down a rubbish chute was bad enough, but perhaps there was one of those grinding machines waiting at the bottom to reduce it all to pulp!

Panic!

Awg ran over to the chute and grabbed the trolley with the box on it. The zwnerba was obviously both surprised and alarmed, so Awg bowed several times and then began to point at the pockets in his tunic and then at the box, and then pretended to scrabble about in the cat litter as if he had lost something.

Something of the message must have got through because the zwnerba himself (or herself – Awg still found it difficult to tell) gave a little bow and walked away.

Awg grabbed the handles of the trolley and zoomed off down the hall.

‘Where the hell are we heading?’ he hissed into the box.

‘Far end o’ the hall an’ through the door,’ came the muffled reply. ‘If it’s locked, bang on the side o’ the box.’

The door wasn’t locked and Awg slipped through with his trolley, keeping as low a profile as he could.

‘Now keep goin’, as much in a straight line as you can,’ said the voice-in-the-box.

The huge store opened into a second hall, and then a third.

‘How come you know so much about this place?’ quizzed Awg, in a whisper.

‘It’s the transit store for all the stuff arrivin’ an’ leavin’ Auyvhasdh. I worked here, in one of the offices. Holiday job. O’course, I used th’opportunity to look round a bit.’

Whereas the first warehouse had been full to bursting point, the second was half empty and the third had stuff only along one of the side walls.

‘Why’s the first store so full if they’ve got all this space?’ whispered Awg.

‘Front hall’s got newer technology – an’ besides, it’s not so far to walk.’

At the rear of the third warehouse were a large set of double doors and a small side door, all closed.

‘Go through the small door,’ said the voice-in-the-box.

Awg tried the side door but it wouldn’t open. He tried the double doors, with the same result.

‘Locked,’ he hissed, and rapped his knuckles on the side of the box.

After a few seconds, there was a buzz and a click from the lock on the small door.

‘Now open the door an’ see if there’s anyone in the yard. Softly-softly though.’

Awg opened the door a crack, then more widely.

‘No, all clear.’

Zert emerged from his box amidst a shower of cat litter.

‘₪₪₪***! I’m not sorry to be outa that!’

They found themselves in a large open yard. On each side were covered storage areas where building materials were stacked. Awg could see prefabricated sections of the domed structures he remembered from the spyridi colony around the transporter terminal.

To the rear of the yard was a high wall. Together, Awg and Zert made their way towards a small exit at its base. The gate was fitted with an impressively complex electronic lock and carried a large red and yellow notice.

‘How’s your Zeroian comin’ along?’ asked Zert, who was looking for a bit of revenge for the cat litter.

‘It’s still pretty basic,’ said Awg, ‘but I can remember most of what you’ve taught me.’ He was very glad the spoken part was taken care of by the translocution modules in his ears.

‘Go on, then.’

Awg looked at the lines of symbols. ‘It’s the condensed language, so it’s quite short.’

There were two systems of the hieroglyphic language. One was the older form, where the symbols still bore a resemblance to the historical pictograms they’d started from originally. This was beautiful to look at but very long-winded. The modern

version was a highly condensed form in which the symbols had been reduced to a series of curved lines and dots. Awg struggled to work the message out.

‘The symbols at the top are very large – and they’re printed upside down – so it’s a warning. I think it says DANGER!

‘Good. You got it! And und’neath?’

‘Not sure – but I think the second bit means “outside”.’

‘Nearly. Try “OUT”.’

‘DANGER KEEP OUT.’

‘ ’Xactly. An’ they’re not kiddin’. There’s some pretty hairy stuff in there.’

Zert fiddled with his communicator. The command sequence took almost a minute to complete.

Then the lock clicked open and they went in.

Forty Six

These are the sorts of things Awg was hoping to find on the other side of the wall. They are mainly concerned with a strong and understandable desire to avoid (a) getting captured by Xurog, and (b) starving to death:

1. A large and powerful space vehicle, preferably all fuelled up and ready to go. (This was unrealistic, for the reason given in Chapter 43.)

2. A really neat teleportation device that would rapidly put a distance, preferably several light years, between you and your pursuers.

3. Somewhere mega-impressive to hide in, like an ancient castle with towering battlements and miles of stone passageways, preferably with a pit of molten lava somewhere in the middle which you could conveniently dump your enemies down.

4. A McDonalds (This was also unrealistic, at least at the time of writing).

What he actually found was this:

A junk yard.

In general, things on Zero were well-ordered and tidy. True, the Patrician’s palace was a bit run down – but it was still very grand in a slightly dilapidated sort of way. Elsewhere, the streets were clean and the buildings well kept. Only once had Awg seen garbage piled up, in a back alley in Gexadkydubm. This was different.

But straight away you could tell it wasn’t an Earth junk yard. Like the plants you saw. If you screwed up your eyes and squinted, most of them looked like you could be on Earth. But open them a little bit wider and it was a different story. The colours and shapes and patterns were totally unlike anything you’d see back home, even in Kew Gardens. This was the same. Most of the same types of stuff were there. Disused vehicles, household junk, scrap building materials, dead machinery, stuff that was obviously to do with wiring and piping. But it looked as if some little kid had got in and run amok with a distorting mirror and a can of everycolour paint. And some of the stuff was so weird you couldn’t even begin to imagine what it might have been used for.

Awg gaped at Zert.

‘What … the … HELL … is … THIS ?’

‘It’s an administrative error.’ ???????????????

‘It’s a buildin’ site. Only the buildin’ finished a long time ago.’ ???????????????

Zert persisted. ‘You know Auvhasdh’s not actually on Zero at all?’

‘Yes, it’s a sort of virtual city.’

‘Well, how d’yuh think it was built?’

‘I don’t know. I thought that maybe someone pushed a button somewhere – and there it was.’

‘Nah, nah! You oughta know things don’ work like that.

‘First, there was the high-tech bit, where the location was formed. You can think o’ it like a small artificial planet bein’ grown into an empty space, complete with an atmosphere an’ everythin’. Then the hyperspace links has got to be made – that’s like the roads in an’ out in a normal city.

‘But when all that’s sorted, you still gotta level the ground an’ build buildins an’ such, and that’s done in the ordin’ry way. Except the stuff’s mainly pre-fabricated in other places an’ then brought to the new location for final assembly. An’ that’s what this was – the builder’s yard. The whole of Auyvhasdh started here.

‘But when it was all finished there was a snag. Who d’you think did all the actual buildin’ work?’

‘The zwnerbas?’ said Awg.

‘ ’Xactly. The native Zeroians designed it, the spyridi supplied the virtual location an’ the zwnerbas did the construction. An’ their contract said that on completion all the prefabrication an’ assembly sites on the planet had to be demolished an’ the land restored. So the zwnerbas did ’xactly that. All the pre-fabrication stuff on Zero was cleared away an’ the sites landscaped. They did a beaut’ful job. An’ o’ course this storage an’ assembly site was meant to be included, as it was now part o’ Zero – at least for admin purposes. But the zwnerbas pointed out it wasn’t located on the planet, so it wasn’t their responsibility. So it’s never bin touched. The legal case dragged on for years. In the end, they jus’ built a big wall ’round an’ abandoned it.’

‘So why are we here?’

‘’Cos it’s a very interestin’ place.’

Awg put his hand to his head.

‘That’s just great. Really great. So we just fool around here for a while, admiring the interesting rubble. And then Xurog comes along and sticks us in jail and fries the pebble into cosmic dust.’

‘He won’t, ’cos we shan’t be here. You’ll see.’

Zert turned back to the gate in the wall and checked it was securely re-locked.

‘D’you know, when I first come here it took me a week to find out how to open that door! So maybe they won’t even think o’ looking inside. Still, it won’t hurt to cover our tracks. Come on!’

Awg took off the tunic and stuffed it into the box. Then they pushed the trolley up close to the most tottery pile of junk they could find. Using a length of scrap metal, they levered away at its base until the whole pile came crashing down, submerging the trolley and box completely.

The only buildings in the junk yard were at the back of the site. As far as Awg could see, they were again mostly warehouses or storage sheds. Several were semi-derelict, the roofs caved in

and the walls sagging. At the far end of each was a cage-like metal structure built against the rear wall.

‘They’re the TDM’s,’ said Zert, casually. ‘Disused for years, o’ course. Decommissioned. Cabling hacked out. Forgotten ’bout.

‘Show you somethin’, though.’

Beyond the row of warehouses was a box-like structure built from a type of rough grey brick. Zert made for the side and, with some difficulty, forced open a steel door. Awg followed. Almost the whole of the central space was taken up by a large metal sphere.

‘Listen,’ said Zert.

Awg held his breath. There was a faint humming noise. He cautiously stretched out his hand and touched the sphere’s casing. It was vibrating. Only slightly. Just enough to feel in the tips of your fingers.

‘Power source,’ said Zert. ‘Still active. Now come next door.’

They made for the back of the end warehouse. A lattice of grey metal enclosed a space the size of a small room. There were sliding gates at the front, one of which was partly open. Thick black cables ran to the corner of the warehouse and disappeared through the floor.

‘This is the first one o’ the set. Wired straight into the generator. Too much o’ a sweat to dig out the cables an’ disconnect, so they jus’ left it. Luck’ly for us. Come on in.’

They slipped through the lattice gate and Zert shut it firmly behind them.

Awg was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable.

‘Over here.’ Zert took up position at the rear of the cage, where a handrail ran from one side to the other. In the centre was a box with two buttons on it, each accompanied by a set of hieroglyphic symbols. Awg recognised one of them as the name of Auyvhasdh. He did not recognise the other, and it was this one which Zert was about to press.

‘Sure you got your bag?’

Awg nodded nervously.

‘Hang on, then.’

Awg tightened his grip on his rucksack. Zert hit the button. The world dissolved.

Forty Seven

Zert was laughing. Awg knew this because he was shaking from side to side and making a series of loud clicks. That was laughing, spyridi-style. Presumably they were now quits from the cat litter incident.

Awg was not laughing. He felt dizzy and was probably going to be sick.

Perhaps he should have known what to expect. He had been in and out of Auyvhasdh several times, but that had been inside the helicraft vehicles and it felt safer. Not like now, with just a few strips of metal between you and the outside world. To be surrounded by a silent firework display of dazzling lights while a seemingly bottomless chasm opened beneath your feet was not reassuring.

Zert saw Awg’s face and calmed down at once. He stretched out two of his arms and held Awg steady.

‘Are you OK? I’m sorry. I shouldda warned you prop’ly. It’s finished now. We’re here.’

He slid back one of the gates of the cage and helped Awg through.

The cage wasn’t the one they’d started from and the building wasn’t the same either.

‘Where’s “here”?’ said Awg weakly.

‘Come outside an’ take a look.’

It was night-time and the sky was as usual brilliantly ablaze with stars. But what dominated the view were the two huge objects that seemed to fill half the heavens.

‘H … O … L … Y J … E … E … Z !!!!!’

‘Whaddya think?’

‘I – I don’t think we’re on Zero any more.’

A green disc hung in the sky to their right, whilst directly overhead lay the gigantic orb of a rust-red planet.

‘No. We’re on Vwner, an’ … ’

‘That’s Zero, isn’t it?’ cut in Awg, staring at the circle of red. ‘We’re on one of the moons.’

‘Like I told you, they put a lot o’ Auyvhasdh together from stuff they made at other places. Nearly all of ’em was on Zero, but one wasn’t. Most o’ the metalwork was made on Vwner, an’ it just so happens that the TDM to Vwner’s the only one still workin’.

‘We can chill out here an’ let the buzz on Zero die down. It’ll give us time to think a bit. You hungry?’

‘You mean there is a McDonalds?’

‘What’s a modonal?’

‘Never mind.’

They chomped on the emergency rations that were still in the food racks of the old TDM terminal. The packs were covered in dust but their contents seemed OK. Well, fairly OK.

‘D’you think this stuff tasted any better when it was new?’ asked Awg, nearly gagging on something that tasted like soup made out of toenails.

‘Nope. Or the TDM staff wouldda eaten it all. It was just there to keep ’em alive if they got stranded. Shouldn’t think it ever happened. System’s very reliable.’

‘So – is it the same as plasma transport?’

‘Nope. Different. But it uses a chunk o’ the same technology.’

‘TDM … ?’

‘TransDimensional Module. It’s how they transported all the stuff for the buildin’ work. It’s the most usual way o’ getting’ in an’ out o’ Auyvhasdh. Much safer’n matter transport by the plasma system ’cos there’s no unsecured dimensional coordinates.’

???

‘OK, sorry. Plasma transport can go anyplace. No limits. So it’s mega-dangerous if there’s unknowns. With the TD system, the destination’s fixed, sorta like it’s runnin’ on rails. But it’s only good for short distances – well, under a million miles anyway.

‘It works for places like Auyvhasdh that’s already linked to the anomalous dimensions – they’re the ones that’s real but don’ get used much …

‘Yaaaarrrggghhhhh!’ Zert leapt about two feet into the air.

‘What’s up?’ asked Awg in alarm.

‘Holy Moly! An’ this whole trip was to keep it safe for a bit!’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Jus’ do me a favour an’ run a quick check on that pebble.’

Zert was hopping up and down, clearly highly agitated.

Awg opened the pocket of his rucksack and scrabbled about. And scrabbled about some more.

‘It’s not there!’

‘Yaaaarrrggghhhhh! Let me look.’

He peered in.

‘I can’t see it neither. Oh shit! It’s tunnelled!’

‘What’s all this about? What have you done?’

‘I din’ think what might happen to a pan-object if you put it through a TDM. It was only just about hangin’ on to our own dimensions in the first place. You could tell that from the way it looked diff’rent to everyone.’

‘You mean it’s just buzzed off into a new set of dimensions?’

‘Yep. Actually, more likely it’s jus’ retreated into the ones the rest o’ it exists in.’

‘Yaaaarrrggghhhhh!’ It was Awg’s turn to have a fit of the horrors.

‘OK, OK, OK. Just don’ panic! We gotta think about this. Chances are a tiny fraction o’ it’s still here.’

‘Like the blob of glue that’s left behind when the thing you’re trying to stick falls off the wall?’

‘Think you got the gen’ral idea.’

‘So if we reverse the journey we’ve just done, we’ll get it back?’

‘Maybe

in comics. That sort o’ thing don’t usually work in the real world.’

‘You got a better suggestion?’ ‘Gimme time.’

Forty Eight

They tramped along in the brightness of Vwner’s night.

‘Thought of anything yet?’

‘Like I said, gimme time! Somethin’ll turn up. Besides, there’s stuff I wanna show you.’

Awg looked across towards the green sphere, now down close to Vwner’s shortened horizon. From their present vantage point, it looked even more eerie and threatening than it had on Zero.

‘Have you been to the other moon as well?’ he asked.

‘Nope, and don’ want to. Nobody goes to Morvkd ’less they picked a seriously bad study project – or they’re tired o’ livin’. Our two moons is a geological curiosity. The theory is that origin’ly there was jus’ one big planet. Then it got busted up in some sort o’ cosmic traffic accident. The biggest bit turned into planet Zero an’ two other large bits became moons. Only, one of ’em got most of the useful metals – iron, copper, tin and such; an’ the other got the beryllium, thallium, arsenic and poisonous stuff like that. Nobody knows why. It don’ seem to’ve happened nowhere else. Anyhow, that’s why we’re on Vwner an’ how there ain’t no big queue to get on Morvkd. Most o’ the colour’s due to chlorine gas, by the way. Nice, healthy atmosphere. Breathe an’ enjoy. Then die.’

‘Sounds awful.’

‘It is.’

‘Do people live here on Vwner?’

‘Did once. To work in the mines. But that finished years ago.’

They were approaching a huge area of disturbed ground:

a mountain of mine waste, derelict buildings and abandoned machinery.

‘Richest mines in the whole galaxy. It’s one o’ the reasons Zero’s bin strong for so long.’

He surveyed the scene of devastation before them.

‘I gotta admit what we used to do warn’t very clever. ’s better now, though.’

Beyond the old mining area, the ground sloped away until they reached the lip of a shallow basin. At its centre was a cluster of white buildings.

‘See that buildin’ in the middle?’

‘The round one?’

‘Come down an’ take a look.’

‘But won’t anybody mind?’

‘No one here. ’s all operated remotely. A few maintenance people comes ’casionally.’

‘So there are other ways of getting here?’

‘O’course. We just got in by the back door – only it’s a door that’s bin forgotten ’bout.’

Entering the circular building, they emerged on a narrow platform that ran all the way around its inside edge.

Awg moved cautiously towards the safety rail and peered down into the core.

He held his breath.

As far down as the eye could see, pinpricks of light traced the target points of energy beams. Scanning, circling, penetrating further and further underground into the far distance, as if searchlights were being played along the spokes of a gigantic wheel from a powerhouse at its centre.

‘Metal’s extracted by plasma jet an’ beamed straight back to Zero,’ said Zert, obviously proud of what spyridi technology had achieved. ‘Selective process. Just takes out the useful stuff.’

About a third of the way around the walkway, a metal ladder dropped over the edge of the huge shaft and disappeared into its depths. Further along, Awg could see the outlines of others.

‘That’s how they gets down to work on the plasma guns if the

ion sources needs renewin’ …’ said Zert, warily keeping as far back from the edge as he could.

‘… An’ see them holes?’

Awg craned over the rail and looked down to where the ladder descended past the mouths of tunnels opening into the great shaft.

‘Them tunnels goes back to the old workin’s we saw at the top o’ the hill. They uses ’em now for ventilation.’

Awg straightened up and stepped back from the rail. The huge size of the shaft was unsettling. Just how deep was it? All you could see were more and more of the scanning beams going down and down and down into the blackness. Awg supposed it must have a bottom somewhere.

As he stared across the abyss, Awg sensed some movement behind them. He half turned, then immediately dropped to his hands and knees and called urgently to Zert, who was several yards ahead.

‘Get down.’

‘Wassermarrer?’

‘How often do the maintenance people come here?’

‘Dunno. If nothin’ don’t go wrong, not very often, I’d guess.’

‘Then who are those guys behind us?’

Zert looked, then let out a long moan.

‘It looks like we underestimated Xurog,’ he said, meekly.

Any doubts about the newcomers were immediately dispelled. They split into two groups at the entrance and advanced rapidly left and right. Since there was only one way in or out of the circular walkway, the two friends were caught between them.

Awg and Zert had just reached the second of the metal ladders.

‘Do you reckon we could get back up the hill through those tunnels?’ whispered Awg.

‘Prob’ly, but count me out. You know I can’t do heights.’

‘It’s that or Xurog,’ said Awg.

The two groups behind them each broke into a run.

Awg gripped the ladder and swung over the edge. He stopped with his shoulders level with the rail and called to Zert. Their pursuers were only yards away.

‘Hold on to me. Don’t look down.’

Awg felt the ladder shaking as Zert, terrified, got on to it. One of Zert’s arms reached down and grabbed him around the neck, nearly choking him.

‘I said hold on – not strangle me.’

Together, they struggled down the ladder, rung by rung. They still had a long way to go before they reached the first of the side tunnels. But their pursuers seemed to be hesitating. The two friends would discover why in about ten seconds.

‘They’re not following,’ shouted Awg. ‘D’you think they’ll try to shoot us, or something?’

Zert couldn’t speak at first. Then all he could manage was: ‘N–n–n–not Xurog.’

They edged down the ladder until they were at the first tunnel entrance. There was a small platform projecting out. Awg was just about to step off and into the hole when a searing jet of white-hot plasma swept past them, missing them by inches. It scored along the shaft face above them, bringing down a hail of fractured rock and debris. The beam sliced into the ladder, reducing one side of it to a spatter of molten metal.

‘What the hell …’

Awg didn’t have time to complete the sentence. A second beam tore across the rock below them. It also hit the ladder, this time cutting through it completely.

Awg and Zert hung on as the remaining rungs to which they were clinging tilted over and swayed away from the side of the shaft. Only a single strut of metal now joined their short section to the rest of the ladder above. As they swung to and fro in space, ominous cracking sounds began to come from the strip as the metal started to fatigue and weaken. It was only a matter of time – and probably a very short time – before the spar snapped and they would be sent plunging to the bottom of the shaft.

Zert reached up to the break in the ladder and bridged himself across it. Stretching out two more arms, he just managed to grab the edge of the tunnel platform. A scaffolding – made of Zert – was now holding the ladder together and anchoring it to the side of the shaft. Summoning what remained of his strength, he yelled out:

‘Into that hole – quick!’

Awg obeyed instantly. Letting go of the broken rungs, Zert swung himself into the tunnel, landing by his side.

Now unsupported, the bottom section of the ladder broke off completely and fell into the void. They could hear it for a long time bouncing off the sides and cannoning into lower platforms, the sound echoing up and down the shaft.

Then there was silence.

Forty Nine

It was some time before Awg’s heart rate slowed down enough for him to get his breath and speak.

‘Zert, that was awesome.’

‘I jus’ thought – as I was the one with all the arms, I jus’ gotta do somethin’. ’

‘But – you’re afraid of heights.’

‘Can we jus’ not talk ’bout it?’

‘OK, but I still think it was awesome. And you said they wouldn’t attack us.’

‘They didn’t.’

‘Well, somebody did.’

‘No. Not on purpose. It was th’extractor jets. When we went down, we musta upset th’electro-optic field that controls it all, an’ brought some o’ the beams up from the deep levels. I just didn’ think that’d happen.’

He shook himself from side to side in distress.

‘We shouldda got down OK. Only we didn’t. An’ the others musta known an’ didn’ wanna chance it.’

To Awg, that meant it was only a matter of time before their trackers either turned the beams off or found some other way to reach the lower levels.

‘Well, we’re here and we didn’t get fried,’ he said. ‘So let’s move.’

The tunnel was roughly made, and uneven. Much of the time they passed through black or grey rock, but sometimes the walls showed bands of brown and yellow. In one place, a vein of golden crystals passed across the roof with streaks of

blue and green along its edges. At that point there was a sharp, sulphurous smell in the air. Back on Earth, a tunnel like this would have been dripping with water. The floor would have been slimy and slippery, perhaps with patches of moss and lichen. Here, everything was dry. As on Zero itself, water was a memory.

At intervals, vertical shafts disappeared into the darkness above them, and from one of these came lights and the sounds of pursuit. Awg’s heart sank. The two friends quickened their pace until they were almost running. In the near-darkness they could not rush on too fast in case they stumbled into a pit, and they dared not slow down with their enemies behind them. How long would it take their pursuers to get down that shaft? Had they got ladders or would they have to delay and go back for more equipment? Perhaps their hunters might get ahead and cut them off before they could reach the high ground and a way out.

At least there didn’t seem to be any noises ahead of them so far. They became conscious of a cool draft blowing towards them and there were glimmers of a stronger light ahead. All the time, they were going steadily uphill. They scrambled along the passage until, rounding a corner, the tunnel opened out into a small chamber. High above them, a vertical shaft ended in a circle of sky.

In front of them, the way was blocked by a massive metal grille.

It was built right across the tunnel and was obviously intended to provide a clear passage to air whilst keeping everything else out.

Behind them, the sounds of pursuit grew louder.

Awg had an idea. It relied heavily on extreme optimism in the face of overwhelming danger.

‘D’you think there’s a rope leading up to safety?’ he asked, hopefully.

‘Nope.’ Zert was always strictly practical.

‘What about a secret switch that opens a hidden door?’

‘Don’t think there’s one o’ them neither.’

‘Perhaps one of the plasma beams will sweep along this tunnel and vaporise those guys whilst miraculously leaving us completely unharmed.’

‘Fat chance.’

‘But I bet you’ve got a gadget that cuts through steel bars.’

‘Yep. But not in 20 seconds.’

‘How do we escape then?’

‘We can’t.’

Fifty

‘Where d’you think they’re taking us?’ hissed Awg, as they were frogmarched along.

‘Back to Zero to face the music, o’ course,’ replied Zert. They were pushed along roughly and, although no weapons were visible, the threat of violence was very evident.

Something wasn’t right, and Awg felt seriously uneasy as well as scared. He also knew that the weight of their actions was pressing very much harder on Zert than on himself. To Awg, Xurog was a terrifying but remote figure. To Zert, he was not only the head of his people and a giant intellect, but also a revered scientific leader and mentor. Awg had on two occasions seen the respect Xurog held for Zert’s abilities. And, despite the huge differences in seniority and experience, it was clear that there was a bond of friendship between them.

‘We must have really angered Xurog for him to treat us like this,’ said Awg.

‘It’s not jus’ that,’ said Zert miserably. ‘By crossin’ Xurog, I’ve disgraced all the Spyridi ’cos it looks like their leader’s disobeyed the Patrician. I’d jus’ hoped we wouldda sorted things out ’fore it come to this. He ha’n’t even sent people I know to bring us back – just a load o’ hacks.’

They headed towards a square building at the start of the new mining complex. One part of it seemed to be mess rooms and other facilities for visiting maintenance crews. The other side contained storage silos for tools and equipment. In the centre was a row of TDM cages. They were much larger and newer than the one they had travelled in from Zero. There were

even some seats, although it was clear these could be removed to make space for larger items of equipment.

The two prisoners were thrust roughly into a corner. Their captors took the seats and one of the native Zeroians went to operate the controls. These were more complex than the primitive push button box they had seen before and clearly covered several possible destinations. However, the Zeroian did not use the existing set-up. He took a control unit from his pocket and plugged it into the side. Zert, who had been slumped down in despair, sat up at once and watched him intensely.

This time, Awg was ready for the transdimensional journey. He gripped the rail hard, closed his eyes and waited for it all to be over. He was in no mood to enjoy the excitement. Also, he was very apprehensive about what would happen to them once they got back to Zero. ‘Very apprehensive’ is a polite way of saying that it was scaring the shit out of him.

It wasn’t easy to judge how long these strange journeys took. They seemed to take place in some timescale of their own. In what felt like an age – but was in reality only a few minutes – the two friends were being bundled out of the cage. Zert seemed to have sunk once again into a black mood, and slouched along sullenly, his head down. Hardly even looking where he was going, he tripped at the doorway and went sprawling. Awg tried to help him up, but was held back whilst one of the zwnerbas dragged him to his feet. Then they were again herded together and marched down a long and otherwise empty corridor.

Eventually, they came to some sort of hub area where there seemed to be a lot more activity. Other corridors criss-crossed their path and there were many doors and entrances. However, Awg noted that, wherever they went, there were no windows. They passed through a set of double doors and were left alone in a small room. It was plainly furnished but was certainly not a prison cell. There were comfortable seats and a table. There was even stuff to eat and drink. Awg leant forward to take some of the fruit juice.

‘I wouldn’t,’ said Zert.

‘Why not?’

Zert wasn’t saying any more. He looked very grim. Obviously he thought they were being observed.

Awg got up and tried the door by which they had entered. It was locked. There was a second door on the opposite side of the room. He was about to try that too when it opened and a figure came out to greet them.

‘Please come in,’ said Mayor Sharibvdl. ‘We need to discuss your future. I do hope it’s not too short a conversation.’

Fifty One

Mayor Sharibvdl installed himself behind his desk. Awg was shocked at the change that had come over him since their last meeting at the Town House in Gexadkydubm. Sharibvdl’s face had hardened, and his eyes revealed something more deadly than greed. The almost comic figure which Awg remembered seemed now startlingly sinister, as if a common bully had suddenly turned and drawn a knife.

There were three others in the room with him. With a start, Awg recognised one of them as the female Zerioan he had identified as a supershape during his virtual excursion to Gexadkydubm. However, it was Sharibvdl who seemed to be in charge, and it was he who spoke.

‘I thought you might like to meet some of my business colleagues, particularly (he gestured towards the female Zeroian) my – shall we say – Finance Manager. She has been particularly successful in devising some ingenious and most persuasive methods for encouraging clients to contribute to our funds.’

The Zeroianne fixed her gaze upon them. It was a look of utter contempt and loathing. Awg felt as if he had been stabbed with an icicle. Sharibvdl noted the effect with satisfaction.

‘We have a proposition to put to you.’

‘We’ve nothing to say to you,’ said Awg.

‘Come now, you haven’t even heard our proposal! I’m quite sure that you’ll be interested.’

Zert glared at him silently.

‘It’s like this,’ he continued, wringing his hands together in a

gesture that looked as if he were strangling a small animal. ‘You have something we want – and we can offer you something that you will value.’

‘There’s nothing we have that could possibly interest you,’ said Awg.

‘Oh, but there is. We would like you to hand over the bomb.’

There was a long silence.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Awg, at last.

‘Yes you do. You have something so dangerous that our dear Patrician was thrown into a state of utter panic even thinking about it. Then of course he went for the safe option and decided to destroy it. What a waste – to do away with such a useful thing, merely to save a few worthless lives! And just when he thought his henchman had the situation under control, you two very conveniently spirited the thing away from under his nose!’

Awg was in a cold rage. How could Sharibvdl know all this –and what was he up to?

‘Well, the Patrician shall have his wish,’ continued Sharibvdl. ‘He shall have his plaything back – provided he is willing to pay the right price. Which I’m sure he will. He was always so very cautious. Well, his caution will pay off for both of us. From my point of view, wiping out much of the population would be bad for business. We would be forced to relocate to a more prosperous part of the galaxy. But first, you have to give this little device to me.’

‘I haven’t got it,’ said Awg, quite truthfully.

‘Liar!’ screamed the Zeroianne. ‘We know you took it with you. Why else did you run away? Did your little spidery companion think that he could do a better deal with the Patrician – or with his pathetic daughter!’

Zert’s eyes blazed. ‘You’re a bunch o’ fools. You’ve no idea what you’re dealin’ with. You’ll never find this object.’

Sharibvdl was purple with rage.

‘So you admit you have got it! Take them away! Search them!’

Two zwnerba guards entered the room and one descended on each of them. Awg wasn’t going to give in without a struggle.

In a fury, he lashed out with his most lethal karate kick but the zwnerba seemed hardly to feel it. In response, he grabbed Awg’s arm and forced it up his back so hard that Awg screamed in pain. Zert didn’t even try to put up a fight. He knew that attempting to win out against the immensely strong zwnerbas was a waste of time, and he was led away.

Awg was taken into a small, bare room. His rucksack was seized, all his clothes were stripped off and he was left naked and trembling in a corner.

Fifty Two

The door of Awg’s room opened and his clothes and possessions were flung back inside. He was then locked in again and left there without food or water for several hours.

Awg dressed himself and did his best to recover from his dishevelled state. It wasn’t exactly fun having all your kit ripped off you by an eight-foot alien and he felt abused and outraged. He was also saddened. He expected no better of Sharibvdl – but, up until now, he had never seen zwnerbas behave like this. Generally, they were hard and effective workers who could become good and faithful friends. Even his bureaucratic jailor in Tukzadryk prison had been cheerful and fair minded, going so far as to offer an apology for the torture he was dutifully about to inflict. Awg wondered what it was that had made the people here so surly and vicious.

Eventually, he heard heavy footsteps outside. A zwnerba entered, grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into the corridor.

Awg found himself back in Sharibvdl’s office. There was no sign of Zert. This time there was no attempt at the niceties. Sharibvdl was alone and he came straight to the point.

‘I want to know where you have hidden it.’

‘I haven’t hidden it. If you must know, I lost it. I did take it from Auyvhasdh but it got lost on the journey. Zert says it’s disappeared into another dimension or something. Anyway, I haven’t got it any more. It’s gone.’

Sharibvdl said nothing, but stared at him very hard.

‘When we had our first little talk, I offered you a bargain.

Something I want in exchange for something you want. It seems we never quite got around to discussing the second part.’

‘Zert and I want nothing from you.’

‘But you’re wrong. I think there is something you would like very much. Like to keep, and be sorry to lose.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Your lives.’

On Sharibvdl’s desk was one of the black cube screens that Awg had often seen before, except that this one was very large and grand. Sharibvdl flicked a switch on his desk. The screen came alive.

Awg gasped.

Zert was alone in what looked like a long narrow room. At each end was a complicated-looking door. The one on the left of the screen was open, the one on the right closed.

‘Do you know what that is?’ asked Sharibvdl.

‘No.’

‘It is an airlock. Let us close the inner door.’

He flicked another switch and the left door rolled shut. Awg could see that it was heavily sealed all around its edges.

‘Now I want you to think very carefully where you might have hidden the bomb, because in thirty seconds I am going to open the outer door.’

Awg was mystified. What was outside? The atmosphere on Zero was perfectly breathable. Were there poisonous insects out there – or wild animals?

‘Perhaps even now you do not appreciate the situation …’ Sharibvdl pressed another switch.

The picture on the screen opened out to reveal a much wider view. What Awg could now see was the long arm of the corridor stretching out into an utterly barren and toxic landscape, with angry clouds of lethal green vapour swirling around the outer door.

Awg was absolutely stunned. It took several precious seconds for the truth of the situation to sink in. They had not returned to Zero. The TDM had been programmed for a quite different

destination. They were on Morvkd.

‘You have five seconds left to save your friend.’ Sharibvdl’s face, like that of most native Zeroians, was devoid of emotional expression. But his eyes said it all, and they were pitiless.

Awg looked in panic at the cube screen. Zert was sitting quite still.

‘I haven’t got it,’ screamed Awg. ‘I swear I don’t know where it is.’

Sharibvdl hit the switch and the airlock began to open. Almost at once he stopped it again. Green vapour began to stream through the crack. As the first breaths reached Zert, he doubled up and rolled on the floor.

‘I – want – to – know – where you have hidden it,’ said Sharibvdl.

Awg couldn’t take his eyes off the screen. He was shaking uncontrollably. Useless words came tumbling from his mouth.

‘I don’t know where it is. I don’t know. I don’t know.’

Sharibvdl pressed the switch again and the door rolled fully open. Clouds of heavy green vapour began to fill the chamber.

Zert got up, his limbs jerking and twitching. He staggered through the door and fell out into the lethal fog.

Awg’s world collapsed in on itself. The enormity of what he had just witnessed was too much for him to take in. His surroundings seemed to retreat to an immense distance and he was left alone in the centre of a void.

Fifty Three

Awg was icy cold. He felt empty of everything.

A great chunk of himself had been ripped out and thrown away. Zert was the best friend he had ever had. He had really good mates back home on Earth but it wasn’t the same. They had done so much stuff together. Unbelievably dangerous, exciting stuff, and Zert always came out on top. Except now.

Gradually, the room around him took on solid form again. He became aware that Sharibvdl was still speaking to him, the words echoing up some long tunnel inside his head.

‘You now appreciate that I mean what I say – and that one way or another I shall obtain the bomb. Your friend will, I am afraid, have been in considerable pain before he died, but at least his suffering was brief. Most life forms last no more than a few minutes out there.

‘For you, on the other hand, we can make things a great deal more uncomfortable – and for a far longer time.’

Sharibvdl’s threats were intended to inspire terror but they did not. Awg was numb from his loss, and the words meant nothing to him. But an Idea was hovering at the edge of Awg’s consciousness, and it was breeding in the pool of deepest hatred that it found there. It spoke to him:

‘LOOK AT HIM. ISN’T HE REPULSIVE? ISN’T HE UTTERLY LOATHSOME? HE’S THE BEING WHO HAS DESTROYED YOUR FRIEND. HE DOESN’T DESERVE TO LIVE. HAVEN’T YOU EVER WONDERED WHAT IT WOULD BE LIKE TO KILL SOMEONE WITH YOUR BARE HANDS? JUST THINK OF HOW SATISFYING THAT WOULD BE. YOU

COULD GRAB HIS NECK AND STRANGLE HIM, THEN BEAT OUT HIS BRAINS AGAINST THAT VERY CONVENIENT SCREENCUBE IN FRONT OF HIM. JUST IMAGINE ALL THAT SQUELCHY STUFF BURSTING OUT OF HIS HEAD, AND BLOOD RUNNING ALL OVER THE DESK. HIS BLOOD. THE BLOOD OF YOUR ENEMY. IT WOULD BE RIGHT, TOO, WOULDN’T IT? REVENGE FOR WHAT HE DID. GO ON. GIVE IT A TRY. YOU KNOW YOU’LL ENJOY IT. YOU … ’

Awg took a firm grip on his mind and wrestled it free. ‘NO!!! I’m not going to make myself as evil as he is. Who the hell are you?’

‘JUST AN IDEA.’

‘Well, you can bloody well eff off !’

Awg then realised that, in his disgust, he had shouted this out. Sharibvdl was taken aback at his vehemence.

‘You are being remarkably stubborn – and remarkably stupid. You shall have a few hours to think about your situation. There is not the slightest possibility of escape. Nothing can live outside this building. If you tell me what I wish to know, I will return you to Zero. In fact, you can be the messenger to inform the Patrician of my terms. I am sure he will be pleased to see you again – particularly as you will be providing the means to save his population from destruction.’

Back in his cell-like room, Awg sat with his head in his hands. He had never felt so alone. The only thing he could think of doing was to check the pocket of his rucksack again. Perhaps the pebble might have re-appeared as mysteriously as it had vanished. If so, perhaps he should give it to Sharibvdl. If Zert’s theory was right, there was no danger to the planet and the Patrician could safely call Sharibvdl’s bluff.

If Zert was right. What was he going to do without Zert? Zert always knew what to do. He worked things out and made plans.

So, what would Zert do now? He’d find some way of getting

out of here. Awg searched around for some method of opening the door but it was hopeless. He didn’t have Zert’s knowledge or his technology. What about some sort of weapon? There was nothing to make one from, and anyway he was bound to come off second best against a zwnerba.

His thoughts went back to his time in Tukzadryk prison. How had he got out of that? Asa had rescued him. Not much chance of that happening here.

But if I don’t get out, they’ll try other ways to make me talk. I’m going to get tortured.

And then he remembered.

Perhaps he had a weapon after all. One they couldn’t take away from him. One he didn’t have to hide because he always carried it with him.

And zwnerbas were orderly beings. They lived by the Rules. Well, he was going to remind them of a few that they seemed to have forgotten.

But would it work? He racked his brains to remember all the contacts he had had with the zwnerbas on Morvkd since his arrival. He had tried very hard not to show pain or anger, but of course this was thinking in Earth terms. Putting a brave face on it, trying to hide emotion. So at least he’d done the right thing, even if for the wrong reason. What about when that zwnerba had nearly broken his arm? He had been below the line of sight and facing away, so there was a good chance they hadn’t seen the agony on his face.

So he’d give it a go. It was worth a try.

Fifty Four

18th October

Started rock climbing again! There’s lots of places to practise on. I think it’s the best way to test my confidence because I can check out my progress. The first thing I tried was pretty disastrous. I was shaking like a leaf and peeled off about fifteen feet up. Piss poor! Luckily, just a few bruises. Somehow it helped, though.

19th October

Too wet to do much outside today. I’ve taken over Awg’s clock winding duties, and I help out all I can. I think Annie and Joseph are glad to have someone else around the house, though I’m sure they would rather it was Awg. I wonder what he’s doing? Sometimes, Joseph comes up to my room to do stuff on his clocks. After all, it is his workshop. I think he knows how much I worry about Dad.

20th October

I’ve sussed out the best short climbs within easy distance of Bryn Castell and roughly graded them. So the plan is to start with the simplest and work up, checking them off in my notebook. I’m not doing any really dangerous stuff because Awg’s grandparents aren’t going to want a hospital case to look after.

21st October

A nice thing happened today. I met a girl from one of the farms. Her name’s Gwen and she’s the niece of old Mrs Jones from Tyle-mawr. She asked me where I learnt to climb and I told her about the school I went to near the French Alps. She thought that was very cool but I said it

was no fun going to umpteen different schools and being uprooted like a turnip every five minutes. That made her laugh. Afterwards I did quite a tricky pitch in the old quarry behind the farm. This is all free climbing and I’m wondering if I ought to get some kit.

22nd October

Awg’s been gone three weeks now. I think about him every day. About him and about Dad. In my dark moments I wonder if either of them is still alive.

23rd October

I talked about Dad and Awg to Joseph. He was a RAF navigator in the war and he understands. He told me it’s no good thinking too much about what might have happened or might happen. You just have to hope for the best and get on with the job. It was pretty obvious what his job was. He climbed into that Wellington every mission, did what he had been trained to do, and hoped the old plane would get them home again. I wonder what my job is?

24th October

I saw Gwen again today. Or rather, she saw me. We talked about climbing again. And then, do you know what? She asked me if I’d teach her. Wow!

25th October

I’ve decided what my job is, and I’m a bit ashamed I hadn’t thought like this before. Just look at what happened to Awg when he got back from Zero the first time. He landed up at Ty Nant and nearly got killed in the waterfall. What’s going to happen this time? And perhaps he’ll have Dad with him. Say they landed up somewhere bad and weren’t found? They could be trapped in a cave, or anything. And nobody knows when this might be. It might be tomorrow. I hope to God it hasn’t happened already.

I’m going to ask Gwen for help. I’m going to tell her that I’m a junior member of the Interplanetary Society (I made that up) and that they’re

expecting some special event at Llangarreg, She won’t be surprised because Llangarreg’s quite famous for its UFO sightings and weird happenings. I shall say they’ve asked all their members to keep a look out and report anything unusual back to them immediately. So she’s to pass on the message to everyone she knows and tell them to call me straight away if they spot anything. Anything special or unusual at all.

26th October

Gwen’s climbing’s amazing. She’s brilliant, and picks stuff up really quickly. I think she’s a natural. Helping around the farm obviously strengthens the fingers!

27th October

I told Annie and Joseph about Gwen and they’ve let me order some climbing gear from Nicholls of Brecon. Just a few decent ropes and karabiners and stuff. It’s not like we’re going to do Everest. The weather’s getting a lot colder but it’s fine and dry at the moment, so still OK for climbing. Hope the frost keeps off for a while.

28th October

Gwen invited me over to their farm. Her Dad doesn’t actually own the place but rents it from the landowner. It’s mainly sheep and dairy. He’s a bit suspicious of the climbing thing (and of me) but can see that Gwen is obviously keen. Her mum is a lot more relaxed and gave me the most enormous cream tea I’ve ever had. I realise I don’t know much about farming, except it’s stonkingly hard work and long hours.

29th October

I can’t believe we’re nearly into November. I shouldn’t think anyone has fireworks up here, but perhaps if I look out from my tower room I shall see some rockets coming up from the valley. I wish I could see a real shooting star or something. That might tell me that Awg and Dad were on the way home. Annie saw things the night before Joseph came back, and the electricity in the house went funny.

30th October

The climbing stuff came in a huge box by CarryAll. They must have had fun getting the lorry up the lane. I’ve shown Gwen how to rope up and stuff, so we’re all set to tackle our first pitch.

I feel so much better, though there’s always this big ache inside where I can’t stop thinking about what’s happening on Zero. But it’s really great to be with Gwen. She makes me feel I’m an OK person again. There’s a pile of stuff I’m good at, and deep down I know that. Getting left behind here wasn’t my fault.

Fifty Five

Awg had no idea how long the days were on Morvkd, or even whether it was now day or night. Anyway, it seemed that he had a few hours before his next – and perhaps painfully final – session with Sharibvdl. Awg was determined that such a meeting was never going to happen.

But how best to attract the attention of the zwnerbas? If he was on camera perhaps he could pretend to be ill and roll around the floor making gurgling noises. That wouldn’t work because they probably wouldn’t care. Perhaps he should thrash about as if he were trying to wreck the room. Then they’d be sure to come running. But maybe they’d give him a good kicking for acting up.

He was still wondering when the door opened and a zwnerba entered with a tray of food. Awg put his plan into operation immediately. He felt a total dummy behaving this way, but forced himself to do it by picturing what would happen to him if he didn’t.

He confronted the zwnerba and pulled the most horrible face he could think of. He contorted his mouth, frowned ferociously and rolled his eyes *.

‘Do you know who I am?’ he thundered.

‘I am the Great Prince, the Lord Allardyce, friend of the Patrician himself and of Asa his daughter.

* Only those of Patrician descent possessed the physical ability to make facial expressions (see Book 1, Ch 31, p 100)

‘It is the LAW that you obey me. I ORDER YOU to release me!’

Under this fierce and Royal exterior, Awg was shaking in his shoes, partly with fear, and partly with laughter as he felt so ridiculous.

But it worked.

Whatever was going on in the other’s mind Awg could not guess, but the zwnerba dropped the tray and rushed from the room.

Awg cautiously looked outside. The corridor was deserted. Which way should he go? He had to get off Morvkd, that was certain. And the only way he knew to do that was by the TDM cages, so those were what he had to find.

He had not been able to form any clear idea of the building’s layout. There seemed to be a central section with a cluster of rooms and then longer corridors going out towards the edges. From the length of the passage outside his cell room, he would seem to be in one of these. So, one way would lead back towards the centre, and the other towards the edge – and this was where, as far as he could remember, the TDM cages were located.

He decided to go left, but he had not walked very far before he realised that the air was getting warmer. That probably meant he was going towards the centre of the complex. He quickly turned on his heel and hurried back in the opposite direction. At the end of the corridor, the passage met another in a V-shaped junction and from the left came the sound of footsteps.

There was absolutely nowhere to hide.

Awg ducked back into his own corridor and flattened himself against the wall. Whoever was coming would pass within a few feet. He just had to hope that they didn’t look behind them.

Awg couldn’t see who was coming until they reached the junction. Then he had a clear view as they passed across his branch into the single tunnel ahead. It was Sharibvdl, clearly intent on getting somewhere quickly.

Awg followed. The passage they were now in was quite different from the ones that Awg had seen previously. The surroundings looked much older and shabbier. And whereas everything so far had been on the same level, they were now going downhill. The passage ended abruptly in a small door, completely unlike any of the other hi-tech electronic bulkhead doors in the complex. Sharibvdl took a finned metal plate from his pocket, inserted it into a slot and turned it. The door swung open.

Sharibvdl passed through the door and pushed it shut behind him. It did not seem to have locked. Awg waited a few moments and then edged the door open again. A long flight of roughlycut steps descended through solid rock. There was light at the bottom and for a moment the grotesque form of Sharibvdl was outlined in a monstrous silhouette before he disappeared from view.

Awg crept after him. The bottom of the stairway opened into a rocky chamber. The walls glistened with moisture which Awg was careful not to touch. It might be water, or it might be something considerably more corrosive. Awg still had memories of the black rain and was taking no chances.

At the far end of the chamber was a pool of dark liquid, and floating in its centre was the most extraordinary object that Awg had ever seen. It was a large white sphere from which emanated a pale blue phosphorescence, giving Sharibvdl’s skin a livid and horrible hue. But it was not Sharibvdl that made Awg’s flesh creep. It was the sphere itself, which was constantly quivering and vibrating. It seemed to be alive, like a gigantic jellyfish.

‘Looks really disgustin’ ’ said Zert.

‘Yes,’ said Awg, ‘but look at Sharibvdl. What’s he doing?’

‘Looks like he’s talkin’ to it,’ said Zert.

‘Yes, but …………………… ’

‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!’

‘Quiet! Or they’ll hear us!’

‘But it’s you. You’re alive.’

‘Course I’m alive! It’d take more than that jerk to kill me off.’

Awg reached out his hand to touch Zert, just to make sure he was real.

Zert turned, then looked at him in surprise.

‘I thought you’d be pleased to see me!’

‘I am. There’s nothing – in the – whole world that could –make me happier.’

‘Then what you cryin’ for? I thought you humans did the eyewaterin’ thing when bad stuff happened.’

‘No. I’m – crying with – joy,’ choked Awg, the tears flooding down his face.

‘So, you cries when good things happens as well?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, all I can say is, it’s mighty confusin’. Couldn’t you work it so’s you cried with – say – your right eye when you was pleased, an’ with your left eye when you was sad. That’d make things a lot clearer.’

‘Oh Zert, you’re hopeless! But I’m so glad you’re OK.’

Fifty Six

‘He’s definitely talkin’ to it,’ said Zert.

‘It’s more than that – he’s bowing down to it!’

It was true. Sharibvdl was on his knees with his head lowered.

‘What the hell is it?’ hissed Awg. ‘Is it one of those slime beings you’ve told me about.’ He struggled to remember the name. ‘Nerians.’

‘Nah. They’re much nicer.’

‘At least,’ he added, ‘once you get to know ’em.

‘Let’s do a bit o’ listenin’ in.’ He held something up and pointed it at the glowing sphere.

‘You’ve still got your communicator! How d’you manage that?’

‘It’s not easy to search a spyridon! Speshly if you’re as clumsy as a zwnerba. An’ we’re not a very convenient shape for searchin’. We got … um … lots of … um … places where we can hide stuff.

‘He’s callin’ it Ulgor – an’ tellin’ it he’s not bin able to get the pan-object. An’ it’s tellin’ him he must or he’s for it. He’s scared.

‘An’ – Ah! Jus’ what I thought!’ Zert was looking at wave patterns on the display.

‘What?’

‘It’s a fraud, a trick. That thing’s not alive at all. It’s jus’ some sort o’ receiver. I c’n pick up the signals that’s feedin’ it. So –what about I adds a few o’ my own?’

He keyed in a long string of code.

The result was not what he expected. A ray of brilliant red light shot out of the sphere towards them and Zert’s communicator burst into flames.

‘Holy shit! That’s done it!’ Zert was aghast.

The light from the sphere flared up until the whole cavern was lit with a dazzling brilliance. Sharibvdl turned away from the glare and saw them at once.

They fled back up the steps and along the passage.

Sharibvdl made no attempt to follow them. A far more deadly pursuer would do that. From the dark pool on which the sphere floated, a ball of blue light rose into the air. It hovered for a few moments, then sped off in the direction Awg and Zert had taken.

Zert seemed to know where he was going. They passed the junction where Awg had first seen Sharibvdl and bolted down a side turning into a room piled high with boxes and packets.

‘Food store,’ said Zert. ‘Good place to hide out while we waits.’

‘Wait for what?’

‘I’ve ’ranged a diversion – should kick in pretty soon. Thought it’d give ’em somethin’ to think ’bout while I rescued you – only now I don’ have to.’

‘How’ve you done all this?’ said Awg in amazement. ‘And how did you survive in all that poisonous stuff outside?’

‘Easy. Soon as we got here, I stole one o’ their micro lifesupport sets. There was one outside the TDM we come in –grabbed it when I conveniently tripped over. Thought it might come in handy. Give me the first clue where we might be, as well.

‘Soon as we got in that TDM on Vwner I saw somethin’ was up. The guy bypassed the normal controls so I knew we wasn’t headed back to Zero. An’ even ’fore that you could feel things wasn’t right. Not Xurog’s style at all.’

The rising wail of a siren cut through the air.

‘Here we go,’ said Zert.

Soon, alarms were going off everywhere.

‘Now everybody’s looking for us,’ moaned Awg.

‘Nah. It’s not us they’re after. Like I said, I created a diversion. I busted into the air purifyin’ system. ’Stead o’ cleaned air, it’s

suckin’ in gas from the outside. That’ll make ’em cough a bit. An’ us too, if we don’t shift!’

‘Where we headed?’

‘TDM bays – but they’re over th’opposite side, so we gotta cross the central bit to get at ’em.’

Awg looked round for anything he might use as a weapon. He ripped the side off one of the boxes. It gave him a thick strip of board about three feet long. Probably useless, but it made him feel better.

They were soon into the main section of the complex. There were people running, people shouting, people checking meters on the wall, people doing almost everything except looking out for Awg and Zert. Passage by passage, they dodged their way along. But they were tiring, and it was getting harder to breathe. They were nearly through the central section when they were finally noticed. Two Zeroians chased after them.

The corridor they were in was partly blocked by a trolley loaded with equipment. As they sped past it, Awg turned and pushed it as hard as he could back the way they’d come. It bowled along the corridor and cannoned into the two Zeroians, knocking them off their feet and hurling tools and cans of stuff everywhere. Something nasty began spilling out of an upturned container and blackening the floor.

They hammered down a long straight corridor. No one was following them. They reached a point where the passage divided. At the junction, a glowing blue ball hung in the air.

‘What is it?’ panted Awg.

‘Dunno, but it don’ look friendly.’

Awg took a step forward. The glowing sphere moved towards him by the same amount.

Awg stepped forward again. The sphere moved as well, then rose upwards to the level of his neck. Instinctively, he ducked.

A tiny silver dart spat out from the ball’s centre. It missed Awg by a fraction and buried itself in the wall.

‘Wow! I wouldn’t want that in my eye.’

‘Or nowhere else neither,’ shouted Zert. ‘Thousand to one it’s

poisoned. Prob’ly with somethin’ real bad. RUN!’

The glowing ball streaked after them. They were being forced back the way they had come – and that had to be bad news. About half way along the passage, Awg grabbed Zert and pulled him to the ground.

The ball shot past them. Then its sensors realised that the target was no longer ahead and it boomeranged back towards them. As it approached, Awg stood up, gripping his piece of board. In his mind’s eye he saw the hated Hamilton Crutchley bowling down the wicket towards him. He swung the board back and, with all his strength, whacked the blue sphere towards an imaginary far boundary. There was a sharp crack and it sailed back down the corridor, hit a door pillar and exploded. Acrid black smoke drifted towards them.

Zert looked at Awg in amazement. ‘Where d’you learn to do that?’

‘Back on Earth. It’s a game we have, only we don’t usually do the poison dart bit.’

They retraced their steps to the junction and Zert unhesitatingly took the left fork. They were approaching the outer sections of the complex and ahead of them was the first of the airlocks.

Before they realised it, they had tripped a sensor beam. A new alarm sounded and the doors began to close. With seconds to spare, they charged through the inner door. But the outer door was already half shut. Awg turned sideways and slipped through but Zert was too wide for the space. For several seconds he was jammed in the closing door. A huge yank from Awg got him through, but, as the door rolled further across, one of his limbs got caught underneath. Awg forced his piece of board into the rapidly diminishing space and threw his weight against it. The door was levered back just far enough for Zert’s bruised arm to be freed. Seconds later, the full force of the closing mechanism fell upon the strip of board and it burst into fragments as the door finally rolled shut.

They crossed a small chamber hollowed out of the rock. Ahead they could see the next airlock but Zert led them left, and then right, so that they found themselves in a cargo bay containing two TDM cages.

They could have gone straight into the nearest one.

Except for the eight foot high zwnerba blocking the way.

Fifty Seven

Zert was suddenly holding something. Something else that he had stolen in case it came in handy. Something short, rod-like and with a dangerously-glowing handgrip.

Something that looked very much like a gun.

‘Move out the way!’ he shouted.

‘Move, or I swear I’ll do you serious damage! I don’ wanna do it, but I will.’

The zwnerba seemed very distressed.

‘You do not understand,’ he said. ‘I want to come with you.’

‘What!’

‘I must get away from here.’

Zert looked across to the controls of the TDM. He wanted to override them but without his communicator he was powerless to do anything.

‘Can you operate this TDM?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then take us back to Zero.’

The zwnerba moved to the console. He pressed several of the selection keys and stared at the information pad.

‘I cannot choose the destination. The journey has already been programmed and I cannot change it.’ His finger rested on the control button.

Zert looked at Awg.

‘Whaddya think?’

‘We’ve got to get away from here. To anywhere.’

‘OK. Let’s go.’

The zwnerba hit the button. The world dissolved.

There was total darkness and total silence. Then, the space around them became brighter, and for a while Awg could see thousands of images of their TDM cage receding into the distance in all directions. And brighter still, until the light was blinding, and there seemed to be out-of-focus spherical shapes in front of them. Gradually, the glare faded, and the shapes resolved themselves into a geometric pattern. They were looking out at a large circular space. Helicars were parked at landing bays. Across the far side was a city of low, domed buildings connected by tubular walkways.

Awg recognised it and breathed a long sigh of relief. They were at the transporter terminal in Auyvhasdh. There was only one person there to meet them.

Zert slid back the door of the cage and stepped out, his head bowed.

‘Well – what have you got to say for yourself?’ said Xurog.

Fifty Eight

Awg took the zwnerba to Benedict’s house, as he couldn’t think what else to do. The zwnerba hadn’t said a word since their departure from Morvkd and seemed deeply traumatised.

Benedict, kindly as ever, prepared a meal for them all but asked no questions. Eventually, the zwnerba spoke. It seemed that he was the one who had brought the food to Awg and who had then fled.

‘It was what you did,’ he said. ‘You reminded me of how things were. You don’t remember that we met before, do you?’

Awg blushed. ‘I’m afraid I’m not very good at recognising your people,’ he said apologetically. ‘But perhaps it’s just a question of practice.’

‘I was the doorman at the Town House in Gexadkydubm when you came to stay,’ continued the zwnerba. ‘I remembered you.

‘I don’t know what happened to me on Morvkd. I changed. There is something terrible there. It changed us all.’

‘Even Mayor Sharibvdl?’ said Awg. ‘He always was a crook.’

‘Yes, he was a cheat and a swindler,’ answered the zwnerba. ‘But now he has become a monster’.

He shuddered.

‘You have been very foolish.’

‘I know.’

‘Why did you run away?’

‘’Cos you were gonna destroy the pan-object, an’ I thought that was wrong.’

‘Did you not think that I had considered other possibilities?’ Zert was silent.

‘If I were not here,’ said Xurog quietly, ‘what would you propose to do?’

‘I was gonna put the object in the quarantine chamber an’ then try to open it with the stuff I thought up for the cone.’

‘And what safeguards were you going to put in place to prevent a catastrophe if your approach should be wrong?’

‘I was hopin’ to put a dimensional lock on the boundary ablator so it’d only open if my amplitude conditions was met. An’ I’d set ’em real low so’s nothin’ massively dense could get out.’

‘And what about a small but lethal amount of some ultrahazardous substance such as a biotoxin?’

‘I was expectin’ the quarantine chamber’d contain it, ’cos that was what it was built for.’

‘That is acceptable. So it all hinges on the integrity of the dimensional lock. How were you going to construct that?’

‘I dunno. I hadn’t worked out how to do it yet.’

‘Would you allow me to help you?’

There was a deafening silence …

‘You would work on it with me – little Zert. After I ran way an’ everythin’?’

‘Yes. With you, Zertalan Baskuborok. Partly to teach you a lesson but mostly to stop you killing us all if it goes wrong.

‘Now, go and fetch your friend – and we shall determine whether after all your ridiculous adventures there is anything left for us to work on.’

‘Xurog … ’

‘Yes, Zert.’

‘How did you find us an’ bring us back?’

‘I tracked your communicator, of course!’

‘But I built it with a mutronic anti-tracking device. They’re untraceable.’

‘Then it’s as well for you that others can solve riddles besides yourself! As soon as the signal disappeared I knew you were in real trouble. Then I had to jam virtually the entire TDM network to get you back here. I shall be receiving complaints for weeks.

‘Now, do as you are told and BRING YOUR FRIEND BACK HERE AT ONCE.’

Zert fled.

All eyes were on Awg’s rucksack. He opened the pocket and looked inside. There was no pebble.

The space appeared to be completely empty.

Xurog brought over a large sheet of a dark coloured, glassy material.

‘We may have to deconstruct your bag and microsearch every surface,’ he said. ‘But we will start with what is simplest. Shake out the pocket on to this – carefully!’

Awg did as he was asked, and the sheet was then locked into a viewing device which began to scan the magnified image.

‘Examine it closely,’ ordered Xurog. ‘If there is anything, you are probably the most likely to detect it.’

At first, there seemed to be nothing. But when Awg looked very carefully, he could see what appeared to be a very thin, straight hair.

White, its surface glassy and smooth.

And at its centre a tiny stain, darker than the rest.

‘You see something?’ Xurog’s voice was urgent.

‘Yes. It’s like a very fine scratch mark.’

‘So, just one dimension has returned. The object has a length, but little else. However, that is enough.’

The glass sheet was extracted from the viewer and taken to the quarantine chamber, where a new platform, attached to an array of instruments, had been constructed. Once the sheet had been secured, the chamber was sealed.

‘And now, Zertalan Baskuborok,’ said Xurog, ‘you and I have some work to do.’

Xurog and Zert went to the laboratories in the city of the spyridi. They worked without a break for three days.

Xurog was pleased with their progress.

Zert was totally burnt out.

Fifty Nine

‘You don’t mind me coming here?’

Asa was sitting with Awg on the window seat in his room, looking out over the college green. It was the day after the return from Morvkd.

‘No, of course not. I’m just glad you still want to, after all the trouble I’ve caused.’

‘It’s about the only place they won’t look for me. Father makes sure I don’t get a moment to myself. He thinks that’ll keep me away from any unofficial business. Actually, all it means is I hardly get any sleep, because I’m not going to give up. Too many people have made sacrifices for that.’

‘I know stacks of people depend on you. You’re their only hope of getting anything done to put things right.’

‘He might send for you, by the way.’

‘The Patrician? Himself?’

‘Yes. He knows that you defied Xurog. He wasn’t exactly pleased about that. In his eyes, you endangered the planet. But it’s only because of Xurog that you’re not back in Tukzadryk. Zert too.’

‘Xurog spoke up for us?’

‘Yes. He told the Patrician that you had performed a very courageous act by investigating the black box for us, and that the stress of it all had affected your judgement.’

Asa smiled. ‘So I suppose I shouldn’t really be sitting here with someone who’s a bit of a loony.’

‘Thanks a lot! Actually, the sight of Sharibvdl bowing down in front of that jelly blob was enough to blow anyone’s mind.’

‘What d’you think he was doing?’ asked Asa.

‘Getting instructions. That’s where it’s all comes from. Zert always said Sharibvdl wasn’t bright enough to cross the street on his own. He’s been getting it all from the jelly ball. Zert believes the white sphere’s only a communication device to fool people like Sharibvdl. The real brains behind it are hidden away somewhere.’

‘Like in another black box?’

‘That’s what Zert thinks, too.’

Awg bit his lip. He was still worrying over what Asa had said about the Patrician.

‘Do you think I endangered the planet?’

‘Yes. But not intentionally. And I’m more relaxed about it now I’ve had time to think. That’s probably true for the Patrician as well. He seemed happy enough for me to take responsibility for what we do next.’

‘What’s changed?’

‘Several things. You’re usually lucky, and I trust you. I also trust the judgement of the spyridi. And the sphere wanted the pebble back. That suggests it was something it valued rather than something dangerous. Of course, it also confirms that the Chykideyh black box and the Morvkd sphere are connected.’

And Awg didn’t say so, but he had another reason for feeling sure the two were linked. The insidious, tempting voice in his head had been the same.

‘Who d’you think built that place on Morvkd?’ he asked.

‘That will have to be investigated. There’s been a small research station there for a long time, but it was very rarely visited. It now looks like something else was there first, as must also have happened at Chykideyh. And more recently it’s obviously become an outpost of Sharibvdl Enterprises.’

Asa held out a small disc of black glass.

‘Have a look at this.’

Awg held it to his eye. He was expecting to see a picture of someone or something, like the images of Asa and Zert he’d been given at the end of his first visit to Zero. In fact, he saw

a whole gallery of portraits, all in colour and all in holographic 3-D.

‘Recognise any of them?’

‘YES! Of course, the first one’s Sharibvdl himself – and next to him is the Zeroianne I spotted in virtual Gexadkydubm and actually met on Morvkd. Not a nice person.’

‘No. That pair are made for each other.’

‘The next two I don’t know, but the fourth one – and the fifth – were supershapes. And the next one was with Sharibvdl in the room on Morvkd. I think there’s others …. How did you get these?’

‘We’ve been doing more detective work. You know about the raid on the black-market water plant under Gexadkydubm?’

‘When your two friends were killed?’

‘Yes … ’

Asa was silent for a moment.

‘… well, after the raid, we checked on all the companies in the city to see whether any of them showed signs of difficulty or problems with their business.’

‘So you could spot the ones that must have been using the stolen water – because suddenly the supply was cut off!’

‘Exactly. And we identified twenty seven! The pictures you’ve got there are the owners or Chief Executives of those businesses. We already know that at least fifteen of them have definite links to Sharibvdl.

‘And there’s something else. We’ve identified the building you told us about where someone went in a normal Zeroian and came out a supershape. It’s a private medical clinic. They perform minor surgical procedures – usually things like cosmetic facials. They were quite open about what they did and told us that they had a contract with the Mayor to supply people with a special type of implant. They said it was a simple procedure – like fitting an identity chip. Apparently, the device was supposed to be a harmless health aid, releasing vitamins and other health supplements into the body.’

‘I wonder what it was really doing,’ said Awg.

‘I’m sure I can guess. It’s probably Sharibvdl’s biggest earner. He supplies the implants for a suitably enormous fee …’

‘THAT’s probably what they were arguing about when I saw them! But what then?’

‘I don’t know how, but I’m sure that what it does is confer immunity to the auto-extradition process. Somehow, it stops the system either recognising them or registering that an offence is being committed. Think of the value of that! It’s a licence for a lifetime of undetectable crime!’

Sixty

After a brief rest, Xurog and Zert had returned to the quarantine room, taking with them the results of their intensive work together in the spyridi laboratories. They now made final preparation for their critical and perilous experiment. The staff of the isolation facility had been on constant watch since the pan-object had been placed in their care. Every aspect of its nature had been closely observed. Its length and mass were continuously monitored, and any disturbance in the electromagnetic field around it would have been instantly detected. So far, nothing had changed.

A small group was now gathered around the quarantine chamber. The delicate, hair-like transmutation of Awg’s pebble still sat on the dark glass plate, but a new piece of equipment had been placed beside it. It had the form of a silver cube. Both Zert and Xurog knew that it possessed the power to do what they wanted. The only question was, what would happen when it did.

Seated in a semicircle around the control console, everyone was on edge. Zert was visibly shaking and Awg had that exam feeling, only much worse. Asa was extremely pale and even Xurog was subdued. Only Benedict was outwardly calm.

Xurog began.

‘Asa has assumed responsibility for this experiment, and it falls to her to start the sequence. I must remind you all once again that there is still a risk, although we have done our utmost to minimise any consequences.’

Asa stood up, but did not move to the controls. Instead, she turned to Awg.

‘I have listened very carefully to Xurog on this matter. He believes that Zert created something quite new in his design for the original cone device. It holds unknown possibilities for us. And you, Awg, were the first to use it. You risked your life in entering the black box. It was you who found the pan-object and are the most closely connected with it. Therefore, I think that you should make the beginning.’

Xurog showed Awg the symbols to enter for ‘open’.

‘Then,’ said Xurog, ‘you must press the white key.’

‘But what’s the yellow key for?’

‘If I judge that there is mortal danger, I shall use that.’

‘And then?’

‘It will initiate an exclusion procedure. The object will be forced back into the hidden dimensions and the entry parameters for our own space will be permanently erased. It will not be able to re-enter Zero’s world. The change will be irreversible. The object will be gone, and anything within it –good or ill – will be lost to us for ever.’

Awg swallowed hard. The possibility of destroying the planet was bad enough, but now there was also the alternative risk of ending a life – and crushing the happiness of another.

Awg entered the ‘open’ code.

He thought of Robo back home in Llangarreg, waiting desperately for news.

He pressed the white key.

Xurog towered at his side, poised above the yellow.

Sixty One

There was a small flash of light.

And then, for several agonisingly long minutes, nothing.

Then it seemed to Awg that the tiny length of extraordinary matter was becoming thicker. Gaining volume. Changing size and shape. Growing.

Soon, the outline of the original pebble had been restored. And now everyone could see it, even Zert.

And afterwards, and for the next two days, it just sat there. Awg stayed until he couldn’t keep his eyes open, and then went off to get some sleep. Even Asa tired eventually and did the same. Zert and Xurog stayed constantly on watch. Benedict sat with them, his eyes closed.

On the morning of the third day, Awg was awoken by Benedict. A further change was taking place. Together, they hurried back to the quarantine building. Awg had slept in his clothes and didn’t feel massively awake. He was rather disappointed to find that the pebble looked exactly the same as before. Zert and Xurog were hunched over the display panels. Awg didn’t feel like disturbing them, but Zert had been expecting him and turned round at once.

‘We bin monitorin’ th’energy balance. First off, a load o’ high-frequency signals come in from somewhere. Looked like a whole stack o’ information was bein’ downloaded. Then that stopped an’ the mass started goin’ up. Look at this.’

He showed Awg a graph on one of the cube screens.

‘Shows its weight since the start.’ He pointed. ‘That’s where the pebble re-formed. The shape changed but the mass didn’t.

But look at what happened after!’

The graph climbed steadily.

‘The size han’t altered but the weight’s bin goin’ up.’

Awg was unimpressed. ‘That isn’t possible. You can’t make something out of nothing.’

Zert snorted. ‘It’s not from nothin’. It’s suckin’ in mass from th’other dimensions it exists in. It’s transferrin’ itself from there into our world. An’ look here!’

He keyed in some instructions and two red markers appeared on the graph.

‘That first mark’s about what the pebble’d weigh if it really was a pebble, an’ made o’ rock. The second mark’s about what you weigh.’

Now Awg was impressed. ‘So the pebble’s now twice as heavy as me. I don’t believe it!’

‘’s true. An’ now the weight’s levelled off. So you know what’s gotta happen next.’

And, even as they watched, the change began. The pebble began to expand.

Xurog tensed, a fraction away from the yellow key. Zert switched the screens to the setting monitor all functions.

The pebble grew, its walls becoming more and more translucent and its centre ever darker. It looked like a small, well-defined cloud with a thunderstorm at its core.

After four hours, it was bigger than Awg himself and its envelope so thin as to be completely invisible. The only evidence for a skin or shell was that there had to be some division between that tight swirl of white fog and the outside world of the quarantine chamber.

Everyone had gathered to watch. Zert and Xurog at the controls. Awg by their side. Asa and Benedict standing behind.

And then, the bubble burst.

There was a searing flash of light, so bright and so sudden that no one was prepared for it. The instruments on the control panel went berserk.

Awg could see nothing except the huge purple splodge that

seemed to be filling his head. As his eyes began to recover, he fought to focus on the chamber in front of him.

There was no trace of the pebble, or shreds of anything membrane-like that might have been part of it.

But on the floor was the figure of a man.

A human, dressed in thick, padded trousers and an arctic jacket. And he wasn’t moving. He was lying face down, with his head turned to one side, and there was a lot of blood.

Zert had been right.

Awg had, unknowingly, accomplished what he set out to do.

But was Robo’s father alive?

Sixty Two

Xurog would not allow anyone to enter the sealed chamber –even to give emergency medical help – until the first-level safety checks had been completed.

The only information he could pass on to Awg was that the figure was certainly human and was alive (the heartbeat showed up clearly on the monitors). Eventually, Zeroian medics in protective suits were allowed into the chamber to examine the injured man. They could find no contamination or dangerous infection, so he was moved into an open medical unit. He remained unconscious for three days.

Awg sat by his bedside, hoping in that way to lessen the shock when he recovered.

At last, there came a flickering of eyelids.

Awg spoke softly.

‘Dr Robertson …… ’

‘ … Uh?’

‘Dr Robertson … ’

‘Who … are you?’

‘I’m called Awg. I’m a friend of Jon’s.’

But the injured man had already drifted back into sleep.

When he woke again, he was more alert. Awg repeated his words.

‘Dr Robertson – I’m a friend of Jon’s.’

The figure moved, slowly turning his head towards Awg.

‘But … Jonathan’s at home in England. … He didn’t come with me.’

‘You aren’t in Norway any more.’

Robo’s father tried to sit up, but the effort was too great and he sank back.

‘Uh …then … where the heck am I?’

‘I’m afraid that’s going to take quite a bit of explaining.’

Awg took a new set of translocution modules from beside the bed.

‘By the way,’ he said, ‘you’ll find it easier to talk with people if I put these in your ears.’

The Zeroian doctors were very interested in their new patient. Robo’s dad was the first full-grown being from Earth that they had ever been able to examine closely. They looked up the original report on Benedict, but there was of course no one alive who had any personal memory.

Dr Robertson had suffered severe damage to his face. The resonator was discovered partly embedded in his chest, but the thick jacket had adsorbed much of the shock and saved him from serious internal injury.

The Zeroians found that the Sabqveli regeneration procedure worked quite well on humans. Dr Robertson’s ribs and chest muscles were repaired completely and the residual scarring on his face was minimal.

Awg stayed with Robo’s dad for several days, returning to his lodgings only at night. Once he’d begun to accept the idea of being on another planet, the main thing Dr Robertson wanted to hear about was Jonathan. He made Awg tell the whole story, from the time they had met at school up to unexpectedly getting separated in Llangarreg. And he told Awg to stop the ‘Dr Robertson’ and just call him Gary.

He was very disturbed by the happenings at Marsh Lane, and took a lot of reassuring that Robo really was OK and, at the moment, safely in Wales with Awg’s grandparents.

Awg also told him about Milroy and helped him piece together the Norway story.

‘What was the last thing you remember?’ Awg asked.

‘Putting that metal tri-sphere into the X-ray chamber and turning on the beam. I half-remember something bursting in my face but it’s more a vague feeling than a real memory.’

‘Was there anything after that – before here, I mean?’

‘I clearly remember waking in a white empty space. Just about everything was white, except where I’d made it red. I definitely remember groping about, trying to get up and walk, but there was blood all over the place and I couldn’t see properly. Then I blacked out again and there’s nothing else until I woke up here. If I am awake – and the whole thing’s not some wild dream!’

Awg took his hand and squeezed it hard.

‘No. I’m afraid it’s real, and it’s the truth, and you’re stuck with it.’

Then Awg told him his own story, from its beginning with the clock in Llangarreg to his expedition into the black coffin and the rescue of the pebble.

During all this time, it had been thought best that Gary Robertson should be seen only by Awg and the native Zeroian medics who had treated him. But the day came when Awg felt that the patient was strong enough to stand a few more shocks. So, on his next visit, he made some arrangements, and at the end of the morning he said to Gary, ‘I think you should meet the nurse who looked after you when you were first taken out of the quarantine capsule.’

The door opened and the zwnerba came in.

Robo’s dad just sat there with his mouth open. Eventually, he managed to stammer out ‘thank you very much’. The zwnerba bowed slightly and quietly withdrew.

‘That was amazing. Even after all you’ve told me, coming face to face with the reality of it was still a real shock to the system. Especially after Norway. Seeing a live one.’

‘The head, you mean.’

‘Yeah.’

Awg grinned. He could just hear Zert’s voice saying OK, OK. You just gotta get used to it.

‘So, d’you think you’re strong enough to have a chat with my best friend?’

‘Bring it on.’

Zert came in.

Dr Robertson went white, but quickly recovered himself. Then they talked together for four hours.

‘Zert … ’

Awg dodged outside the room where they had left Gary asleep.

‘What’s going to happen to Xurog?’

‘Nothin’ … why?’

‘Because now Gary’s here, it’s obvious he did disobey the Patrician. He didn’t destroy the pan-object.’

‘But he did destroy it. He did ’xactly what he was asked. What does “destroy” mean?’

Awg thought for a moment.

‘To break down – put an end to.’

‘Well, that’s ’xactly what he did. He caused the pebble to cease to exist. It’s gone. Totally.’

‘But what about having to fire it into a sun?’

‘Someone else’s idea. Suggestion. It din’ come from the Patrician. His instruction to Xurog was only the object should be destroyed. An’ he done it. But you got what you wanted, as well.’

Sixty Three

Gary Robertson must have been very fit, because he recovered from his ordeal remarkably quickly. And once he had recovered, all he talked about was getting home to Jonathan. Awg knew he had to go with him. He wanted to see Robo himself and he was worried about his grandparents. They would have had no news at all since his unexpected departure. Besides, there was the little matter of getting back to school. Awg wondered what Robo had said in that letter to his parents: he’d been suspiciously cagey about it.

Awg had worked out that he’d been away from Earth for at least three weeks. There was going to be a lot of explaining to do. But Awg knew there was a way to make things easier. There was normally no connection between time in Zero’s Universe and time in Earth’s. He could get back whenever he liked, as long as he didn’t break Benedict’s rule and try to return before he set out. Perhaps if he could arrange to get back just a few days afterwards. A few small adjustments …

Zert was aghast.

‘Don’ even think ’bout it! You can’t imagine how lucky you was to get back like you did the first time. You couldda bin megamiles out, ages out. Don’t mess with it! We’re gonna do ’xactly the same as we did for you an’ your grandad. Same resonator, same settin’s, same everythin’. That way, you should both be OK this time too.’

‘What’s going to happen to the other resonator,’ asked Awg, ‘the Adventurers’ one that got Gary here?’

‘It got pretty beat up, so there’s repairs for a start. But that’ll give us chance to investigate a bit further. Like Xurog said, we don’t know too much ’bout ’em an’ how they works.’

‘I wish I could stay,’ said Awg. ‘There’s still so much to do.’

‘You done pretty well anyhow,’ said Zert. ‘You got your friend’s dad out o’ the black box an’ found out loads o’ things to help Asa. An’ there’s all that stuff we sussed out on Morvkd as well. We gotta find what this Ulgor is an’ why it’s bin passin’ stuff to Sharibvdl an’ his cronies.’

‘Yep – and I’ve been thinking about the supershapes. They must be the ones who’ve had the implants, so they’re special.’

‘Yeah, they’re specially crooked.’

‘No. It’s more than that. They’re special to whatever’s behind the black box and the jelly blob. They’re singled out in its field of vision, so they must be important to it. But why?’

‘That’s what Asa’s gotta find out. You know she’s gone back to Gexadkydubm?’

‘No. I hoped I’d see her again before I left.’

Awg was frustrated he wasn’t going to be part of it all. In fact, he might never get to know how it worked out. And he really had wanted to say goodbye.

Zert saw the disappointment in his face. He reached into a small box he’d brought.

‘It won’t help with Asa – but I done this for you.’

Zert had asked to borrow Awg’s watch again and he now returned it. Beside the knob that set the hands there was now an extra stud.

‘Jus’ try it,’ said Zert. ‘Same method as before. 12.01 for your letter A, 12.02 for – what d’you call it, the second one?’

‘B’ said Awg.

‘Yeah, B. An’ so on. Dunno if it’ll work. It’s much harder th’other way round, ’cos we got all the power an’ the technology back here, an’ you only got what I can fit in that little case. Try it. But remember, only very short messages. Twenty symbols max, an’ the shorter the better. An’ it’s slow.’

‘How slow?’

‘Dunno. P’raps that’s the first thing we gotta test. When you gets back, look for a message. What’ll I say?’

Awg thought for a moment.

‘What about “Watch this Space” ?’

Sixty Four

On the morning of the journey, Awg collected together his few belongings and stuffed them into his rucksack. He checked the pocket that had contained the pebble to make quite sure it was now empty. Then there was one last very important item to put in. He took it from the back of the cupboard where it had been stored since the day of his arrival from Llangarreg. It was remarkably heavy, although most of the weight seemed to be in the central sphere.

Awg took a final look out of the window to make sure he’d remember the view across the green. He’d grown to like his room in the student village and was in many ways sorry to be leaving it. Then Zert appeared at the door and together they went to the plasma transport unit near the helicraft terminal. They waited for Benedict to arrive with Gary.

‘Zert … ’ Awg shuffled his feet uneasily. There was something he wanted to ask.

‘You know when we were trying to get off Morvkd, and that zwnerba stood in the way … would you really have shot him?’

‘Dunno. Prob’ly wouldn’ta done much anyhow. Welding gun I’d robbed off a workman’s trolley. Mighta bin better to lob it at him. Lucky things turned out like they did.’

The door opened and Gary and Benedict came in. But they were not alone. Xurog was with them.

Gary looked as if he had not slept the previous night.

‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ he said, ‘and to wish you good luck for your journey.’

‘What about you?’ said Awg, in astonishment.

‘I’m not coming. I’ve decided to stay, at least for a while.’

‘What Dr Robertson means, is that I have asked him to remain with us,’ said Xurog.

‘Many people visited me in hospital,’ said Gary. ‘Asa called in to welcome me to their planet. I learnt a tremendous amount from the wisdom of Benedict. But nothing prepared me for what I heard from Xurog.’

‘I have to admit that my original visit was largely out of curiosity,’ said Xurog. ‘I wished to meet a scientist from Earth but did not expect to benefit very greatly from the experience. My arrogance was soon deflated! I found I had much to learn.’

It was also obvious that the two had formed a real friendship.

Gary sat down beside Awg.

‘Awg – you, especially, will realise what a hard choice this has been for me, but I know that I’ve reached the right decision. Xurog suspects that a monstrous horror lies within this ‘Ulgor’ that you have unmasked, and that to withstand its destructive power we must all work together.’

He held out a letter.

‘Give this to Jonathan for me. Please see that he’s OK. It’s a lot to ask, but he is strong and resilient, and I know you’ll look after him.’

And he put his arms around Awg and held him very tight.

Awg felt Zert tap him on the shoulder.

‘Everythin’s ready. You gotta go.’

Awg got to his feet, the shock still on him.

‘You sure you got the resonator?’ asked Zert, as they locked limbs in a final bristly embrace.

Awg nodded silently, pointing to the rucksack at his side.

Zert led him through the building and into the spherical chamber. He helped Awg strap himself into the single bunk at its centre.

‘I swear I din’ know. He an’ Xurog musta decided yesterday. I

gotta go now. You’ll be OK.’

The double doors were closed and the lights turned off. Awg remembered the cold and the silence. He remembered his grandfather reaching over and grasping his hand. But this time he was alone. Really alone, and very scared. There were a lot of things that could go wrong.

There was a blinding light, and then a whirlpool of darkness.

Sixty Five

Robo stuck his nose out of the bedclothes. The room felt very cold and his breath issued white and billowy into the morning air. He slid out of bed and whipped across to turn on the small electric fire. Medieval castles didn’t have central heating. He had intended to dive straight back into bed and wait until the room warmed up a bit. But the sunlight streaming in through the tall windows tempted him across to gaze out from his tower. He wondered how many others had done the same over the hundreds of years the castle had stood; perhaps some of them not so very different from himself.

It was the first really cold day of the autumn. Sunlight stabbed through the trees and the hills were white with frost. From up here he could see for miles. It was far too good a day to waste.

He washed quickly in some of the ice-cold water in the jug, pulled on his warmest clothes and went downstairs. Joseph and Annie were already up, and there was a log fire blazing in the grate.

Robo was only halfway through his breakfast when there was a knock at the huge old door. Joseph drew back the bolts and turned the massive iron key in the lock.

It was Gwen.

When Awg woke up, he knew exactly where he was. He was at the top of Gellyn mountain. Over there was the white rock, and to his right was the path leading down to Llangarreg. It was obviously very early morning and it was bitterly cold.

Awg fished in his rucksack for the small amount of extra clothing he had with him, and put it on. It did not immediately strike him that he was very oddly dressed. That was because his body was still trying to recover from being transmitted through Space and his brain was seriously out to lunch.

What Awg should have done next was to find the best shelter he could, lie down and rest. This was what Zert had got him to do when he had arrived on Zero, and it was what he had done last time he returned to Earth, only it hadn’t then been a conscious decision. He’d rested up till dawn because he was stuck in a cave behind a waterfall and couldn’t see the way out.

But, because Awg thought he was OK and wanted to get back to his grandparents and Robo, he stumbled off down the path. He was unaware that his brain was still imagining itself somewhere up in the ionosphere and trying to work out where the rest of his body had got to. And that was why he turned left at the Cross in the Rock instead of right. Unfortunately, this path ended very abruptly in a hundred-foot drop.

Robo and Gwen toiled up the mountainside. Each had a large coil of rope over their shoulder and Robo had two pockets full of cams, bolts and other useful hardware. If his job was to be a rescuer, then he was going to be properly prepared for it.

Eventually they reached the top, and could see immediately that the shepherd’s report had been right. Struck by lightning Edward had said. A circle of grass was blackened and there were cracks and splits in several of the nearby rocks. A gorse bush had been reduced to ashes. And where the frozen ground had been melted, there were clear footprints leading off down the mountain, back the way they had come.

‘We’ve got to go back,’ said Robo.

‘Why? We didn’t meet anybody on the way up.’

‘So it must mean that anyone going down has turned off the path.’

‘Who are you looking for, then?’

‘It’s a long story, but if something has happened here I’m expecting some friends of mine to be around as well.’

Gwen looked squarely at Robo. She had a peculiar smile on her face.

‘Would one of these friends be Mrs Bradley’s grandson by any chance?’

Robo was taken aback.

‘Yes. How did you know that?’

‘He was here before. When Mr Bradley came back – from nobody knows where. Perhaps that’s a long story as well. Never mind – you get used to these things in Llangarreg.’

They came to the place where the path divided. Smaller tracks split off in several directions and the main path was marked by a cross cut in the rock.

Robo went back up the hill a little way and stood looking down at the junction.

‘Gwen … say you were coming down from the top and you took a wrong turn here – which way do you think you’d go?’

‘That’s easy. Down the path to the Lookout. It follows the way you’ve been going and curves downhill. Lots of people make that mistake. That’s why the monks put the cross. It shows you’ve got to veer off to the right to get down the mountain.’

‘Come on, then.’

Awg was surprised to discover that there was no more path under his feet and that he was falling through the air. Before he was alert enough to consider that this was almost certainly a bad idea, he landed with a whummppp! that jolted the breath out of his body.

He lay still for a few moments to make sure that all the falling had stopped, and then tried to sit up. His surroundings appeared to consist entirely of prickles. They were in his hair, down his neck, jabbing into his arms and legs, everywhere. Even in places where he definitely didn’t want prickles to be. Painfully, he got up on to his hands and knees. He seemed to be completely enveloped in gorse bushes. Eventually, he struggled to his feet and was able to look around.

Behind him, a wall of rock rose up to the crag from which he had begun his rapid descent. In front, he seemed to be suspended in mid air. Carefully (he was by now awake enough to be cautious), he made his way towards the edge. At first, the mass of undergrowth seemed firm beneath him, but at the next step it sagged alarmingly and Awg pulled himself back sharply. He could see the ground through gaps in the branches, and it was a long way down. He stepped back from the overhang, sat firmly in the centre of the bushes and did the only thing that seemed sensible.

He shouted for help.

Gwen and Robo walked quickly down the left-hand path. After a short distance, it ended at the viewpoint. Far below, a rough track ran along the valley bottom. Between this and where they stood, the hillside fell steeply away in a series of terraces. The first of these was about fifty feet down and was covered in a dense blanket of gorse. Perched uncomfortably upon this, a figure was waving his arms and calling out.

‘If that’s your friend,’ said Gwen, ‘he’s fallen over the cliff.’

‘That’s him all right. I wonder how much he’s hurt.’

‘He can’t be too bad if he’s making all that racket! You’d better get down there and see for yourself.’

‘Then what? Even if he’s OK I’ll never get him back up here.’

‘No, but if you can drop him down another fifty feet it’s nothing like as steep. Then you can reach the track that goes

into Trefedlin and we can get the Landrover along that.’

‘OK, I’m going down.’

‘Climbing?’

‘Not when I can ride! When I’m down, I’ll whistle once if I’m coming back up and need you to lifeline me. If I can get Awg down, I’ll whistle three times. In that case, untie the ropes and sling them down, because we’ll need them.’

‘What if I can’t hear your whistle?’

‘You’ll hear me all right.’

Robo checked he’d got all the kit he needed, and roped up. Then, with Gwen securing the top, he abseiled down to Awg’s level. His first words to Awg were:

‘Are you OK?’

And then, sick with apprehension: ‘Where’s Dad?’

Sixty Six

‘Where d’you learn to whistle like that?’ Awg was still halfdeafened from his experience with Robo on the ledge.

‘It’s special. Dad taught me. The sound’ll carry over a mile in the mountains.’ Robo lapsed into silence. It had been a happy memory. But the way things were now, it hurt.

They were sitting on a pile of felled timber by the forestry track. The logs and the trees overhead provided some shelter, but the wind was bitterly cold. At last, they heard in the distance the sound they had been waiting for, and in a few minutes the Landrover drew up beside them.

Robo climbed the step and opened the door. He was surprised to find only one person inside.

‘I didn’t realise you meant you could get the Landrover along here!’

‘I’ve been driving since I was ten. You need things like that when you farm on the hills.’

Awg stuck his head inside the Landrover. ‘Hi, Gwen.’

Slightly embarrassed, Robo made some introductions: ‘This is Awg. I don’t think you two have actually met.’

‘No,’ said Gwen, giving Awg a rather strange look, ‘but I know his Gran very well. She seems quite normal.’

Robo, rather puzzled at this remark, helped Awg into the back and they were off, lurching along the heavily rutted track. The Landrover was ancient and battered but Gwen was obviously used to handling it. Rain had swollen the streams and Awg closed his eyes as they rocked across a narrow bridge made from old railway sleepers and then ploughed through a hollow

that was just a sea of mud.

Gwen swung them around a hairpin and then into a hillside climb that seemed to challenge gravity. Eventually, they reached the metalled road, and she slipped the Rover out of four wheel drive before setting off towards Llangarreg.

‘I’ll take you straight to Bryn Castell and then I’ll run this back to the farm. With a bit of luck, I’ll get it home before Dad misses it. He’ll be real mad at me if he finds I’ve been driving on the roads again.’

They reached the house. Awg got out and knocked at the door. Robo made the most of a few moments alone with Gwen.

Grandma Annie burst into tears as soon as she saw Awg, and he got the world’s biggest hug. Before going indoors, Awg ran back to the Landrover. He rapped on the window and Robo hastily moved back into the passenger seat.

‘Thanks, Gwen,’ said Awg. ‘You were terrific. But I think I’ll add that bit through the woods to my list of scariest journeys.’

‘That’s OK. So long, Superman.’

Once inside, Awg was inspected for damage. He had got off remarkably lightly. Joseph wondered if Awg’s body had still been so relaxed after the interstellar trip that he had been protected from the worst of the fall. He had heard of drunks falling down flights of stairs and getting away with a few bruises. And the bed of gorse had acted as a gigantic cushion, although Awg was removing the prickles from his clothes and from himself for weeks afterwards.

Awg felt wretchedly unhappy for Robo. He could just imagine the sickness of disappointment after so many weeks of waiting and hoping. And it was particularly awful that he couldn’t himself provide any explanation for why Gary Robertson had chosen to stay behind. All he could do was to hand over the letter.

Robo took the letter and went up to their room. At first he could hardly bring himself to open it, but eventually he did. This is what it said:

Jonathan

I’m writing this with a very heavy heart, because the thing I want most in the world is to be back home with you. So I hope you’ll understand when I say that I’ve decided to stay here on Zero for a while at least. I know this will be a massive blow to you and I’m desperately sorry. Let me explain. Through the most astonishing accident, I’ve been sent on the greatest voyage of exploration that any human being has ever experienced. Somehow, I’ve travelled beyond even the limits of our own world into another – the Dark Universe. There are unlimited opportunities for learning and discovery. If I were to come home now I may never get the chance to return, and this incredible moment would be lost. So I hope the scientist in you will see that this is something I have to do.

And I must tell you that there is something else. I have been talking a lot to Xurog, the leader and chief technologist of the Spyridi. Although his understanding is vastly greater than my own, I believe that there are also areas where I can help his people. A terrifying problem has arisen and every scrap of knowledge and experience will be needed if disaster is to be averted.

I have a great respect for your friend Awg and I have asked him to arrange with his family to look after you until I return. I know that I can rely on them to do this, especially his grandparents as they know about the Dark World.

There is no easy way to communicate but I’ll try to do something. I shall return as soon as I can. I can hardly bear to be parted from you for a longer time but I hope so much that you will understand, and forgive me.

With all my love to you, so very far away

Awg waited a very long time before going upstairs. He wondered if Robo would be asleep, or what state he would be in if awake. He crept very quietly up to the room. There was still a light under the door. Awg opened it as slowly as he could and went in.

Robo was sitting up in bed writing his diary. He seemed quite calm, but was deathly white.

‘Are you … OK?’

Robo nodded. ‘I’m fine.’

A silence.

‘You like Gwen a lot, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

A long silence.

‘What did she mean, “So long, Superman”?’

‘Well, take a look at yourself,’ said Robo. Awg moved until he could see himself in the room’s one small mirror. He hadn’t changed his clothes since getting back. It had been freezing on the top of Gellyn mountain and he had put on the only extra items he had. And it was too cold to take the other stuff off first. The tee shirt didn’t look too bad, but …

‘I still don’t understand the ‘Superman’ bit,’ said Awg, who was feeling exhausted and shaky and anything but.

Robo looked down at the Formula One racing cars.

‘So – who else do you know who wears his underpants outside his trousers?’

Sixty Seven

The start of the following day was rather like Christmas morning. Everyone was in a fever of anticipation, waiting to hear what Awg had to say. He himself was just so very glad to be back safely in Llangarreg. There had been times, especially on the moon of Morvkd, when he had seriously doubted that he would ever see his home again. Then a further wave of guilt and sorrow swept over him as he thought how Robo must feel. He had waited all that long, long time to get his father back, and now it hadn’t happened.

Annie cooked them all a massive breakfast, and then the whole of the rest of the day was taken up with Awg’s story.

Each of his listeners took different parts of his tale for their own. Robo discovered that Awg had risked his life on at least two occasions to save his father – and in the end had succeeded in rescuing him without realising it. Robo wished for the thousandth time that he had been there too, and wondered how things might have turned out then. Would they both have stayed in Zero’s Universe, or would they now be home together?

Joseph was fascinated by the time bubbles and how the pebble had meant so many different things to different people. To Asa and her father it had seemed a deadly threat, to Sharibvdl it had presented an opportunity for blackmail and extortion, whilst to Zert and to Awg it brought danger and, eventually, hope.

It was at this point that Awg made a discovery. He knew he’d left Llangarreg on the night of 2nd October and he announced that it was now, according to his calculations, the 25th.

‘And the rest,’ said Robo.

‘Meaning what?’ responded Awg.

‘Meaning it isn’t 25th October. Today’s the 3rd of November. You were away a month.’

Awg checked his watch. It said 25th October. Robo continued:

‘So this thing you told us about the resonator locking the time interval on Zero to the time here hasn’t worked.’

Awg thought for a minute. Then he remembered what had happened to Gary.

‘No, I don’t think it’s that. It’s the black box. Your Dad thought he was in his time bubble for a few days, but we worked out it had to be nearer five weeks – ten times as long. So, I’ve been thinking that I was in the black box for less than a day, but I bet it was over a week. That’d account for my lost days. But the odd thing was, I remember feeling my heartbeat to see if I was still alive, and it was about 80 to the minute by my watch. So my heart wasn’t slowed down.’

‘No, that’s not right,’ said Joseph. ‘It seems unbelievable, but if the pace of time really was slower inside than outside, everything would be affected. So checking you heart against your watch wouldn’t show any difference, because they’d both be slowed down by the same amount.’

There was a long silence, and then Grandma Annie said she’d heard quite enough about dawdling clocks and one-eyed giants and black rain and clouds of poison gas, and she didn’t understand why Jon’s father wanted to stay in such an awful place.

‘It’s not awful,’ said Awg. ‘A lot of it’s quite like Earth. There are awful bits and wonderful bits. It’s just that some of it’s way outside anything we ever experience here.’

And then Robo showed them the letter, and they understood. But Awg’s grandparents were worried about what they’d been asked to do.

‘Of course we’ll look after you,’ said Joseph. ‘It’s the very least we can do for you and your father. But do you think he wants you to live here? The nearest secondary school’s in Colebury. I

don’t know how we’d get you there each day and there’s nowhere else you could stay.’

‘No, he’ll come home with me,’ said Awg. ‘He’ll stay with us.’

‘But I don’t know how your parents will cope,’ said Annie. ‘Organisation’s not their strong point, and it’s only a small house.’

‘I expect we’ll manage somehow,’ said Awg. And they did, because things at home had changed.

Sixty Eight

Awg’s father wasn’t usually worried by things that came in the post. That was because he never saw them. His wife took care of everything like that. No items of normal daily life were allowed to trouble his mind, in case they extinguished “that precious creative spark”.

But on the day after Awg and Robo set out for Wales, he happened to be at the door when the postlady came, and he just happened to notice one of the letters she brought. And that was because it was actually addressed to him, personally. Most letters that arrived said ‘Mrs Bradley’ because she was the one who took care of everything.

Mr Bradley took the letter into his workshop and opened it. This is what he read:

Dear Mr Bradley

If you want to see your son Allardyce again, send us the details of your new invention. He will then be released unharmed, although there may be some delay before he returns. DO NOT GO TO THE POLICE OR TELL ANYONE ELSE.

Signed A Wellwisher

As Robo had admitted to himself, this was not one of his better ideas. But he could have had no idea of its consequences.

Mr Bradley was appalled. How could anyone have found out about his invention? He hadn’t finished working on it yet.

It was a nuisance about Allardyce as well.

It just so happened that Mr Bradley had indeed recently discovered something really useful. Like most such things, it was a complete accident.

In his workshop, he had an old waste bucket. At the end of the day, he dumped into it all the residues from different experiments he had been conducting. One night, a filthy cleaning rag dropped off its hook and landed in the mixture.

Next day, Mr Bradley noticed with annoyance what had happened. He tut-tutted, pulled the rag out, and rinsed it under the tap. As the running water washed away his mixture, it left behind a beautifully clean piece of cloth. In fact, the cloth looked like new. Mr Bradley was actually quite clever, and quickly worked out what had happened.

He went to see his old friend Mr Lafarge who owned a small detergent factory. After a few tests, they could see they were on to a winner.

Mr Bradley stared at the kidnap note. To him, it was quite clear what had happened. Allfroth Ltd, who were the biggest detergent company in the country, had obviously got to hear about his invention and were determined to get hold of it at all costs.

There seemed to be nothing else for it, so he wrote down the details and posted them off to Allfroth’s Head Office. Unfortunately, in his haste he made some rather serious errors in the formula.

Mr Chetwynd, manager of Allfroth’s factory in the Midlands, was not a popular figure. This was partly because he was paid a lot more than anyone else, but mainly because he was a pompous idiot. He had been asked by Head Office to make a large batch of a mysterious new product which they were very

secretive about. He quickly passed the details to Shift Foreman Troughton. This was partly because he didn’t understand anything technical but mainly because he always passed jobs straight on and never did anything himself.

Albert Troughton, who had come up the hard way and knew his job inside out, soon came back to say that the information did not appear to be correct. Mr Chetwynd told him to get on with the job and not waste time asking stupid questions, as greater minds than his (meaning his own) had already considered the matter.

Mr Troughton and his team cautiously made up the first batch and put it into the reactor to heat up. When the temperature was steady they went off duty, leaving the following note for the foreman of the night shift:

Hello Tom Chetwynd has insisted that I run this batch of new stuff. If you check the components, you’ll see there is twice as much activator and ten times as much peroxide as normal.

If I were you, I’d keep a very close watch on the temperature and if it starts rising too fast you know what steps to take (bloody big ones).

Bert

Sixty Nine

Next day, Awg’s father was surprised to get a call from Mr Lafarge saying did he know that Allfroth’s factory had been destroyed. There had been a huge explosion during the night. Fortunately, no-one had been hurt. The only casualty had been at Mr Chetwynd’s house nearby, where a lump of metal had fallen through the roof and destroyed his cornflake collection.

With the Allfroth factory out of commission, there was a national shortage of cleaning materials. Mr Lafarge took on more staff and greatly expanded his output. His best selling product was Mr Bradley’s washing liquid. It was a runaway success.

Later, Awg’s father received a cheque with a rather large number of noughts on it. Even Mr Bradley himself, who didn’t deal much with money matters, was impressed. Unfortunately, he then forgot about it and used the back of the cheque to make notes about a new type of dog whistle. Luckily, his wife spotted it when she was cleaning the room and was delighted to find that they were now millionaires.

All this rather obscured the fact that Awg seemed to have been away for rather a long time. When he returned home, he slipped back into his old life without his parents really noticing. He did bring a friend with him and said he might be staying for a while, possibly years. Well, that extension they were planning to the house would come in really useful. Awg and his friend could have nice new rooms and a proper games area. Mrs

Bradley could enjoy a new kitchen, and Mr Bradley would get the big workshop he had always wanted.

Much to Robo’s relief, no one ever mentioned the kidnap letter again.

Robo decided to give up the flat at Marsh Lane. He put the few items of furniture into store and took the rest to Awg’s house. Amongst the post that had accumulated was an envelope with a Bristol postmark. Inside was a press cutting dated the day after his visit to the city. There was also a short note. It just said Thought you might be interested in this. Looks like we had a lucky escape, Violet.

ARMED ROBBERS FOILED BY GRANNY

One man is in custody and another in hospital with a fractured scull following a failed robbery attempt yesterday. The intended victims were Mrs Violet Milroy and her son Henry of Bainrigg Road, Knowle.

Seventy-one year old Mrs Milroy, who was upstairs when the doorbell rang, told our reporter that she always keeps a good look out for callers because her son is of a nervous disposition.

‘I just knew those two were up to no good when I saw them coming up our path,’ said Mrs Milroy. ‘And when the tall one pulled a gun out of his coat I was sure of it. Luckily, my big pot of begonias was on the windowsill so I dropped it on his head. It must have surprised him because he fainted.’

Mrs Milroy called an ambulance for the wounded man. His accomplice was found hiding in a dustbin and gave himself up to police on the condition that they didn’t let ‘that woman’ near him.

Robo knew that Violet was much smarter than she had made out, and he felt that Henry was in safe hands. But for a moment he was gripped again by the terror he had felt in the park as the two men came striding towards him.

Then he relaxed. He flipped open the neat new phone that Awg’s dad had bought him to see if there was a message from Gwen.

He hadn’t heard from her for almost an hour.

The Story continues...

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The Matter of Dark

The Matter of Dark

Book 2 Strangers and Adventurers

The Matter of Dark

a trilogy by Colin Stewart

The Matter of Dark Book 2

Strangers and Adventurers

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

RETURN STRANGER Z

Fifteen

Sixteen

1st October

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty One

Twenty Two

Twenty Three

Twenty Four

Twenty Five

Twenty Six

Twenty Seven

Twenty Eight

The Legend of Trollheim

Twenty Nine

Thirty

Thirty One

Thirty Two

Thirty Three

Thirty Four

Thirty Five

Thirty Six

Thirty Seven

Thirty Eight

Thirty Nine

Forty

Forty One

Forty Two

Forty Three

Forty Four

Forty Five

Forty Six

Forty Seven

Forty Eight

Forty Nine

Fifty

Fifty One

Fifty Two

Fifty Three

Fifty Four

Fifty Five

Fifty Six

Fifty Seven

Fifty Eight

Fifty Nine

Sixty

Sixty One

Sixty Two

Sixty Three

Sixty Four

Sixty Five

Sixty Six

Sixty Seven

Sixty Eight

Sixty Nine