David Clarke

Excelsior

Chapters 29-32

Chapter Twenty-nine

I stood at the front of the gondola looking down into the turbulent, muddy waters of the neither-beautiful-nor-blue Danube, going over in my head all the things I had done wrong. I should have tried to find somewhere to land at Pressburg; I should have thrown all eight guns overboard while we were still in Romania; I should have run the third engine all the way. Ultimately I supposed I should have told Admiral Giorgetti to sod off and taken the longer but far safer route home through Greece and Illyria. But it was too late for any of that now: in the next five minutes or so our gondola was going to hit the water.

"Captain!" said Sam Sullivan from the communications desk. "Forward observers say they can see æthership mooring masts above the trees off the port bow!"

"How far?" I asked.

"Less than a thousand metres [3000 feet]," Sam told me. "But the wood goes on past them, so…"

So we weren't going to be able to get to them, because our gondolas were all below the level of the trees, and if we tried to bash our way through the woods the propellers would simply disintegrate on contact with any decent-sized tree. So near, and yet so far, I thought.

I got my telescope out and scanned the bank, hoping to see a place where the trees were thin enough to break through, but it seemed hopeless.

"'Ow abaht there, Captain?" said Weasel, pointing at something that just looked to me like more trees. "I reckon we might get froo there…"

Finally I saw what he was pointing at: there was a small river, maybe ten metres [30 feet] wide, branching off just ahead of us.

"Come on, Muscles," said Weasel to the stoker who was helping him with the wheel, "let's go fer it!"

They forced the wheel over to port and the ship slowly swung towards the bank. The ship was far too big to make it around the corner cleanly, and I could hear the scrape of the branches on the underside of the hull.

"Dustbin, Engine Four to idle!" I yelled, realising that the outer gondola was almost sure to hit the trees.

Now there were branches scraping both sides of the hull, and I thought we'd never make it. The screeching sounds of the wood on our armour probably made it sound worse than it actually was – after all, armour that can repel explosives should be able to survive a little scratching from a few branches – but it still sounded scary.

"Chris, is there any chance at all of forcing the elevators up a degree or two?" I asked.

Chris and his stoker wrenched away at the wheel and did succeed in moving the rope along by one spoke, but I couldn't feel any difference. And the drag of the trees was definitely slowing us down, too. Nor was the little river we were following straight, and when a waterway changes direction every hundred and fifty metres [500 feet], it's hard to keep a two hundred metre [650 feet] long ship from hitting the trees on either side of it. But somehow we kept going, and at last the trees thinned out ahead of us and we were in the open. And now I could see the mooring masts our spotters had seen. The only problem was that the gondola was now only about six feet [2 m] off the ground, and there was a ten foot [3 m] fence around the æthership base.

"I fink we're gonna bend their fence," observed Weasel.

"Engine Four, full power!" I ordered, hoping a bit more push would help to take us through the fence.

"Sorry, Capting," said Dustbin, "Yer can't 'ave that. They gotta bent prop."

I wasn't surprised, and at least the propeller hadn't been spinning at high speed when it had hit whatever had bent it. But the two engines we still had were strong enough: the fence disappeared under the gondola with a screeching sound, and then we were into the landing area.

"See if you can get us to that mast," I said to Weasel, pointing at the nearest one. "Sam, tell the ground crew to release the ropes and stand by to leave the ship."

"Reception committee coming," said Wolfie, pointing in the direction of some buildings off to our right, and I saw a number of men running towards us. Most of them were probably the base's own ground crew, but I could see a couple of officers among them.

"Time to go and say hello," I said, picking up my hat and putting it on. "Let's see if we can dazzle them with your exalted rank. Albie, you have the bridge. Get her moored and then wait here for us."

By now it was getting on for ten o'clock, so technically Albie was officer of the watch anyway. But I'd held on to Wolfie's bridge crew: I'd thought it would be unwise to risk our least experienced team on the bridge during what had seemed certain to be a set of critical manoeuvres. And I'd been right, too: I didn't think Tommy would have spotted the little river Weasel had noticed, and he certainly wouldn't have dared to try taking the ship along it.

Soon our crew had the ship in position just short of the mast, and the base crew used the mast winch to finish the job. Wolfie and I stepped outside and walked forward to greet the base officers.

"Good morning!" I said in German. "I'm sorry about arriving the way we did, but we're critically low on hydrogen and so we didn't have any choice."

"Who are you?" asked the senior officer. "And where is your captain? I'm not going to waste time talking to the ship's boys."

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't introduce us. My name is Leo de Courtenay, Fifth Duke of Culham, and I am the captain. This is my first officer, Lieutenant-Commander Wolfgang-Christian Hohenzollern, Markgraf von Brandenburg-Bayreuth."

The officer gaped at me, then at Wolfie, then at the ship, and I could see exactly what he was thinking: what are a couple of kids doing commanding a ship like this? And then Wolfie's full name and title seemed to seep into his brain and his attitude changed.

"Ah," he said. "My apologies, Captain. You understand that as a neutral country we are unable to provide military assistance to the vessels of combatant nations?"

"Of course," I said. "We don't need any military assistance, just refuelling. We wouldn't dream of asking you for shells or rockets."

"Strictly, any assistance provided to a warship could be considered military assistance."

"Well, I won't tell the Russians if you don't," I replied. "Besides, there's nothing really military about coal or water or gas, is there? After all, trade vessels use those things too."

"As you say," said the officer. "Perhaps we can accommodate you after all."

"That would be very kind," I said. "Our most pressing need is hydrogen, but water and coal would be helpful. And if by chance you have a couple of spare propellers lying around…"

"I think that might be a little more than we could do as a neutral," the officer said. "Fuel, yes; mechanical repairs, no. I'm sorry."

"Don't worry," I said. "I expect we can cope with only two engines. Very well – if you'd like to arrange the refuelling, perhaps I can come and write you out a draft on my bank?"

Half an hour later I was able to stroll back to the mast and watch the tubes from the base's underground storage tank being connected to the ship. I swore to myself that I wasn't going to get caught out like that again: from now on, high flying was out. We hadn't overdone it by much: probably a thousand feet [300 m] lower would have left us with enough hydrogen for positive buoyancy, but I decided that from now on I'd go around anything more than six thousand feet [1800 m] high.

While the hydrogen was being transferred I walked around the ship. There were significant numbers of black marks and scars on the surface, indicating where missiles had hit us, but only in a couple of places were there signs that the armour had been penetrated down to its third layer. Of course we'd only actually exchanged shots with a couple of ships, and only one at a time: I was sure that if we had found ourselves fighting five Eagles at once the armour wouldn't have protected us for very long. We were just lucky that the French had arrived when they did.

The water ballast had been loaded at the same time as the gas, and the tanks that supplied the three boilers had been restocked, too (there was no point in restocking the tanks for Engines Three and Four, of course), so now we were just waiting for the coal. And the last of that was just going aboard when the first of the French ships appeared overhead – at a decent altitude, too. I wondered how they had managed to retain their height so much better than we had.

I collected Wolfie and Chris – in case I needed an interpreter – and walked over to the mast at which the French flagship was just settling, and there we waited until the ship was safely on the ground, at which point two officers stepped out of the bridge gondola. The admiral was a short man with fairish hair who looked young to have reached flag rank: to me he looked to be less than forty, but I later found out that he was forty-nine. And he was similarly surprised by my appearance.

"You're the Duke?" he asked, in good English. "I was expecting someone…"

"Older, I imagine," I supplied. "Yes, I'm Leo de Courtenay, and this is Wolfgang-Christian Hohenzollern, my first officer, and Christopher Beeching, my chief linguist, among other things."

"Jean-Paul Giorgetti," he replied. "Pleased to meet you, and even more pleased to see that you got here in one piece."

"That makes two of us," I said. "So how did you manage to stay in the air so long?"

"We didn't," he admitted. "We stopped to refuel in Győr. We didn't think we'd get within eighty kilometres [50 miles] of Vienne otherwise."

"We should have done that," I admitted. "It would have made things a lot easier for us. Still, we got here. So can you tell me why it was so important to come back this way?"

"Yes, but not here. Please could you come onto our ship?"

There seemed no need for an interpreter here, so I sent Chris back to the ship, and then Wolfie and I followed the admiral to a small room inside the French ship's hull. Here he produced a map.

"First you should know what is the main objective of this plan," he told us. "In fact it was your trip to the Crimée that caused our High Command to advance the date, because it was felt that a significant action there would serve us admirably as a distraction. So as soon as your uncle informed us of your intentions a force was put together to support you and at the same time draw attention to the region.

"We were fortunate to arrive at the good moment – your ship was in the air, and so a number of Russians were also available for us as targets. And when our first attack met with such a success, we thought it good to continue with a full attack on their base at Alouchta, in which you were able yourself to participate. But this whole action was simply to distract, as was the land attack aimed at the capture of Hanovre."

"So what is the real target?" I asked.

"Ha! Now you will see why it was essential for us to return by this route. This morning we launched a major attack into the Kingdom of Württemberg. This is no small raid to snatch a little material, but a large attack intended to take the entire æthership works at Friedrichshafen and remove everything in it, including such ships as we can capture intact. Our part is to join our other ships and deny the skies to the Eagles until everything has been removed from the works and the buildings have been destroyed. This is why it was so urgent for us to arrive as soon as we could: when the Russians realise what is happening they will counter-attack, and we will need all available ships to hold them at bay."

I supposed that made sense: the æthership works would be considered vital by the Russians, and would certainly be the subject of a major counter-attack if the initial capture succeeded.

"Then we would be happy to assist you," I said, because if we could seize the Russians' entire stock of meteor material it would guarantee us no more dangerous or uncomfortable expeditions to the far north.

"Excellent!" exclaimed the admiral. "Your ship would be of great service, protected as it is by the new armour. Unfortunately we are low on our new rockets, but if we use them wisely we should be able to hold our sector until the operation at Friedrichshafen is complete."

"What new rockets?" I asked. "I mean, I saw what they did at Alushta, but how do they work?"

"What is the only thing we have that is harder than the Russian armour?" he asked me.

Somehow I couldn't imagine a rocket made of diamonds, so I shrugged.

"Our armour!" said the admiral. "We have devised a rocket with a nosecone made of the same armour as that on your ship. The concept is that the armour penetrates their armour and their hull, then there is an explosion from the warhead, and then there is a magnesium device which the warhead ignites. This should then set fire to escaping hydrogen and so destroy the ship. And to this stage it has worked extremely well.

"If we are to be honest, its invention was no more than a happy accident. When Timothée Duvallier had made sufficient armour for your ship and that of your uncle he sent what little remained of the catalyst to our research centre near Rennes. There was insufficient to armour another ship, and so our scientists tried to devise other uses for it – and the new rocket was their answer. And of course if we are able to capture the Russian stockpile intact, we will have enough material to armour our fleet and to make several hundred new rockets. We believe that this will change the course of the war."

I thought he was probably right: not only would this give us a chance to armour all our ships, but it would deprive the Russians of the chance to armour any more of theirs. Of course they would be able to collect more meteors, and if they had any sense they'd open a new æthership works somewhere out of our reach, probably in Siberia, but that would take time.

"Well, I'm certainly happy to help," I repeated. "But we're going to need some work done on the ship afterwards – we're down to two engines now, so we need a pair of new propellers fitting, and we also have some broken glass to replace on our rear observation post and in one of the engine gondolas. Could we arrange to have that done in France?"

"Of course. Most of our ships will be using the field at Mulhouse, but there is certainly capacity at the smaller base on the west side of Sélestat. Head there afterwards and tell them I authorised them to assist you with repairs."

"Thank you, Admiral."

Of course we could have carried out those repairs back home, but I wanted to be able to show my uncle an undamaged ship if I could, just in case he changed his mind and decided I couldn't be trusted to run the ship in a combat zone again. Yes, I knew he probably wouldn't react like that, but he might have been worried about my safety if he saw the state the ship was in now, and that might have led to a similar ban.

Half an hour later we were in the air again, flying in formation with the three surviving French ships and following a westward course along the north side of the Austrian Alps. Once we were in the air Albie told me and Wolfie to go and rest.

"You two were up all night," he pointed out. "Alex and I can handle it for the next four hours. We'll call if anything happens."

I wasn't going to say no to an offer like that, so Wolfie and I went to our cabin, shut the door, undressed and climbed into bed: this time I felt reasonably confident that nothing would disturb us.

"Next time you give me advice," I said, putting my arms around him, "please make me follow it, all right? If I'd done what you suggested and landed at Pressburg we'd still have three engines and I wouldn't have spent the following hour or so convinced I'd killed us all. And if I don't listen, just remind me that you've been doing this a lot longer than I have."

"No, I haven't – well, not really. We never made any really long flights like this while I was on Excalibur with your uncle, because if he thought the mission he was on carried any serious risk he made me stay at home. I suppose I've been flying longer than you, but I really don't know anything about commanding a ship in hostile territory. Besides, you haven't made any really serious mistakes so far."

"I'm glad that's what you think, but all I can say is, you can't have been watching very closely. Still, we made it, just about, and from now on the only thing we're going to need to worry about is a huge mob of angry Russians. What could possibly go wrong?"

"I think Albie was intending for us to rest, not spend the next four hours worrying," he pointed out. "Perhaps you need something to take your mind off things."

"What would you suggest?"

"Well, we could start with this…"

"Ah. Now I remember why I went all the way to the Crimea to get you back!"

***

The next half hour was a lot of fun, and afterwards we just curled up together and went to sleep. And I stayed asleep until someone shook my shoulder around three and a half hours later.

"It's your watch," said Alex as I peered up at him. "I thought I ought to come and get you myself, just in case you were… well, pretty much like you are, actually. I don't really think anyone in the crew would object to you and Wolfie sleeping together, but I thought it might still be best…"

"Thanks, Alex," I said, swinging my legs out of bed and trying to remember what I'd done with my clothes. "Anything happening?"

"Not really. We're in Bavarian territory at the moment, but we haven't seen any sign of the Russians. Albie thinks we'll reach Friedrichshafen in about two hours' time, so that's when things will start getting interesting."

I got dressed and made my way to the bridge. Not much seemed to have changed: we were still flying behind Magnan and alongside Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, we still had mountains to our left and lower ground to our right, and it was still a nice, sunny day.

"We're here," Albie told me, indicating a point on the map south-east of Munich. "We've been in Russian-controlled territory for the past hour or so, but we haven't seen any sign of them."

"Not surprising, really," I said. "They're probably all trying to recapture Friedrichshafen. Okay, Albie: I have the bridge. Go and have a rest, but I wouldn't bother getting into bed because we're likely to need you again before too long."

Another hour went by, and there was still no sign of the Russians. It was only when we reached the town of Kempten, which was perhaps forty miles [65 km] short of Friedrichshafen, that we began to see signs of things happening on the ground: there were columns of vehicles moving along the streets leading out of town, and I supposed they had to be Russians, since they were heading towards the Lake. We ignored them and kept going, and about fifteen minutes later we were intercepted by another French æthership. This one lined up on our flagship and began to exchange messages, and since we were right behind Magnan Chris was able to read what the new French ship was sending.

"The perimeter is holding," he read. "More air cover needed to the north… I'm sorry, Captain, they're sending some sort of coded co-ordinates and I can't read them… now he's gone back to standard French: hold position until at least eighteen hours. After that you may break off and head for France. We expect evacuation to be complete by seventeen thirty."

"Well, that tells us what we need to know," I said. "It's coming up four o'clock now, so they need us to stay put for a couple of hours. After that we'll have a couple more hours to get to Sélestat, because sunset is supposed to be at about eight o'clock. It's about a hundred miles [150 km], so we should make it nicely. Okay, helm, stand by: let's see where they've sent us."

But at first there was no change of course: we just kept going the way we had been. Only after another fifteen minutes did the admiral's ship start to turn to starboard, and the rest of us held our formation and turned with him. By now we could actually see Lake Constance off to port, so it looked as if the perimeter was smaller than I had expected.

The city of Ravensburg came into view just off to our right, and now we could see smoke on the ground, suggesting that fighting was taking place just south of the city. And ahead of us we could see a number of other ætherships, and not all of them were French: even as we watched a ship caught fire and began to sink towards the ground.

"Sound action stations," I said to Joe. "There's nothing for the gunners to do, since we haven't got any guns, so tell them to stay in quarters and wait to be deployed as needed."

Now we were close enough to see that there were five other French ships engaging six or seven Eagles, so we seemed to have arrived at exactly the right moment. Magnan's semaphore dropped down.

"We'll fly through them in formation," read Chris. "After that, break formation and choose your own targets. Good hunting."

"All turrets turn to port," I ordered, because if we were going to hold this formation we'd still have Gouvion-Saint-Cyr on our right. "Hold your fire until I give the order."

We flew steadily into the battle that was raging ahead of us, the admiral choosing a course that would takes us between the other ships.

"Make sure you're aiming at Russian ships only," I said. "Let's start with that Eagle at a hundred yards and five degrees above us. All upper turrets, fire at will."

After that first pass it was difficult to keep track of everything that was going on: all I could do was to pick out an Eagle and attack it whilst trying to ignore everything else, which wasn't easy when I could feel and hear missiles hitting us. By now we had Sam helping Joe with the desk, because there was too much going on for one person to man the desk on his own.

"We need to get a proper intercom system set up," I commented to Alex, who had come back to the bridge when the shooting had started. "These tubes aren't too clever when there's a lot of noise going on."

"I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to do that," he said. "Of course, that's always supposing we're still alive in ten minutes' time. This is a madhouse! Is this how this world conducts all its battles?"

"I've no idea," I said. "Apart from the day my mother died I'd done no more fighting before the Norway expedition than you had. Desk, tell Turret Four to target that Eagle trying to sneak underneath us… you were saying?"

"Nothing. I just had this vision of airship battles here being conducted rather like Napoleonic naval battles: two lines of ships sailing past each other in a nice neat line, shooting away at each other. This is more like a really messy World War Two dogfight, but supersized and in slow motion. How the hell do you keep track of who is trying to attack you?"

"You hope you see them in time, or that one of your observation posts does. Or you hope your allies are watching out for you… Turrets One and Two, your target is that Eagle at three-zero-five, the one that's attacking the French ship with the blue turrets!"

"Two Eagles coming up at speed, heading one-eight-zero," reported Sam. "Rear post thinks they're ignoring the fight and trying to break through towards the Lake."

"Bearing?" I asked.

"Wait. Bearing?" repeated Sam, into his tube.

"Zero-one-nine," he told me a few seconds later.

"Got them," I said. "I think the spotters are right. Helm, come about to bearing one-four-five and let's try to intercept them. Joe, tell Turrets Three and Five to pick them up now. All engines, maximum speed."

We swung onto an intercept course with the two Eagles, which were flying side by side and taking no part in the fight going on around them. If they were allowed to get through to Friedrichshafen they would be a threat to any French ships still on the ground there, and so I had to try to stop them. But I was handicapped by my lack of guns: as our courses converged the Eagle closest to us was able to fire continuously at us with guns and rockets, while we could only retaliate with our turrets. I could hear the shots hitting us as we drew closer and closer, and although I had confidence in our armour it was getting a serious battering at very short range. And then there was a louder crash than before and all the lights on the electricity desk went out.

"Turret Five reports a direct hit on Gondola Six," reported Joe. "I can't raise the gondola."

Gondola Six was our electricity generator. Of course we didn't have to have electricity: none of the ship's controls depended on it. We only used it for lighting and heating. But if the armour on that gondola had failed, the remaining gondolas must be equally vulnerable, including the one I was standing in.

"Helm, turn to one-three-five," I said. This would close the gap even more quickly, and indeed if the Eagle didn't change his own course it would mean a collision. Once again I was trusting that our armour was better than his, but I knew it was a risk. I just hoped the Russian captain would chicken out and change his own course.

"Are you sure?" asked Alex in my ear.

"No, but without any guns I can't think of any other way to stop him. I wonder if we could actually board him…"

"What! Leo, we're flying at sixty miles [100 km] an hour, and there's no deck to swing onto with a cutlass in our teeth. How the hell do we board him?"

"Through his gun ports. And he can't do it to us because ours are all closed…. But, no, you're right. It's a stupid idea, but only because we're not prepared for it. Maybe next time. Desk, tell all hands to brace themselves for impact."

By now we were only seconds away from hitting the Russian ship, but the impact never came. I don't know if it was the Eagle's captain who panicked or his helmsman, but the result was the same: the ship swung to port to avoid us. Unfortunately for them, the Russian bridge crew had all been looking at us and so had apparently forgotten that there was another Eagle on their other side, and as the ship swung to port it collided with its colleague.

"Helm, come to one-six-five and climb five degrees," I ordered, and as we moved above the Russian ships I could see that the one on the far side was damaged: there was a dent and a vertical gap in its armour, and from the way it was falling slowly I came to the conclusion that one of his gasbags had been damaged.

"Turret Four, target the further Eagle and aim for the damage," I ordered: if hydrogen was leaking it would be mixing nicely with the air outside the ship, which would make it highly flammable. And indeed, although the rocket we fired missed the damaged section, the flame of its exhaust was enough to ignite the gas. The ship began to go down faster, and the first jumpshades appeared around it.

The first Eagle was still flying, though, and didn't seem to have suffered any significant damage, and its turrets began firing at us again.

"Helm, take us down to seven hundred feet [200 m]," I ordered, because as long as we were above the enemy our upper turrets were useless.

Five seconds later there was a massive crash, but this time the sound came from the hatch at the top of the gondola ladder.

"Report!" I called to the desk, but both operators shook their heads.

"That was from inside the ship," said Alex. "I'll go and find out what happened."

He disappeared up the ladder, and the hatch had just about closed once more when there was another loud bang.

"Fire!" called the crewman monitoring the gasbags. "We have a fire in Section Fourteen!"

"Vent it!" I yelled.

"Doing it now," he replied, and at the same time the ship lurched a little and the floor tilted downwards, unbalancing me sufficiently to make me fall over.

"Mr Sparrow, can you get us level?" I asked, struggling to my feet.

"I'm trying! Oi, Speedy," he called to the boy on the ballast desk, "we're tail-heavy! Dump us some ballast off the back!"

The crewman looked at me for confirmation and I nodded, and a few seconds later the ship started to level out once more. I looked out of the window, just in time to see the central turret on the Eagle, which was still alongside and a little below us, swing round to face me until I was looking straight down its barrel. It was only about fifty yards away, and I realised that at this range it could hardly miss.

"Oh, shit," I said quietly… and then there was the swoosh of an incoming rocket, but it came from beyond the Eagle and struck it just behind the nose. The Russian ship belched flame and started to go down, and the rocket that I had expected to kill me was still fired but passed harmlessly beneath the gondola. I looked beyond it and saw Lemarchand turning away to look for a new target, and I told myself that I owed her captain a large drink, if I ever got the chance to buy one for him.

"Turret three says they're out of ammo," Joe called, giving me something else to think about.

"Ask the others what they have left," I replied. "Gas control, is the fire out?"

"Wait… yes, Sir, and it didn't spread. The bulkheads held."

So we were safe for a bit longer at least, I thought, but now we had other worries: we only had a handful of rockets left.

"Tell them to make every one count," I said, checking my watch and discovering that it was still only half-past five: we were supposed to keep fighting for another half hour, but we only had ammunition for another ten minutes at best. I decided on a new tactic: we'd try to chase the Eagles onto the guns of our French allies. After all, we were still big and scary-looking, and there was no way for the Russians to know that we were almost out of ammunition, so maybe if we sailed straight at them they'd back off, and if they were concentrating on us, maybe the French could hit them from another direction, as Lemarchand had done with the Eagle that had been attacking us a little earlier.

I looked around for a suitable target, but I could only see three Eagles still flying, and all of them were engaged in battles already. So I picked the nearest one and decided to try distracting it.

"Helm, come to zero-three-five," I ordered. "Both engines, maximum speed. Turret One, fire one shot only, and make sure it hits – somewhere close to his bridge would be perfect."

In theory this was a good strategy, but of course in practice it simply drew their attention to us, and soon there were more rockets heading towards us. Only one of them actually hit, and that one didn't seem to do any serious damage, but it was enough for me to decide that this wasn't such a good idea after all: maybe I should start thinking about my own ship while I still had one.

"Change of plan," I said. "Helm, come to three-zero-five. All turrets turn to starboard and fire when you have a target."

That was our last full attack of the battle, and the most successful: one of our rockets struck the enemy bridge and blew it to pieces. The ship, its control cables broken, began to swing to the left and also to go down. This wasn't the first ship we had shot down, of course, but it was the first time I'd actually seen the results in human terms, because I could clearly see bodies falling away from the shattered control gondola, and this time it seemed that none of them was wearing a jumpshade. Sickened, I turned away.

"All right, that's enough," I said. "We'll leave the others to the French. Engines, slow to one quarter speed. Desk, tell me if anyone looks like targeting us, otherwise we're done – we'll just wait for the French to mop up and then we can head for France."

I looked out of the gondola windows, but it looked as if the fighting was more or less over: there was one fight still going on a mile or so away, but there were only two ships anywhere near us, and they were both French. But it looked as if we'd done what the High Command had wanted us to: we'd kept the Russians away from Friedrichshafen, and it was almost ten to six, so the evacuation should have been complete.

As I watched the last Eagle broke off the fight and headed away to the north, and the two French ships it had been engaging decided to let him go. Instead, they headed in our direction. One of them turned out to be Bernard Magnan, and when it reached us it dropped its semaphore and started to signal us.

"Thank you for your help," read Joe. "It seems the sector is secure. We will regroup and then return to France. Go to Sélestat for repairs."

"Acknowledge that," I said to Chris, and then I went back to looking out of the window and saw that three other French ships had survived the battle. One of them was our old friend Laurent de Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, but there was no sign of Frédéric Lemarchand, so it looked as if I wouldn't get a chance to buy her captain a drink after all. The other two hadn't been part of the Crimean expedition.

The four French ships formed up in a single file and so I tacked us onto the back of the line, and then we began to head west, climbing gently as we went.

"All right, Wolfie, you have the bridge," I said. "I'd better go and see what it's cost us."

The first person I saw when I walked into sick bay was Alex, who was sitting on the side of a bed with a bandage around his head.

"God, are you all right?" I asked anxiously.

"Just a headache. I got hit by a piece of… well, to be honest, I don't know what hit me. There was a bang, and then I woke up lying on the deck with blood in my eyes. Did we win?"

"Just about. They breached our armour at least twice, though, so we're going to need a bit of patching up. We're on our way to France now."

I looked around and saw that all six beds were occupied and I wondered how many we'd lost.

"Alex, are you okay to return to duty?" I asked. ""Because if you are, can you take a roll-call? I need to know how many… you know."

"Sure," he said, standing up. "Tell Joe to order the crew to their quarters, other than the gondola crews on duty, and I'll pick up the roster and check for you."

"Thanks," I said, and I walked back through the ship to see the damage for myself.

The first missile to penetrate our armour had been a solid shell, and we'd been very lucky that it hit the oven in the small galley adjoining Crew Quarters One, because the oven was made of iron and it had stopped the missile. Otherwise if would have kept going through the ship and caused a lot more damage. The second one had been the rocket that had ignited the gas in Bag Fourteen, and again we'd been lucky that Tim's gypsum partitions had contained the fire. The galley was wrecked, but there was only minor damage to the crew quarters and little other internal damage – at least, not that I could see.

By now Joe had called for the crew to return to quarters, and so a steady stream of them was heading past me.

"We done 'em good, dint we, Captain?" said one rocketeer on his way past me.

"Yes, you did," I said, managing a smile for his benefit and trying not to think about tumbling Russian bodies. "You did an amazing job. I'm proud of you."

And I supposed that I was, because if they hadn't done such a great job it could easily have been me and Wolfie falling out of a wrecked gondola instead. But for almost the first time since the mission had begun I wished my uncle was with me, because I wanted to ask him if feeling guilty about dead enemies was normal or not. Maybe I wasn't cut out for this after all.

I stayed there, talking to some of the crew and answering their questions as best I could, until Alex arrived with his clipboard, and when he'd finished taking names and marking his board I accompanied him to Crew Quarters Two and watched while he repeated the exercise there. Then we went to the two surviving engine rooms and checked off the two crews in those, and finally we returned to the bridge.

"So?" I asked.

"Well…I've got seven unaccounted for. I've counted those in sick bay, including the four that are dead, the four observers on duty, the two engineer crews and those in their quarters and on the bridge, but I'm still missing seven. I suppose five of them will have been in Gondola Six, but I don't know where the other two are."

"Let's try the turrets," I suggested. "Maybe one of the speaker tubes is broken and they didn't hear the order to return to quarters. I'll take the upper ones, you take the lower."

I found the two missing crewmen in Turret Two. It had been struck by what must have been one of the last missiles fired at us: there was a hole in the turret wall and whatever had come through that hole had obviously struck one of the rocketeers in the back. There was blood everywhere, so much so that at first I thought they were both dead. But then one of them looked up at me, and I recognised him as the youngest stable-lad, Freddie. The dead boy was a stable-lad too: I recognised him as Ted Wilson, who had been at my New Year's Eve party.

Freddie stumbled to his feet and threw his arms round me, sobbing, and I held him and tried to calm him down, but he was shaking and obviously still terrified. And I felt horribly guilty again: these kids were far too young for this. I'd had no right to take twelve-year-old boys and put them in a position where they were likely to see a friend killed right in front of them.

"It's all right, Freddie," I said. "It's over. Let me take you down into the ship where you'll be safe."

I managed to disentangle myself from him long enough to reach the speaking tube, which was undamaged. I blew down it, and when Sam answered I asked him to send a couple of stokers up to Turret Two to retrieve a body, and once I'd done that I opened the hatch and helped Freddie down the ladder and through the ship to sick bay.

"Oh, my God," exclaimed Albie when he saw us. "You'd better bring him straight through to the theatre."

"It's not his blood," I said. "He was clinging on to his friend's body – that's why he's got so much blood on him. He's in shock – he just needs a chance to calm down a little."

"I'll look after him myself," promised Albie, and he put his arm around Freddie's shoulders and led him to the only vacant bed, the one Alex had been using. I left them to it and went back to the bridge to tell Alex that he could finish filling in his roster.

I didn't feel like speaking much after that. I'd have liked to go and hide in my cabin, but I supposed that a ship's captain would be expected to show some leadership even when he's feeling like crap, and so I sat in my chair beside Wolfie and watched the land scroll by beneath us. We'd changed the watch while I'd been off the bridge, and so now it was Weasel at the wheel beside me.

"Yer look like shit, Captain," he said, '"if yer don't mind me sayin'."

"I feel like shit," I replied.

"Well, yer shouldn't. Yeah, I know as we lost some, but we're still 'ere, ain't we? If yer'd lived in the sewers yer'd be used ter wakin' up an' findin' a mate dead beside yer. It 'appens, an' yer 'ave ter get used to it. An' if yer gonna fly a fightin' ship, yer'd better get used ter it fast."

"I know," I said, wondering why I was even discussing this with a sewer-rat I hardly knew instead of with my uncle or my best friend. "But I don't have to like it."

"Nobody sez yer 'ave ter like it, an' if yer did, nobody'd want ter fly wiv yer. It's 'cos yer care abaht us that we follow yer, 'cos if it 'adn't been fer you we'd all still be starvin' dahn Bazalgette's. We all chose ter be 'ere: nobody forced us. Yeah, it's bad that people died today, but it ain't gonna stop us comin' wiv yer next time. I reckon there ain't one kid on this ship wot would choose ter stay at 'ome next time there's a job ter be done. Me, I'm prahd ter be on yer ship at all, never mind akchully steerin' the fuckin' thing, an' that ain't gonna change. So look 'appy: yer ship's still flyin', an' we're goin' 'ome. An' in case it ain't obvious – though it fuckin' well should be – you didn't kill none of us. It wuz the Ivans wot done that. Right?"

"Right," I agreed. "Thanks, Weasel."

"Any time. Do I get a bonus fer that?" And he flashed his less-than-perfect teeth at me.

"Probably not," I said, managing to smile a bit myself. "By the time I've paid for all the repairs we're going to need I probably won't have any money left to pay you at all."

"Hey, Leo," said Alex, "come and look at this."

He was standing on the port side of the gondola next to the electrical desk, which was obviously no longer manned, so I went and joined him. He pointed down at something about a couple of hundred feet below us. There was a hill down there – actually it was a mountain, as I realised when I glanced at the elevator altimeter and saw that we were flying at almost five thousand feet [1500 m]. At first I couldn't see what he was pointing at, but then he said, "It's still a nice sunny day, isn't it? So what is that patch of mist doing down there?"

He was right: everywhere there was near-perfect visibility, but in that one little hollow on the side of the hill there was a patch of mist. I didn't think it could be due to water evaporating in the sun, because a short distance away was a round lake, and the surface of that was completely free of mist.

"Where are we?" I wondered, heading for the chart table.

"We're over the Black Forest," Wolfie told me from his seat at the front of the gondola. "That's Freiburg off to our right. Why?"

I found Freiburg on the map, checked the bearing and turned the map until I could identify our current position.

"I think that's this hill here," I told Alex, pointing at the map. "The Feldberg. Of course, it could just be natural…"

"It doesn't look it, though, does it?" said Alex. "In fact it looks just like Stonehenge."

"This is the Archduchy of Baden," I reminded him. "That means it's still Russian-controlled territory, and after today you can bet they'll have more troops around here to prevent any more French raids across the Rhine."

"I suppose so. But it's worth making a note of where this is, don't you think? Perhaps things will be back to normal in a month or so and then we might be able to slip across the border and investigate."

"Perhaps," I agreed. "I'd sooner find somewhere closer to home, though."

"Well, if there's one place like this, perhaps there are others. We'll just have to keep a lookout."

Once we were past Freiburg the admiral's ship dropped back alongside us so that he could signal us 'Bon voyage' – the other ships were heading for the larger facility at Mulhouse, which would mean that our paths would diverge from here onwards. We thanked him and watched the other four ships turn slightly to port while we swung in the other direction onto a bearing that would take us to Sélestat.

"You can start to take us down," I said to Chris, who was on the elevators. "There are no more hills from now on. Gently, though – there's quite a nice view from up here."

We flew on, across the Rhine and into France. The sun was starting to drop towards the Vosges Mountains that lay ahead of us, but it was a beautiful evening with hardly any wind, and so I expected the rest of the journey to be straightforward – and it was, except for the fact that we were still a little too high when we approached the town of Sélestat.

"Make a circle round the town," I said to Weasel. "We don't want to have to descend too steeply – we've got injured kids in sick bay and we don't want them falling off their beds."

So we made a large anticlockwise circle around the town, gradually getting lower. On the edge of the mountains overlooking the town was an old ruined castle, and I was looking at that when I spotted another isolated pocket of mist a little way beyond it, a bit further into the hills. I grabbed my compass and took a bearing on it, and then another a couple of minutes later: with two bearings I could triangulate onto it. I marked its position on my map, thinking that if it did mark another crossing point it would be a lot safer to use one in France than one in Russian-controlled Baden. Of course, it was probably nothing more than a natural patch of early evening mist…

The semaphore mast on the base signalled to us, telling us where they wanted us, so we followed their directions to a mast close to the administrative buildings, and when we stepped ashore we found the base commander waiting for us.

"We've received a signal telling us to offer you every assistance," the commander greeted us. He did it in French, but I remembered Tim telling me that Alsace was a German-speaking province, so I replied in German and found that we could converse quite easily in that language, which meant that I wouldn't need Chris to translate everything. I said that we'd be grateful for any help they could give us with repairs, and the commander said he would be pleased to do whatever he could to assist us.

Then we walked around the ship together and I realised that this was going to be no quick fix-up: the ship was a shambles. If I'd been worried about letting Uncle Gil see it after the Crimea, I thought that if he saw it now I'd find myself grounded for life: one gondola had gone, leaving only a collection of spars and struts; another gondola had broken glass and a twisted propeller shaft emerging from it; another propeller had two blades that were bent at right-angles; there were holes through the hull in a couple of places; the central upper turret had a hole in the wall; and there was hardly a place on the hull that wasn't showing the marks of missile impact.

"It would seem that you've been busy," commented the base commander. "It's going to take us quite a while to get this ship back into proper shape. I hope you have no urgent appointments in England."

"I suppose not," I said. "I'd like to get a message to my uncle, though, or he's likely to worry."

"I'm sure that can be arranged. One other thing: this is a small base, and we don't have a large barracks. Will your crew be able to sleep on board?"

I did a quick mental sum: we'd started with 106 men, plus officers, but we'd lost thirteen on the way back, and a further six were in sick bay. If I assumed that Billy was sleeping with Alex and Sparrer would be in with Joe, that meant that we needed 85 sleeping places for the crew, and we had eighty.

"If we can borrow half a dozen mattresses we can," I said.

"Good. That will make matters easier."

"But we've lost our galley facilities," I went on. "Can you provide food for us?"

"Tonight, no," he said. "We do not have the supplies on the base. But from tomorrow, yes."

Oh, well, that simply meant that we'd have a hungry evening, and I thought that most of my crew – certainly the ones from London – had plenty of experience of that. And I supposed that the fact that we had survived at all was what really mattered: now that I'd seen the condition of the ship I was amazed that we had only lost thirteen of the crew. Hopefully it would be a long time before we had to fight again…

Chapter Thirty

I slept better that night than I had expected to. Having Wolfie beside me probably helped, as did the feeling that it was all over, at least as far as this mission was concerned. And it was dark in our cabin, too: obviously we no longer had any electric lighting, and there weren't enough oil lamps to go around, so I had decided that we could manage with just my flashlight, and once it was off it was very dark indeed.

The ship had been towed into one of the base's three hangars, which of course made it darker still. And that meant that when I woke up the following morning it was still pitch black in the cabin. I used the torch to check my watch and found that it was a little after seven, which I supposed meant that we ought to start thinking about getting up; we had a number of things that needed doing today. I left the torch turned on, putting it on the little bedside table and pointing it at the far corner of the cabin, and then I woke Wolfie up.

"Feeling any better?" he asked me.

"A bit," I told him. "But it was still my fault that some of the crew got killed. I walked around the ship when we were at the base outside Vienna, so I knew there were places on the underside of the hull where the armour had been weakened – after all, Pasha was pounding away at us there for quite a while. But I still took us above that Eagle. If I hadn't done that the hull wouldn't have been penetrated and we wouldn't have lost some of the crew."

"It's easy to be clever afterwards," he said. "For all you know, if we'd stayed on the same level he'd have hit the bridge instead, and then not only would we have died, but so would everyone else, if what happened to that last Eagle is anything to go by."

"Yes, and I don't feel good about that, either," I told him. "Okay, it's true that in a battle it's often going to be either us or the other guy, but I'd like at least to think that most of the Russian crews had shades and so would have survived. Seeing that bridge crew falling… it didn't make me feel good, Wolfie."

"Nor should it. If you started to enjoy killing people you wouldn't be the boy I love any more. Anyway, what matters is that we're both alive and the ship is still just about in one piece, so let's get up and see if we can find out how long it's going to be before we can go home."

We followed the scent of coffee to the base canteen, where we found coffee brewing and a mountain of fresh rolls which had apparently just been delivered by the local bakery. We also found the base commander, and so we grabbed a cup of coffee and a roll each and sat down with him.

"That depends," he answered when Wolfie asked his question. "We'll need a bit of time to replace the shaft and check over the engine on your port side, but provided the engine itself is undamaged it won't take too long to fit a couple of replacement propellers. We can get the glass replaced in a couple of days, but if you want a new gondola to replace the missing one…"

"We won't," I interrupted. "We can deal with that when we get back to England."

"That will save us some time, then. As for the rest of it, you need to understand that we can't replace your missing sheets of armour – at least, not with the same stuff. We can patch up the holes and put basic armour over them, but obviously we don't have any of the special stuff."

'That's fine," I said. "Again, we'll worry about that in England. Just patch her up for now."

"As you wish. The other matter is replacing your burnt-out gas-bag. We can do that, but we'll need to get one in from elsewhere, because your ship is rather bigger than most of the ones we deal with. We might have to wait a few days for it to get here, but once it's with us we should be able to fit it in a day or so. Of course there are things we can do while we're waiting for it to arrive – putting your galley back together, for one, although we'll lose a bit of time next weekend because it's Easter, and so we won't be working on the Monday. Altogether, and allowing for it to take four or five days to get the replacement gasbag here, I would say we should be done by the middle of next week. Earlier if the bag gets here promptly and we don't get any other work, but I'd prefer not to promise too much at this stage. Let's say by Wednesday of next week, which will be the eleventh."

So I was going to be stuck here over Easter. I supposed that might save me from having to go to church quite as often as would have been expected of me at home, but it meant that I was going to miss out on Cook's Easter Sunday lunch, and that would be a pity. Oh, well…

"That will be fine," I said. "One other thing: I have five dead crewmen on board, so could you contact an undertaker for me?"

"Of course," he said. "Is there anything else you need?"

"Not right away. I'll come and find you if I think of anything."

The rest of the crew arrived for breakfast in drips and drabs. Ours was the only ship currently in dock, and so we had the place to ourselves, and that meant that I was able to keep everyone in the canteen once they'd finished eating. And once I had everyone's attention I gave them a little speech about how well they'd performed and how proud I was of them, especially considering that this was our first voyage together.

"I'd like you to stay on the base this morning," I concluded. "I'll be going into town to find a bank shortly, and once I've got some money I'll be able to give you an advance of pay, and after that you'll be free to go into town yourselves. We'll be here for at least a week, though, so don't spend all your money straight away. Right, that's it: you can go…"

"Just one moment," interrupted Alex. "I agree with everything the captain said about how well you did yesterday, but I want you to remember that we're in a foreign country, and when you're off the base you'll be wearing His Grace's uniform. If anyone does anything to embarrass His Grace, I can tell you that that person will have to make his own way back to England, because he won't be flying back with us. Is that understood? Good. All right, now you can go."

"Sorry," he added to me as he sat down again, "but I thought it would be a good thing to make sure none of them reverts to type: the last thing we want is a spate of pockets being picked and locals being fleeced by card-sharps and con artists. I know you think they've changed, and probably you're right, but they could easily be tempted."

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Wolfie nodding his agreement, and although personally I'd have trusted the crew enough not to issue that sort of warning, maybe it was no bad thing to remind them of their responsibilities.

Before we went into town I spoke to Dr Harries, and he said that he thought it might be as well if some of our wounded went to the local hospital for a few days, because facilities on board the ship were a little limited. I asked him to contact the local hospital and make whatever arrangements were necessary.

While we were in town I not only went to the bank but also found the Post Office and sent a message to my uncle, telling him that we were safe, that Wolfie was back with us, that the ship was undergoing what I called 'minor repairs' here in Sélestat, and that I hoped to be home in a week or so. This wasn't a very big town – it was quite a bit smaller than Abingdon – but it had a reasonable number of shops, so the crew would have somewhere to spend their money.

Once we got back to the base Wolfie dealt with paying the crew, and after lunch most of them wandered off in the direction of the town centre. I was thinking of heading in the opposite direction, up into the mountains. There was a brisk wind blowing today, and so I thought there would be no point in looking for the mist patch we had seen from the ship, but I was interested to see the ruined castle up close, and I thought there would be quite a good view from up there too.

But before we could leave we found that we had visitors. We'd been sitting in the canteen looking at a local map provided by the base commander when the door opened and Admiral Giorgetti came in accompanied by a tall, distinguished looking man in an æthership captain's uniform.

"Hello, Admiral," I said, standing up. "I didn't hear the base landing signal."

"No, we came by train. Both our ships are being repaired at the moment, but I thought you would like to know that the attack was a great success: we cleared out their stores and also captured three ships intact, as well as a number of German technicians who have said that they would be much happier working for us than for the Russians. It was as near to a perfect operation as I have ever seen."

"Well, good," I said. "Does that mean we've now got enough meteor material to armour our fleets?"

"More than enough. We will send a quantity to the British research base at Abingdon, and then you will be able to make a start on improving your own ships. And I should tell you that your own part in the battle was included in my preliminary report to High Command, and will certainly be mentioned in the full report that I am currently compiling. I found your performance to be most impressive, especially if your entire crew is of an age with yourself. Are these your officers?"

"Yes. You've met my second-in-command, and this is Lieutenant Demetriou, my second officer, Lieutenant Reed, my Chief Engineer, Sub-Lieutenant Silver, my Chief Electrical Engineer, and Sub-Lieutenant Collier, my third officer and medical assistant. And you met Lieutenant Beeching, my interpreter, yesterday. He's on detached duty from the Oxfordshire Militia, but I very much hope he'll be able to join the crew on a more permanent basis in future."

"I'm pleased to meet you, gentlemen. Now, Your Grace, is the base providing you with everything you need?"

"Yes, thank you. They think the work should be finished by the middle of next week."

"Good. Obviously while you're here you are to consider yourselves our guests: the cost of the repairs and any incidental expenses, such as providing food and accommodation for the crew, will be picked up by the French Government. So you may relax a little and enjoy our hospitality. I will probably return before you leave us next week.

"Now, this is Philippe Bichot," he went on, indicating the other officer. "He's captain of Laurent de Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, and he asked if he could come with me today. His English is not so good, but I am happy to translate for him."

"Good afternoon," said Captain Bichot, via the admiral. "I've wanted to meet you since our first encounter in the Crimée. You see, I knew your mother – we flew on missions together on several occasions, and you may be aware that I was unfortunate enough to witness her death…"

"Yes, I know," I said. "I was aboard Daedalus at the time."

"So I understood. Indeed, the following day we were involved in the search for you. But what I wanted to say was that your mother was a great captain, but what I saw of your conduct yesterday was of at least as high a standard. You should know that if your mother was still alive she would be proud of you."

I didn't know how to answer that. For a start, my own recollection of the previous afternoon's fight was one of more or less complete chaos, and I'd done nothing more than any of the other captains present: all I'd been interested in was making sure we stayed in the air while taking down an enemy here and there if we could. Indeed, I'd messed even that up so badly that our hull had been punctured in two places, and it was sheer luck that we hadn't ended up as a heap of twisted metal on the ground. At the same time I was aware of a lump in my throat at the thought of my mother. I wasn't quite so convinced that she would have been proud of me, but it was still nice to hear that opinion from someone who had known her.

"Thank you," I managed to say. "Most of the credit should go to my crew, though. Considering that this was our first mission I thought they were amazing. "

"I would agree," said the captain. "But a crew is only as good as its leadership. Don't be too quick to give others the credit for your achievements."

Well, I didn't think it would do any good to argue, even though I thought that the ship had survived despite my best efforts to get it destroyed, rather than through anything good that I might have done.

By the time the French officers left it was around three o'clock. We would still have had time to get up into the hills, but then the undertaker arrived, and by the time I'd dealt with him it was close to four o'clock and I didn't really feel like it any more: there's something about ordering a coffin to fit someone who was barely five feet [1½ m] tall that puts you off going out and having fun. So I decided that the visit to the castle could wait.

By now the repair crew was hard at work on the ship, and that made it difficult to relax in our cabin, so I grabbed Wolfie, walked a short way into town and booked a room in the first hotel we came to. My first thought had been that I ought to stay with the ship, but then I realised that nothing was going to happen to it while it was in dock, and that it would probably do me good to get away from it for a day or so. And so I spent the rest of the afternoon lying on the bed with Wolfie beside me.

"I feel a bit guilty about this," I told him. "I wish I could find a hotel big enough for everyone."

"Nonsense. Most of the crew lived in the sewers, remember, so a bunk in our crew quarters must feel pretty good. If Alex and the others want to join us, that's up to them, but right now I'm more than happy for it to be just you and me. I'm quite sure that the crew won't mind in the slightest if we're sleeping off the base – in fact I imagine that they would expect that. It would probably be a good idea if at least one officer stayed on the ship, but if the others fancy sleeping in a hotel instead I'll be happy to draw up a rota for that. So relax, Leo: we've got a week to unwind, so let's make the most of it."

I supposed that made sense. Then I thought of something and chuckled.

"What?" he asked.

"Oh, it's just something we used to say in Alex's world: when we saw two people who were obviously engrossed in each other, or smooching if it was a boy and girl, we used to say 'Get a room'. And now we have got a room."

"What's 'smooching'?"

"I'll show you, shall I?"

***

We spent the rest of the afternoon smooching and so forth, and by the time we walked back to the base for supper I was feeling a lot better, and I was starting to look forward to getting home, rather than looking backward and beating myself up over what had gone wrong.

During the meal Wolfie drew up a rota for the officers, telling them that we needed one of us to be on the base at all times, but that if the others felt so inclined there was a perfectly decent hotel ten minutes away, and I wasn't too surprised when everyone decided to book a room.

That night I slept properly for the first time since the mission had started: I had Wolfie beside me, the ship was safe and there was nothing to worry about. I began to feel as if I was properly on holiday – the school holidays had just started, after all. I could do a little walking in the hills, explore the town and just spend time with Wolfie and my other friends. Maybe the next few days would be exactly what I needed.

***

The following day it rained, so we didn't do very much at all, just hanging around in the hotel for the most part. But when we got up on the Wednesday morning the weather was a lot better, and so I decided to go and do some exploring in the hills. But Wolfie was a bit less enthusiastic.

"It's quite steep up there," he said, "and I'm not very good at steep climbs. Would you mind if I hired a horse?"

"No, and that's a great idea!" I said. "Let's all do that!"

Of course, not everyone could ride a horse, but Alex and Joe could manage, even if they weren't too enthusiastic, and they both said that they wanted to come if we were going to look for the mist, just in case it offered them a way home. Albie had the short straw of being duty officer, but he didn't ride anyway, and Chris said he'd stay and keep him company because he wasn't all that keen on riding either. Graham wanted to come, and Billy tagged along too, "in case you need any help with the horses," he said, although I think that really it was just that, like Graham, he'd been too long without a chance to get on a horse.

The hotel manager had shown me where the nearest stables was, and so the six of us – me, Wolfie, Alex, Joe, Graham and Billy – took ourselves there shortly after breakfast. Graham insisted on checking all the horses over first, just to make sure we weren't being palmed off with animals that were sick or injured, but once he'd done that we rode back to the base, where we got changed into civilian clothes, because if the hole really was there and we were able to get back to Alex's world, I thought that we'd attract far too much attention if we appeared in a modern French town wearing Germanic uniforms.

Once we had changed we set off up into the mountains. The first two or three miles or so were fairly flat, and so we cantered along at a comfortable speed, but then the land started to rise. We went through a hamlet called Kintzheim and after that the track began to get quite steep, so we slowed to a walk. The road ran into the forest and stayed under the trees for the next three miles or so, only emerging into the open once more just before we reached the castle. Actually there wasn't that much of it left: half a tower, some stretches of outer wall and the mostly collapsed remnant of a central keep. Looking at it I guessed it had been built in the sixteenth century or thereabouts.

It was perfectly placed to command the plain below: we could see Sélestat, Colmar and the stretch of open land between them, most of which appeared to be farms and fields. We explored the ruin for a while, stayed long enough to eat the packed lunch we had brought with us, and then remounted and rode back down the hill. I had hoped it would be possible to ride directly to the location of the mist patch we had seen, but the hill behind the castle was heavily overgrown and far too steep for horses, and so we were obliged to retrace our steps for a couple of miles until we came to a point where a much rougher track led off to the left. We followed this for a mile or so and then, when I judged that we were in roughly the correct place, we left the path and headed off to the left.

The trees were thinner here, and in places we emerged into open ground, which allowed me to take a bearing on a couple of hills. It was hard to be sure because this whole region was made up of hills and forest, but I was fairly sure that the area we were looking for was only a short distance away… and, sure enough, another hundred yards or so and we could see mist ahead of us.

"Do you really think…?" asked Alex.

"Well, we haven't seen any mist anywhere else, have we?" I replied. "It has to be worth a look, anyway."

"Wait!" said Wolfie, grabbing my arm. "How do you know it's going to take you where you want to go?"

"What do you mean? Either it will, or it's just mist, in which case we won't go anywhere."

"Are you sure? How do you know it won't take you to a different world completely?"

"Oh, come on!" I said. "How many worlds do you think there are?"

"One, until last summer. And I bet all of you only thought there was one before then, too. Now we know there are two. How do we know there aren't three, or fifty, or a hundred million? You might end up anywhere."

"You really think there are millions of different worlds?" I asked. "So what do you think we're going to find – a world that has been invaded by space aliens? A world where reptiles are in charge? A world ruled by the Lost Continent of Atlantis? Come on, Wolfie, places like that only exist in stories. I'm sure there are only two. Something happened a long time ago to split them apart, and so they followed different paths and turned out differently, but it must have been something really unusual to cause a split like that. I'm sure it couldn't have happened more than once. Anyway, I assume you're coming with us, so even if we do end up in some weird place, we'll still be together. And unless this is completely different from Stonehenge we'll be able to turn straight round and come back if we don't like what we find. All right?"

"I suppose so. But let's be careful!"

"Of course we will. Anyone else not sure about coming?"

"I don't really understand any of this," said Graham. "Billy has sort of explained what happened to you four years ago, but I really can't imagine a whole other world. So… you think as there's another hole here?"

"Possibly. It might be nothing but normal mist, but I want to try to find out."

Nobody else spoke, so I urged the horse forward. The trees had thinned again, and I could see that we were in a small valley that rose slowly into the mist ahead of us. I found myself thinking about what Wolfie had said: was there any risk of this patch of mist leading us into a different world, and if so, might it be dangerous? I wasn't seriously worried about the outlandish suggestions I had made about aliens and so forth, but what if this hole – if it was one – led to a world where the Russians had conquered France? Or suppose there was a world where the Nazis had won – did I really want to risk going to a world like that?

But then I pulled myself together. That was pure fantasy – I was sure there were only two worlds, and therefore there was a fifty per cent chance that it would take us back into Alex's world. But just suppose…?

No. I shook my head and rode on, and the mist closed in around me. I rode slowly forward until I reached a point where the horse stopped moving and didn't seem too keen to start again: we were, I could just about make out, between a pair of trees that grew about twelve feet [3½ m] apart. Personally I could neither see nor feel anything different about the ground ahead of us, but the horse apparently could, as I had to urge it forwards before it would start moving again. Once we were past those two trees it walked steadily again, so whatever had spooked it was obviously just in that one spot, not everywhere in the mist, which suggested that those trees marked the threshold of the hole – if indeed it was one.

The mist thinned and then cleared ahead of me, and I could see absolutely nothing different about the ground ahead of me, which was still a gently sloping wooded valley with a stream running through it. One by one my friends came to join me, and I wondered if Wolfie, Graham or Billy had felt anything change while they were in the mist. But if they had, none of them said anything.

"It doesn't look any different," commented Alex.

"No, it doesn't," I agreed. "Let's try heading back towards Sélestat – if we are back in your world we'll pretty soon know it when we reach the road. We'll have to go around the mist this time, though."

I led them off to the right, where the valley was a bit less overgrown than on the other side, and allowed the horse to pick its way back in the direction we had come, making sure to keep the thicker mist off to my right. I had my compass out, and once we were clear of the mist I led us back the way we had come. To start with there was no visible difference, but as the track appeared before us we could see that this was not the one we had followed on the outward journey: this one was wider – wide enough for a car – and the trees to the left of it had been cleared completely, giving up a great view off to the north.

"Are we home?" Joe asked me nervously.

"Possibly," I said. "After all, if Wolfie's right we could be in any world except the one we left ten minutes ago. Keep an eye out for space aliens and Atlanteans!"

We followed the track until it met the road, and now there was no doubt at all that we were in a different world: there was a gate across the track just before it reached the road, and when we had – with some difficulty – led the horses around it and reached the road, we saw that it had a tarmac surface. Either this was Alex's world, or another that had a very similar level of technology, because as we stood there a couple of cars drove past.

"Unless the aliens have learned to drive Peugeots, I would say that we're where we want to be," I said.

I was a bit nervous about taking the horses back down the road towards Sélestat because it was quite steep and there were some fairly sharp bends, and if a car came down the hill too fast it could easily run into the back of us. To start with there was no real alternative, but a couple of hundred yards down the road we found a track that seemed to head in the right direction, so we followed that instead, and eventually we came out in another village that was situated at the edge of the trees and a short distance above the level of the plain. There were plenty of cars parked in its streets, and I was fairly confident that the registration plates were standard for French cars in Alex's world, so I was by this stage almost certain we were back.

"Are those steam-cars?" asked Graham. "If so they must have very small boilers, and they don't have chimneys, either."

"They're not exactly steam-cars," I said. "They're similar, but they run on something else. They can go quite quickly, too, so watch out for them."

I led my friends through the village. There was a sign in the centre pointing towards Sélestat, and so I took that road, which dropped down to the level of the plain, emerging from the last few houses into an area of vineyards. I turned round as we left the village and saw that the sign said 'Orschwiller', and underneath it was another sign in a darker colour that read 'Fief du Ht. Koenigsbourg'. And on the skyline immediately above the sign was a castle, substantially bigger and in better repair than the one we had visited earlier that day.

We rode on until we reached Sélestat. Just before we reached the town the road took us over a motorway.

"Bloody hell, those things can move!" observed Graham, looking down at the cars below. "I've never seen an auto-carriage as could go as fast as that!"

There was, I was not remotely surprised to see, no sign of the æthership base here. Instead there was what looked like a radio station of some sort, with three tall masts supported by guy ropes where the æthership hangars should have been. I rode straight past the base, and then changed my mind and stopped, dismounting.

"It won't be safe to stay on the horses in town," I said. "There's sure to be a lot of traffic, and I don't suppose these horses are used to a lot of motor vehicles. We'd better leave them here and go on without them. Sorry, Graham, but could you stay here with them? If we just leave them on their own someone might take them."

Graham looked a bit disappointed, but he didn't argue. The rest of us walked on into town.

"If this is my world we need to find a telephone," said Alex. "I want to call home."

"That might be a bit difficult," I said. "I bet we haven't got any coins that would fit in the slot, and I don't suppose for a moment that they'll take our notes, either."

"I've got some sterling notes – from my world, I mean," said Alex. "If we can find somewhere to change them I can get some euros, and then maybe we can find an internet café…"

We found a bank, and that led me to realise that I'd slipped up again: in my world this was a German-speaking province, but here people spoke French, and we'd left both our French speakers behind. But we still managed to change some of Alex's English money into euros, and we even managed to make the bank clerk understand that we wanted an internet café. He scrawled a little map on a piece of paper and handed it to us, and we followed it to an internet café not too far away.

The next problem was that this was early in the afternoon, which made it most unlikely that any of our parents or guardians would be online. Alex thought that his sister might be, but was unable to contact her, and Joe found the same thing when he tried to reach his brother.

"I'm pretty sure there'll be someone at home this evening," said Alex, "but I don't fancy trying to find the mist again after dark. Should we stay here overnight, do you think? If we book into a hotel I can recharge my mobile, and then I'll be able to text home even if I don't have enough credit to phone."

"I don't think we've got enough money to book all six of us into even the cheapest hotel," I told him. "We should have planned this a bit better: if we'd brought a couple of tents we could have camped somewhere, and if we'd brought some jewellery we could have got enough money for tickets back to England. Except I wouldn't be able to travel with you because I haven't got a passport."

"Neither have I," said Joe.

"Then maybe we ought to ask your parents to travel here," I suggested. "I'm sure they wouldn't mind doing that if it means seeing you again."

"But that would mean staying in a hotel for a few days, because I'm sure my father can't just drop everything and catch a plane to France," objected Joe. "I've got some English money too, but not very much."

"Why don't you buy a tent?" suggested Wolfie. "It's sure to be cheaper than a hotel."

"That's an excellent idea!" I said. "And I'm fairly sure I saw a sign to a camping ground on the way into town. And I've still got some of my other-world money, too, so if we all club together I'm sure we can get a decent tent and some sleeping bags. That way I can stay too, because I'd really like a chance to talk to Auntie Megan this evening if I can. So…Wolfie, do you want to stay or go back?"

"That's a really stupid question," he replied. "You mean, do I want us on opposite sides of a hole again? What do you think?"

"Okay, so you're staying," I said. "So we want a tent big enough for four, and four cheap sleeping bags, preferably two of them of the type that you can join up into a double. All right, let's find a camping shop and do some shopping, and then the camp site, and then… well, let's just get that far first."

None of that gave us any problems, and soon we were busy putting up the tent.

"I think maybe I should go back as far as the hole with Graham and Billy," I said. "Just to make sure they find it okay. And it'll be easier to manage the horses with three of us."

"Four," said Wolfie, glaring at me.

"Sorry, I meant four," I corrected.

"You mean I can't stay?" asked Billy.

"Sorry," I said. "Graham won't be able to get six horses back through the forest on his own. And we only hired them for one day, so they'll all have to go back this evening. But if the hole is fairly stable, maybe you can come back here later in the week."

So we left Alex and Joe putting the flysheet up and walked back to where we had left Graham, and then the four of us rode back up into the forest, leading the two spare horses. We found the hole without any real difficulty.

"Tell the others we'll be back sometime tomorrow," I said to Graham. "I don't think we'll have any trouble with the weather, so the hole should still be here, but if not, just wait for us. We'll be back as soon as we can. If anything comes up, I'm sure you and Albie can sort it out between you."

Wolfie and I watched Graham and Billy lead the horses off into the mist, and once we were sure that they'd got through the hole we turned and made our way back to the track and started out on our walk back to town. It was a really nice day for early April, so we took our time, resting now and again and enjoying the surroundings and each other's company. Just being together was perfect, even when we weren't talking, and once again I found myself wondering how I'd ever survived for four years without him. I supposed that Alex had helped a lot, but he and I hadn't been living in the same house and frequently sleeping in the same bed the way I had with Wolfie…

It took us a couple of hours to get back to the campsite, and when we got there we found them both looking really happy: they'd managed to get their phones recharged, and Joe had then texted his brother and got a reply.

"Apparently they thought I was dead," Joe told us. "It's been about six months, after all. Anyway, my father will be home at about six, so they're going to phone me after that. I think I've got enough credit on the phone to accept a call from England, but if not we've found a couple of public phones, and I'll just text them the number of one of those. I've almost forgotten what their voices sound like…"

"It might be a good idea not to mention what we've been doing for the past week or so," I suggested, "especially if you're hoping to persuade them to come through to my world."

"I am," he said. "London's dead boring compared to your place. And obviously I'm not going to mention the war. I'm not stupid, you know."

It was already half-past five, so we decided to postpone supper until after the phone call, but we'd forgotten that there was an hour between British time and French time, and by the time we remembered it was once again too late to go and eat. So we sat around twiddling our thumbs and then, at about five to seven, went up to the camp office, where the two phone kiosks were situated. I was a bit surprised that such a thing still existed – surely everyone in this world had a mobile phone by now? But when I mentioned this Joe pointed out that if you were on holiday abroad your mobile might be more expensive to use than a public phone box, especially if you were calling for a taxi or something else that was also in France.

We had barely reached the office when Joe got a text from his brother to say that the network had refused the call, so Joe texted back the number of one of the public phones, and a few seconds later it rang. The rest of us stepped back to give Joe a little privacy, but we still heard most of his half of the conversation.

He explained that the hole at Stonehenge had been destroyed and that we had only found another one in the last few hours, which was why he had been out of touch, but that he was alive and well and there was nothing to worry about (and I wasn't surprised to hear that that comment started a bit of an argument).

Joe also explained that he couldn't get back to England because he didn't have a passport, suggesting that his family should fly to France instead. But apparently that wouldn't be too easy.

"Yes, Dad, I know it's almost Pesach," said Joe. "And I know you won't be able to get a ticket very easily because it's also Easter. But we can wait. We've… Yes, I know you don't want to wait. Perhaps the train, then?….. Yes, I know it's likely to be booked as well… What about next week? … Yes, but aren't we allowed to travel during Pesach in case of necessity? What? Yes, of course I've been observant. There's a synagogue in Oxford…. Look, Dad, you need to get here before Wednesday if you can, because that's when we're supposed to be going back to England, and Leo needs me… Leo. That's who I…. No, he used to be called Keith Lambert…"

At that point I walked away, because I didn't want to get involved in something that Joe really needed to sort out with his father. I stayed on the other side of the room until Joe hung up the phone.

"He says I have to stay here until he can come and get me," Joe reported. "But that might not be until next week. He's going to try getting a flight for tomorrow, but if he can't I might have to wait a while."

"When you say 'Come and get you,' does that mean you're going to go back home with him?" I asked.

"I hope not. I really want to stay with you. But it might be a bit hard to persuade him to let me stay. What I really want to do is to persuade him to come through and see what your world is like, because I think once he's seen Culham he'll understand why it would be better for us to live with you than in this world. So I've asked him to bring Mum and Simon with him, and then, if I can talk him through the hole, maybe you can fly us back to England. I should think the journey alone would go a long way to changing his mind."

"Obviously I'll do anything I can," I assured him. "Um… are you going to tell them about Ben?"

"I don't think so, do you? I mean, that's hardly an incentive for them to let me come back to your world, is it? I really don't think they would approve of me having a boyfriend, somehow. So I'll keep it quiet until we're safely back at Culham."

Ten minutes later the phone rang again, and Joe answered it and spoke briefly to his father.

"The earliest he can get a flight is Tuesday," he reported. "He's obviously serious about seeing me again, because that's still in the middle of the festival, but that was the first day that he was able to get a ticket for everyone. And he won't want to travel back until after the festival finishes, so that'll give me four or five days to work on him. Of course he might be prepared to come straight back through the hole with me, but I'd be a bit surprised…"

The phone rang again.

"That'll be for you, Alex," said Joe. "I asked him to phone this number through to your parents."

We left Alex to talk to his family in peace, but we didn't get a lot of chance to hear his report afterwards before the phone rang again and it was my turn. I'm going to skip over the next few minutes, which got quite emotional, but that bottom line was that Auntie Megan was happy for me. Uncle Jim was away at the moment, and so they wouldn't be able to come and visit for a couple of weeks, but they hoped it would be possible towards the end of the month. I explained that the temporary nature of the holes made it hard to be able to say with any certainty when I might be able to cross over again, but that I could see no reason in theory why I shouldn't come back here in three or four weeks' time. It would mean taking time off school, of course, but I thought maybe Mr Devlin would accept that this was a good reason.

We swapped 'Love you" farewells and I hung up and headed back to the tent with the others.

Apparently Alex's parents were also going to come to Sélestat straight after Easter, so if all went well we could get everyone through the hole and fly them back to Culham. We'd then have a couple of weeks to persuade them to move to my world permanently, after which we could travel back here – probably by train, rather than flying, because I didn't want to take all my crew out of school just to save us a few train fares – take the two families back through to their own world so that they could return home and do whatever needed doing in the way of selling up and so on while I spent some time with Auntie Megan and Uncle Jim.. Then we'd just have to fix a time and date to pick them up again when everything had been done, and there we would all be, with all three families in my world and everyone living happily ever after.

Obviously I knew it might not run quite as smoothly as that, but at least I felt that we were now in the home straight. The only major hurdle might be persuading Joe's parents in particular to take the enormous step of moving to a completely new world, but I decided that for now I'd settle for getting them through into my world.

That evening we ate at McDonalds. This wasn't because we didn't have a lot of money to throw around, but rather because I didn't expect to get too many more opportunities to eat a quarter-pounder with cheese. Although perhaps opening a chain of burger restaurants would be another way for us to make some money for the orphans…

No, I decided. I knew nothing about making a good burger, and I wasn't sure that the Victorian palate was quite ready for chicken nuggets.

I'd half-expected Alex to get his cards out when we got back to the tent, but it turned out that both he and Joe were thinking about their families and so not really in the mood. So instead we had a fairly early night.

Next morning there was once again virtually no wind, so it seemed likely that the hole would still be open – as long as conditions hadn't changed on the other side, of course. We'd decided that it would be best if Alex and Joe stayed here in case the weather did change over the weekend: if the families arrived and found nobody to meet them they might just decide not to wait, whereas if Alex and Joe were here when they arrived it would be fairly easy to persuade them to stay here long enough for the hole to reopen.

"If all goes well we'll come back on Tuesday," I said. "If we don't turn up on Tuesday it'll be down to bad weather, in which case just sit tight until we get here. We'll be back as soon as the hole opens even if we have to camp out right next to it for a few days."

"Okay," said Alex. "We'll be fine. If we're not going to be here when you get back – I suppose my dad might want to use a hotel instead of camping – we'll leave a message for you at the office."

"See you next week," I said, giving them both a quick hug. Then Wolfie and I picked up our bags and walked the short distance to the station, where we took a cab up through Kintzheim to the end of the track that led back to the hole. Yes, I suppose we could have walked. I could pretend I was thinking about Wolfie's leg, but really I was just feeling lazy.

The hole was still there, and we were back at the æthership base in time for lunch. Work on the ship was progressing nicely, so we stayed out of the way and left the base crew to get on with their work. Instead we walked into town and found a bookshop, because with the Easter weekend looming I thought the next three or four days might involve a lot of sitting around, and while I was sure that Wolfie and I could find some interesting ways to fill some of that time, four days of non-stop physical endeavour was probably beyond us.

There were no books in English, but I had expected that. This was a German-speaking province, and so, as I had expected, we found that the majority of the books were in that language. We went and browsed in the Thriller section. I didn't recognise the names of any of the authors, so in the end I just picked up a book at random. It was called Hinter der Linie, or Behind the Line, by an author called Theodor Köninger, and according to the blurb on the back it was about a detective working for the Royal Bavarian Police in the days just before and just after the start of the Russian occupation. It looked interesting, so I bought it. Wolfie bought a couple of books too, so by the time we got back to the hotel we were confident that we'd be able to fill the time, once way or another.

***

The next three days went by without incident. We read our books, we spent some time in bed (awake and asleep), we went for walks around the town or up into the hills, and generally we had a relaxing time of it.

On Easter Sunday night I was duty officer, and so we both slept on board the ship that night, as indeed we intended to do the following night, when it would be Wolfie's turn for duty. I suppose there wasn't really any need for an officer to stay on board: so far the crew hadn't even looked like letting us down, and tonight in particular it would be quiet: the next day was a holiday, and so the base crew wouldn't be working.

So after I'd taken a quick walk around the ship to make sure everything was as it should have been I went back to the cabin, got undressed and curled up with Wolfie, intending to have a bit of a lie-in next morning. Instead I was rudely awakened shortly after six in the morning by a klaxon going off, loudly and repeatedly. I jumped out of bed, got dressed in a hurry and rushed out into the hangar, where I found the main doors already halfway open. I ran towards the base administration building, but I met the base second-in-command before I got there.

"What's going on?" I demanded.

"It's an attack," he told me.

"What, a raid?"

"No, it's a full attack in force. The Russians are already across the Rhine. We've been ordered to evacuate…"

Chapter Thirty-one

"What state is my ship in?" I asked. "Can we fly?"

"Don't worry," the base officer told me. "The only things that we haven't done yet are patching up the hole in your middle turret, doing a little work inside your galley and fitting the new gas-bag, which we haven't been able to do because it hasn't arrived yet. Everything else is done, so you have four engines and no holes in the hull. How are you off for fuel?"

"If we've got four engines again we could probably do with a bit more, and the same for water. If you can arrange that – and a top-up with hydrogen, too – I'll go and sort my crew out. How long do you think we have?"

"Long enough, I should think. Most of the attack so far is aimed at the big cities, and Sélestat is too small to count. But I still want to be out of here in the next hour."

I nodded and ran back to the hangar. Some of the crew were already emerging from the ship, so I grabbed a couple of engineering petty officers, explained what was happening and told them that I wanted the crew assembled outside the ship in the next ten minutes. Then I ran into the command gondola and got the local charts out. Wolfie came and joined me a few seconds later, so I filled him in on the situation and then went on, "I'm intending to hop over to the other side of the Vosges. The French are going to try to hold the high Vosges, and I would think they should be able to do that, at least in the short term. There's a base at Saint-Dié, here, look," and I indicated a town level with Sélestat on the map but on the far side of the mountains. "That should be out of the immediate firing line."

"But what about Alex and Joe?" he asked me.

"We'll have to come back," I said. "We can probably get transport up to the defensive line, and then we'll just have to find our way through the lines and get back to the hole on foot."

"That'll be dangerous," he said.

"I know."

"But we've got to do it."

That surprised me a little: I'd expected Wolfie to try to stop me taking this sort of risk.

He saw the look on my face. "Look," he said, "I know how you feel about Alex, and Joe, come to that. And I feel the same way: they're part of our family now. So we're going to have to get them safely back here, although it might not be quite so easy to persuade their families to emerge behind enemy lines in a war zone… but let's worry about that when it happens. So wouldn't it be easier if you went straight back to them now? I can get the ship over to Saint-Dié."

"No," I said, firmly. "I'm the captain, Wolfie. The ship has to be my first responsibility. I have to get the rest of the crew to safety first."

"Well, then, do you want me to go back through the hole now?"

I stared at him. "Wolfie, every time there has been the least question of us ending up on opposite sides of a hole you've flatly refused to let it happen – and now you're volunteering?"

"They're our friends. I know you can't abandon them, and I also know you have to stay with the ship, so if this is the only way…"

"It isn't," I interrupted. "Wolfie, if anything happened to prevent me coming back it would be bad enough losing Alex and Joe – and at least they'll be in their own world with their families. I couldn't stand to lose you too, especially in a place where you don't belong. So, no, whatever else happens we're staying on the same side of the hole as each other. If we do what I said first – get the ship across the mountains and then make our way back – we'll find a way to reach them somehow."

"We could send Billy," he suggested. "He knows where the hole is and how to get from there down into the town. At least then they would know what was happening."

I thought about that. Billy was my senior helmsman, so I was a bit reluctant to fly without him. But Weasel was certainly fully competent, and Tommy Green could manage in a pinch…

"Where is Billy?" I asked. "Is he on board, or is he at the hotel?"

"He's probably on board, seeing that Alex is in the other world."

"Okay, find him," I said. "Tell him to go to the stable to hire a horse and then to bring it back here. I need to go and find Dr Harries – we've got to try to get our crewmen back from the hospital if we can, and especially Tim, obviously. Look, can you manage here? Get the refuelling done – the base Number Two is already sorting that out – and then get the boilers fired up and Number Two watch at their posts – we'll need to use your watch because too many of mine are missing, what with Alex and Joe and Billy. I'm going to the hotel to find the doctor. I'll be back as soon as I can."

I grabbed my hat, which Wolfie had brought from the cabin for me, and headed off into town at a steady jog, and when I reached the hotel I rounded up Albie, Graham and Chris, explained what was happening and sent them back to the ship. Then I grabbed the doctor and we made our way to the hospital.

Three of the crew were clearly not fit to travel: there were two head injuries and one complicated leg fracture. That patient was awake, so I explained the situation to him.

"You're almost certainly too young for the Russians to think you're soldiers," I said. "We'll take your uniforms with us and I'll leave some money for the nurses here to buy you some civilian clothes. But if the worst does happen, I want you to give the Russian officer my name and tell him that I will be prepared to ransom you. You're not going to end up in some grotty camp. And if they leave you alone, just stay here: we'll find a way to come and get you to take you back home."

The rest of the injured were fit to travel, so with a bit of help from some of the hospital orderlies we got them back to the base. Tim, whose arm was still strapped up, was more or less back to being his normal self.

"We should have anticipated this," he said, when I told him what was happening. "The Russians know that they can't just sit and wait, because if they give us time to use the material we took from Friedrichshafen we'll have overwhelming air superiority. So it's logical that they should attack now and try to put France out of the game before we can armour our ships and make more rockets."

Well, that made perfect sense to me, and I wondered why, if a fourteen-year-old boy had been able to work that out, the Allied High Command apparently hadn't. Or perhaps the Russians had just attacked a little sooner than anticipated. Of course, attacking over the Easter weekend was another good move, because probably a lot of the senior French officers would be off-duty with their families, which would make the French slower to react.

We got back to the ship and found that refuelling was under way. I was a little surprised that we hadn't seen any Eagles yet, but perhaps they were concentrating on the larger bases at Mulhouse and Strasbourg. This base did have some rocket emplacements, but I really didn't want the Eagles to arrive while we were still on the ground, so I did my best to hurry things along.

It didn't take too long, but by the time the ship was being towed out of the hangar ready for take-off we were already getting reports of Russian auto-cannon units on the far side of the town. Billy had returned with a horse, but I'd realised that I couldn't simply send him off on his own: what would happen if he reached the site of the hole and found it gone? He'd then be trapped on the wrong side of the mountains with nowhere to go. So we managed, with some difficulty, to get the horse aboard via the main cargo hatch.

"We'll check from the air," I told Billy. "If the hole is there we'll land on the road leading up to the castle – there's just about enough room – and let you out there. If the hole is gone you'll have to stay with us. Either way I suppose we'll owe the stable the price of the horse."

The base ground crew didn't bother attaching us to the mast: instead they just lined us up into the wind. I shook hands with the duty officer, wished him luck and stepped aboard the command gondola.

"Engines, station holding," I ordered. "Drop lines and release extra ballast. Are the ground crew well clear? Okay, helm, up five degrees and engines ahead one quarter. Come to bearing two-eight-zero. Chris, take us up to seven hundred and fifty feet [225 m]… Now, the hole should be…"

I got my compass out.

"Chris, we might need to climb a little more steeply than usual. I want to try to follow the road that goes up from Kintzheim – that's the little village down there, see? Try to keep us a hundred feet [30 m] or so above the trees. Weasel, you've already shown that you're good at this, so try to hold us above the road. And Sam, tell the observation posts I want to know about it the instant they spot another ship, all right?"

We followed the road up into the forest, and when we reached the point where the track we had followed to the hole began I could see a pocket of mist right where it was supposed to be.

"Right, Billy," I said. "We'll put you down in a few minutes, as soon as we find a big enough space. Don't forget that you have to go into the mist from this direction and then circle wide on the far side, or you'll just end up coming straight back through the hole. Make your way back to the camp site – and be really careful if you ride right into town, because you saw how fast those cars can move – and tell Alex and Joe to stay exactly where they are. We'll get to them as soon as we possibly can.

"If the absolute worst happens and the hole closes and stays closed, or if the Russians set up camp right next to it so we can't reach it, tell Alex that I said he was to look after you, all right? Eventually we'll find a way to get to you again, I promise, no matter how hard it is or how long it takes, understand? Good. You'd better go and get the horse ready, then."

Within five minutes Weasel and Chris had between them guided the ship to an area above the trees and a little below the castle, where the road was straight enough for us to be able to land. Wolfie went to supervise the unloading procedure and called me from the cargo area as soon as Billy and his horse were safely on the road.

"Close the hatch and come back here," I told him. "Chris, take us up to two thousand feet [600 m]. Engines, ahead one quarter."

Now that Billy was safely on his way we were able to rise above the mountains and have a proper look at what was going on. I still couldn't see any other ætherships, but I could now see troops moving beyond Sélestat. I could also see that the French were digging artillery batteries into the lower slopes of the mountains, more or less at the edge of the trees, and also around the castle, but before I could look any further I was distracted by a massive sheet of flame between us and the town, and I realised that the base commander had burned off his hydrogen supply to prevent it falling into Russian hands. I hoped that he and his men had left themselves time to escape into the French defensive line.

There wasn't a great deal that we could have done to help because we were carrying no bombs, we had no guns, and our rocket supply was still very low indeed: I'd intended to ask about a resupply of weaponry once everything else had been done, and there simply hadn't been enough time to do anything about it this morning. Once we reached Saint-Dié it would be top of my to-do list, but until then we were reduced to the role of spectators, and at the first sight of an Eagle we would have little alternative but to run. But for now there were no Eagles in sight, and so I kept us more or less where we were and watched what was going on below us.

The Russian columns reached Sélestat and came around on either side of it – obviously no attempt was being made to defend the town – and as they came into range of the French batteries the defenders began to fire. The Russian infantry fell back and sought cover in the buildings at the edge of the town, but the auto-cannons kept coming, and now they began to return the fire. I sincerely hoped that Billy was safely through the hole by now, because if a stray shell landed anywhere near him…

"Captain, rear observation post reports a ship at about four thousand yards, bearing zero-five-three," said Sam. "They can't be sure of its nationality yet, but coming from that direction…"

"Agreed," I said. "Okay, it's time to go. Helm, new bearing two-seven-five and take us up to three thousand feet [900 m] – and as steeply as you need to, Chris, okay? All engines, full ahead."

Now that we had four engines again there was no chance of an Eagle catching us, but of course the sooner we got to Saint-Dié, the sooner we could rearm and make ourselves useful, because I had now realised that if we could help to keep the Russians out of the mountains – and particularly out of the bit above Kintzheim – it would make it a great deal easier for us to retrieve our friends.

It only took us a short time to cross the mountains and reach Saint-Dié, which was nestled in the foothills on the far side. We had to wait a few minutes for a mast to become available, but once we were down I grabbed Chris to interpret for me – now we were in a purely French-speaking area – and asked what the base could do for us in terms of rearming.

"Rockets, yes, provided you're using a standard size," I was told. "Medium and light bombs, yes. Guns, sorry, no. We have plenty of shells, but you'll need a specialised engineering base to get guns fitted. The nearest one to here is probably Nancy, but the last we heard from them was that they were under attack. You might have to go to Troyes instead."

I asked him for as many rockets as he could spare and some medium bombs, but I was extremely worried to hear that Nancy was under attack, because it was a hell of a long way behind the French border, and if the Russians had penetrated that far already things were very serious indeed.

I decided that we didn't have time to go to Troyes, because even if they had some suitable guns actually available at the base it would take quite some time to get them installed. So as soon as we'd taken the weapons on board I headed us straight back towards Sélestat.

Unfortunately the rockets were the old type, not the new armour-busters, but of course there hadn't been enough time for the French scientists to build any more of those since the attack on Friedrichshafen. But at least we now had a good supply of the more usual type. I decided not to use the central upper turret – the rocket-launcher was apparently still fully operable, but the hole in the turret wall was still unpatched, and the blood had not been cleaned up, either. So instead I manned the other four turrets, and this time I also stationed snipers in every gondola, as Alex had suggested on our way to the Crimea.

As we crested the mountains we saw a lone Eagle over the lower slopes above Sélestat, apparently attacking the French positions above Kintzheim, so I sent us straight at him and succeeded in knocking out one of his engine gondolas, at which he turned and headed east. I didn't want to risk chasing him into Russian-held territory, so I let him go and took us a little higher so that we could see what was going on.

There was quite a bit more Russian artillery between Sélestat and the mountains than there had been earlier, and more auto-cannons were just arriving, too. So far the Russians didn't seem to have made a determined attempt to move up into the mountains, which was good news from our point of view, and so I decided that the best thing we could do for the time being was to act as a mobile weapons platform and try to keep the Russians pinned down where they were until nightfall, or until help arrived.

I thought about trying to drop a few bombs on them, but we quickly discovered that they had rocket batteries, and since the underside of the ship was vulnerable – we lacked proper armour where Gondola Six had been, and also in the places where the base had patched up our earlier damage – it would have been highly unwise to take the ship directly above enemy rockets. So we stayed where we were and used our two lower turrets to prevent the Russian auto-cannons from advancing.

This went on for a good two hours, by which time I was wondering where the hell the French air force was – surely they couldn't all have been destroyed on the ground? But, although we could see French ground troops moving down the mountain to reinforce their positions on the lower slopes, we didn't catch a single glimpse of a French æthership.

And then, at around four in the afternoon, the situation changed.

"Rear spotters report Eagles at zero-one-five," Sam told us. "At least six, range about four thousand five hundred yards."

"Helm, come around to zero-one-five," I said. "Let's see what we're dealing with here. Engines, ahead one quarter."

The ship swung around slowly until I could see that the spotters were correct: there was a complete squadron of Eagles heading in our direction along the edge of the mountains. Well, that's the end of that, I thought: there was absolutely no question of staying to fight.

"Turrets four and five, you have ninety seconds to destroy as many Russian auto-cannons as you can,' I said. "Weasel, can you get us above the road as it leaves Kintzheim on the mountain side?"

"Course I can!" he said, and the ship began to swing once more.

"Wolfie, grab a couple of men, get down to the cargo area and prime a couple of bombs," I said. "Then open the hatch and chuck them down onto the road. I don't want it to be passable by any Russian vehicle, and especially not auto-cannons, understand? And make it quick – we'll have to be out of here in the next two or three minutes."

Wolfie disappeared up the ladder. I waited until Weasel had us nicely lined up at the edge of the hamlet, ordered the engines to idle and waited. I opened one of the gondola windows and leaned out a bit, and so I was able to see the first bomb drop away from beneath the ship. It exploded right on the edge of the road, but the aim on the second one was perfect, and when the dust cleared I could see that there was a decent-sized crater almost in the exact centre of the road. The Russians would probably be able to fill it in, but it would take time.

I glanced out of the opposite window and saw that the Eagles were getting a bit too close for comfort.

"Sam, tell the bomb crew to close the hatch and hold on," I ordered. "Tell me the second the hatch is closed."

This only took a few seconds, but they seemed to pass very slowly indeed. Finally he told me that it had been done.

"All engines, full ahead," I ordered. "Weasel, make it two-three-five, and Chris, get us up to three thousand feet [900 m]."

A missile whistled past us as we started to move, but I was confident that we could outrun them easily enough. And in fact they showed no interest in coming after us, so once we had reached the highest point of the ridge I held position so that we could see what was going on. Wolfie returned to the bridge and joined me at the window.

As soon as the Eagles reached the northernmost French positions they started dropping bombs, lots and lots of them, and they went on doing it as they moved along the French line at no more than half speed. The idea was obviously to destroy the French artillery positions, but it was a risky tactic because the French had some rockets, and as the squadron drew level with the ruined castle one of the Russian ships suddenly spouted flame and veered away, landing heavily on the plain below. But the rest kept going. I tried to distract them with a few rockets, but they ignored me and stuck to their task, and with no guns I certainly wasn't going to risk getting any closer.

Once the Eagles had moved away to the south I ordered us back to our previous position. There was still movement at the edge of the trees, so some of the French had clearly survived, but the ground was a mess. And when I looked down to where the hole had been I could see broken and fallen trees and smoking bomb-craters, but there was no sign of mist at all. It had disappeared between the arrival of the Eagles and their departure.

Wolfie and I looked at each other.

"Now what?" he asked. "Do you think we'll still be able to get through?"

I shook my head slowly. "I shouldn't think so," I said. "We might be lucky and find that the trees at the sides of the hole survived, but I really don't think so. I think that hole is gone for good."

"Are we going to go back home and see if there's been any change at the Great Circle, then?"

"No," I said. "I'm pretty sure there won't have been. No, we've got one chance left: we're going to have to go to Baden."

He stared at me. "Leo, we can't go to Baden!" he protested. "Now that we're fighting again there will be Russian ships coming and going all the time – it'll be on their main supply line!"

"I wasn't thinking of flying there. Sam, call Mr Sparrow, Mr Collier and Mr Reed to the bridge, please – oh, and Tim Duvallier, too."

Once Sparrer reached the bridge I sent him to relieve Chris and then took the officers and Tim over to the chart table.

"We'll hold on here for as long as we can," I told them, "but our priority has to be to get back to our friends. So half an hour before sunset we're going to fall back to Saint-Dié. And then tomorrow morning we're going to pay a visit to the Swiss Confederation – specifically, to Basel. As Wolfie has pointed out, we daren't fly into Baden, but we can drive there. We'll hire a carriage in Basel and take it up onto the mountain where we saw the mist, and hopefully we'll find a hole there that will take us back to the other world."

"What if we don't?" asked Albie. "Suppose the mist you saw was just mist?"

"Then we'll have to think of something else – and before you ask, I honestly don't know what else there is, other than doing what we were going to do before, which is checking out every ancient monument we can find. But that pocket of mist was the only one in sight, so I'm hopeful.

"Anyway, we'll need Chris to come with us because we'll need someone who can drive… I mean, you can, can't you?"

"I've done some driving," he assured us.

"Good. And also because he can speak French," I went on. "But everyone else stays with the ship. You'll be safe enough, it's neutral territory. Albie, you'll be in command, with Graham as your Number One. You'd better consider yourself an Acting Lieutenant-Commander. I'll expect you to do everything necessary to secure the ship and the crew, but really you probably won't have anything to do at all except wait for us. I'd expect it to take two or three days, but if we have to wait for the hole to open it could be longer.

"If we're not back in two weeks you should take the ship home. I'd suggest you go the long way around and avoid the Vosges, in case the fighting is still going on. Once you get home you can send the crew back to London. Tell my uncle we'll contact him as soon as we get back to Basel.

"Does anybody have any questions?"

"Why should we stop waiting after two weeks?" Albie asked. "You're our leader. As far as I'm concerned we should wait for as long as it takes, and I don't suppose there's anyone on board who would want to argue with that."

"He's right," agreed Graham. "We're not going to fly off and leave you behind."

"Thank you both," I said. "But I don't want the crew to miss school, particularly the kids from London. They're a long way behind already, and education's important. Besides, we'll be perfectly safe in Basel, and if we send a message to my uncle he'll either arrange for the French to get us home, or, if the situation in France is really bad, he'll get us out through Austria-Hungary or Italy. Come to that, by the time you get home Excalibur should have been properly armoured, so he'll be able to come and get us himself if he has to.

"And there's another thing, too: we need to get Tim here back to Abingdon, so that he can get back to work on making armour. We'll have plenty of material to work with now."

"The scientists do not need me to work," argued Tim. "I can wait 'ere for you. Or… per'aps it would be interesting to see zis uzzair world – so per'aps I could come wiz you?"

"I don't think so," I said, firmly. "We'd be in Russian-controlled Baden for quite some time, and if we have to wait for the hole it could be several days. We simply can't risk the Russians getting their hands on you. Sorry, Tim."

"I understand," he said, though he did look disappointed: I imagine that any scientist would die for a chance to visit a whole new world.

Nobody had any other questions, so we changed watch – Wolfie's crew had already been on duty for a fair bit longer than four hours – and resumed our job of policing the Russians and keeping them from moving forwards.

Over the next hour and a bit we headed off a couple of attacks by the auto-cannons and also did our best to discourage the infantry from moving closer to the hills. But then another quartet of Eagles came towards us from the East, and this time it did seem to be us that they were interested in, because when we started moving, they changed course to intercept us.

"All right, that's it," I said. "All engines, full ahead. Ben, climb and keep climbing until you reach four thousand feet [1200 m] or I shout stop. And Tommy, take us…"

I looked at my watch and saw that it was only ten to six, so there was still plenty of daylight left.

"Bearing one-eight-zero," I went on. "We'll head straight for Basel, I think. Desk, make sure the forward spotters are alert, because those other five Eagles are somewhere south of us, and I don't want to run into them. At the first sign of trouble we're heading due west over the mountains and back into France proper, all right?"

We speeded up and began to climb steadily. At first it looked as if the four Eagles were going to come after us, but I suppose they realised that they couldn't match us for speed, and so with a parting gift of a couple of rockets, both of which missed us by a distance, they turned away again. I suppose they'd achieved their objective of getting rid of us, anyway. I didn't like abandoning my French allies, but I told myself that it really wouldn't do them any good if we got ourselves shot down trying to beat off too many enemies.

We passed just east of the town of Colmar. The town itself was quiet, but there seemed to me some fighting going on at the foot of the mountains west of the town, so it looked as if the French were still holding the higher ground. And then we saw the city of Mulhouse coming into view, and now for the first time we saw some French ætherships: they were engaged in a battle with a number of Eagles north and east of the city. There also seemed to be ground troops in action in the same area.

"Ben, bring us down to the level of those ships," I ordered. "All turrets to stand by."

The ship began to descend, and at the same time our heading wavered too, just for a moment. I looked up from my chair and saw Tommy Green's face: he was biting his lip and trembling a little, too. I looked around the bridge and saw that he wasn't the only one who looked scared: Sparrer looked as stoical as ever, but at the ballast desk Speedy the street-kid was looking less than comfortable, while Georgie Reeves, who was a gardener's boy at Culham when he wasn't flying, seemed to be hanging onto the Comms desk in a death grip. And I realised once again just how young my crew was, and wondered how many others on board, out of my sight, were desperately trying to be brave while feeling anything but.

I stood up and put my hand over Tommy's on the wheel, feeling him trembling. I gave his hand a quick squeeze and smiled at him.

"We're not stopping," I told him. "I don't know if you saw those two Eagles at Ravensburg, the ones who tried to ignore the battle and fly straight through, but this time, that's us, and nobody's going to intercept us, either. We'll fire on the Russians as we go past and hopefully distract them a bit, but we're not going to stop and get involved, all right? As far as I'm concerned we've more than done our bit already. The French will just have to manage without us from now on."

I was still slightly in two minds about this: perhaps some people would think it our duty to stay and fight alongside our allies. But for once I wanted to put the survival of my own crew first: I'd lost more than enough already and I wanted to get the rest home in one piece.

"Desk, tell Turret One they may fire at will," I ordered as the first Eagles came into range. "Other turrets may fire once they have a target – but choose your targets carefully. If you're firing at a ship with waist gondolas, aim for the engines. Otherwise, target the tail section and try to damage the control surfaces.

"Speedy, we'll stick to full speed unless I tell you otherwise. And Tommy, just keep us going due south. If anything gets in front of you, go underneath it, alright – just yell to Ben if that happens. I don't want any Eagle getting underneath us this time."

In the event nothing got in front of us, so we simply sailed straight through the fight, firing at the Russian ships on the way past. I know we knocked out one ship's port engine gondola, but I didn't really have time to see if we did any other significant damage. Two or three Russian rockets or shells hit us, but they didn't do any serious damage. And then we were through, and the city and the battle were falling away behind us.

"Excellent job," I told the bridge crew. "All right, now bring us to one-three-eight and drop to cruising speed. Ben, take us down to seven hundred and fifty feet [225 m]."

Another fifteen minutes saw us reach the border with the Swiss Confederation. The city of Basel lay immediately across the border, and just to the south of the city was an æthership base, so I took us around it, brought the ship in on the approach and dropped the semaphore. But the base semaphore never even twitched, so after a minute or so I ordered ours raised again and brought the ship in towards the nearest mast. There was no sign of a base ground crew either, and so as we settled into position I ordered my own crew to go and secure the cables.

Once we were down – not moored to the mast itself, but right in front of it – I stepped ashore, and Wolfie, Albie and Tim came with me. And now there was a sign of life: a tall man in uniform emerged from a building off to our right and strode towards us. He didn't look happy.

"Good afternoon," I greeted him in German, but he just scowled at me and launched into a torrent of some Germanic dialect that was so far removed from anything we could understand that Wolfie and I were reduced to simply shrugging at each other. But then Tim stepped forward and replied in what sounded to me to be much the same dialect, and the Swiss guy looked positively taken aback.

"He says the Swiss Confederation is strictly neutral, and that this airfield is closed to all warships on both sides," Tim told me, in standard German.

"Tell him we're not a warship," I replied, and the Swiss officer burst out laughing even before Tim started to translate, thus indicating that he could understand High German perfectly well.

I looked at the ship, seeing it from his point of view: five rocket turrets, a row of gun ports, and clear signs of missile damage on the hull, and I could understand his laughter.

"Look," I said to him, not bothering to go through Tim, "I know what we look like. But if you come aboard you'll see that we're not carrying any guns and that we only have sufficient rockets to defend ourselves. We're here on a humanitarian mission: there are a couple of English families, relations of some of my officers, who are stuck in Baden, and we're just here to get them out. I don't want to fly into Baden because that would be certain to result in a fight: I just want to leave the ship here while we go into Baden by road. I hope not to be more than two or three days, but in any event my Number One has orders not to wait for us if we're gone too long, so we shouldn't cause you any embarrassment – and, of course, if you can find a hangar for us, probably hardly anyone will know that we're even here."

"You understand that the rules of neutrality prevent us from helping you in any way?" said the officer, in passable High German. "No fuel, no gas, no water, and certainly no armaments?"

"Of course," I agreed. "We won't ask you for any of those things. And obviously we're happy to pay your mooring fees, and the rental cost of a hangar, and if my crew might be allowed to use your canteen facilities we'll be happy to pay cash for that as well. If not I'll get them to eat in town."

"No, I expect we can accommodate you," he said. "Tell me something: I assume you're here because you all speak German, but is your captain injured? Because I ought to meet him before I prepare the paperwork."

"You're speaking to him," I said. "I'm Leo de Courtenay, and I'm the captain. I know I'm young, but then so is the whole crew. This is Acting Lieutenant-Commander Collier, who will be in charge while I'm in Baden. He doesn't speak German, I'm afraid, but Mr Duvallier here will be able to interpret for him if necessary. So, shall we deal with the formalities?"

We went to the office and I signed the necessary paperwork, and shortly after that the ship was towed into a hangar. Once that was done I assembled the crew once more and gave them another little speech, emphasising this time that I very much hoped we wouldn't have to fight again, and I could see the relief on a lot of their faces.

"I've arranged for you to eat in the base canteen," I told them. "The people there are quite happy to accept your French money, so you won't need to change it. You'll be sleeping on board as before, but this time if you go into town – and it'll be up to Commander Collier whether or not you're allowed to do that – I want you to go in ordinary clothes, not your uniforms. This is because strictly we're not supposed to be here, and I don't want any Russian spies reporting back that there's an Allied ship on this base. So far nobody has let me down, and I'm sure that isn't going to change.

"I'm not sure exactly how long we'll be here, but I expect it to be between three and ten days, so once again, don't spend all your money at once.

"Right, supper will be served from seven-thirty, so you're free until then. Dismissed."

The following morning I went into town with Wolfie, Chris and Tim, who was there in case I needed an interpreter: apparently the local Swiss dialect was almost identical to that spoken in southern Alsace. Mindful of the fact that we would now have quite a long journey on the other side of the hole I found a bank and drew out a fair bit of money and then found a jeweller's and used it to buy some jewellery, gold and diamonds mostly, which I would be able to sell for Euros once we reached the other Germany. Then we found a garage that rented out auto-carriages and I hired the largest one they had for a week. It wouldn't be possible to fit everyone into it on the return journey if both Joe's and Alex's families wanted to come with us, but it would be possible to squeeze seven or eight in at a time, which would mean that we would only need to make two trips.

We took it back to the base and loaded it up with a couple of small tents, a sleeping bag each, some changes of clothing, a couple of local maps and some food, and then Chris drove us through the city and out towards the border with Baden, which lay a couple of miles north of the city limits.

The border crossing gave us no problems: there were a couple of Russians on duty alongside the German guards, but when I explained that we were going to visit members of our family who lived near Todtnau, a small town which according to my map was three or four miles [5-6 km] below the summit of the Feldberg, the guards waved us through without challenge.

It's not all that far from Basel to the top of the Feldberg – as the crow flies it's only about twenty miles [30 km]. But it's also a very long way up, and the road, like most roads that climb mountains, snaked back and forwards, making the actual road distance considerably longer. Steam cars don't particularly like steep gradients, so it took us until early afternoon to reach the top. A little way below the summit there was a small village and I was able to arrange for the innkeeper there to look after our carriage for a few days, which I was sure would be safer than just leaving it at the side of the road.

We climbed the rest of the way to the summit. It was windy up there, but the sky was fairly clear and we had a spectacular view from the top.

I got out my compass and map, worked out exactly where we had seen the mist and headed in that direction, and in a little hollow about two hundred feet [60 m] below the top of the mountain was… nothing at all. I wasn't surprised – in view of the strength of the wind I'd have been amazed if there had been any mist. But I was sure we were looking at the right place.

We could have just pitched out tents and waited, but since there was an actual inn only a mile away that seemed unnecessary. So we went back to the inn and asked the innkeeper if he knew what the weather was likely to do over the next few days. He told us that it was set fair, and that the wind was supposed to drop overnight, and when I asked him how sure he was he grinned and told me that his brother worked at the weather-station on the western arm of the summit, and so his information came straight from the horse's mouth. Encouraged by this I booked us a couple of rooms, and we spent the night a lot more comfortably than I had expected.

The following morning we left the inn early and walked back to the summit, and this time there was a lovely, welcoming pocket of mist exactly where I'd hoped to see one. There were one of two others about as well, so this one could have been purely natural – it was indeed a fine, still morning – but we made our way down to it regardless.

"Wait here," I told Wolfie and Chris, and I strode into the mist, emerging from the other side… to see that they were still standing where I'd left them. For a moment my heart sank like a stone… but then I remembered that the holes only seemed to work in one direction, so I turned round and re-entered the mist from the other side. And this time when I came out into the open my friends were nowhere to be seen, even though I should have been standing right next to them. I ran back through the mist and called them round to the far side, and they came and followed me through.

This time I was confident that we were in Alex's world. From the edge of the trees I could see what looked like a restaurant a short distance away and there was a proper tarmac road leading off down the mountain. There didn't seem to be any other buildings in sight, so I decided that it would be quicker to go back to the other side of the mountain: if there was another inn here in this world, maybe we could call for a taxi.

On top of the mountain we found a couple of towers and some sort of a monument, each on a different arm of the summit, and there was also a cable-car going down to a building complex a hundred feet [30 m] or so below us. The cable-car didn't seem to be in use, so we walked down to the buildings, found an information office and asked them to call us a taxi, and at the same time I bought a map so that we could see where we were going.

The taxi took us down the mountain to a town called Hinterzarten, which had a railway station. It also had a jeweller's, but I found that selling a couple of items of jewellery wasn't quite as straightforward as I had hoped: the man behind the counter was quite suspicious and asked where they had come from.

"Family heirlooms," I told him.

"Oh, really? And which family might that be?"

I opened my mouth to give him my name but then had a flash of inspiration and gave him Wolfie's name instead. It's almost a hundred years since the last German Emperor abdicated, but the name of Hohenzollern still carries a lot of weight in Germany, and I knew that the family still laid claim to the Kingdom of Prussia and the rule of the German Empire here in this world, even though neither had existed since 1919. And so Wolfie's visiting card, which held his full name and his title of Margrave, could hardly fail to impress the man behind the counter.

"I see," he said, handing the card back. "In that case I'm sure I can help you…"

Once we had the money we were able to return to the station and buy tickets, and the rest of the journey was straightforward: we reached Sélestat in mid-afternoon.

We walked round to the camp-site. I'd never met Joe's parents, of course, and I wondered if I'd be able to answer the questions they were sure to have for me without actually lying to them about what was happening on the other side of the hole. Obviously if all went well we'd be able to take them straight back to Basel, get onto the ship and fly home, going as far to the west as we had to in order to avoid the fighting, and then maybe I wouldn't have to mention the war at all, at least not until we were safely back at Culham. But of course Billy had come through to warn Alex about the war, so probably they would already…

"Hey, Keith!"

That didn't register as being addressed to me, so I walked on, but a moment later someone grabbed my shoulder, and I turned round to find myself looking at Danny Carmody.

"Carmody!" I exclaimed. "What on earth are you doing here?"

"I asked if I could come. Simon's told me some stuff, and it seemed so mad that I wanted to see for myself… so is it true? Is there really another world?"

"Well, yes… so… are you okay?"

"Sort of," he said, not looking at me. "I got through it, anyway."

"Was it bad?"

He nodded sombrely. "Look, come on," he said. "I'll take you to our tents. I know Alex and Joe have been worrying about you…"

The tent we'd bought before I went back to my world was still in the same place, but now there was a smaller two- or three-man tent next to it. Carmody put his head into this, found it empty and took me into the larger one, and here I found Joe, who was talking to a smaller boy in glasses.

"Leo!" he exclaimed as I entered the tent. "You're okay! Billy said…"

"Yes, I'm fine," I interrupted. "Look, there's been a bit of a change of plan: the Eagles bombed the hole to hell and gone, so the only one left is in Baden… that's Germany, in this world. It's not as well sheltered as the one here was, so we might have to wait for it to reform – so I want to get back there as soon as we can. Is your family all here?"

He nodded. "My parents are in a hotel with Alex's, but this is my brother Simon. Si, this is Leo, and that's Wolfie, and the older one is called Chris Beeching – he's our French interpreter."

The younger boy turned to face me, and I saw that he'd managed to inherit all the good features that Joe had missed out on: Simon was genuinely good-looking, and if anything the glasses actually emphasised this, rather than detracting from it. He was two or three inches [5-7 cm] shorter than me, and he had a really nice smile, too.

"I remember you from school," he said. "You were in the football team, weren't you?"

"That's right," I said.

"I watched you play a couple of times," he said. "I mean, really I was there to watch Danny, but I remember you being pretty good. So is it really true about you being a Duke?"

"I'm afraid so. Weird, isn't it? I had no idea… But I don't act like one most of the time, unless my uncle's around, of course. Then you'll have to grovel and kiss my shoes and stuff."

"Sod off! I'm not kissing anyone's…"

"Joke!" I interrupted. "Joe's more like part of my family, rather than a member of the household. Same goes for Alex, and I suppose if you come through you will be too… I mean… are you going to come through to my world?"

"I hope so. Dad's not sure about it, but Joe and I are both working on him, and I'm pretty sure Alex has persuaded his parents to come, so it looks hopeful."

"Great!"

"Leo," interrupted Joe, "is there any chance of you letting Danny come too? Only he really needs to make a fresh start somewhere new, and Si and I thought…"

I turned to look at Carmody. "Is that what you want?" I asked him.

"Well, yes… look, I know I was a bit of a bastard back in England, shooting my mouth off all the time, but… well, I'm not like that any more…"

"He's not," Simon put in. "Really he isn't. Only it would be really hard for him if me and Joe went and he had to stay behind…"

"What about your parents?" I asked Carmody. "How do they feel about you just moving away?"

"My parents have split up," he told me. "My father moved out right after I got back home. And my mother says she's happy for me to do whatever's best for me, and since I don't think she'd be able to cope with looking after me on her own…well, if I could find somewhere else to go it would solve the problem. And I'd like to stay with Si, because he's been such a good friend since I got back home… I have nightmares, you see, and Si helps me… I've been sleeping at his house for a while, using Joe's bed, because I kept waking my mother up in the night and it was driving her mad, but Si copes with it really well… so, please, Keith… I mean Leo… I'd really like to come with you."

I was by no means sure about this. It's true that this didn't sound remotely like the loudmouth I'd known at school, and he looked different, too – sort of smaller and timid. But I really didn't want him to morph back into the old Carmody once we got back home.

"Joe?" I asked.

"He can certainly come with us as far as I'm concerned," said Joe. "And don't forget that Alex and I still owe him for not grassing us up."

"Well… okay, then," I said. "If it's okay with everyone else, it's okay with me."

"Thanks!" said Carmody, his face lighting up. "I really mean it!"

"Okay, I said. "So where's Alex?"

"He and Billy went to the shop," Joe told me. "He should be back any time. So when do we leave?"

"Tomorrow, provided I can fix it up with your parents. Will your dad be willing to travel during Passover, though?"

"He will if I explain how important it is. Look, Leo, once Alex gets back I think you ought to come and meet our parents straight away. I'm fairly sure my dad will agree to come after he's spoken to you and you've told him a bit about Culham. I think he just wants to be sure that we'll have a proper, safe future with you. And we will, won't we?"

Ah, I thought, now there's a question. If I'd been asked that question five days previously I'd have said yes like a shot. But now…now things were different. Yes, when we'd left France the French had been holding the Vosges, but further north things had apparently been very different: if the Russians had already reached Nancy on Monday, by now they could be more than halfway to Paris. What if we returned to my world to find France under Russian control? And if the Russians controlled the whole of mainland Europe, how long would it be before they crossed the Channel? There might even come a time when I would find myself seeking refuge here in this world…

Chapter Thirty-two

Alex and Billy returned five minutes later, and as soon as he saw me Alex dropped the shopping bag he was carrying and hugged me hard, apparently not caring in the least that Simon, Danny and Chris were watching.

"God, I've been worried sick," he told me, letting go of me and then, rather to my surprise, hugging Wolfie as well. "When Billy told us the Russians were coming, and then we didn't hear from you again… I was really scared. I thought we'd never see you again."

"There was a moment when I was pretty worried about that too," I admitted. "Once the Eagles splattered the hole I really thought we were in trouble…"

"What do you mean?" he asked, staring at me. "Do you mean we're stuck here now?"

"No – at least, I hope not. Remember that other patch of mist in Germany? Well, we got lucky. At least, we've been lucky so far – if anything happens to that one we'll be right back at square one. That's why I want to get back home as soon as possible. What's the position with your parents?"

"They want to come to your world. It took a bit of work, because after all, there's more to family than just the four of us. But I convinced them that I've got far more of a future with you than I would have in London, and I'm pretty sure I've got them convinced this is the right thing to do. As long as Joe's 'rents don't talk them back out of it, of course."

"Are they likely to, do you think?"

"Well… I'd say they're a bit less enthusiastic than mine. I'm sure that there's still a part of them that doesn't believe in the other world at all and thinks this is just some massive hoax, or something. And it's hard to blame them – after all, if someone had told us a year ago there was a completely different world right next to this one we'd have thought they were barking."

"More like Upminster," said Simon.

"Huh?"

"Upminster. It's way beyond Barking," he explained.

Chris and Wolfie both looked totally baffled, so I explained that on one of the London Underground lines there's a station called Barking, and a long way past it, at the terminus of the line, is a place called Upminster. I also had to explain 'barking mad'. Somehow cross-culture humour doesn't seem to work very well…

"Well, anyway," I said, "maybe I should go and talk to the parents now, because I really want us to be on our way tomorrow morning."

So we all walked round to a hotel that was about five minutes' walk away, only to discover that Joe's parents weren't there.

"They've probably gone for a look round;" said Joe. "I'm sure they'll be back soon."

"Well," I said, "while we're here… Chris, it might be a good idea if we book you a room. There won't be room in the tent for five of us, and if all goes well you'll have to do a lot of driving tomorrow, so maybe it would be a good idea to get a decent night's sleep."

"That's fine by me!" he assured me, and so we booked him a room on the same corridor as the two sets of parents and Alex's sister. And when we got back down to Reception after checking the room out and explaining what a television was and how it worked – and it took a while to drag Chris and Wolfie away from it – we found that we'd timed it perfectly: Joe's parents had just returned from their walk. So we went up to their room to talk.

I thought it might be a good idea to try to impress upon them that we'd be able to offer them a comfortable life in my world, and so I introduced myself and Wolfie formally, including titles, although I made no mention of our military rank, and I simply introduced Chris as "our friend and interpreter", because I certainly didn't want war to raise its ugly head too quickly.

Next I gave them the short version of my history, telling them only that I'd stumbled through the open hole at Stonehenge following a bang on the head and suppressing everything that led up to it. Finally I told them, as Joe had already done, that the Stonehenge hole had been destroyed in an accident and that we'd only just been able to find another way to get from one world to the other.

"Joe tells us that this world you live in is quite primitive," said Mr Silver. "Apparently you don't have proper cars or aeroplanes, or even electricity. Is that right?"

"Well, we do have cars – they're just steam-powered, rather than by petrol. And we have airships instead of planes. And as for electricity, we don't have it at the moment, but we will very soon, and it's likely to make us a lot of money. Most of my share will be going to charity – I'm fairly well-off already…"

"He means he's rolling in it," interrupted Alex.

"But I'm intending for my friends to benefit from it too," I went on, ignoring him. "The point is that financially you'll all be assured of a good future with me." Provided the Russians don't mess it up, I didn't add.

"Well, that's good to know, and it's obvious that Joe is very happy in your world. But I'm sure you can understand that it's a really big step. We're not too badly off in London, and we need to be sure that we're making the right move if we decide to uproot and make a completely new start somewhere else. Joe told us that what you're suggesting is for us to come and see where you live and find out a bit about your world and then make our minds up, and if we decide to come to your world to stay we'll be able to come back here to sort everything out before moving there on a permanent basis. Is that right?"

I hesitated. With the only surviving hole where it was it wouldn't be easy to do a lot of coming and going, especially if things went badly in France. In fact in that event it might not be possible at all.

"That's right," said Joe, as I hesitated. "Isn't it, Leo?"

I took a deep breath. "No," I said. "Not any more. You're right, Mr Silver, this is a major step, and it wouldn't be fair to ask you to make it without knowing what's going on…"

"Leo, no!" interrupted Joe, urgently.

"Joe, we have to," I said. "I wouldn't lie to you, and I'm not going to lie to anyone else who's going to be part of my family either. You see, Mr Silver, there's a war on at the moment. It's not war as you understand it: it's more like war was in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, where the fighting is purely between the armies and there is virtually no civilian involvement. The fighting is nowhere near England – the front line until this week was the River Rhine. But it affects us because the only hole between this world and mine is in… well, you'd call it Germany, and that's currently behind enemy lines. Imagine that we were living in 1970 or so and the only place we could cross was in Communist Poland, and you'll get an idea of the situation.

"Now, we can get back to the hole this time fairly easily, and I don't think we'll have any real trouble getting back to my world. But as well as being in enemy territory, the hole is also very much dependent on good weather conditions: it has to be fairly still and, as far as I can tell, dry. This time we'll be waiting for it to appear, if we have to wait – and I'd like to look at the weather forecast on TV a bit later – in this world, and clearly there's nothing dangerous about that. But it could be dangerous if we had to wait for any length of time on the other side. That's why it might not be so easy to come back again once you're in my world.

"Now I'm pretty sure you'd like to talk about that amongst yourselves for a bit, so we'll go and wait in Chris's room – that's 216. Come and find me if you have any questions."

I gathered up Alex, Billy and Chris and left the family, plus Danny – who seemed to be a sort of honorary Silver at the moment – to talk about it. I was sure that Joe would be trying his hardest to convince them to come, and probably his brother and Danny would support him, but I know that if I'd been a father I'd have been a bit less enthusiastic.

"Why did you tell him?" asked Alex.

"For the same reason that we're going to tell your parents when they get back. The war's important, and it wouldn't be fair to tell them all the good stuff without giving them the bad news as well. And I honestly believe that it'll be hard to use this hole very often, so they may very well find that once they're in my world they won't be able to get back. And they definitely have to know that before they decide, don't you think?"

"Yes, I suppose so," he admitted. "But they weren't sure about coming before, and I should think they'll be a lot less happy about it now. We'll just have to hope they give Joe the choice of whether to stay with us or go back with them. I think if they do he'll choose to stay – I think I would if my parents gave me the choice."

We sat in Chris's room for about ten minutes. I'm not sure if the fact that it was taking some time was good news or not: on the one hand, it seemed that Mr Silver hadn't just put his foot down and said that they were going home straight away, but on the other it was equally clear that Joe hadn't been able to convince him straight away of the benefits of coming with us.

The TV could pick up German programs as well as French ones and the hotel had included listing magazines for both, so I checked out when the next German news and weather broadcast was due, and since nobody had yet come to look for me when it was due to start I turned it on. The news wasn't particularly exciting, but the weather forecast was interesting, if not exactly what I wanted to hear: the next two days in the Black Forest were likely to be wet and windy, but Friday and Saturday were supposed to be dry and bright. The innkeeper in the other world had said that the weather there was supposed to be set fair for the rest of the week, so it looked as if we would be able to cross over on the Friday.

"At least that gives Joe a couple more days to work on his father," I observed. "There's no point in us leaving here before Friday now."

Five minutes later there was a knock and the door opened, but it wasn't Joe or his father: instead it was Alex's dad. I knew both Alex's parents pretty well, because I'd been In and out of his house a lot when I lived in Palmers Green and I was happy to see him again now.

"Hello, Mr Demetriou," I said, standing up.

""Hello, Keith…. No, it's not Keith any more, is it? Anyway, how are you?"

"Well, thanks."

"Good. Could you come with me for a moment?"

I supposed that he wanted to ask me the same sort of questions as Mr Silver, so I followed him out of the room, along the corridor and into another bedroom. Alex's mother and sister were there, but so was someone else.

"Auntie Megan!" I exclaimed. "I thought… I mean, you said you couldn't…"

"I didn't think I could," she told me. "But then when I found out that George and Anna were coming I changed my mind and asked if I could come too. So here I am."

I went and hugged her.

"Did you understand what I said in the letter I gave Alex to give you last October?" I asked.

"I think so. Of course it's hard for me to understand how my little Keith can actually be a duke, but it explains a few things: didn't I always say how grown up you were for your age? You'd obviously been very well brought up before we met you."

"Actually, my uncle – that's my real uncle, Uncle Gil – said he'd like to meet you, because he thought that you and Uncle Jim had done a wonderful job with me. So… will you be able to? I mean, do you want to come and live in my world?"

She smiled sadly. "No, I don't think so," she said. "You have your own family now, your real one. And you're growing up, too – you're a lot taller than the last time I saw you. You don't want us under your feet. Besides, Jim and I are happy where we are. Of course if you want to come and visit us occasionally we wouldn't mind that at all…"

"I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that," I said. "I expect Alex has told you that the hole between worlds we used before has gone. There's only one left now, and we won't be able to get at that one very often, if at all. Of course, if we could find another one, one in England, it would be different, but otherwise there probably won't be any way to get from one world to the other."

"Hold on," said Mr Demetriou. "I thought there was a supposed to be a hole close to here, one that we could get at without too many problems?"

"Well, there was," I told him. "But there isn't any more… look, how much has Alex told you about my world?"

We more or less went over the same ground that I had already covered with the Silvers.

"I see," said Mr Demetriou. "So what you're saying is, we can come with you now, but we might not be able to get back here again afterwards?"

"Well, we might… No, I'm not going to lie to you either. That's pretty much the position, yes. Look, I'm sure you'll need to talk about it, so maybe I should go. Auntie Megan, is there somewhere we can talk?"

"Of course. My room is just next door."

The next fifteen minutes or so were nice: we had a conversation along the lines of 'Do you remember…?' and I enjoyed thinking about all the things that had happened to me while I had lived in Palmers Green, even if most of them were fairly mundane – first day at school, first match for the school football team, the week we spent in a caravan at the seaside, and so on. That life had completely lacked the excitement of flying my own æthership or rescuing my best friend from the clutches of a Russian aristocrat… or, I realised, nearly getting killed several times in the past two weeks alone. Maybe there was something to be said for a quiet life…

Just for a moment I wondered how my life would work out if I simply went back to London with Auntie Megan and picked up my life where I had left it the previous summer. But it was only for a moment: that world might be safe – well, safer, because there was always a risk of being caught up in a terrorist attack – but in it I would just be an ordinary kid, with no real freedom and little money. It was a world without ætherships and – the final, overwhelming decider – it was a world without Wolfie. Really, it was no choice at all.

But I couldn't change Auntie Megan's mind either: she and Uncle Jim were happy where they were and wouldn't know what to do with themselves living in some huge aristocratic mansion. Maybe if a stable hole could be found somewhere in Britain they might come to visit, and of course I would always be welcome to come and visit them, but otherwise…

But I realised that there was at least one thing I could do. I excused myself for long enough to go back to Chris's room and collect my bag, and when I got back to Auntie Megan's room I presented her with a necklace, one of the pieces I'd bought at the jeweller's in Basel.

"The diamonds are real," I told her. "Of course you could just wear this if you go to a party or something, but if you ever need money – like if anything happens to Uncle Jim and he can't work, or something – you'll be able to sell it, and it should give you enough to get by on for quite a while. Consider it a late birthday present."

She argued a bit, but this time I insisted, and in the end she gave way. And a couple of minutes later Alex knocked and put his head around the door, and as he was smiling I deduced, correctly, that it was good news: his father had said that he was still prepared to make the journey, provided that he could make some arrangements with his relatives in London to look after the house for him while he was away.

There was no sign of a resolution from the Silvers, though, and I didn't blame Mr Silver for that in the slightest. If anything I'd been pleasantly surprised that the Demetrious had decided to go ahead as quickly as they had – after all, it's a massive step to walk away from your job, your home, your other relatives and everything you know in favour of a new life in a world that you know next to nothing about and that you've never visited. And when you find out that that world is in the middle of a major war… well, to me the only real surprise was that Mr Silver still hadn't delivered a categorical 'no'. It was probably a little easier for the Demetrious, because they knew me personally, and because Mr Demetriou was self-employed, so he wouldn't be walking out on a normal nine-to-five job, but even for them this was a pretty enormous step.

Eventually, at around half past six, Mr Silver came and found me, taking me down to the lounge on the ground floor and parking me in a chair facing him.

"You should know that I'm still far from happy about this," he told me. "But it would appear that Joe's happiness depends on him staying in your world, where he assures me he has definite prospects. Does he?"

"I guarantee it," I replied. "There'll be no problem putting him through university, if that's what he wants, and there will definitely be a job for him afterwards – or before, if he would prefer that. The same will go for Simon and Danny."

I wasn't actually sure that I wanted to pay Danny's way through university – after all, I'd always thought of him as a complete dick. But maybe he really had changed, and if helping him was what it was going to take to get Joe's family on board, then it certainly wasn't too high a price to pay.

"Well, I admit that's a major consideration," said Mr Silver. "Joe's by no means certain that he'll get the grades he'll need for a university place, and the job prospects in London aren't exactly wonderful at the moment, even if he does get a half-decent degree.

"If it wasn't for the difficulty with getting back here I don't think I'd have any problem, but as it is… I've decided that we'll take a chance with you. But I want you to swear to me that if things don't work out you'll do everything in your power to get us back to this world. Joe says I can trust you, and while I'm not in the habit of trusting boys I've only just met I do trust my son's judgement. So, would you be prepared to swear to that?"

"Without any hesitation," I assured him. "Just as long as you understand that it might take quite a long time, and that it might not be actually be possible at all. But I will guarantee to do everything in my power to arrange it, if it can be arranged."

"Then… very well. We'll come with you. Can you give me a little while to make some phone calls?"

"Take as long as you need. Now that I've seen the weather forecast there's no point in us leaving here before Thursday at the earliest. We need clear, calm conditions, and that's not going to happen before Friday."

That evening Joe and Alex ate supper with their families, so I took Auntie Megan, along with Wolfie and Billy, to a reasonable-looking restaurant in town – I thought that the situation called for a bit more of a celebration than eating at McDonalds – where we ate steak followed by an enormous ice-cream concoction that I'm sure Auntie Megan would have never dared order at home. Heaven only knows how many calories it contained. Afterwards we walked back to the hotel with her and then went to the camp-site to wait for the others.

We couldn't have actually slept all seven of us in the tent, and I thought even five might be a bit of a squeeze – I was assuming that Simon and Danny would be sleeping in the smaller tent next door – but there was plenty of room for us to sit and talk. Joe and Alex were both relieved that their parents had agreed to make the journey, and so was Billy, who had been scared that Alex wouldn't be allowed to come back with us, although since Simon and Danny were in the tent with us Alex and Billy were pretending to be no more than friends – as, of course, were Wolfie and I. Of course once we got back to our own world I had no intention of pretending any longer, and if Simon or Danny didn't like it, well, that would just be their problem.

But in fact Simon and Danny were both so excited about the journey that they probably wouldn't have noticed if Alex and Billy had sat and kissed each other all evening: they just kept firing questions at me about what my world was like, and what it was like to fly in an airship, and did I really live in a huge house, and what was school like in my world…

Okay, that one calmed them down a bit: I don't suppose our description of Mr Devlin was much of a recruiting poster. Nor was the lack of TV, let alone computers, although I was able to say that once we had electricity, all sorts of things might become possible.

Once the flood of questions had dried to a trickle I had a question of my own for Danny: what had prison been like?

"I told you, it was bad," he said, not looking at me. "I don't really want to talk about it."

"Danny… look, you probably know that I didn't really like you very much last year," I told him. "But you've definitely changed, and… well, you're going to be part of my family from now on, more or less, and I'd really like to know what happened. Maybe I didn't see the real you at school, but I'd like to find out a bit about the real you now. Please?"

He looked around us and saw – or, at least, I hope he saw – only friendly faces.

"Okay," he said. "I've told Si, and I suppose I don't mind telling the rest of you. But just this once, all right? It's not something I'll want to talk about again.

"I didn't realise at first how serious it was. Even when they smashed my door down at six in the morning I thought they were just being dicks for the sake of it, because if they'd knocked we'd have let them in and I'd have gone with them without arguing. But apparently the police never just knock these days – I suppose a regular criminal would be ready for them and would be off out of the back door the moment the doorbell rang. But I was asleep in bed. At least they didn't burst into my room and drag me out of bed – my father stopped them from doing that. But one of them came into the room and watched me getting dressed, and then they just took me to the police station. They showed me my baseball cap, I admitted it was mine – well, it had my name in, and I'm sure they could have got DNA from it if they'd had to – and then they charged me with… well, it was all in Legal, but it meant breaking into a shop and nicking a pair of trainers, basically.

"The court appearance only took a few minutes. My dad had found a solicitor, but there wasn't much he could do except to advise me to plead guilty and tell the court I'd never been in trouble before. I thought I'd get probation, so when the magistrate gave me eight months in a secure establishment, or whatever it's called, I couldn't believe it.

"They stuck me in a van and it took me to some place miles out of London. I didn't really know what was going on: I'd expected to go to Feltham, but it turns out you can't go there unless you're fifteen, so I had to go to some other place about a hundred miles away."

What was it like there?" asked Alex.

Danny shrugged. "I suppose it could have been worse," he said. "I had my own room, so at least I didn't have to share with some psycho, and the food wasn't as bad as I'd expected. But some of the other kids were total bastards, and the staff didn't do anything to stop them. I suppose it was obvious I'd never been in trouble before, so they gave me a really hard time: I got beaten up a few times, and I had to give them sweets and stuff I bought at the canteen. Most of the time I just kept my head down and hoped they'd pick on someone else.

"Lessons weren't too bad, although I don't think I really learned very much while I was there. Perhaps your Mr Devlin won't be so bad after all, Leo. Anyway, I only had to stay there for four months, because apparently if you behave you get time off for good behaviour, but… well, it was a bad four months, and I still have nightmares about it – I dream I'm back there, and… well, anyway, I suppose that's about it."

Joe and Simon both looked at him, but Danny just looked at the ground and clearly wasn't going to say anything more, and so Alex changed the subject.

"Who fancies a game of cards?" he asked.

Of course we all knew where this was going – well, probably Simon and Danny didn't, but neither tried to back out when Alex explained the usual rules: clothes first, then forfeits, except that the forfeits were limited to things that could be done inside the tent, and you could demand a truthful answer to a question instead of a forfeit. The person with the best hand of the round got to choose the forfeit or the question.

Of course I hadn't had a lot of luck with this in the past, and the last time I'd played with multiple players, at Seaforth's place in Scotland, I'd been the first to lose. But tonight the cards were far friendlier and I never looked like being the first person to lose. That honour – or dishonour – fell to Alex, who removed his underwear without hesitation. Danny turned out to have the best hand, but he seemed unsure of what to do about it.

"Truth," he said at last. "Alex, are you really and truly happier in Leo's world than you were in ours?"

"That's easy," said Alex. "Yes. I miss a few things, like computers and TV, and playing football, I suppose, although there's no reason why we can't do that at Culham. But otherwise I've got everything I need at Culham, and I've got a far better future there than I would have here."

"Actually I think maybe we should change the rules," I said. "We'll carry on playing strip, but whoever gets the best hand has the right to ask everyone else a question, the same question for everyone, and we all have to answer it truthfully. It'll be a good way for Danny and Simon to find out more about where they're going, and it'll give the rest of us a chance to find out a bit about them. So let's all answer that question – well, Simon can't, because he's never been there, and I suppose it's hard for Wolfie and Billy because they don't know much about this world, but maybe other questions will be suitable for everyone. So: well, obviously I like my world better because I'm rich and I sort of matter there, which I certainly didn't in London."

"You did to some people," said Alex.

"Yes, but not very many. Joe?"

"Same answer as Alex, really," said Joe. "I can achieve a lot more there than I could here. And I've got good friends there, too."

We played another hand. Joe lost and removed his tee-shirt, and Wolfie, who had the best hand, looked at us, grinned and asked "Who do you love most in the world, not counting family?"

I don't think he was trying to put me on the spot, but I thought it was a rather unfair question. Still, we'd sworn to tell the truth.

"You," I said. "But you're not the only person I love. It is possible to love more than one person at once, you know."

I was looking at Alex when I said that, but he seemed to be finding it an even harder question to deal with than I had.

"Leo," he said, finally. "But that's just because of how long we've been friends. Otherwise I'd have to say Billy. And Leo's right: you can love more than one person. I love Wolfie too, even though I'm going to try to think up a really nasty question for him later."

"Alex," said Billy, who was next person along. "I love Leo too, for taking me out of the stables and for changing my life, but Alex is the most important."

"Ben," said Joe. "You two haven't met him yet, but you will once we get back to Basel. And I really hope you'll get to like him, too."

It was Danny's turn, but he seemed embarrassed. "What if there's nobody you love?" he asked.

"Then you can say that," I told him. "As long as it's the truth, of course."

"Then there's nobody… yes, there is. I don't think I'd have called it 'love', but I suppose I'd have to say I love Simon. I don't mean it like that," he added, quickly, even though none of us had suggested by word or expression that we cared how he meant it. "But… he's been more than just a friend since I got out of… you know. I couldn't have got through the nightmares and stuff without him. So if thinking someone is a proper friend counts as loving them, then I suppose I love Si."

"Simon?" I asked.

"Well… I'm like Danny," he said. "I probably wouldn't use the word 'love' because that makes it sound well gay, but I like Danny a lot. He's never cared that I'm way younger than him – he's always been ready to hang with me and do stuff, and it's obvious he trusts me because of the sort of stuff he tells me – like when he found out about… something to do with my brother…"

"It's okay, Si," interrupted Joe. "They all know about it."

"Really? Oh… well, anyway, he shared it with me straight away. And he's told me all about being in… where he was last autumn, too, even the really bad stuff. And you only tell big secrets to special friends, don't you? So I suppose you'd have to say Danny and me are really good friends, even if we don't actually love each other…"

"I wouldn't worry too much about it sounding gay," said Alex. "We don't have a problem with that. Your brother isn't the only one – in fact most of us are, I think, or at least, we are at the moment. Some of the others might grow to like girls, but I'm not going to, for one. So perhaps – and I know we're not really due for another question yet, but still – perhaps I should ask if it would bother you, sharing a house with gay people?"

Simon and Danny looked at each other.

"I already have, obviously," said Simon. "Joe and I shared a room, and it didn't bother me at all. Of course I teased him loads, but I still felt really bad when he never came back last October. In fact I wondered if it was my fault…"

"It wasn't," Joe assured him.

"I know that now, but back then I thought it was. And I couldn't even talk to Danny about it, because I think they listen in on your phone calls when you're in prison, and they read your letters, too. When he got out Danny told me that it was far more likely to be his fault than mine, because he was the one who'd outed Joe to me in the first place, and suggested all the stuff… I mean…"

"It's okay," I told him. "We know about that too."

"Really?"

"Really. Joe trusts us," I said, deciding not to bother mentioning that it had been Sparrer who had first raised the subject of Joe's lack of hair. "You'll find that about us: we really don't keep a lot of secrets from each other. So, anyway, some of us being gay doesn't bother you too much. Danny?"

"Well… I'm not gay," he said. "At least, I don't think so… and it does seem a bit sort of weird to actually want to do stuff like… you know… with another boy. But Joe… even when I was being a total bastard to him, he was still sort of my mate, and sometimes we just hung together, or went bowling down Wood Green or stuff like that, and I thought we got on okay. And him being gay didn't bother me when we were doing stuff like that. That day he came to visit me… I never thought he'd do that. Simon, yes – we were friends, and I'd hoped he'd be allowed to come. But I thought Joe would be happy to see me locked up, after what I did to him. But he wasn't: he was worried about me, and tried to cheer me up, saying he'd take me bowling soon as I got out, and stuff.

"At first I thought he was just being nice because I never grassed him up, but then I realised that wasn't it, that he was being a proper mate. So him being gay doesn't bother me, and so I don't see why anyone else here being gay should bother me either. As long as they don't try it on with me, of course."

"Wait till you meet Albie!" commented Alex. "I don't think the rest of us will, though. Sorry, Danny, but you're not really a pin-up, are you?"

"Sounds like that's a good thing. Except… if you live in a proper stately home, Leo… does that mean you've got maids?"

"Yes, I have. So maybe you'll get lucky, if that's what you're after."

"Only if you can find one who's desperate," commented Simon.

"Bet I find one before you," retorted Danny.

"Well, you're two years older than me. Still, we both know I've got more to offer a girl than you have."

I expected Danny to challenge that, and the fact that he didn't suggested that maybe Simon was telling the truth. After all, Joe had more or less hinted as much the previous year…

"Have you ever actually been out with a girl?" asked Alex, who by now had pulled his boxers back on – clearly the card game had stalled in favour of conversation.

"Well, no. I have asked, though, only she told me… well, she said no, anyway."

"Don't let that put you off," said Alex. "Seriously… I mean, you might not want to be told this by a raving queer, but you're not bad-looking. It's just your personality that needed some work, and that seems to have happened while you were… away. I'm sure you'll find a girl eventually. Just keep asking, because if you don't ask, you'll never know. I just wish I'd asked a couple of years ago."

I knew he meant me. "I think that might have made things a lot more complicated when we got to Culham," I said. "If we'd been proper partners… well, I wouldn't have wanted you and Wolfie to end up fighting a duel over me."

"I don't know," said Joe. "I think it sounds romantic. I don't think anyone's ever likely to fight a duel over me."

"It might sound romantic, but would you really want your two best friends to be trying to kill each other and knowing that you're responsible for it? I think things worked out pretty well…"

We went on talking about this and that – school, sport, the difference between the two Londons – for another hour or so, and then we settled down to sleep. The tent was a little crowded with five, so Joe went to sleep with his brother and Danny in the smaller tent, which could take three comfortably, leaving the rest of us a bit more space. Not that we needed a lot of space, because the four of us were only using two sleeping-bags.

***

The next couple of days passed quietly. We did some shopping, walked around the town and went up into the mountains to have a proper look at the castle, which in this world was a lot bigger and in an almost perfect state of repair, though it had been built a lot more recently than the version in my world.

On Thursday morning I said a difficult and, to be honest here, tearful goodbye to Auntie Megan, who was travelling back that afternoon. I promised that I would get back in touch the moment I found a suitable hole between worlds.

On Friday morning we took down the tents and made our way to the hotel, where we met the others. Mr Silver wasn't very happy about travelling on the penultimate day of Passover, when traditionally work – which includes travelling, other than on foot – has to be avoided, though by citing 'necessity' and allowing the rest of us to carry the family's luggage he was able to talk himself into it. I'd have taken a taxi, but it wasn't too far to the station and we managed to get there eventually despite the amount we had to carry.

"Do you realise that today's Friday the Thirteenth?" commented Danny as we waited on the platform. "There are thirteen of us, too. That could be a lot of bad luck."

"Well, if you want to stay behind, so there are only twelve of us…" I suggested.

"No, thanks. I'll take my chance with the rest of you. I was just saying, that's all."

I didn't think I believed in omens or fate or bad luck… well, not in the sense of 'It's Friday the Thirteenth so something bad is sure to happen'. All the same, I wished he hadn't mentioned it, and if the bridge over the Rhine collapsed while our train was halfway across it I told myself that I'd make sure Danny drowned before I did. But in fact the journey went thoroughly smoothly: even though we had to change at Strasbourg, then again at Offenburg, and finally yet again in Freiburg, we didn't miss any of our connections and all the trains ran on time. We reached Hinterzarten at about a quarter to twelve.

Here we did run into a problem, though not one that was completely unexpected: the local taxi company only had one vehicle capable of taking seven passengers at once. All of their other vehicles could take no more than four passengers at a time, so we'd have needed four ordinary taxis if we all wanted to travel together. But of course there was little point in doing that, because our own autocarriage could only carry seven passengers at a time, which meant that half of us were going to have to wait for Chris to drive the first load down to Basel and then come back, and I knew how long that was likely to take. It made more sense for Chris and his first five passengers, together with most of the luggage, to go now and to ask the taxi-driver to come back for the rest of us once he'd dropped the first batch off.

I sent the four parents and Alex's sister with Chris in the first load, leaving the seven of us boys to sit outside the station to wait for the taxi to come back. It was quite a nice day, clear and bright with hardly any wind, as the forecast had predicted, so I was confident that the hole would be there, and that meant that I could just sit back, relax and enjoy being with my friends.

About three-quarters of an hour later the taxi returned and picked us up, and we were driven back up to the Feldberg. Today the cable car was running, so I bought us all one-way tickets – I sincerely hoped that we wouldn't have to come back down in this world – and we travelled up to the summit of the mountain. The sky was clear and the view was magnificent: we could see the Alps off in the distance, and to the west the Vosges were also visible.

I led the others to the north-east corner of the summit and far enough down the slope beyond it for us to be able to see the patch of mist, exactly where it should have been. Alex made to continue the descent, but I stopped him.

"Not yet," I said. "We don't want to have to wait around on my side of the hole in case some passing Eagle sees us and gets curious. It'll take Chris at least three hours to get to Basel and then back up here again, so it would be a lot safer to stay where we are for another couple of hours or so. That way we'll only have a few minutes to wait for him on my side."

Alex agreed that this sounded sensible, and so we went back to the top and spent a couple of hours sightseeing. There was a memorial to Chancellor Bismarck on one arm of the summit, and a little way away from it there was an observation tower, from which there was a clear view in every direction.

"I bet it gets damned cold up here in the winter," commented Danny. "There's nothing to block the wind, whatever direction it comes from."

"That's one reason why this isn't likely to be a particularly useful hole," I said. "As far as we can work out, they only form when there's no wind. The one in France would have been a lot better because it was quite well sheltered. It probably means we'll only be able to use this one during part of the year – and that's without taking the fact that it's in enemy territory into consideration. If your dad decides he wants to go back, Joe, maybe we'll have to go off hunting for other ancient monuments after all."

Shortly before three o'clock we made our way back to the north-east corner of the summit, but this time we climbed down to the hollow that held the hole. I led them through to the far side.

"It looks exactly the same," said Simon, in a disappointed voice. "Are you sure we're not still where we started?"

"Look over there," I said, pointing. "In your world there's a restaurant a couple of hundred metres away. Here that part of the slope is covered in trees. We're where we should be. You'll be able to see better when we get back up to the top, because in this world there's no cable-car, no Bismarck Memorial and no tower – the only building is the weather station on the north-west arm."

"Really? Come on, then, Danny – let's go and see!"

Simon set off up the slope as fast as he could with Danny behind him. The rest of us took it more slowly: Wolfie didn't like climbing up slopes as steep as this, and Billy and I stayed on either side of him so that he could grab us if he needed to.

Danny and Simon disappeared over the crest, but a few seconds later Simon's head reappeared.

"You're right about the top," he called. "And there's a massive airship up here too. Is it yours, Leo?"

"It might be," I said. "I can't think why anyone else should land up here. I suppose Albie thought it would be quicker to fly up here to pick us up. It's a bit risky, though – it would have been a lot safer to wait for us in Basel. Better make sure, though. Can you see what it's called?"

"I'll have to get a bit closer," said Simon, and he disappeared again.

The rest of us continued up the slope. A minute or so later, just as we were approaching the crest, Simon's voice reached us from beyond the top of the slope.

"Hey, Leo," he called, "Why did you give your ship a Russian name?"

"What?!"

"It's called Chornaya Molniya," Simon told me. "That's a funny name for a ship – it means 'Black Lightning'."

"Oh, my God… get back here!" I yelled. "And get Danny back here, too!"

Simon said nothing – presumably Danny had run on ahead and he'd gone to call him back. I carried on up the slope until I could see the top of the mountain, and it was all I could do not to vomit: the ship moored on the top was painted black all over, except for a white circle over the nose. This didn't hold an eagle: instead there was a single black bolt of lightning, just as there had been on the sides of Alexander Suvorov.

"Run!" I yelled in the direction of Simon and Danny.

"Too late," said Alex, and when I turned to see where he was pointing I saw a quartet of Cossacks in red shirts on the slope fifty yards to our right. And they were all pointing rifles at us.

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