David Clarke

The Final Nexus

Chapters 17-19

Chapter Seventeen

"I've never seen you in uniform before," I remarked as we headed down the ramp. "I hadn't even realised you were a colonel."

Mr Narj shrugged. "Since they put me in charge of the Nexus project I've spent most of my time with politicians or contractors, and I felt more comfortable talking to people like that in civilian clothes. Besides, we're not really a very military sort of people. The only reason I put the uniform on today is because it would look silly wearing a tin hat with a suit."

"You're likely to need to keep wearing it, unless someone can think up a way to stop the Greys using their portal," I pointed out. "What will you do? This time the Greys know that both Hubs exist – at least, I presume you repatriated the ones who survived at Hub Two instead of just shooting them. And that means you can't simply abandon the Hubs and hope the Greys don't stumble on them this time."

"No, we can't. We'll either have to destroy them, or at least remove all the computers. Of course if the Greys really can open an interface to anywhere, and not just to here, we won't be the only ones who need to worry. And in that case they won't need our Hubs so badly anyway."

"No, but they'll want the information on your computers. It'll help them to decide where to send their tanks next – after all, they probably don't want to risk invading some hi-tech world by mistake."

We went back along the tunnel to the office.

"It doesn't help that today is an Ertday," he said, sitting down in front of the computer. "It means we won't be able to start getting anything done properly until tomorrow, and by then it'll be almost too late. Still, I can inform the militia offices in Molnarhass and Kolmar, which are likely to be closest to the Grey portal, and I can try to get things moving in Temishar, too."

I sat back out of the way and let him get on with it. He was using a sort of videophone program on his computer, which I guessed worked like an instant messenger program, or like Skype, in my native world, and it was obvious that he was only managing to reach fairly junior figures who had the misfortune to be scheduled to work on a rest day. And in each case the person on the other end of the line went from disbelief to panic.

"Just call in your commanding officer," advised Mr Narj in each case. "I'm trying to get something moving in the capital, so if your chiefs call in there later today we can hopefully get moving before it's too late."

Things went slightly better with the call to Temishar, because at least here there was a general actually on duty, though it took time to convince him that the threat was both real and imminent. Finally the message seemed to sink in and Mr Narj was able to close the connection and allow the headquarters types to take charge.

"All right," he said to me. "What do you want us to do about your Arvelans?"

"Nothing just yet. I'd say send them home, but there's no direct portal and I really don't want them going back through my world in case they're feeling vindictive. They know where my parents live, after all. And if General Lee has demolished Stonehenge they wouldn't be able to go that way anyway. Just stick them in a room out of the way for a bit."

"All right. But I want to get back to Hub Two – it's closer to the probable invasion point, and I want to start thinking about dismantling the computers. I expect you'll want to come with me, because then you'll be able to get back into either Elsass or your own world, and you'll need to do that before we shut the Hub down. So we might as well take the Arvelans with us, too."

So we went back to the surface to fetch everyone else, and ten minutes later we were back on the Capsule. We parked the Arvelans in the second carriage with most of the militia to watch over them, making sure the soldiers were commanded strictly not to remove their helmets, and the rest of us sat down in the first carriage.

"Will Elsass be able to help?" I asked. "You have a full alliance with them, after all."

"Well, I'll ask, obviously," said Mr Narj. "But they haven't got an army, either, just a militia that's even smaller than ours. And as far as I can tell the rest of Europe is exactly the same. Nobody expects war these days. I suppose we've never really thought about invaders from other worlds. Even last time we put it down to no more than bad practice on our part: after all, it was our portal the Greys used to invade, not one of their own. We thought if we just mined the tunnels at the Hubs that it couldn't happen again."

"We could ask the Horde to help," said Sam. "They love fighting. If General Lee was right and there are other crawlers in this area they might be able to get here in time to help."

"I don't know," I said. "I know what a crawler can do, but up against four hundred tanks I don't think it would have a chance. And I'm sure that Grey infantry won't hesitate to shoot at Horde cavalry, either: I don't think the Greys know what 'bad form' is."

"Maybe, but if there's a chance of them being able to fight in a real war and we don't tell them about it, they'll be angry," said Sam.

"Angry, but alive," I said. "I don't like to think of boys like Xan and Vanya charging with lances against a mass of Grey tanks. But… we're going to have to call them anyway to find out if Stonehenge has been destroyed or not, so I suppose we could mention it. Do you think you'll be able to raise them?"

"They'll be listening out at nine this evening," Sam reminded me. "Provided that there's a decent transmitter here, I'll raise them."

I translated that, and Mr Narj confirmed that there were radios Sam could use, though there was a much more powerful radio station down on the plain. He advised using that one as the transmission would probably get a lot further from there than it would with a weaker transmitter up here where we were surrounded by mountains, especially if the intended recipient of the calls was somewhere to our west.

When the Capsule reached Hub Two Mr Narj arranged for the Arvelans to be taken upstairs to the briefing room and held there, but before we left them I thought I ought to let them know what was happening.

"Irfan, did you manage to read what I was talking to Mr Narj about back at the portal?" I asked.

"The reptiles are about to invade," he replied.

"Right. Don't worry, I'm going to make sure we get you out of here before it happens, but we can't just send you back the way you came because it's quite possible that you won't be able to use the portal at Stonehenge."

"Why not?" asked Aarnist.

"Because it might not be there any longer. There's a chance that General Lee will have destroyed it."

"Who's General Lee?"

"The commander of the crawler where you found me."

"But we closed the portal to his world, so how is he going to be able to get through?"

"There's a way," I said. I didn't want to say any more because if anything went wrong with the plan I didn't want to get Dec into trouble, but of course I was dealing with Konjässiem here.

"The crippled kid's a Konjässi?" exclaimed Irfan, clearly seeing what I was thinking yet again. "Damn! How did I miss that?"

"He was trying to look inconspicuous. I suppose it worked. But yes, the plan was for him to get the portal reopened and for the general's men to take the circle over, and if it worked you won't be able to get back that way. We think we can probably get you home through the Horde world – that's the one the crawlers are based in – but we won't be able to find out until this evening. If there's a crawler anywhere near here it should be possible for you to get into their world, and after that it's just a question of getting back to England: even if the circle has been destroyed I expect the general can find a way to open a portal back to your world, because I'm pretty sure he'll keep all the computers and records from the work Gordiss and his colleagues have done. And the crawler computers are really efficient: they opened a portal into this world in less than an hour.

"Of course, if the circle hasn't been destroyed you can go back the way you came. We're going to try to radio the general this evening, and once we've done that we'll know how to get you home."

"So you're not thinking of having your friends just quietly shoot us, then?" asked Aarnist.

"No, of course not – not even you," I added, looking at Irfan. "After all, you haven't done me any real harm. Of course, if I knew for sure that you were going to send me back to Laztaale things might be different, so it's a good thing Dec isn't here to ask you that question, isn't it?"

"Not really," said Aarnist. "I don't think I'd have done that. But you'll just have to take my word for it, won't you?"

We went back downstairs, and when we went through to the office we found another familiar face: Jean-Patrick was sitting on a chair in a corner looking thoroughly scared. He jumped up when we came in.

"Stefan!" he cried. "What's happening? What is this place? Nobody here seems to speak French…"

"You're not in France any longer," Stefan told him. "This is a country called Kerpia."

"But… of course I'm in France! I went up to the hut to leave the message Jake's mother sent, and there were two men there. They took me down a ladder and through a couple of tunnels to get here, but it can't have been more than two or three hundred metres at the most – so I must still be in France!"

"Not exactly. You've moved into a different world. Jake comes from your world, but I don't, and nor do any of these other people. But you don't have to worry, because they're friendly – in fact the man in charge is a good friend of ours. The only reason they brought you here is because the people who found you didn't know what to do with you, but now that we're here everything will be fine."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm certain. It's just that the people here are a bit worried at the moment because…"

I suppose Stefan realised that it wouldn't exactly help to calm Jean-Patrick down if he told him that the country was about to be invaded by intelligent reptiles.

"Well, they've got a few things on their minds," Stefan concluded.

Yes, I thought: about four hundred things, and all of them armoured and hostile. And that wasn't counting their infantry support

"Can I go home, then?"

"I expect so," said Stefan. "In fact, we'll come with you. There's not much we can do here, and I expect Jake would like to call his parents and let them know that he got here safely."

That was a very good point, and so when Stefan went to find Mr Narj, who had left the office again, I went with him. Mr Narj said that Jean-Patrick could certainly go home – after all, they could hardly hold him indefinitely – but that we should try to impress upon him the need not to tell anyone about the hut: there were already too many worlds with portal technology without having it spread to my world as well.

We went back and collected Jean-Patrick from the office. Sam asked if he could come too, since there was nothing useful he could do here until nine o'clock, and so the four of us walked back through the tunnel to the Nexus Room and then back through Door Eight and along to the foot of the ladder.

"This is where the actual portal is," Stefan told Jean-Patrick. "The ladder is in your world, but everything beyond this door is in Kerpia. Maybe Mr Narj will let us show you some of the other worlds once everything calms down a bit."

"I'd like that!" he said. "Are they very different to my world?"

"Some of them are."

We climbed to the top of the ladder and stepped out of the hut. Apparently the engineers had finished their work before taking Jean-Patrick to the Hub because there was now a blanket of mist surrounding the hut. But Stefan had his compass with him as usual, and that allowed us to head away from the hut in the correct direction. Once we were fifty yards or so away the mist thinned and then disappeared.

"Some of the worlds don't look very different to this one," Stefan went on. "But the history is always at least a bit different. Everyone you have met so far except Jake comes from a different world: I'm from a world where Germany won the last war; Nicky is from a world where a huge asteroid changed the climate and caused massive floods – in his world your house would be under water; Killian is from a world where Atlantis actually exists – in fact that's where he comes from; and Sam here is from a world where Europe is all communist."

"Wow! But… don't you have problems understanding each other? And how come you can all speak French?"

"The Kerpians have this great machine that can teach you a language in about four days, and they gave the technology to the people of the world where we live. Jake and Nicky speak French naturally, but Killian and I had it implanted. Maybe if the Kerpians decide they can trust you they'll be able to arrange something for you, too. But… look, JP, this is really important: you can't tell anyone about this… well, maybe we could tell the Webers. But no adults! If the Kerpians find that anyone else has found out about it they'll probably have to close this portal permanently, and then we won't be able to come and visit you, and Jake won't be able to go home to see his parents. Are you sure you can keep this a secret?"

"Definitely!" he said, nodding vigorously. "And especially if you can get your friends to teach me to speak English and German – that'll save me a lot of time at school!"

We walked on down to Orschwiller, and once we got to Jean-Patrick's house I was able to phone my parents and let them know that everything was okay.

"I won't be able to get back home for a while, though," I said. "There's a bit of a problem we've got to deal with first, and I'm not sure how long it might take. As soon as I have any news I'll call you."

Obviously they wanted to know more, but I said I couldn't really talk at the moment because I was on Jean-Patrick's phone and I didn't want to run up a big bill – and, besides, there wasn't a lot more I could say at the moment.

Next we walked round to the Webers' house, where we found the three brothers playing video games. They seemed glad to see that I was safe, but Didier and Sébastien were even gladder to see Stefan.

"Are you going to be around for a bit?" Didier asked him.

"Well, we don't have to rush off for a few hours yet. Why?"

"Because when you're here we can keep Luc from getting too lippy. He knows you can beat him in a fight with one hand tied behind your back, after all."

"Crap!" declared Luc, which of course led to Stefan demonstrating that he could at least pin Luc down using only one hand.

"This is fun!" declared Didier, watching his older brother squirm. "Luc gets taught his place and Bastien and I don't even need to move a muscle. I wish Stefan lived with JP permanently."

"No, you don't," said Stefan. "You enjoy dealing with him yourself, too. I've watched you, don't forget."

"Well, that's true," admitted Didier. "But it still makes a nice change watching someone else doing the work."

"Did you ever get that money back?" I asked. "Or did you have to bury him in a snowdrift like you threatened?"

"No, he repaid us as soon as he got his Christmas money. We knew he would – like he said back then, he always does. But it might have been fun to strip him and bury him in the snow. We'll have to remember that one for next winter."

"Stefan," said Jean-Patrick, as Stefan got up and helped Luc to his feet, "can we…?"

"Yes, I suppose so," said Stefan. "Just as long as they remember what I said about not talking to grown-ups about it."

"What are you talking about?" asked Didier.

"We've got a secret," Jean-Patrick told him. "It's a really important one, too, so you have to promise never to tell anyone else about it, and especially not your parents. Do you swear?"

All three brothers duly swore.

"Well, you know that hut up behind the castle?" Jean-Patrick continued. "It leads to another world."

This was predictably greeted with a chorus of scorn.

"It's true!" insisted Jean-Patrick. "Stefan doesn't even come from this world!"

"Stefan's an alien!" said Didier, laughing. ""He comes from the Planet Blond!"

"Go on, Stefan, tell him!"

"Well, I don't come from another planet, but I do come from a different version of this one," said Stefan.

The Webers seemed less inclined to laugh at Stefan, but clearly they still thought this was a joke.

"Alright, then," said Jean-Patrick. "Come up to the hut with us and we'll prove it!"

"Okay," said Luc. "Let's do that."

So we set off through the village and up the two tracks to the hut, which was of course still surrounded by mist.

"That's odd," commented Luc. "You don't often get mist in the afternoons – at least, not at this time of year."

"It's not natural mist," Stefan told him. "It's artificial. It's to make it harder for people to stumble on the hut unless they know it's here."

"Then why wasn't there any last time we were here?"

"Because they only fixed the generators this morning. Come on."

Stefan unlocked the door and led us inside.

"Oh, yes, it's obvious now," said Luc. "This is definitely a different world! Just look at that alien bunk and that completely foreign chair! Come on, JP, just admit you're winding us up."

"Do you want to bet?"

"Yes, okay," said Luc. "You prove this is a different world and I'll give you ten euros. Otherwise you pay me. Easy money!"

"You're on, but we're not in the other world yet. You have to go about another three or four metres."

"Whatever," said Luc. "Do we have a bet?"

"Yes, we do. Go on, Stefan, open the trapdoor for us."

"What trapdoor?" asked Stefan, completely deadpan.

"Oh, come on, Stefan! I know it's there – I used it earlier. I just don't know how to open it."

"Well… all right, wait there." Stefan took two steps towards the kitchen but then stopped.

"Listen!" he said.

We all went quiet, and then I heard it, too: there were noises beneath our feet. And a second or two later the trapdoor swung open and Nicky climbed up into the hut, with Killian just behind him.

"Jake!" he exclaimed as soon as he saw me. "You're alive!"

And he threw himself into my arms and hugged me hard.

"There's going to be some party at the Résidence tonight," he said. "Everyone's been really worried. And then when Stefan got taken too we thought we'd never see you again. We were just coming to see if Jean-Patrick had any news… but… are they supposed to know about this place?"

"They do now," I said. "Actually Jean-Patrick found out for himself this morning, so we thought we might as well tell the others, too. Didn't you see Mr Narj down in the Hub? I'd have thought he'd tell you himself that we're back."

"We didn't see anyone, but then we didn't go as far as the Hub. We just used the hut in Elsass to get to the Nexus Room and then came straight here."

"So the Elsass portal here is working again? I didn't know that."

"It's been up for ages – it's the first one they opened after the one to your world. We asked Mr Narj if he could open it as soon as we knew what had happened to you. We told him we'd probably want to visit your world quite often to find out what was happening, and it takes too long to go all the way to Strossburi, use the portal there and then come all the way over here. It's much quicker just to get the train to Schlettstadt. And today we didn't even have to do that, because Alain gave us a ride in his car."

"Alain's got a car?"

"He got it a couple of weeks ago. It's not exactly new – in fact I think it's older than he is. But it goes. And today he was going to take Oli for a drive up into the mountains as a sort of birthday celebration… actually it was Oli's birthday a week ago, but Alain was working last weekend. Anyway, he was going to go up to the Bonhomme and maybe do a little walking – you know, find a quiet spot somewhere. There are some great views up there. So he said he'd drop us off on the way and then pick us up again at about five o'clock."

We'd been speaking English, so I switched back to French and suggested that we should go and see what was underneath the hut. Of course the Webers were already starting to believe Jean-Patrick by now, and when we reached the Nexus Room and we explained that there was a different world behind every door – even if at that point a lot of the tunnels were still blocked – they were obviously coming to the conclusion that we hadn't been winding them up after all.

"That's the way to the world where we live," Stefan told them, pointing at Door Twelve. "We'd take you to see, but our version of Orschwiller isn't very different from yours, and it would take too long to walk all the way down to Schlettstadt. Maybe we can do that one day, if everything works out okay. Anyway, come and see the Hub, and then maybe we can show you the Kerpian version of Orschwiller: that is a bit different."

There was no sign of life in the hall at the Hub. It was an Ertday, of course, so probably most of the people working there had taken the day off before we discovered about the Grey plans. So we crossed the hall and went up the spiral staircase to the dome on the surface, and then we walked down to Orschwiller – or Ortsvil, as it was called here. And once we got there it was obvious to all of the French boys that this was a different world: the church wasn't there, the village was quite a bit smaller, and the road signs and shop names were written in a completely different alphabet.

"That'll be ten euros," said Jean-Patrick, and for once Luc paid up without a second's hesitation.

"This is incredible!" said Luc. "And you said there was another different world behind every door in the round room? And nobody in our world knows about it except us?"

"That's right," I said. "And it has to stay that way, too, okay?"

"Sure! But… can we explore through the doors?"

"I don't know. We'd have to ask Mr Narj. But not every world is friendly – in fact, quite a lot of them aren't. In any case you won't be able to do any exploring for a while yet, and maybe not at all, because this world – the one we're standing in – has a big problem at the moment."

I hadn't originally intended telling them about the imminent invasion, but now that they had been given a taste of what the Nexus Room could offer I thought I should at least explain why they might not be able to use it for a long time, if ever again: if the Grey invasion succeeded I thought it highly unlikely that the portals would be reopened any time soon – at least, not by the Kerpians. So I told them what we had discovered.

"You should be safe enough," I said. "Our world is too advanced for the Greys to take on even if they managed to develop a portal leading here. But the Hub is likely to be closed down as soon as the invasion starts. If that happens, you'll find that the ladder from your hut just goes down into a small room with no exit.

"Come on, let's go back to the Hub and find out if there's any news."

We returned to the Hub. When we got there I went into the office and asked Mr Narj what was happening and, more important, when he intended closing the Hub down.

"Things are moving," he told me. "We've got engineers destroying most of the bridges over the Thur, Doller and Ill and mining the others, and we're trying to organise an evacuation of the towns close to the likely point of invasion, though of course it doesn't help not knowing exactly where that is. We'll never get everyone evacuated in time: there are three quite large towns in the area, Tann, Sennhass and Gepvil, and a lot of smaller places. We're trying to get people either up into the mountains – the Greys will concentrate on the plain at first – or back north of Kolmar at least. And if things get really bad we'll be able to get quite a lot out into Elsass through the portal at Utkravar, because Elsass has agreed to help as much as they can.

"We're trying to get what guns we have to screen the major cities: we're going to try to hold the Greys south of Kolmar and west of Molnarhass, but even with help from Elsass it's going to be difficult: most of our heavy weapons are right at the other end of the country, on the Lettrian border, and it'll take days to get them here.

"Our only real hope is to spot the portal as soon as it appears and destroy it, though even that will only give us a brief respite: now that they have the technology they'll be able to open one wherever the geography is compatible. Our worst nightmare would be if they have the capacity to open several simultaneously in different places, because then our defences would be stretched far too thin to cope. So if your friend Sam is able to persuade his friends to come and help we'll be only too happy to accept.

"As far as closing this place is concerned, I've been thinking about that, and I've decided that it would be better to keep it open as long as possible: after all, we can use it as an escape route if the Greys get too close. We can destroy the computers and the power generator before we leave. So you don't have to worry about getting caught here: we'll make sure you can get back to your world before we blow this place up."

Well, that was a relief, anyway, though otherwise the situation sounded highly unpleasant. The main problem would be that the Greys now had the ability to launch an invasion anywhere and at any time, so even if by some miracle this invasion could be beaten back, in the long term the Greys were sure to succeed.

I went back to the hall and gave the news to the others. None of us was in immediate danger – we'd all be safely back in our own worlds before the Greys arrived – but if the Hubs closed it would be difficult, if not impossible, for me to return to my own world in future to visit my parents, and of course it would be impossible for Jean-Patrick or the Webers to go anywhere. So we cheered ourselves up by returning to the hut in my native world and spending the rest of the afternoon playing forfeit games. With nine of us playing nobody got forfeits too often, not even Luc and Killian, though when we switched to playing in partnerships, with the three brothers forming one team, things got a bit livelier.

I didn't suffer too many bad forfeits – as usual, Luc and Killian seemed to get hit with the worst of them – but I did find that running around in the mist outside the hut with nothing on wasn't at all comfortable, especially as when I'd completed my three circuits I found that they'd locked me out. By the time they finally let me in I was feeling distinctly clammy, though once I got back inside Stefan did his best to warm me up, which almost made it worth it.

"Pity Dec isn't here," observed Sam at one point. "He'd really enjoy this."

"If at least one crawler doesn't get here before the Greys do we might not even see him again," I replied. "Look, Sam, if you can't get to the Horde world before the Greys get here you can always come and live with us. Everyone speaks English. You'll fit in really well."

"Thanks, Jake. Except… well, now you've got Stefan back… you know."

"Don't worry about that," I said. "You'll get plenty of chances to make friends of your own. You're good-looking and you're fun to be with. Loads of people will want to be friends with you."

We kept playing until around half past four, and it was a lot of fun: Killian was as good at adding to our enjoyment of the game as Dec had been, and everyone clearly found it thoroughly entertaining. But at half past four we said goodbye to the Webers and Jean-Patrick.

"We'll try to let you know what happens," I said. "If our friends in the Horde world can open a portal back to this one we'll get a message to you, but you should stay away from the hut for a bit. If things go wrong the Greys could take over the Hub, and you don't want to get caught by them. If by some miracle things work out we'll arrange for you to come and visit us at our place."

We saw them off, returned to the Nexus Room and went back to Elsass. I was glad to be back: there had been times over the past four months when I'd thought I'd never see this world again – even if this was only likely to be a very short visit I was happy to be here. We walked down to the point where the track met the road and there we waited until almost twenty past five, and when Alain saw me and Stefan waiting with the others he almost crashed the car. He skidded to a halt, leaped out and hugged me hard.

"Oli said you'd come back," he told me. "Are you alright – no injuries this time?"

"No, I'm fine… hey, Alain, your voice has changed!"

"Finally," he said. "I was starting to think I'd never catch up, but at last I'm beginning to look and sound like I'm really seventeen. I didn't even have to show my papers when I bought the car, either."

I looked at the car, which was a small electric machine, painted a nondescript grey and looking distinctly old-fashioned by Elsass standards. On the other hand, car ownership was comparatively uncommon, so owning any sort of a car was quite special.

By now Oli had also come to join in the hug. Both he and Nicky had had their fourteenth birthdays in the past week, but whereas Nicky now looked fourteen – he'd got taller and his voice had broken, too – Oli still looked no more than eleven or twelve.

"I'm sorry I missed your birthday," I told him. "Have you had a good day?"

"It was brilliant! We went way up high into the mountains and found a place where you can see right over into Baden-Bayern, and we sat on a rug and had a picnic and then did… stuff," he said, tailing off as he saw Sam. "Who's this?" he asked. "Another new recruit for the Mad Hintraten Stokers?"

"I'm not sure yet," I said. "That depends what happens over the next day or two. Anyway, his name's Sam, and he speaks English – so maybe we should all use that instead of Kerpian?"

"Alright," said Oli, in English. "Hello, Sam. I'm Oli, and this is Alain, who's sort of my brother and sort of… well, a special friend. What sort of world do you come from?"

"Actually, his world is quite like yours," I said. "He lived all his life on a farm, just like you did."

"Really? Alain will probably call you a yokel, then," said Oli, grinning. "Tell me, what sort of work did you do?"

The two of them started chatting while I steered Alain to one side and gave him the news about the Greys.

"So the three of us are going to be staying here for another day or so to see if our friends in the Horde world can help," I finished. "Make sure you keep your chipfone on over the next few days. If I can find a way to charge mine up – and I expect the Kerpians can come up with some sort of adapter – I'll call you as soon as I know what's happening. Are you working this week?"

"Yes, but if you need help I'll tell them I'm sick and bunk off. I have a perfect attendance record so far, so if I say I'm not well they'll believe me."

"I'll try to avoid making you do that. Anyway, if you could tell Mr Jaecklin that Stefan and I will be back shortly – just in case he's thinking of giving our room away again…"

"I don't live at the Home any longer. Oli and I have an apartment in a complex a couple of hundred metres away. It's small, but there's enough room for us. We'll have a party for you and Stefan when you get home and you can come and see for yourself."

"Great! You're really doing well, aren't you, Alain? Not bad for a bone-idle layabout!"

"Hey, watch it! Though… to be honest, I suppose I was like that. But I wanted to get a place for Oli as much as for me. That's why I got the car, too, so that we could go out together. If it wasn't for him I probably wouldn't bother getting up in the mornings, but as he's officially my responsibility now I have to make an effort. Anyway, I'll nip in and see Mr Jaecklin when I drop Nicky and Killian off. I'm sure he won't have tried to put anyone else in your room, though: remember what happened last time he tried?"

"Markus almost led a full-scale rebellion," I said, grinning at the memory. "I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again. Hopefully it'll only be a day or two. Anyway, we'd better get back. Drive safely!"

"I always drive safely!"

Oli heard that and gave a snort of laughter, which led to Alain grabbing him and tickling him. I collected Stefan and Sam and we slipped quietly away.

"At least everything seems fine back home," I commented to Stefan. "I suppose we should just hope that the Greys are satisfied with Kerpia for now and don't decide to come looking for new worlds to invade for a long time."

"They haven't taken Kerpia yet," Sam pointed out. "There might be fifty crawlers ready and waiting for them when they get here."

"More likely there'll be none at all," I said, gloomily. I just couldn't see how this could possibly turn out as anything other than a complete disaster.

At a little after eight o'clock that evening Mr Narj took the three of us down to the radio station he'd told us about. This proved to be just outside Oriavar, which in turn proved to be yet another name for Sélestat or Schlettstadt. He took us inside and showed Sam the equipment, and Sam almost drooled at the chance to use such a powerful transmitter. At nine o'clock he was sitting in from of the radio, and as the minute hand on his watch reached twelve he started transmitting. For a minute or so he got no reply, but then we heard a voice speaking Horde Common through the speakers.

"Hello, Sam," the voice said. "This is Sanjay. Can you hear me?"

"Loud and clear," said Sam.

"Good. I'm handing the microphone to the general."

"Hello, Sam," said General Lee's voice. "What is your situation?"

"We're free of the Arvelans, but we have another problem. First, though: is Dec with you, and what happened at the circle?"

"Dec is beside me now. We took the circle as planned and we have all the computer equipment we could find, along with some metal sheets that Dec said were important. The Arvelans surrendered without a fight, so we didn't have to kill anyone."

"Did you destroy the circle?"

"No. It seemed a pity to destroy something that old if we didn't need to, and Dec assures me that the Arvelans won't be able to use it until they have installed new computers, retrieved the back-up computer information that was sent to their capital and made some new metal connecting rods – we took the ones they had with us. According to Dec, destroying the stones would not have prevented them using the other method to open portals elsewhere anyway."

"All right. Now, about our other problem: there's going to be a war here in less than two days' time: we're expecting an invasion from the reptiles Jake told you about. Were you able to raise any other crawlers, and are there any close enough to where we are – between the River Rhine and the mountains called the Vosges – to be able to help?"

"How soon exactly do you need them?"

"As soon as possible, but we expect the invasion to start the day after tomorrow."

"We might be there ourselves by then."

"What? How come? Surely the crawlers can't go that fast!"

"We can maintain a steady fifty li per hour if we have to, though this is a longer distance than that sort of sustained speed has been used for before, at least by either ourselves or General Khan. He's with us, by the way: he decided he needed to return to the continent to refit anyway, so we're travelling together. We were going to come to try to surprise the Arvelans and rescue you, but a full-blown war is an even more demanding cause.

"There are also two other crawlers that should be able to reach you tomorrow. We'll send the generals concerned the information they will need to open a portal into Kerpia. We've already tested the equipment ourselves, and it is possible to open a portal large enough for a crawler to pass through.

"There are two more rather further away. We haven't bothered to contact them yet, but if it's a question of war I would like to do so. So if our crawler and Khan's can maintain the speed we've been doing we could get as many as six crawlers to you, though probably not all in time for the deadline you mention. Still, I assume that it's a case of better late than never, no?"

"I think so," said Sam. "Thank you, General. Shall I contact you again tomorrow?"

"Yes, but not until the evening. We had to stop and open a portal into Kerpia to set up the radio antenna, and it took us a while to find somewhere that the portal could be opened. I'd prefer not to stop again until this time tomorrow: there's still a long way for us to come. Can you give me your exact co-ordinates? I'll pass them to the other generals."

Sam looked at me, and I asked Mr Narj the question and relayed the answer to Sam.

"We're at 48° 15' north and 7° 25' 30" east," Sam reported. "Can you find us from those co-ordinates?"

"I imagine our computers can translate if necessary," said the general. "Right, we'll listen out at this time tomorrow. And if the reptiles arrive before we do, mind you save some for us!"

"We will. One other thing, General: Jake says the reptiles won't observe the rules of war that you're used to. He says you should not use cavalry: the reptiles have tanks, and their infantry have rapid-fire weapons and would not hesitate to shoot at riders. Use infantry and your crawler armaments only."

"Noted," said the general. "Lee out."

"Well," said Sam, turning the radio off, "it sounds as though we should have at least two crawlers here when the reptiles arrive."

"It won't be enough," I said. "In fact, not even six will make a lot of difference if we can't hit the portal quickly enough. Four hundred tanks will smash a crawler to pieces in no time. It's a hell of a big target, after all."

As we travelled back up to the Hub in a Kerpian militia vehicle I tried to cheer myself up: after all, maybe just the sight of the crawlers would make the Greys think twice, and I knew what the main armament on a crawler could do. On the other hand, I'd managed to shoot straight through the armour of a crawler with my second shot, which I thought meant that it wouldn't be thick enough to repel tank shells. I suppose if all six crawlers were able to reach us in time it might slow the Greys down a bit, but I didn't think it would stop them.

When we got back to the Hub I went to tell Aarnist what was happening.

"You can't go home via the circle," I said. "It's been cleaned out of equipment, computers and instructions. But we're hoping that one or more crawlers will get here tomorrow, and in that case it might be possible to open a portal directly back into your own world. Gordiss, has your computer got information about the portals you opened at the circle?"

"Some," the scientist replied, guardedly.

"Then the computers on the crawlers should be able to use it to produce a reciprocal set of co-ordinates."

"What's he talking about?" asked Aarnist.

"My computer will have the co-ordinates to get from our world into a different one: he thinks this crawler computer he's talking about should be able to reverse them to obtain the co-ordinates to get back to our world," Gordiss explained.

"And do you think it's possible?"

"Given a powerful enough computer, I don't see why not."

"Well, that's the idea, anyway," I said. "As soon as a crawler reaches us – and we hope the first one might get here tomorrow – we'll get you aboard it, and you and their scientists can find out how to open a portal back into Arvelan territory. I'll be able to interpret for you, although I think that if they plug you into their central system it has a built-in translation device anyway. Even if it takes the computer a while to find the co-ordinates we should be able to get you back home before the Greys get here."

Aarnist and Irfan had a muttered conversation for a few seconds.

"Irfan tells me that you're completely sincere about wanting to get us home," said Aarnist. "Thank you, Jacob."

"No problem," I said. "If the Greys win here they're likely to start looking for their next target, and although your own continent should be safe, they might easily try breaking into your territories in Europe. You probably ought to try to persuade your government to increase the size of your army in France."

"That might easily provoke a war with the Kaiser," Aarnist pointed out. "If we suddenly build up our army on his border he might decide to attack us before we can attack him."

"Then get your people to talk to the Germans and warn them about the Greys," I suggested. "After all, there's Grey territory on the other side of the Rhine, too."

Aarnist laughed. "I don't think even my own people are going to believe this easily," he said. "If we start talking about this to the Germans they'll be certain to think it's a plot of some sort. But thanks for the warning, anyway. I'll pass it on to Laztaale if we get back."

I went back to the dormitory and got ready for bed. Twenty-four hours earlier I'd still been more or less a prisoner of the Arvelans; now I was free. But I felt a lot less happy now than I had on the previous evening.

***

I woke up next morning feeling no better than I had before I'd gone to bed. The Hub's alarm sirens hadn't gone off overnight, so at least the Greys hadn't appeared yet, which I suppose was something.

I washed and got dressed, and then I got my bag and dug into the side pocket: I wanted to make sure I was wearing Stefan's swastika from now on. Wearing it in the battle at the Hub in 2009 might not be why I came through that battle unscathed, and I'm not generally superstitious, but I wanted to wear it anyway. Besides, Stefan and I had been apart for too long, and I wanted to show him that my feelings about him hadn't changed. Actually I'm sure he knew that, but still…

I found the swastika, and I also found something else, and five seconds later I was running out of the dormitory and into the tunnel that led to the Nexus Room. When I reached it I opened Door Twelve and ran back to the hut that was in Elsass. The hut was surrounded by trees, of course, and so I followed the usual route away from it, found the track and jogged down it as far as the road. Just across the road from the end of the track was an open space that I thought was big enough, so I stopped, pulled Kirk's bracelet from my pocket, slid open the panel and pressed the button beneath it.

I didn't know how long I would have to wait. I supposed that it would depend where the Tammid ship was – if it was on the far side of the planet I would have to wait until it came around to this side. But I was prepared to wait for as long as it took, because now I was convinced I had the solution to our problems: no matter how good the Greys were and how many tanks they had, I was pretty sure that the Tammids would be able to deal with them. You don't make intergalactic flights without some pretty awesome weaponry.

It was about half an hour before I heard a faint noise, and when I looked up I saw a triangular Tammid ship dropping rapidly towards me. I ran back across the road to be out of the way, but I needn't have worried, because the ship came to a stop about ten feet above the ground and then settled very slowly to earth. The ramp at the front opened and a Tammid travel box emerged.

"Kirk?" I asked.

"I am Kirk," replied the Tammid. "Hello, Jake."

"Sorry I didn't recognise you," I apologised.

"Our boxes are identical. You could not have distinguished mine. How may I help you?"

"Well, our Kerpian friends have a problem. You see…"

I explained the situation and ended by asking if the Tammids could come through into Kerpia – once the crawlers arrived I was confident that we could open a portal large enough for this size of Tammid ship to pass through – and fight on our side.

There was a pause.

"I am sorry, Jake," said Kirk. "This will not be possible."

"Huh? Why not?"

"There are strict rules regarding interference in the affairs of other planets. It is unusual for there to be any interaction with the natives at all, and even if there is contact, as is the case with your planet, we are strictly forbidden from entering into acts of warfare. We can observe, but we cannot participate."

"But this isn't simply a war between different countries," I argued. "This is an invasion from what is, to all intents and purposes, a different planet. Surely you can do something to prevent interplanetary war?"

"No, we cannot without a formal alliance agreed by the parent hive on Tamman. And this is not 'interplanetary' in the sense in which the word is generally understood: the parallel interchanges are unique to your planet, and their use does not constitute a war between planets as such. Again, I am sorry, but we cannot participate in your war."

My shoulders slumped. I'd been convinced that this was going to solve everything, but now it looked as if there was nothing that could prevent Kerpia being overrun by the Greys.

Now that really would have been too easy, wouldn't it? If you've followed the whole saga so far you should have known that there's never an easy way out…

Chapter Eighteen

"All right," I said. "I suppose I shouldn't have asked. But if we can find a way to bring about a cease-fire, would your people be able to mediate? I understand that you can't fight, but perhaps you could help to find a way to stop us fighting."

There was another pause, and I realised that Kirk was in telepathic contact with his ship, and perhaps with his queen, though I didn't know too much about how the command structure worked.

"That would be possible," he said. "Bringing peace to warring parties would in no way contravene our rules."

"Then we will try to find a way to bring one of your ships through," I said. "That way you'll be on hand if we are able to arrange a cease-fire."

Actually I was hoping that the sight of the Tammid ship would draw the Greys into firing on it, at which point the Tammids would be entirely justified in firing back. But once again I was counting my chickens.

"We would be willing to have a ship available," Kirk told me. "But it could not enter a war zone while fighting is taking place. We would have to remain on the ground and well away from the war zone."

"Okay," I said, realising I wasn't going to get what I wanted here. "Then why don't you go to the Institute in Strossburi and wait there? I should think the scientists there can open a portal big enough to bring your ship through to this side – or if not I'm sure your own computers can manage it. If things work out and we can use your services to mediate we'll call you there. Thank you, Kirk."

"We will await your signal," he said, before turning and re-entering his ship. The hatch closed and the ship shot off vertically until it was hidden by the clouds. I sighed and walked back up the track to the hut.

"Where did you go?" Stefan asked me when I got back to the Hub.

"I went to talk to the Tammids. I thought they could help, only it seems that the Tammid version of the Prime Directive doesn't allow them to get involved in wars on the planets they are visiting. They're prepared to umpire a bit if we can organise a truce, but I can't see any reason why the Greys should agree to one."

"That's a damned nuisance… look, Jake, I know the Kerpians are our friends, but please can you promise me we'll leave before everything here falls to pieces? It was bad enough last time when they separated us at the mine. I really don't want to risk it happening again."

"I promise. Mr Narj said yesterday that they're going to keep the Hub open for as long as possible to give themselves an escape route, so we'll be able to get back to Elsass easily enough if the Greys break through. Besides, the Greys don't know where this Hub is: the ones we fought here were taken out along the tunnel to Hub One, so they never saw Hub Two from the outside. They won't know where to look until long after we've all left."

"Well, let's not leave it too late, all the same. I know you, Jake: you'll hang on and hang on, hoping that something turns up, and when it doesn't and you finally agree to go it'll be too late."

"I promise not to do that this time."

"Good. Because if you try I'll just bash you over the head and drag you away, understand?" And he kissed me and hugged me to show that he didn't mean it… at least, I didn't think he meant it.

The Hub itself remained fairly quiet as that day went by, though further south there was all sorts of frenzied activity: more bridges being mined or destroyed, more civilians evacuated, cameras being set up on every tall building and on as many of the foothills of the Vosges that allowed a clear field of vision, and artillery pieces being dug in south and west of Kolmar and in the low hills to the west of Molnarhass. Units of militia from Elsass and a small number of heavy guns came through the portal in Strossburi and rushed south to strengthen the Kerpian forces south of Kolmar. And at around eight o'clock in the evening, by which time we had eaten and moved down to the radio station, the first crawler arrived. It had come through a portal close to the Ill on the far side of Oriavar, and so the first we knew of it was when an alarm was raised as it appeared just to the south of us, having taken a route that avoided the town: had it followed the direct route through the town it would probably have demolished everything in its path.

We went outside the radio station to watch it approach. There was still half an hour until sunset, so we could see it clearly enough, and so I could tell that this wasn't Lee's crawler: the hanzi on the front was painted in black with a background of a circle of pale blue. It stopped just before the fence that surrounded the radio station and a couple of minutes later one of the open tracked vehicles appeared around the side of it, drove through the gates and stopped three metres away from us. There didn't appear to be anyone in the back, but the passenger door of the cab opened and out stepped a motherly-looking woman in a fetching pale blue suit with black trim.

"Good evening," she said in Horde Common. "I am General Cho. Who is in charge here?"

"Good evening, General," I said, thinking that this was a thoroughly unlikely-looking general: she was short and plump and had grey hair done up in a bun; and she looked more like one of my mother's shopping circle than a warrior. But I suppose it takes more to command a crawler than the ability to wave a sword about. "This is Colonel Narj. He's in charge of this area. Did General Lee explain what is happening here?"

"He told us that there's a good chance of some proper military action," she said. "All I need to know is where the enemy are."

"They're not here yet, but we're expecting them tomorrow," I said. "They'll be coming through a portal like the one you came through, somewhere south of here – at least, we hope it's south of here, because otherwise all our guns are in the wrong place. They'll have tanks – as many as four hundred of them if we can't close their portal quickly – and lots of infantry with automatic weapons. And they don't subscribe to our rules of warfare, either."

"No, Lee said we probably shouldn't use cavalry, at least to start with," she said. "Do you have detailed local maps that I can look at? We're not used to operating in terrain like this with buildings everywhere, and I imagine you'd prefer us not to drive over too many of them if we can avoid it."

"I think that would be appreciated," I said.

I conveyed the request to Mr Narj.

"The colonel will give you a full briefing now," I explained to her. "We'll then rely on you to pass the information to the other generals as they get here – if any of them do, of course. There are only two of us here who speak Common, but the other one is a trained radio operator, so we can co-ordinate our attack with the Kerpians through him. Now, there's one other thing: we have a party here who got stranded away from their world when their portal was… let's say taken off-line. Can we use your computers to try to find the co-ordinates for a portal to take them home?"

"I don't see why not. Bring one of them to the crawler and ask for Captain Zeiss – he'll arrange it."

She spoke briefly to her driver, who nodded and drove back to the crawler.

"I'll go and fetch Gordiss," I said to Mr Narj. "Sam and Stefan can interpret for you and the general until I get back."

Mr Narj assigned me a vehicle and a driver and we drove back up to the Hub. This time I didn't put a helmet on, though before I went into the briefing room I explained to the militia NCO that if I came out with anyone other than the bald guy, or if I came out and started issuing new orders, they should ignore me and force a helmet onto my head straight away. But I needn't have worried.

"The first crawler's here," I told them. "Gordiss, if you'd like to come with me and bring your computer we should be able to get you all out of here: between what's on your hard drive and what's in your head I'm fairly sure the Horde computer can crack it. They managed in my case, and I didn't even understand the stuff I'd been reading on the Kerpian computers. And as soon as we have a portal we'll come and get the rest of you."

I took Gordiss back down to the radio station, accompanied him to the crawler and asked for Captain Zeiss, who turned out to be rather closer to the typical military type than his commanding officer: he was tall and muscular and had a very short haircut. He led us to the crawler's testing and implanting room and installed Gordiss in one of the chairs, setting the helmet on his head.

"I don't suppose there's any record of this man's language on your computers," I said. "Will the system be able to translate for him?"

"Probably, though it might take a while for the system to set up a translation program from scratch."

"I speak his language," I said. "If I give the computer a few translations it might speed things up, mightn't it?"

"It might," he agreed. And so I spent the next half hour reading passages in Horde Common and translating them into Arvelan wearing one of the helmets until Zeiss said he thought the system had enough to be able to build up a working translation system.

"Then I'll leave you to it," I said. "If you can give him enough Common to get by he'll be able to show you what's on his computer, and then with any luck the central system will be able to work out the co-ordinates for a portal to take him home. I'll be over in the radio station if you need me."

I'd missed the nine o'clock chat between Sam and General Lee, but Sam gave me the gist: Lee and Khan expected to be with us in mid-morning next day. One other crawler was expected at around the same time, and two more were on the move but would take longer to get here. We could only hope that the lack of bridges over the rivers would hold the Greys up for long enough for more crawlers to arrive.

We went back up to the Hub to sleep, and tonight Stefan and I did what we had done during our first stay here: we squeezed two beds into one of the side rooms and pushed them together to form a double bed. It was a bit rough on Sam, who had to sleep in the dormitory on his own, but this was the first chance Stefan and I had had for a bit of privacy at night in a very long time, and we made the most of it, even though that meant that we didn't actually get to sleep until after midnight.

We would have liked to spend a little longer in bed the following morning, but we didn't want to risk having the alarm go off or having someone burst in to get us while we were romantically engaged, and so reluctantly we got up, had a shower (with not too much distracting behaviour) and went to the dining hall for breakfast. And we were just finishing off when the siren sounded. We went downstairs to the office and found Mr Narj, once more in his militia uniform, talking to someone on his radio.

"They're here," he told us, unnecessarily. "We're not sure exactly where yet, but their portal does seem to be south of the Thur, and that's good news, because most of the bridges have gone. It ought to hold them up for a bit. Anyway, we need to get down to the radio station: we're going to use it as a command post. It'll pick up the camera feeds better than this place will. Where's Sam?"

"He was just finishing his breakfast," I said. "I'll go and find him."

I met Sam halfway down the stairs and saw that he'd changed into his Horde riding uniform.

"I thought that if there's going to be fighting I ought to wear it," he explained. "I expect I'll be stuck in the radio station, but maybe I'll get a chance to go and help Xan later on."

"Sam, I really hope Xan won't be leaving the crawler," I replied. "It'll be far too dangerous for cavalry out there."

I sent Sam down to the office while I continued up the stairs to the briefing room, and here I made the decision to trust the Arvelans – after all, in our current situation it would hardly be in their interest to turn hostile: they needed us to fix them up with a way home. So I told the militia that we were all moving out and that they didn't need to worry about the Arvelans any longer. The NCO made me repeat that wearing a steel helmet, but once he was satisfied that I wasn't being controlled he let me into the briefing room and took his men off.

"We're leaving," I told Aarnist. "I don't know whether Gordiss has managed to open a portal yet, but if not it'll still be better if you're down with us rather than stuck up here."

They didn't argue, just gathering up their belongings and following me back down the stairs. Nor did Mr Narj challenge me for bringing them with me.

By the time we got down to the radio station General Cho was waiting for us, looking the very picture of impatience.

"We need to get down there," she said. "The reptiles already have engineers trying to bridge the Thur, and we need to stop them. Your infantry are finding it difficult because of the covering fire from the reptile tanks. I thought that if we cross the Ill and come at them from the side we can drive the engineers back. And I've got spotters out trying to locate the reptile portal. We'll relay everything to you on the frequency Sam gave me last night."

And with that she jumped into her vehicle and drove back to the crawler, and within a minute of her driving aboard the crawler itself started to move south, leaving a lone figure standing beside it. This turned out to be Gordiss.

"They haven't got the co-ordinates yet," he told us when he reached the station. "But they've given me everything their computers have done so far. They think that when your friend Lee gets here his system will be able to find a solution faster, because it's already carrying the information it got from Jake. You know, that's a really strange society: I've never seen such a mix of people, or such a lack of obvious hierarchy. It looks completely chaotic, but it seems to work."

"That's pretty much what I found," I said. "They're actually very well organised once you get past the initial impression."

We went into the radio station and found it already buzzing: reports were coming in from the various units south of Kolmar, a number of officers were perusing the various camera feeds, trying to see where the Grey tanks were coming from, and on a table in the centre of the room was one of those large maps with pins stuck in to indicate the positions of the troops. I was surprised they were still using something so old-fashioned.

"It's just a back-up," Mr Narj explained when I raised the question. "We're using the computers to give us a dynamic view, but if the power goes down – which could easily happen if the Greys get too close – the map will let us see what is happening until we can restore power to the computers. Now, if you and Sam could man the radio we were using last night to talk to the crawler…"

So we tuned in to Cho's crawler, and their communications chief began to give us a commentary on what was happening. I'd wondered how the crawler was going to cross the Ill, but Sam had already worked out that, provided the river was no wider than half the length of the crawler, it would simply drive across. A wider river would slow them down because they would need to rig the skirt and use the hover engines, but the Ill was narrow enough not to need that approach.

Over the next two hours or so we heard how Cho's crawler had destroyed a pontoon bridge over the Thur before it could be used and had then recrossed the Ill south of the Thur to attack the enemy directly, only to be driven back by the sheer number of Grey tanks and artillery pieces. They had retired back across the Ill and were attacking the enemy from across the river, though they were still taking damage and were uncertain how long they could stay in position.

The good news was that their spotters had located the portal. The bad news was that the Greys, by accident or design, had established it south of a fairly thick stretch of woodland to the east of Sennhass, which meant it was sheltered from direct attack by artillery and out of range of Cho's main armament unless the crawler could get a lot closer than it was now. Cho had tried using a couple of spotters as flying bombs, but the portal was well defended by infantry and both spotters had been shot down before they got close enough to do any damage.

It was at about that point that General Lee arrived, having opened a portal a short distance north of us. The general drove the last couple of kilometres in one of the tracked vehicles, explaining when he arrived that the crawler had to remain connected to the portal, which they were keeping open for General Khan.

"He threw a couple of tracks about twenty li north of here," he explained. "Normally he would just have kept going, but he's already suffered engine failure on four other tracks, and he needs at least one more set running. He says it shouldn't take more than an hour to fix it, though. So, what's happening here?"

I filled him in and then he spent a few minutes talking to Cho's communications man and then to the general herself.

"This is going to be interesting," he said, handing the microphone back to Sam. "Normally our armour is fairly strong, but it sounds as though the reptiles have some quite powerful weapons, because they've cause a fair bit of damage to Cho's crawler. On the other hand, even our secondary weapons can knock out one of their tanks with a direct hit, so things could be worse. Any sign of General Shen yet?"

"Not so far," I told him.

"I'm not surprised. He'd basically settled down permanently in one place. Of course when I told him we had a genuine war for him he said he'd want a part of it, but he warned me that it might take a little while to get the crawler back into fighting order. He still thought he could be here this morning, though. As for the other two, they're coming from a bit further away. Sung is beyond the Rhine, where the terrain isn't exactly crawler-friendly, and Zhao is – last time I spoke to him, earlier this morning – about here." And he indicated a space south and west of the town marked on the map as Szepavar, which I thought corresponded to Belfort. I thought that could be very useful indeed, since he would be approaching the Greys from an unexpected direction and might take them by surprise – but then again, it would still take him quite a long time to get close enough to matter.

"While you're waiting for Khan," I said, "could you take this man and carry on with the work Cho was doing?" I indicated Gordiss. "We're trying to open a portal back into his world to get him and his colleagues home. Dec speaks his language, so he'll be able to interpret for you."

"Yes, I suppose so. I'll get my driver to take him to the crawler. I'd like to stay here for a while and have a look at the maps. Give Valeriya a call and tell her to expect him."

So we sent Gordiss to the crawler. Meanwhile things to the south of us weren't going so well: the Greys had succeeded in bridging the Thur out of range of Cho's guns and their tanks were starting to cross, supported by large numbers of infantry.

Another hour went by, and then General Shen arrived. We gave him a quick briefing and then sent him down to the west of Kolmar to bolster the defences on that side of the town. His arrival helped to stop the Grey advance, but according to Cho's surviving spotters tanks were still coming through the portal, and I felt sure that, sooner rather than later, sheer weight of numbers would be enough to push the Greys through our defensive line and into Kolmar. And once Kolmar fell our own position would be directly threatened.

"We need aircraft," mused Stefan, looking at the map. "If we had bombers we could close the portal and flatten their tanks in no time."

"What are aircraft?" asked Mr Narj.

"They're flying machines, like the crawlers' spotters, but much larger and manned."

The Kerpian world, unfortunately, had no air travel. Elsass had air travel but no military aircraft, and the crawlers had nothing larger than their spotters, and they had precious few of those. Short of going up in a hot air balloon and lobbing hand grenades over the side I thought the whole concept was a non-starter.

Then Sam called across the room to tell me that Lee's scientists had cracked the portal problem again and that they'd got the co-ordinates for the Arvelan world, and I realised that an aerial attack might not be impossible after all.

"We've got your co-ordinates," I told Aarnist. "As soon as we get a portal open using them you'll be able to go home. Except… are you still interested in learning more about portal technology?"

"Well, yes, but this is hardly the time, is it?"

"This is exactly the time. Look, your world has aircraft, hasn't it? I mean, I've seen your helicopters – hoverers – and I know you've got bombers, too, because Terry told me the old Imperial Palace in Sanöve was destroyed in an air raid."

"So?"

"So we need aircraft if we're going to win this fight."

"You want me to commit Arvel's military to a war that has nothing to do with us at all and is being fought in a different world?"

"Yes. Look; High Captain, there are five worlds that we know about who have portal technology. The Greys are one. Doesn't it stand to reason that the other four should stand together? After all, if the Greys win here, sooner or later you're likely to end up fighting them yourselves, because they're not the sort of people to stop using the portals now they've found out how to create them. If we stand together we can stop them: if not they'll take us down and then come after you."

"And your carrot is, if we help you'll share the technology with us? So what's the stick – help us or we won't send you home?"

I shook my head. "That wouldn't be fair. Actually it wouldn't work, either, because we'd have to send you back in order to get your aircraft, wouldn't we?"

"Well, you could keep everyone here except me," he pointed out. "But… let's say I'm interested. What makes you think I can swing it? As I told you before, I'm only a provincial copper."

"This is your territory. Once you go back through the portal you'll be where you belong, as the senior police officer for the region. That ought to give you some clout. Besides, we're not asking for a complete air armada – a handful of planes will be enough, as long as they can take out the portal. I'm sure you can swing that, especially if you tell your bosses the benefits of being full members of the portal operators' club. After all, one day you might open a portal into a hostile world, and then we'll be able to help you."

"I'd like to hear that from your man Narj," he said. "It's not that I don't believe you, but I'd want to hear it from someone in authority."

Mr Narj was not enthusiastic at first: he'd already expressed his distrust of a society that included slavery and mind-control among its operating principles. But I suppose that when you're in danger of bleeding to death, any doctor is better than none.

"All right," he said, finally. "We'll give you access to our records. I might have a job selling it to the Ministry, but I'll find a way. If we're still here at the end of this because of your help, perhaps they'll be less unhappy about it."

Aarnist looked at Irfan, who nodded.

"He's sincere," he confirmed.

"Then I'll see what I can do," said Aarnist.

"You understand that my offer is conditional on results?" asked Mr Narj. "No flying machines, no information."

"Obviously. In fact, I'll go further: if we don't close the portal, we won't expect anything from you. Is that acceptable?"

"Perfectly."

"Just one question," asked Irfan. "How are we supposed to get our planes into your world?"

"Well, through a portal, obviously. The General here can open one for you."

"No, I mean how do we move them? Planes can't generally move on the ground very well, and they certainly won't be able to roll across a field."

"I don't suppose you have any vertical take-off planes?" I asked.

"No. Do such things exist?"

"They do in my world. Well, could you use the motorway? We know there's a motorway in your world and this one."

"It'll be astonishing if they're in exactly the same place," said Aarnist, looking at the map. "In fact, I'm certain ours runs east of the one in this world. Our pilots would have to land on our motorway and then we'd have to find a way to tow them through a portal and carry the planes to your motorway so that they could take off again. And I don't see how we could move a plane on the ground from one place to another across farmland without damaging it."

"Could we take a crawler to your air base and open a portal at the end of a runway?" suggested Stefan.

"I don't think so. The plane would have to time its take-off to absolute perfection: if it leaves the runway too far before it reaches the portal it could miss it, and if it leaves it too late it would crash, because if it was still on the ground beyond the portal it wouldn't be on a runway any more."

"Well, could it fly through a portal?" I asked. "I've seen film of planes flying under bridges and along narrow canyons and stuff. If we set up the biggest portal we can manage, would your pilots be good enough to be able to fly right through it?"

"Well, I'm no pilot, but I wouldn't want to try it," said Aarnist. "Get it a little bit wrong and you leave part of your plane in the wrong world, and that really can't be good. But I can ask. How big can you make the portal?"

"Big enough for a crawler to pass through, and perhaps bigger than that," I said. "General, could you find out from your scientists how big a portal they think they could create?"

Lee went to the radio and called the question through.

"They say that if we have a proper frame they can probably make it a fair bit bigger," he reported. "But only as long as the weather stays like it is now. If the wind gets up it'll be very difficult to maintain a large portal for any length of time."

I translated this for Aarnist.

"If the wind could disrupt it, I would imagine that a jet engine could disrupt it, too," he said. "If this is going to work we'd probably have to send one through and then re-establish the portal before the next one can use it. We'd need a proper type of air traffic control to let the pilots know when it's safe to go."

"I'm sure we could have a radio post on both sides of the portal," I said.

"Could we use the radio masts?" asked Sam – he'd heard the crawler's reply to Lee, of course. "They're quite far apart, and they're high enough, too – about two hundred feet, I think. If you could open a portal between two of them it ought to give the pilots something big enough to aim at, oughtn't it?"

And in the end that's what we did: Lee confirmed that his scientists could open a portal that large, and Aarnist said that he thought his pilots should be able to fly through it, provided there were no tall buildings close by on either side of the portal. Lee's crawler had to hold its current position until Khan arrived, but once Khan's crawler was safely in our world Lee closed the portal to his own world and set about opening one from Kerpia to Arvel between two of the four radio masts. And it worked, though apparently it was taking a fair bit of power to maintain it. Normally portals are self-sustaining, but this was too big for that and needed a constant power input from the crawler.

The next problem was the fact that the radio station didn't exist in Arvel, so although there was a hazy image of the masts from their side, it wouldn't be clear enough for the approaching pilots, and so we had to mark out where they were on the ground. Aarnist borrowed one of Lee's tracked vehicles to drive the short distance into Arvelan Sélestat, where he commandeered a road-marking machine and its crew from the local highways depot, and they set about painting white lines from the base of each mast and broad arrows to show the pilots where to aim. As soon as they had started work, Aarnist collected his colleagues, got back into the vehicle and drove off, presumably to the nearest airfield. Meanwhile Mr Narj set up a temporary radio on the Arvelan side of the portal to give instructions to the pilots. As we were short of Arvelan speakers we walked to Lee's crawler, found Dec and asked him to man it for us.

By now we could tell for ourselves that things weren't going well at all: we could clearly hear the noise of the artillery now, and there was smoke rising from the direction of Kolmar.

"We've got problems," Sam told me when I got back inside the radio room. "Shen decided he could get close enough to destroy the portal, but he underestimated the reptiles: they've worked out that if you can destroy enough tracks you can immobilise a crawler, and Shen got too far south before he lost his engines. The reptiles blew a hole in the side of the crawler and they're fighting hand-to-hand inside. Shen's guns are still firing, but probably not for much longer. Khan tried to go to help, but his crawler is already lacking too many engines, and when he realised that the reptiles were deliberately targeting his tracks he had to fall back.

"Cho's taken a lot of damage and has had to fall back, too, but she and Khan are just about keeping the reptiles south of Kolmar. And Sung has broken down somewhere in Bavaria and isn't going to make it at all. At least Zhao should be in range in an hour or so."

"If it isn't too late by then," I said, pessimistically. "What about the Arvelans? Any sign yet?"

"Not yet, but then they haven't been gone long."

Sam gave Dec a quick crash course in radio procedures and then we sent him through to man the station on the Arvelan side.

News continued to come in, none of it good. The Kerpian engineers had spent the past couple of days digging ditches and tank traps as well as demolishing bridges, but despite all of this the Greys' armour had managed to break through the defensive line and were now actually in Kolmar. The wings were holding better because there was a crawler on each side of the town, but in the centre the Greys were definitely winning.

Then, just when I was beginning to wonder if Aarnist had been turned down by his military or by his government, or even if he'd actually bothered talking to them at all, his borrowed vehicle came back through the portal. Irfan and Gordiss were still with him, though the other three Konjässiem had been replaced by an older man whom Aarnist introduced as "Air-General Lorness of Maarvuishippe."

"Is everything ready on this side?" he asked. "The first plane should be here in a few minutes."

"Everything is ready," Mr Narj told him – I was translating, of course. "That radio is set up on the wavelength you asked for. Did you manage to give the targeting information to the pilots?"

"They know what they're looking for," Aarnist confirmed.

Three minutes later the first plane arrived… and it was a complete disaster. The pilot flew marginally too high, and as a result his tailfin didn't make it through the portal. It was like a double-decker bus trying to drive under a ten-feet-tall bridge: the top gets sliced off. The plane crashed in a fireball a couple of hundred metres beyond the portal.

As we'd expected, the jet engines had also disrupted the portal, but as soon as it was re-established we got Dec to warn incoming pilots that they must keep low, as close to the ground as possible. And the second plane passed through the portal successfully and flew off southwards. Over the next five minutes another four planes followed it, all passing through the portal without mishap. These were mid-sized fighter-bombers that carried rockets as well as bombs, and I felt confident that they would be able to close the portal, especially as the Greys appeared to have brought no ant-aircraft weapons with them. Since they knew that Kerpia had no aircraft, it was an understandable omission.

Ten minutes later the lead pilot called through to say that the portal had been destroyed, but of course that wasn't the end of it: there would be nothing to stop the Greys opening a new one ten metres away. So I advised the Arvelans to bomb the entire area with everything they had, as this would make it much harder for the Greys to find a place where there wasn't a large hole on the ground – which would of course prevent the portal from opening – on our side. The pilots did that and then flew back through the portal to refuel and rearm on their own side.

The Greys did manage to open the portal twice more: the first time it was bombed closed again quite quickly, and the second time it was far enough away from cover that the pilots were able to fire rockets through the portal. I don't know whether these killed the scientists or destroyed the equipment that was being used to open the portals, but after that the portal failed to reappear.

There were still a lot of Grey tanks and troops in our world, but provided we could prevent them from being reinforced it seemed likely that we were going to survive this after all. And then General Lee received a report from one of his spotters that there was a Grey column heading straight for us.

"How did it get past the crawlers?" he wanted to know.

"It came straight through the centre of Kolmar. Once it broke through the defensive line south of the town there was nothing to hold it back."

"If they hit either of the masts it'll destroy the portal, and that'll be the end of our air cover," said Lee. "And almost all of the crawler's power output is being used to maintain the portal: we don't have the power to operate our guns as well. Are there any militia units that can help?"

"Everything is already in the line. We don't have any reserves," Mr Narj told him.

"Then I'll have to use my crew. We don't have much in the way of anti-tank weapons, but we can at least try to slow them down until the planes get back from rearming. I must go and organise things."

"General, do you have any spare weapons we could use?" I asked. "I don't think anyone here is armed, except for the officers with pistols. If you can lend us a dozen rifles, at least everyone in here will be able to defend himself."

"I'll see what I can find. I'll send someone with as many rifles as I can find for you."

The general left, and five minutes later an infantry patrol came in carrying spare weapons and ammunition. I really didn't want to find myself having to fight in a gun battle against Grey soldiers again: I'd survived two of them, but I was afraid that a third one might prove to be a case of pushing my luck too far. But the Kerpian radio operators, at least, seemed to welcome the chance to fight back, and Stefan was already stripping his rifle down and checking that everything was clean and oiled and generally ready for action.

Another ten minutes or so went by, and then we could hear the tanks starting to fire. Apparently they were shooting at the crawler, rather than at the masts: presumably they weren't aware of the portal between them. But if they did enough damage to the crawler, the effect would be the same: the power would fail and the portal would close.

"Any sign of the aircraft?" I asked Dec through the radio.

"Not yet."

"Can you send them a message anyway? Tell them that the radio station is under attack and we need help urgently. The first aircraft through should try to take out the tanks attacking us, because if they get too close we might lose the portal."

Now I could hear small arms fire, and there was also the sound of shells and bullets hitting the crawler and, occasionally, the buildings around the one we were in. At one point a shell hit our building full on and demolished part of the wall, and after that we could hear the noises of fighting much more easily. And then, finally, the first plane arrived and attacked the tanks with its rockets. A second plane came through and joined in, but then one of the tanks, whether it was aiming for it or not, hit one of the masts and brought it crashing down.

"No more air cover," commented Mr Narj. "Jake, tell the pilots to destroy all the tanks in that column and then to conserve what weapons they have left. They should stay aloft and visible for as long as they can. They can land on the motorway if they start to get low on fuel, unless we can establish a new portal using the other masts straight away. Though maybe it would be better to let the crawler use its guns for a bit first. Ask Sam to let the general know we've lost the portal, anyway. He can use his own judgement on whether to use his guns or try for a new portal."

Sam relayed that message. The sounds of fighting outside were growing louder, and I thought that the general would probably want to use his guns – assuming that they were still manned, of course: quite possibly most of his gunners were outside operating as infantry. I wondered if I should go back to the crawler and offer my services, but decided that I was more use here as an interpreter.

"General Zhao reports that he is in range and has started his attack," Sam announced a couple of minutes later. And I thought that really ought to be the final nail in the Greys' coffin: no reinforcements, no avenue of retreat, and a new enemy attacking from their rear. But nobody seemed to have told the Greys outside the base: it sounded as if the fighting was right outside the door now. And when the door was blown off its hinges and the first Grey soldier charged through I wondered if maybe this time I really had stretched my luck too far…

Ah, the return of Peril: Jake's in trouble again. How many times is that now? Anyway, the next chapter is also the final chapter, so if he can get through this in one piece maybe he'll be safe.

Chapter Nineteen

My first instinct was to huddle down in a corner: after all, there were professional soldiers in the room, and I don't think anyone would have blamed me if I had decided to leave the fighting to them. But Sam showed no inclination to do anything other than fight, and of course Stefan's training had reasserted itself even after a layoff of two years, and I felt I couldn't let them down by ducking and hiding, especially since Stefan had said nothing to reproach me for breaking my promise to leave before things turned ugly.

The first two or three Greys died very quickly, but after that they decided to start throwing grenades through the door, and that was clearly a signal to get under cover, though apart from the map table (which was on a solid pedestal), some chairs and a couple of rather lightweight partitions there was little of that, because most of the radio cabinets were set against the walls. Unceremoniously I grabbed Sam and pulled him to the floor: he'd never seen a grenade before, of course, and when the first one went off on the far side of the room it came as a complete shock to him. The second one also exploded some distance away from us, but the third landed about six feet away and sat there spinning round, and at that point I really thought I was done for. Then Irfan dived across the room, batted the grenade off into a corner and slid into us just as it exploded. And I knew straight away that he'd been hit, because when a Konjässi broadcasts pain like that, even a non-Konjässi can feel it.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"Not entirely. You?"

"I'm fine. Why did you do that?"

"Slaves cost money," he said, with a weak grin. "You should always protect your investments…"

And he coughed and fell silent. I didn't think he was dead because I could still hear breathing, but I thought he might not last too long unless we could get him to the crawler for repairs. Only one more grenade came through the door, and that one didn't land near us, though cries and groans across the room made it clear that Irfan wasn't the only casualty. But there were enough uninjured people left in the room that the next Grey to try putting his head around the door was met with a hail of bullets.

There were still noises of fighting outside, suggesting that there were still members of General Lee's crew in action, too. No more Greys appeared in the doorway and no more grenades came through either, and after a minute or so Mr Narj put his head carefully around the door and reported that Lee's men had the upper hand. He gathered together a band of uninjured men and led them out to help Lee's crew finish things off. Stefan went with him, but I stayed put: I wanted to make sure that Irfan got moved to the crawler as soon as the coast was clear. The moment Aarnist, who had gone out with Mr Narj's sortie, came back inside I grabbed him and asked for help moving Irfan.

"I don't think he can make it," he said, examining his colleague. "He's lost a lot of blood."

"He'll make it if we get him to the crawler before he dies," I said. "Their medical facilities are close to miraculous."

"Take his feet, then," said Aarnist, grabbing Irfan under the arms.

We got him over to the crawler. It wasn't easy: there were piles of corpses outside the door. But somehow we got past them and round to the back of the crawler. Fortunately Captain Altay was on duty at the ramps, and when I said that Irfan had saved my life, and Sam's, he gave us an escort and arranged for priority treatment in the crawler's medical bay.

"Why this sudden interest in Irfan's welfare?" asked Aarnist, as the medics took over from us. "I didn't think you and he got on."

"Nor did I, to be honest. But he still chose to save my life by knocking a grenade away from me and then covering me with his body. It looks as if I got him all wrong."

"Not necessarily. I think instinct has a lot to do with how we act in those circumstances. Wouldn't you have done the same thing if your roles had been reversed?"

I thought about that. If it had been Sam lying next to the grenade I'm pretty sure I would have done, but Irfan?

"I don't know," I said. "I'd like to think I would, but… I'm no hero."

"That's not what Colonel Narj says. I was talking to him earlier, using your friend Stefan as interpreter. He said you risked your life to save Kerpia from the reptiles last time they invaded."

"Well, that was a bit different," I said. "That was just a case of planting a bomb. Nobody was shooting at me or chucking grenades about."

"Even so, it must have taken a certain amount of courage to carry it past the reptile guards. And Stefan said you've put yourself between your friends and people shooting at them at least twice. I think you're probably braver than you give yourself credit for."

"That was just heat of the moment stuff. If I'd had time to think I probably wouldn't have done it. When the Greys came into the radio room just now I just felt scared, not remotely heroic. And when that grenade landed next to me I was terrified."

"So would anyone else have been. But even then you still made sure your friend Sam was protected by your body, didn't you? You shouldn't underestimate yourself, Jacob. Narj was right: you're a brave lad."

Well, I still wasn't convinced: I'd been on the point of wetting myself when that grenade landed next to me, and I really don't think heroes generally have to change their underwear after a fight. I was happy enough to be alive, especially considering how many others hadn't made it.

When we got back to the radio room we found it was a mess: the grenades had destroyed some of the equipment, so we didn't know what was happening anywhere else. The surviving operators were trying to re-establish communications with the other crawlers and with the militia units south of us. There was no sign of either of the Arvelan aircraft in the sky, so I assumed that they had been forced to land on the motorway, something that was confirmed when Sam managed to get his radio working again. He was also able to confirm that, according to Cho's spotters, there was still no sign of the portal reopening.

"Can we find a wavelength the Greys are using?" I asked Mr Narj. "If we can, this would be a good time to ask them to surrender."

"Do you think they might? The ones that attacked us here didn't seem to be interested in giving up."

"No, but if we can talk to their leaders we might be able to persuade them. After all, we know what's happening out there. They might not. And remember that last time they got cut off from their base they chose to be sensible about it."

"True, but last time there were only a few of them, and they didn't have any tanks. But we should probably try. I'm sure their scientists will be trying to open a new portal, and if we can get them to surrender before that happens maybe we can talk them into going quietly. For now, anyway, because we can be pretty sure they'll try again before too long."

"Maybe not. What's it worth to make sure they don't come back?"

"Oh, come on! There's no possible way to do that, not now they have portal technology themselves. The best we can hope for is for them to give us time to arrange a permanent alliance with the crawler generals, and maybe even with Arvel – though I'm still not completely sure about that. At least then we might be able to fight when the Greys come back."

"I think we might manage to do better than that. After all, we know the Greys are keen on self-preservation, and there's a huge difference between walking into a place with no defences and trying to invade someone who is well-armed and ready for you. If the Greys lost enough soldiers today, maybe they'll listen to reason."

"I think you're being too optimistic. But I suppose there's no harm in trying."

He got all the remaining operators to scan their wavebands until they found one being used by the Greys, and eventually one of them intercepted a transmission. It was using a lot of code words and so couldn't easily be understood, but we weren't interested in what they were saying: we just wanted a means of talking to them. Mr Narj got the operator to crank the power up and then took the microphone – he spoke Grey himself, of course, so for once I didn't have to interpret.

"This is Narj Larzel of the Royal Kerpian Militia," he began. "The portal back to your world has been destroyed, and will be destroyed again if it reappears, so you have no retreat. There are more of the large war machines on the way, similar to the one that has recently appeared to the south-west. However, we have no wish to kill any more of you than is necessary, and so we have called off our air force to give you a chance to surrender. If you do so, and if we can come to an agreement regarding the future, we will repatriate such of your troops as remain alive. Please reply on this frequency."

That was not, of course, entirely truthful, but the Greys were not in a position to know that no more crawlers were coming, or that the air force was temporarily unavailable to us. And so, a minute or so later, we received a reply.

"Hello, Narj. This is Senior Force Leader Nass. To judge from our previous meetings I believe we can rely on you to keep your word, and so we would be prepared to offer a truce while we talk to each other. Be advised, however, that we still have plenty of tanks, and that we believe the interface can be re-established before too long, and consequently it's a little early to talk of surrender. But we will consider what you have to say. Will you come to us?"

"I think perhaps somewhere away from the fighting would be better. If you have the means to cross the Ill – that's the river that runs south to north, to the east of your position – we can find an area where there aren't bodies all over the place. Approximately twelve ezerhersps north-north-east of where your portal used to be…"

"That's about thirty khirokubs," I put in.

"Thank you. Right, so thirty khirokubs north-north-east of your position you'll find a place where the motorway used to cross the river before we blew the bridge up. Cross the river there – if we meet at the far side of the motorway embankment we will be out of the line of fire of your troops and ours. We'll keep our aircraft on the ground at least until after the meeting. Perhaps we could meet there in about half a kend? Nass, I know you know how our units of time work."

"We will be there," Nass promised.

Mr Narj turned the radio off and began to get a negotiating party together. All of the participating worlds would of course have to be represented, and I thought that it would be a good idea to get the Tammids to attend as well, since the Greys might find it easier to relate to other non-mammals. Mr Narj wanted me, Stefan and Sam to go along to act as interpreters, and so I suggested we should take Dec as well, since he could speak Common and Arvelan. And so while Mr Narj was organising transport, General Lee opened a small portal back to the Arvelan world so that Dec could come back to our side. And I went and pressed the button on my bracelet to summon the Tammids, hoping that by now they had managed to cross into Kerpia.

North of Kolmar the bridges had not yet been destroyed, and so we were able to cross the Ill at Sélestat and follow its east bank southwards. The Tammids simply flew to the meeting place once we had reached it and landed close by.

Mr Narj was obviously expecting the meeting to go on for a while, as he'd managed to find a large tent and a number of chairs, and by the time the Greys arrived the tent was up and the chairs were arranged in a circle inside it. I'd spent that period talking long and hard with Kirk: he had a lot of questions about the various participants, and I answered these as best I could, telling him as much as I knew about each of the societies they represented.

Mr Narj and I met the Greys as they got out of their truck and invited the three officers into the tent.

"I remember you," said one of them to me. "You came up to the control room with Narj just before I returned home. What are you doing here?"

"Translating, mostly," I said. "I've lived in all of the worlds involved here, so I speak all the languages – and of course I was implanted with your language two years ago. You're Force Leader Nass, aren't you?"

"Senior Force Leader, now. I'm sorry, but I can't remember your name."

"Jake," I said. "Jake Stone, or Stone Jake, whichever you prefer. Anyway, if you'd like to take a seat I'll introduce you to everyone."

I waited until everyone was seated.

"You know Colonel Narj, of the Royal Kerpian Militia," I began. "This is Air-General Lorness and High Captain Aarnist of the Arvelan Confederation; these are Generals Lee, Khan and Cho of the Great Horde of the East, and this is Colonel Rietsch, of the Militia of Lower Elsass. And in the boxes are Dan and Kirk, who are Tammids. They come from another planet and have an arrangement with Elsass, my home world. I suggested they should be here because they're neither mammals nor reptiles, and so they'll be able to offer a neutral point of view if needed. And these are my friends Stefan, Sam and Declan, who will be helping with the translating."

"Well, I am Senior Force Leader Nass 04239083, and this is Adjutant Kessin 92246112, and this is Force Marshal Merss 89217082, who is in command of our army. So, Narj, what do you have in mind?"

"May I say something?" I asked, before Mr Narj could answer.

"Go ahead," he invited me.

"You're going to let a juvenile do the talking?" asked the Force Marshal.

"His Grey is better than mine," said Mr Narj. "Besides, he's spent more time beyond the portals than anyone else I know about, and that probably makes him better qualified to talk about them than me. Of course if I disagree with him I'll say so, but in the past he's generally been worth listening to."

"Well," I said, extremely grateful for that endorsement, "the thing is, you're all professional soldiers, and I thought maybe it would be helpful to get a civilian's view before your start getting all martial with each other. May I ask first of all why you decided to attack Kerpia?"

"Because we can," said the Force Marshal. "We have the technology now."

"Yes, you have. And the point about that technology is that it can take you anywhere: you're not limited to this world alone. There are empty worlds out there, places where you can find the minerals you want, or open land to raise your cattle, or places where you can build new towns to prevent your own world from becoming overcrowded. You don't have to fight the neighbours for control of what is already occupied territory when there are open spaces available to you where nobody lives. Why end up throwing away hundreds of tanks and hundreds of soldiers if you don't have to?"

"Well, we weren't expecting a lot of resistance," Nass pointed out. "Which leads me to ask: how did you know we were coming?"

"That was pure chance," I said, grateful for the opportunity to protect Ssyrl and his colleagues. "A couple of days ago High Captain Aarnist took a small party of us into your world because he needed to talk to one of the boys who were with us last year about something that happened back then. In his country there is a race of men who can read minds – you can understand that they're very useful at police work. Well, in retrospect I can understand why the officer in charge of the place where we came though wasn't pleased to see us: obviously with the invasion imminent he thought we were coming to do some spying. But I suppose he thought we'd get even more suspicious if he refused to let us in, and so he allowed Aarnist and one of his mind-readers to go and interview the boy, and I went with them to translate. He sent an escort with us, of course, and we had an uneventful journey: we did the interview and came back to the police post. But while we were gone your officer had been worrying about the invasion and whether we knew about it, and because he'd decided to keep the rest of our party – including three mind-readers – with him, they picked up what he was thinking, and when we got back to Kerpia they raised the alarm.

"So it was just bad luck on your part, really, or good luck on ours: our visit had nothing to do with the invasion, and if we hadn't had the mind-readers with us we'd have gone away none the wiser. But now that it's happened once you can be sure that the Kerpians – and their allies – will be ready if it happens again. That's why it would be a lot more sensible to use your portals to go elsewhere."

"I can see the logic of that, but so far we've only managed to open the one interface," said Nass.

"Well, maybe the Kerpians can give you some help with your portal project."

"Whoa! Hold on, Jake," said Mr Narj. "I certainly didn't say anything about that!"

"I know," I said, switching languages, "but think about it: is it better for the Greys to come and kick you all over your own back yard, or for you to help them find an empty world of their own? This time we knew they were coming. Next time they might pop up unexpectedly at the other end of the country, where you'll get no help from either Elsass or Arvel. Surely you'd be better off co-operating with them?"

"I don't think the government will agree to that at all. I'm going to have enough trouble persuading them to offer anything to Arvel, never mind the Greys."

"They'll change their minds when a Grey portal pops up by the Duna and the Greys sack Budd," I said. "Or even Temishar – I should think the mountains are much the same in the Grey world, so it shouldn't be impossible for them to open a portal in that area. The thing is, your country and mine don't have much of an army, and I don't want to see either of us needing one, either. If you've got powerful neighbours like the Greys and the Arvelans, surely it's better to have an agreement with them instead of just waiting for them to come and kick your door in late one night?"

"That's true, provided you can trust them to keep to the agreement."

"I think there's at least a chance of that."

"All right, Jake, carry on," he said. "But obviously anything you offer would have to be acceptable to my government."

"I'm doing my best not to make any concrete offers, just suggestions," I said. "I'm more than happy to leave the proper negotiations to the experts."

We'd been speaking Kerpian, of course, so:

"Problems?" asked Nass.

"No, not really. Colonel Narj was just reminding me that I can't actually agree anything myself – that's a job for the government. But I can make some suggestions that everyone might want to follow up later.

"Maybe none of you here will agree with me, but personally I think the best solution all round would be for all five worlds to come to some sort of agreement about using portals. You could agree on spheres of influence, for example – so perhaps the European powers would be happy to give the Arvelans free rein in the Americas, or the Greys in Africa – they're better suited to hot conditions, after all. The Horde might be more interested in Asia, since that's where their roots are, though actually the Horde are a bit different from the rest of you, and so maybe they'd be looking for a different challenge.

"But it seems to me that, if you pool what you know about portals, you'll find that there are plenty of worlds out there for everyone. We could set up some sort of council to handle problems – the Tammids could chair that, since they don't have any pro-mammal or pro-reptile bias – and perhaps you could have regular meetings to iron out any minor issues, or to help each other resolve problems in the new worlds. I'd suggest the best place for that might be here in Elsass, since all of you have a presence in this area in your own original worlds. Maybe my Elsass could find a physical place for that to happen."

"I don't think that would work," said Nass. "We'd be outnumbered, and I'm virtually certain we'd never be accepted in a mammal world."

"There might be problems at first," I agreed. "But Elsass now accepts the Tammids without any problem, and you're a lot less alien-looking than they are. Yes, there's likely to be a certain amount of distrust between you and Kerpia, but that's hardly surprising: it'll take time for that to end. But you might be surprised to find that other mammal worlds are more welcoming. If you talk to the two boys who travelled with us last year they'll confirm that in most mammal worlds they were treated exactly the same as we were. And over time we'd get used to each other, especially if we encouraged open portals between your world and ours. Perhaps we could have school exchanges: that happens between different countries in my native world: kids tend to be less prejudiced than adults to start with, and once we got to know each other I think we'd find we could get along pretty well.. Certainly I found that I got on well with the boys I met in your country, just as Torth and Sarleth got on well with us and the other kids we met on our travels.

"Anyway, that's something for the future. All I can say is that from a civilian point of view I'd far sooner we were all talking to each other about a shared future than trying to kill each other."

Mr Narj had been giving a running translation of that into Kerpian, and my friends between them rendered it into English, Horde Common and Arvelan, and once the translations were complete I looked around the room. And I realised that I'd failed to convince them: the Kerpians plainly didn't trust the Greys, the Arvelans didn't trust the Kerpians and the Greys didn't trust anyone.

My shoulders slumped. For a moment there I'd genuinely thought I had a chance of bringing them round them, but now it looked as though I'd been wrong.

"I'm sorry," said Nass. "I really don't think this is feasible. We have nothing in common with mammals, and…"

"One moment," interrupted a voice in English.

It took everyone a moment to work out that the voice came from the box of one of the Tammids, but Nass fell silent all the same.

"We would like to contribute to this discussion," the voice continued. "Jake, will you and your friends translate for us, please?"

"Certainly," I said. "Go ahead."

"We do not like war," the Tammid went on. "We have seen enough of it on our travels and we know that no good comes of it. And we see no reason why there should be war on this planet if it is not necessary."

"Who are you to say what is necessary?" asked the Grey force marshal.

"We are Tammids. We have travelled, and we have seen. But we understand that you each believe you have reasons to fight: Jake has told us something about each of your nations. And we have an alternative way to offer."

"And what might that be?" asked Nass.

"If you can agree to abstain from war we would be prepared to offer transport to any of you who is interested in exploring other planets. Each of you should find this beneficial. I will explain.

"The Horde has run out of land to explore and conquer. We can offer the chance to explore completely new planets. We have ships large enough to convey your travel machines, and we may also be able to assist in the repair of your machines. And we understand that some of you may prefer to stop travelling and make a home in one place. Clearly a peaceful outcome here would permit you to do this in worlds other than your own: you would have wider choices than that of simple agriculture in a largely empty world. We understand in fact that you have many things in common with the reptiles, who are also warriors and raisers of beasts for food. We believe that you may be able to co-exist with them.

"As for the reptiles, we understand that your primary motivation for expansion is to find the minerals you need, and to obtain living space for your population. These things could readily be accomplished if you had access to other planets. Or if you prefer to stay on this planet, by co-operating with the mammals you could improve your interface technology and use it to search out other reptile worlds – Jake tells us he has been to one such, and others almost certainly exist.

"For the people of Arvel this would also be true. I understand that your primary motivation is to obtain assistance with your own interface development, and clearly a peaceful outcome here would facilitate that. And you may also find the concept of space travel interesting. And for our part we would be interested in meeting the race of mind-readers of whom Jake has spoken to us. We find the concept that humans may have higher mental powers than we have hitherto seen fascinating.

"For Kerpia, clearly an accord with the reptiles would be in your interests. It is better to live in harmony with your neighbours wherever possible, and if you can reach an agreement here you will gain valuable allies in the event that your other neighbours – and we understand you have an uneasy relationship with the people of Lettria – should at any time prove troublesome.

"Elsass already knows the benefits of a peaceful existence. We believe that all of you could similarly benefit from an end to war.

"Now we will keep silent and allow you to consider our offer. We hope that you can see the advantages of a successful outcome to your discussions."

As I finished translating that into Grey I saw that the expressions of everyone around the circle had changed: the carrot of space travel did seem to have had an effect – even the Greys now seemed to be seriously considering the benefits of co-operating with the rest of us. Of course, I'd noticed that the Tammid had been careful to talk about 'transport' rather than 'technology': I was virtually certain that they weren't likely to share the technology with anyone other than Elsass – they wouldn't want to be held responsible for warlike peoples rampaging through the galaxy. By limiting their involvement to transport they could ensure that the Horde, for example, wouldn't choose to land on and attack an existing civilisation.

The discussions went on for quite some time, and although some of the mistrust continued to linger, by the time the meeting eventually broke up everyone had agreed to put the basic suggestion of a pooling of portal knowledge and resources, supported by some binding principles of non-aggression and the establishment of some sort of inter-world council to deal with problems, to their respective governments.

The meeting was concluded late in the afternoon, by which time the Greys had established a new portal, although no attempt had been made to send any fresh troops through it. Since it was comfortably within range of General Zhao's crawler any attempt to do so would certainly have been short-lived. Instead, when the Force Marshal got back to his command post he began organising the withdrawal of his surviving troops back through the portal.

When we got back to the radio station we found that Lee's scientists had opened a new portal to Arvel between the other two masts, so the Air-General was able to radio his base and arrange for a fuel truck to be sent to refuel his two stranded planes.

"Can we go home now, do you think?" asked Stefan.

"You know what? That's a great idea," I said. "Except… there's one thing I need to check on first."

I took him to Lee's crawler, and Sam and Dec came too: they wanted to make sure that Xan, Vanya and our other friends had survived the fighting. So while they went to look for them, Stefan and I went to the medical bay to see how Irfan was doing. We found him conscious and looking a lot better than when I had last seen him.

"Impressive medical facilities," he remarked. "I thought I was in trouble when that grenade went off, too. So, how's it going out there?"

"The Greys are going home," I told him. "Everyone has come to some sort of an agreement. Aarnist was there, so I'm sure he'll be able to give you the details later. Anyway, we're going home, too. I hope you're not going to have a problem with that, what with us being escaped slaves and everything – I'm sure you'll understand that we don't want to go back to the school."

"Well, legally I ought to insist on you coming back with me. And I could, of course: neither of you seems to be wearing anything metal."

"Legally you're now the one in a foreign world without valid papers," I pointed out. "If Kerpia had the same laws as Arvel, you'd be liable for enslavement. Actually, now that it looks as if there's likely to be a fair bit of travelling between worlds in the future, maybe that's a bit of Arvelan law you ought to think about changing. I can sort of see a case for slavery for people who commit real crimes – Dec explained that to me a while back – but you can't just go about enslaving people who get lost and end up in your world by mistake."

"We might have to do that," he agreed. "But that's not my decision. I just enforce the law as it stands. Although in your case I suppose an exception might be made."

"Thank you. And… is there anything you can do about what happens at the school?" I asked. "Slavery is one thing, but what goes on there is torture and murder."

"Our people have to train. I can understand why you're not happy about it, but that's the way things are. You can't change the world, Jacob."

"I suppose not. Well, we'll be off then. And thanks."

"For what?"

"For saving my life, and for letting us go."

He shrugged. "A moment of madness," he said, grinning. "Now go before I change my mind!"

So we left the medical bay and I took Stefan to my old living quarters, and here we found Sam, Xan and the rest of Xan's riders, who had not been directly involved in the fighting.

"They said it was too dangerous for cavalry," complained Xan. "We'd have gone in as infantry if they'd let us."

"Then I'm glad they didn't," I said. "Quite enough people died out there. Besides, if you'd died here you'd have missed out on the chance to visit other planets."

"Yes, Dec was just telling us about that. It sounds amazing… although it might be interesting to see some other worlds on this planet first. Maybe it would be interesting to see how people live in your world, and if it really is possible to live in a city without losing yourself."

"What about you, Dec? Are you going back to Sarutaale now?"

"No, I'm going to stay here. This is far more interesting, and if the general does decide to look into going to other planets that would be amazing. Though perhaps we could come and visit you before then."

"I'm staying, too," said Sam. "Dec needs someone to keep him out of trouble."

I wondered if that was going to lead to a wrestling match – certainly it would have done if I'd made a remark like that. But instead Dec just put his arm around Sam's shoulders and gave him a quick hug.

"We'll look after each other," he promised me. "So, are you going home now?"

"Yes, we are. But what you said about visiting: please do. I shouldn't think you'll be going anywhere for a while, because all the crawlers are going to need repairs."

"True. Ours isn't too bad, but Khan and Cho both got knocked about a bit, and Shen's crawler is probably beyond repair. The Greys pretty much destroyed it from the inside. Still, now that we have access to civilisation the repairs will probably be faster than in our own world. I'm sure the Kerpians will help us out with materials. But we'll probably still have plenty of time to come and see where you live."

"Good. If you use the portal in Strossburi you'll find it easier, because the transport links are a lot better. Here, I'll give you my chipfone number – anyone at the Institute will make the call for you, and once I know you're there I'll come and find you."

I scrawled my number on a page torn from Stefan's notebook, and then, after a lot of hugging with Dec, Sam and all of Xan's riders we went back to the radio station to find Mr Narj.

"Is it all right if we go now?" I asked him. "It's just that we both seem to be still in one piece, and I'd like to get home before something else goes wrong."

"Of course, I'll get someone to run you up to the Hub. But I suspect that if everything here works out the king might want to see you again."

"If this works out it'll be nothing to do with me," I said. "It's only going to work if you all persuade your governments to go along with it, and I imagine that's going to be a lot harder than it was for me just to make a couple of suggestions."

"I was thinking more in terms of the fact that we wouldn't have known the Greys were coming at all if you hadn't warned us."

"You can thank Aarnist for that, because going into the Grey world was his idea. I wouldn't have gone there in a million years otherwise. And you might like to mention to the king that it was the Grey boys over there that really saved us. They were the ones who reckoned that reptiles and mammals didn't have to fight, and that's why they decided to warn me. So if the politicians on your side start getting awkward, just point out that the Greys were the ones who took the first step on the road to them and us getting along with each other. Although if you think it'll help for me to say that in public I certainly will."

"Thank you, Jake. That would probably be very helpful, but in any case I'll make sure someone keeps you up to date with how the talks go. Now wait here for a moment and I'll find you a driver."

While I was waiting I walked across the room to where Aarnist was talking to the Arvelan Air-General and waited for a break on their conversation.

"I thought I'd come and say goodbye," I said. "I'm going home."

"Ah, so you're going to sneak off while Irfan's not around? That might be a good idea."

"No actually I've just been to see him and he's okay with it. He must have hit his head when he fell, because he was almost friendly."

"That doesn't sound like the Irfan I know. You must have done something to impress him… anyway, I've got no problem with you going. It looks as if I'm going to get everything I wanted out of this. Even if the politicians don't go with your idea they're definitely going to have to take portals seriously, and that can only be good for me. I don't suppose you'll particularly want to come back to my world, but if you do you can do so freely. I'll make sure your file is cleared up – and if I can catch Irfan while he's still in a good mood I'll see if I can get him to agree to drop the case against the rest of your party, too. After all, there's at least a chance that your world and mine are going to have an alliance in the future, and we probably shouldn't be enslaving our allies."

"Thank you," I said. ""I appreciate it."

Mr Narj waved at me to indicate that he'd found us a driver, and a couple of minutes later Stefan and I were on our way back up to the Hub. And it wasn't too long afterwards that we found ourselves back in our own world again.

"Fancy taking your life in your hands one more time?" I asked Stefan.

"What do you mean?"

"I can't be bothered to walk all the way back down to Schlettstadt," I said. "And he'll have finished work by now, so…"

I pulled my chipfone out – Mr Narj had indeed managed to recharge it for me the previous evening – and called Alain. It was quite a way to ask him to come, but like anyone with their first car he didn't need asking twice. He arranged to meet us at the point where we'd met the previous day, so Stefan and I walked down the track to the point where it met the road, and there we waited.

"Do you think it'll work?" he asked. "Everyone getting together and playing nicely, I mean."

"I don't know. Probably not, if I'm honest, or at least not straight away. You can hardly blame the Kerpians for not trusting the Greys, or the Greys for being reluctant to share with everyone else, especially if they believe mammals aren't really proper rational beings, which is what Torth told me they think. Still, maybe in the long run it'll work – and in any case, it's nothing to do with us any more. Let the adults sort it out."

He nodded. "I suppose that's true," he said. "And there's one other thing: are you disappointed that Sam decided not to come and live with us?"

"No," I said firmly. "I like him – in fact I like him a lot – but I don't want anything to get between me and you. Remember what I said when we saw Marc for the first time? I said something like, 'He's pretty, but you're perfect'. And Sam's the same: he's pretty, but he isn't you. And you're all I want, and as far as I can tell, you're all I'll ever want."

I'm not sure how long it took Alain to reach us because I wasn't watching my watch. Instead I was holding onto my boyfriend and kissing him and hoping that we'd never be separated again. And when Alain did arrive we got straight into the back of his car together and carried on, and we only stopped when he accused us of steaming up his windows.

When we got back to the Résidence we discovered that this time we were expected: Oli had gone round to get things ready while Alain came to pick us up, so we were greeted with a full 'Welcome Home' party, which was really nice, though since it meant that Stefan and I had to stay downstairs talking to everyone for at least an hour instead of being able to retire to the privacy of our room it was also a little frustrating. But eventually we were able to slip quietly away. It had been four months since we had last slept in our own bed, and I can't say how delighted I was to be back. At that moment I had no wish ever to travel anywhere again.

***

Two months went by. At the end of the Easter holidays I went back to school and tried to catch up on another missing term. Of course, I'd learned yet another new language while I was away, but it wouldn't be much use unless I went back to the Horde world, because nobody in this world spoke Horde Common except me. But I got on with my school work and settled back into normal life again.

Of course I didn't completely forget what was happening beyond the portals – in fact Mr Narj kept me up to date, relaying phone messages through the Institute in Strossburi every couple of weeks, and so I knew that – so far at least – the Greys had made no further attempt to invade. Instead a permanent portal between Kerpia and the Grey World was under construction, to go with the ones to Arvel and the Horde World that had already been constructed in and around Strossburi. Still, although it was interesting to know how things were progressing, as far as I was concerned my part in it was over and done with.

And then my birthday came round once more.

I'd celebrated my thirteenth birthday quietly at home with my parents, and I'd spent my fourteenth as a slave in Arvel. But this year, on my fifteenth birthday, I had the biggest party of my entire life so far. Not only did all my friends from the Résidence attend, but I also had some visitors from outside, too: Alain and Oli came, obviously, and so did Marc, and Jean-Patrick and the Webers came from my native world (that wasn't too hard to organise – at least, not once Killian got to work on their parents, who were led to believe that I now lived in Mulhouse, which of course was true, sort of), and Xan and his entire band also made an appearance, though at least they had the sense not to turn up on their horses. Instead they travelled on public transport, which meant that Leila got the train ride she'd wanted.

None of the riders could speak French, of course, and only Sam could speak English, which made conversation difficult. But enough of my friends from the Résidence spoke Arvelan for Dec to be able to act as a translator, and it's surprising how well you can sometimes communicate with gestures even when you have no common language.

Various adults put in an appearance, too: Mr Narj came to give me the latest update on the Five Worlds Agreement and stayed for a while afterwards, General Lee and Valeriya accompanied Xan and his band, and although Aarnist didn't come in person he did send me a brief note wishing me a happy birthday and confirming that there was no reason why I or any of my friends should not visit Arvel again in the future, should we wish to: we'd been officially released from our sentence of slavery. This was nice, although I thought there would be other places I'd be more likely to travel to than Arvel – except I thought that perhaps it would be nice to be able to visit Godfrey, Peter and the twins at Sarutaale. Perhaps I'd invite them to my next birthday party. Come to that, maybe if everything went well I'd be able to invite the Grey boys to come next year, too.

Most importantly, my parents were also at the party. I'd gone back to my world a couple of days after the fighting finished and spoken to them on the phone, and they'd agreed to come and visit. And so the day before my birthday Stefan and I had met them at the station in Sélestat, taken a taxi up to the end of the track above Orschwiller, walked up the track to the hut and taken them through the Nexus Room and out into Elsass, and Alain had then driven us all back to the Résidence. They'd spent a while looking around the town and talking to the Résidence manager, Mr Jaecklin. And during the party they also had a long talk to Mr Narj, though I didn't find out what they were saying straight away because they used Markus as interpreter instead of getting me to do it myself. But a little later they took me outside to talk to them on my own.

"Are you really happy here?" my father asked me.

"Yes, I am. Of course, I was happy in England, too, but this is… well, different."

"It certainly seems to be. And it looks as if this place has done you good, too. You've grown up, Jake, and if even half of what I've been hearing is true, you've become a really good person, too. We're proud of you.

"It's funny, really: almost every time we started to talk to one of your friends we found that they didn't want to talk to us, and in the end we asked one of them – the older boy, the one who drove us here…"

"Alain," I supplied.

"That's the one. Anyway, I asked him why everyone was reluctant to talk to us, and he said that nobody wanted to talk to us because they all thought we'd come to take you away. 'And you can't do that,' he said. 'Jake's our leader, and even if we never travel again we need him. He's the one who got us all here and we couldn't get by without him.'"

"That's not true," I protested. "They managed perfectly well over the four months or so I was away at the start of the year."

"Not according to Alain. He says everyone's schoolwork suffered because they were worrying about you all the time. And he said that everyone was scared that we'd take you away, for good this time."

"And will you?" I asked.

"Jake, don't you think we've missed you, too? Except for us it's been two years, not just a few weeks. A year and a half not knowing where you were or what had happened to you, and then another four months after you were taken away by that policeman. I don't think you can begin to imagine how we felt. So of course we want you back."

So it was actually going to happen: I was going to have to choose between my parents and my friends, and especially my boyfriend. I'd been afraid it was eventually going to come to this from the first moment Mr Narj had told me I could go home if I wanted. I didn't know what to say.

"But," my father continued, "we know how things were for you at home. We used to worry about you, the way you just sat at home all the time or went out for long walks on your own. We used to wonder why you didn't have any friends – were you shy, or didn't you fit in at school, or… well, whatever it was, we were concerned. And yet here you are now with plenty of friends, all of whom obviously like you a lot. And we realised that probably a lot of how you were at home was because of the way we argued, because as soon as you got away from home you began to flourish. So we understand if you don't want to come back with us."

And of course that didn't help me at all, because it simply left the ball squarely in my court.

"This is my home now," I said, eventually. "I don't want to leave my friends, and… well, you know about me and Stefan. Here it's okay for us to be together; back in England it wouldn't be. And I can't live without him. But I don't want to lose you, either. So could we make it like I was away at boarding school? I stay here during term time but spend part of the holidays with you – you know now how easy it is for me to get from this world to yours, so I could get back to England easily enough. Or you could come and stay here during the summer. That way I'd be able to take you to some of the other places I've been and show you how people live there. I think you'd like Kerpia, for a start, and maybe if we're really lucky they'll find a way to open a portal into Vogesia and we can have a tropical beach holiday without leaving France…. Do you think we could do that?"

Once again I think I'll skip over the next ten minutes or so, because it got quite emotional and all of us did some crying, but eventually we had a big family hug, dried our eyes and went back inside. And the moment we entered the room everyone stopped talking at looked at us.

"Well?" asked Stefan, looking like a defendant in court who has just seen the jury troop back in.

"I'm staying," I said, and there was a massive cheer, and Stefan threw himself into my arms and almost hugged me to death. And then everyone else crowded round, slapping me on the back, hugging me and generally making me feel as if I'd just scored the winning goal in the Cup Final. It was overwhelming, and I was still feeling sort of emotionally swamped when the party finally broke up and Stefan led me back to our room.

"I was afraid I was going to lose you," he said.

"Never," I replied. "From now on I'm staying right here with you."

"You say that now," he said, getting into bed, "but I bet you change your mind when the scientists come to see you with another portal problem."

I shook my head. "I've done my bit," I said, "From now on the portals are someone else's problem. I don't mind using them to go and visit my parents, or to go on holiday, but if I do that you'll be with me. And if there are problems with the portals I'm really not interested. I've got everything I want right here."

And I turned off the light, snuggled up to my boyfriend and went to sleep.

And that's where I propose to leave them. I had a lot of fun writing these three stories (even though the last one took quite a bit of effort), and I can only hope that you had fun reading them, too. To judge by your mails – and thank you to everyone who responded – a lot of you did.

The End of Book III