David Clarke

The Nexus

Chapters 14-17

Chapter Fourteen

Last time we left Jake contemplating a very unpleasant future indeed: with Ssyrl refusing to help him to escape he's going to be stuck at the mine after the bomb goes off. And you can bet that when the Greys come looking for him it won't be to give him a medal…

Somehow I got through to the end of the shift. Before Oli headed back to Stefan's dormitory I told him that it might not be possible to leave the following evening after all, but that they should stay awake and come to the changing room in case I managed to think of another way out. We showered and went to the dining room for supper, and I noticed that Ssyrl ate most of his, even though it wasn't an eating day for him: I supposed that three meals like these would just about constitute one ordinary meal by his usual standards.

When we got back to the dormitory I managed to get everyone to stop and listen to me for a couple of minutes before they got into bed, and I used the time to explain that Ssyrl was here because in his world some forms of sexual activity were taboo. "He's just like us," I said, "but in his world he isn't allowed the freedom we have to do the things we can here. And that's the only reason he's here. I've seen the way the boys in his world treated him, and I don't want us treating him like that, okay? It's not his fault his people came here – he's just a kid like we are."

"So what did he do that was so bad, then?" asked someone.

"He likes taking the female role in sex," I said. "I know some of you like that, too, so maybe you can imagine what it would be like for you if you lived in Lettria, say. Then you'll understand how it was for him back in his world."

The reaction seemed entirely positive, and two or three of the boys actually came and showed sympathy by patting Ssyrl on the back.

"What did you tell them?" he asked me.

"The truth – I said you were here because the boys you were with couldn't accept the way you like to… well, you know. How you like sex. Nobody here is going to give you a hard time for it."

"And is that all you told them? Nothing about me not helping you to escape?"

"Not a word. None of them knew I was hoping to do that, anyway. Come on, we might as well lie down."

I moved from my usual place to lie on the end of the Team Three position, where Shander usually slept, and Tommi came and wriggled in between Shander and me after a minute or so. Ssyrl came and lay on my other side, in the last Team Four place. We pulled the blankets over us and settled down.

"Ssyrl, I'm really sorry," I said. "I didn't even think about your position: I was just being completely selfish about it, wanting to use you for my benefit. I shouldn't have done that."

"Why not? It's a logical way to behave – after all, we're expected to think of ourselves first."

"Not in this world, we're not: we're supposed to think of what's best for other people, too, and I definitely didn't do that with you. I won't mention it again. Anyway, I hope things will get better for you now: the others understand why you're here, and they sympathise, and Tommi can speak your language, so there'll be someone to interpret for you even if I'm not here to do it."

"Okay. I don't like being here, and the work is really hard, but if the boys here treat me nicely it'll be something."

"Would you rather be back at the school being treated like shit all the time, and wondering if this time they might really seal your sheath permanently or something?"

"Well… no. But it's hard being the only Grey here, especially since the other boys blame us for them having to work here in the first place. And they're right, I suppose."

"Yes, but I think they can tell that it isn't your fault personally – a bit like me trying to persuade Stefan that the Holocaust is nothing to do with him…"

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, never mind. Let's just get some sleep."

I snuggled against him. This didn't work as well as it did with Tommi or Stefan because Ssyrl's body wasn't as warm as theirs, but it meant he could draw some warmth from me, and I thought he deserved it: I had been really selfish in getting him here, after all.

"Jake," he said quietly, just as I was dropping off to sleep, "can I ask you something?"

"What?"

"Would you… would you like to… to fuck me?"

"Well… not really. See, I'm a bit like you: I think I'd prefer it if my boyfriend did it to me, rather than me doing it. But I'm sure some of the boys here wouldn't mind doing it with you – and I'll help you with your piece of plastic until you find someone to do it with you properly, if you like. It'll probably feel nicer if someone else is doing it than doing it to yourself."

"Okay. Perhaps we can do it on the next Rest Day, then. And maybe you could ask if any of the others would like to… you know."

"I don't think I'll be here on the next Ertday," I said, gloomily. "But I'll ask around for you in the morning. I think Tommi wouldn't mind helping you, but he's not very big… anyway, I'll ask the others in the morning."

I settled down again, putting my arm around him so that he wouldn't feel so alone, and soon I fell asleep.

Next morning I tried to put my worries to one side, though it was difficult. I thought that if I couldn't find another way out of here in the next day or so I might just try running for it and hope that a Type Two guardian got me before a Type One – I was sure that this would be a quicker death than the one I would get if the Greys picked me up for destroying the portal. But perhaps they wouldn't come for me straight away: there was sure to be a lot of panic and confusion straight after the explosion, and an investigation would probably not get under way for a couple of days. The bomb was due to go off next day, and the day after that would be an Ertday, so perhaps Stefan would be able to think of something, if they hadn't arrested me by then, of course. Perhaps we could try to break through into the other side of the building and find some weapons, or something… or at least we might get shot in the attempt, which would again be quicker than what might happen otherwise.

Still, I managed not to think about it between getting out of bed and the end of breakfast. As soon as I was out of bed I grabbed Tibor and Hansi, the two thirteen-year-olds in Team Four, and explained that Ssyrl was looking for someone to try sex with. "He wants to play the female role," I told them. "I know you two are… you know, friends, and I wondered if one of you would like to try the male role with him. Or if not, maybe you can think of someone else who might."

"I'd never have thought of trying it with a Grey," Tibor said. "But I suppose it might be interesting. And I can certainly think of a couple of others who might want to try it with him, too… you're sure he doesn't want to do the fucking? Because I'm not so sure about having him doing it to us."

"No, he definitely prefers to be on the receiving end. Talk to him and he'll tell you so himself. I can translate for you, or Tommi speaks Grey a bit now, too, so he can probably do it if I'm not around."

And I noticed that the pair of them made a point of sitting next to Ssyrl at breakfast (Ssyrl didn't eat breakfast, and he didn't like bread much, either, so he gave his roll to Tibor and Hansi to share, which they were very grateful for). Tommi had been drafted in to translate for them, and they seemed to be having a long and interesting conversation. I hoped something good would come of it.

On the way down to the furnace room I noticed Alain talking to Ssyrl too, again using Tommi as interpreter, and I wondered what that was about: I didn't think Alain would want to have sex with anyone other than Oli these days. But I didn't get a chance to ask him about it before the shift started.

Somehow I got through to the midday rice cake without actually collapsing – how the rest of my team had been coping as a three-man team was beyond me. I noticed that every time Ssyrl had a two-huszak break he used it to speak to someone from one of the other teams, using Tommi to interpret for him, but since my breaks didn't coincide with his during the morning I didn't get a chance to participate. And after 'lunch' I was back to concentrating on keeping going myself.

In late afternoon he changed a break so that he was free at the same time as I was, and he took me a little to one side and asked me what I thought of the food here.

"It's not very good and there isn't enough of it," I said. "Why?"

"Well, at first I thought that because you ate so often everything here must be fine. But then when you told us at school that you have to eat three times every day to keep your body operating I started to wonder… see, I get enough here, but only by eating all the meat that is offered every day and eating some of the other stuff, too. And now I can talk to you all, everyone here says the same thing: you need more food than you're getting. So why don't they feed you better?"

"Ssyrl, this is a slave labour job – that means they give us just about enough to keep us alive. They feed us up a bit on Ertdays, but during the working week they don't want to waste food, I suppose. Actually this is more food than I'd expected: generally slaves are lucky to be fed at all. But you can see how thin everyone is: I've no idea how some of them manage to keep going."

"I see." He was silent for a few seconds. "What you were saying last night: if you did get out of here, where would you go? Aren't things exactly the same everywhere in this world?"

"No. As far as I know your people haven't tried to move too far from this area yet. Of course, once the uranium runs out they'll probably want to push on into other regions with useful minerals, but at the moment we wouldn't have to go too far to get out of your area. But I wouldn't be trying to do that – I'll be trying to get back to my own world. I don't belong in this one."

"You mean, you come from one of the other worlds beyond the doors in that room under the checkpoint we came through?"

"That's right."

"But you'd never get past the checkpoint, so how could you hope to get back?"

"There's another way. If I once get out of the mine I know another entrance."

"Right. You mean there's another way through to that room that my people don't know about?"

"Yes – well, sort of. Look, Ssyrl, you could come with us if you want – I'm sure there are worlds out there that would accept you as you are instead of giving you a hard time about it. I mean, this world would, it's just that Greys aren't very popular round here, for obvious reasons. Parts of my world wouldn't have a problem with you, I'm sure."

"Except that I belong to a completely different species."

"Well, there is that… but I'm sure there are other worlds out there where humans aren't the only intelligent species. Maybe there's even one where your species and mine live happily together."

Our two huszaks were up and we went back to work. Of course, he was right: he would be profoundly unhappy in my world, even if he did avoid getting used for scientific research, and I thought most of the other worlds we knew about would be no better. He wouldn't last five minutes in Stefan's world, and the people of Oli's world would be sure to think he was one of the demons they were all so scared of. And even though the Greys didn't think friendships important, I didn't think he'd enjoy being the only living creature – apart from a cat – in the dead world where we had lived before moving to the Hub.

So when he came up to me in the shower at the end of the shift I was unprepared for what he had to say.

"I've changed my mind," he said. "I'm leaving tonight, and I'd like you to come with me, and if your friends want to, they can come, too."

"Wow, that's brilliant, Ssyrl – but why? I mean, what do you get out of taking a risk like that?"

"First, the work here is too hard – it's too hard for you mammals, but it's too hard for me, too. And second, the food is bad – there's hardly any meat, and I need meat to survive."

"Okay, so that's why you're going – but how come you're prepared to take us with you? Your people wouldn't worry too much about you walking out on your own – in fact they'd probably commend you for having the sense to see what's best for you. But if you take us with you… well, you already told me what'll happen if they catch you after that."

"I don't know, really. Maybe it's because everyone here has treated me okay since you explained what I'm doing here. But I'd also like to come and see whichever world you come from. That would be interesting."

I wasn't going to argue: after all, the bomb was due to explode the following morning, and I didn't want to be here after that. So after the meal we all retired to the dormitory as usual and waited for a couple of hours to allow the building to settle down: the night shift were working, so it was only the furnace room that the guards would be monitoring seriously. By now I'd seen that all the other cameras in the building were pointing at the locked doors that led into the administrative areas, and of course we had no intention of using any of those.

The other reason for waiting those two hours were to allow it to start getting dark outside: even if we avoided the cameras it would be dangerous to try walking out of the gates in broad daylight. But after dark it would be a lot safer. In any event I was fairly confident that there would be only a small risk of being stopped once we were outside the mine because the Greys seemed to rely completely on fear of the guardians to keep humans indoors.

So two hours after we had settled down we got up again. Some of the boys had fallen asleep and had to be woken up by their friends, but absolutely nobody wanted to be left behind, and so within a couple of minutes everyone was ready to go.

We opened the door and headed along the corridor. At the far end there was a door that led into the other half of the building and there was a camera pointing at it, but we wouldn't have to go close enough to it for it to be a problem: we left that corridor just before it reached the dining area, which was silent now: the cleaning up after our evening meal had all been done some time before.

We went down the stairs, and at the bottom we did have to be a bit careful and hug the wall because there was another camera pointing at the door to the furnace room. But we were going the other way, to the changing room, and there was no camera on that door.

We went into the changing room, retrieved our clothes from the lockers and got dressed, and while we were doing so the door opened once more. For a moment I thought we'd been caught, but it turned out to be Stefan, Oli and eight other boys, mostly a little older than those of us who worked in the furnace room. Stefan came straight up to me and hugged me hard.

"I was afraid I'd never see you again," he said. "What were they doing to you?"

"It was just some tests. It was a bit scary because they started out by threatening to cut me up, but they changed their minds about that. Anyway, get dressed – once we're out of here we'll be able to talk properly."

While everyone was getting dressed I pulled Ssyrl to the front of the room.

"This is Ssyrl," I told Stefan and his colleagues. "He's the one who's getting us out of here, so if this works out it'll be thanks to him."

"This is going to work, isn't it?" I said to Ssyrl in Grey and in a much quieter voice. "I mean, there are a lot of us and only one of you."

"It might make the guardians a bit skittish, but they are trained to respect the presence of a single Grey. It means that one of us can escort several prisoners at a time. I think we'll be fine as long as we all stick close together."

Once everyone was ready we went up the stairs and along the corridor to the outside door.

"Okay," I told everyone, "there's a camera above this door looking out into the yard, so we need to stick close to the wall. Ssyrl will have to go first in case there are any guardians close to the door, but the rest of us will have to make sure we stick as close to him as we can. And once we're outside the door, keep quiet – if there are any windows open on the other side of the building someone will hear us. Right, let's go."

I opened the door a crack and looked out, but there was nothing in sight, just an empty yard. Stefan's coal-hauling crew didn't have a night shift because they were able to do everything that needed doing – in particular, keeping the hopper at the furnace room topped up – during the hours of daylight, and so there was no activity going on outside the building.

We edged our way along the wall until we were clear of the camera, and then we were able to bunch up and start moving, with Ssyrl leading us, towards the gates.

"Guardian!" hissed someone, and I saw one of the Type Ones heading towards us. It stopped about ten metres [30 ft.] away but didn't raise its tail or make any other threatening gesture, and when we kept moving it didn't show any sign of wanting to attack. But it didn't go away, either: instead it moved along beside us, and by the time we reached the gates a couple of others had joined it.

We had to be a bit careful at the gate because of the camera on one of the gate-posts. This made it impossible to use the road until it went around a bend about a hundred metres [300 ft.] away, and so we headed off into the woods and then advanced through the trees, keeping parallel to the road by courtesy of Stefan's compass. Eventually we were able to rejoin the road, though somewhere in the woods we had picked up a fourth guardian, and having four of the creatures keeping pace with us was very disturbing.

Nonetheless we reached the town without further incident. This was likely to be the dangerous part, because there had been several Greys in the town each time I had passed through it. I was counting on the fact that it was after dark, and so I hoped that most of the Greys would be indoors, or possibly in a bar somewhere, if Greys liked alcohol, and also on the fact that we wouldn't have to go very far into the town, because the vehicle parking area I'd made a note of the last time I had passed this way was close to the mine end of town. And I was delighted to see that the line of trucks, of the same type as the one that had brought us into town when we had first been captured, was also still there.

There were more guardians wandering about the car park, and these came to investigate as we entered the area. Clearly these were an excellent anti-theft device, but only as long as it wasn't a Grey carrying out the theft. That only left us with one problem: we had to find a couple of trucks that we could start. Initially we looked for hidden keys left in the usual places – under seats, in glove boxes, on sun visors – and when that failed we called on our secret weapon: Markus had been in trouble in the past for stealing cars, and he knew how to hot-wire one. At least, he said he did, but huddling in a group against the side of a lorry and being eyeballed by half a dozen inflated scorpions while he fiddled about in one of the cabs is not a situation in which I wanted to linger, and the longer it took him, the more nervous I got.

Finally, though, he got the first truck going and moved on to the second one. At least the quiet motors these vehicles had helped us – if it had been a normal diesel engine I'm sure someone would have heard and come to investigate very quickly, but the sound of this engine barely carried ten metres.

Eventually he got the second engine started, and this was the point at which we decided to separate: a lot of the boys had made up their minds to just head east until they were out of the area controlled by the Greys.

"We'll head for Ulm," their leader, the oldest boy from Stefan's team, told me. "If there are still Greys around there we'll keep going till we get to Mynga – hell, if we have to we'll keep moving until we get to Bech or even Budd. Sooner or later we'll be out of the area they control. And as long as we stay in the truck the guardians won't bother us. And I don't suppose the ones here can keep up with a truck, anyway."

"Okay," I said. "Good luck."

That left the ones who were coming with the four of us: Markus, Tommi, Frank, Shander, Tibor, Hansi and the last member of Team Four, whose name was Radu. And Ssyrl, of course. The whole party moved to the rear of the two vehicles so that Ssyrl could shepherd everyone aboard except for myself, Markus (who was going to drive our truck) and the leader of the other party, who was going to drive his. We closed up the backs of the trucks so that they would be safe from possible Grey stings and then moved up to the cabs. We said "Goodbye and good luck" to the leader of the other party and got into our cab, and then the two trucks drove out of the car park. The other one turned off a short distance down the road, heading for the main road to the east, while we drove through town, apparently without attracting any unwelcome attention.

On the way up to the car park I'd discussed with Stefan what we should do: should we just head directly back towards the Vosges and try to do the whole journey in the truck, or would it be better to drive back up to the secret entrance to Hub One and trust that the Capsule would be ready to use again? In the end we had decided to do that, mainly because Stefan felt sure that the Rhine crossings would all be guarded – and, after all, if we hid the truck in the forest near the entrance to the Hub we could always come back to it if the Capsule was not ready.

So we drove through town and followed the road on towards the village where we had been captured. We didn't take the turn-off that the Greys' trucks used: the last place we wanted to be was at the Greys' checkpoint. Instead we carried on along the road that would eventually lead to the four loggers' huts we had passed as we walked down from the Hub.

Going through the village where we had been captured we saw no humans or Greys, but we did see our first Type Two guardian, which was sitting beside the road as we passed. It was definitely larger than the Type Ones, and it seemed interested in us, in that it moved out into the road after we had passed and started to follow us, but even on this fairly steep road our vehicle was able to move faster than a guardian, and soon it fell away behind us.

We reached the little collection of loggers' huts, which were still as dark and silent as they had been the first time we had seen them, and here we left the truck, parking it round behind one of the huts before continuing on foot. Before we left the truck Ssyrl found the tool-kit under the driver's seat and helped himself to a tyre-iron – "Just in case," he said. And I wished I'd thought to look for a weapon of some sort, even though the likelihood of running into a Grey up here seemed fairly slim. We did have weapons, because both Stefan and Alain still had their knives – we'd never been searched, and they'd been in the lockers all this time – and I was very much hoping that Oli still had his catapult, too, because that was likely to be a far more useful weapon than a knife if a guardian got too close.

We moved along the path that would take us back to the Hub. I was fairly confident that there wouldn't in fact be any guardians this far up the mountain: after all, we had walked down it without seeing any. On the other hand, if they could communicate with each other maybe the one we had passed back in the village would have sent a signal to others elsewhere on the mountain – and maybe the checkpoint sent a few out at night as a precaution, so probably it would be better not to take this for granted.

We carried on, past the fork where the other path led up to the summit and on to the point where Stefan had marked the trees on our journey down from the cave. He took a bearing and led us out into the open. This was a little worrying, because I now knew that the Greys' checkpoint was just on the far side of the thin belt of trees off to our left, and indeed I thought I could make out a light off in that direction. And if I could see the building, it was possible that anyone in the building could see us, now that the moon was out – after all, we were no more than four hundred metres away from it.

And then when I looked back the way we had come I was sure I saw something moving at the edge of the trees. The moon disappeared again before I could be sure, but I suspected that there was at least one guardian back there.

As we drew close to the cave the light on the checkpoint building became hidden behind a rather thicker group of trees, and that at least left me feeling a little less exposed, but I was still sure I could hear something moving off to our right. The sooner we were safe inside the cave, the better I'd feel.

And then Ssyrl stopped, putting his hands on his knees and breathing heavily. I'd forgotten about the stamina problems the Greys have, and so I called a halt to give him a moment to recover.

"Can you keep moving?" I asked. "It's just that we're almost there, and we're a bit exposed out in the open like this."

"We're almost there?" he queried. "Where are we going, then?"

"Just up there," I said, pointing at the cave, which I could make out because the dark vegetation growing across the entrance stood out a bit against the lighter stone. "There's a cave up there, and the entrance is inside it. Only I don't want to hang around this close to the checkpoint, just in case they have patrols out."

"We're close to the checkpoint?"

"Yes, it's just through there," and I pointed towards the belt of trees. "You can't see it from here, but it's far too close for comfort."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," he said, and he hit me across my left thigh with his tyre iron.

It hurt like hell, and I cried out and fell over, clutching my leg. It took the others a moment to work out what had happened, and by then Ssyrl had already moved away from me.

"There's a pair of Type Two guardians about fifty kubs away to your right," he told us – well, Tommi and I understood him, anyway. "You might not be able to see them, but I can. So you want to get up into your cave as quick as you can, and if you waste time following me they'll get you for sure. Jake won't be running anywhere on that leg, so the rest of you had better carry him to the cave – and quickly, because once I'm out of range the guardians will be coming."

"Why?" I asked him.

"Because I'd never survive in any of your worlds: I'd end up in a zoo or being experimented on. You know that. This way I can get myself re-established in my own world: they'll forgive me any amount of perversion if I show them another way to the other worlds. I'll be able to go back to school and the other boys will have to respect me. Be glad I brought you this far: I could have just left you back in town, or had you arrested, Jake – our soldiers would have got the information about this place out of you quickly enough."

"So why didn't you?" I asked, trying to stand up.

"Because this way I get to lead our troops here personally. And… because you were decent to me. All of you were. That's why I wanted to give you a chance to get away before the soldiers arrive. But now you'd better move, because I'm not waiting. Bye!"

He turned and ran away. Tommi had given a rapid translation as he talked, and one or two of the boys looked as if they wanted to go after him, but Stefan stopped them, pointing out that we had to get under cover before the guardians arrived. He came and offered me his shoulder, and when I still couldn't move quickly enough for safety Markus came to my other side and they carried me up towards the cave. Some of the others were running on ahead, but Alain, Oli and Tommi stayed with us, looking out for guardians. And it was Tommi who spotted the first one, coming towards us from further down the hill. So Ssyrl had been right about that: if we'd tried chasing him the guardians would certainly have got me, because I could never have stayed close enough to him with an injured leg.

Oli pulled his catapult from under his dress and fitted a stone to it – he still had a pouch of them hanging round his neck – and before the guardian got close enough to fire its sting at us Oli shot it. It was a hell of a shot considering that the light was really bad and he was aiming at a moving target, but he hit it full on with a loud 'crack'. The guardian twitched a bit but then stopped moving.

We hurried on towards the cave, which still looked dangerously far away to me, even though it was probably less than fifty meters [150 ft.] away now. And then there was a hissing sound followed by a slap, and something struck me in the back. For a moment I was convinced one of the guardians had hit me, but I was able to keep moving and I couldn't feel any adverse effects. Oli's catapult twanged again and there was another crack from behind us, and then at last we reached the cave and were pushing our way through the vegetation. The others were waiting for us there, crowding round and asking if I was okay, and then Oli came through the vegetation and said there were more guardians out there and that we needed to get through the door before they arrived.

Stefan still had his flashlight (I'd left mine in the cabin where I'd stayed with Haless and Issin) and so he turned it on and led everyone to the door at the end of the cave. Once we reached it he told Markus to help me down the stairs – they weren't wide enough for more than two to go down together – and so we led the way, leaving Stefan to shepherd everyone else along. The emergency lights were still on, but they were now very dim, making the stairs tricky. We were at the bottom of the first flight when I heard shouting from up above, and then a cry of pain, but there was nothing I could do except to lean on Markus and keep moving downwards.

Eventually we reached the bottom and headed down the tunnel towards the barrier… only there was no barrier there – we were able to walk all the way to the door unopposed. And I thought that was a very bad sign indeed, not least because when I put my hand on the panel that should have operated the barrier and opened the door, nothing happened.

By now Frank and Shander had caught up with us, and so I explained that there was a door here that slid upwards, so Markus propped me against the wall and the three of them tried to open the door. It didn't want to move at first, but then I hit on the idea of putting my hand on the panel while they tried – after all, there might still have been a vestige of power holding the door shut. And this time they were able to move it a little, and once Markus managed to get his hand under the edge of the door and lift he was able to raise it far enough for us all to be able to duck underneath it.

One by one the rest of the party came through to join us. Most of them seemed to be unharmed, but Stefan and Alain were carrying Tibor between them. Finally Oli ducked through, still holding his catapult, and we tried to close the door again, only to find that now it was stuck in the half-open position – and the panel on this side of the door was dead, too.

"I really hope the Capsule is working again," said Stefan, "because otherwise we're definitely in trouble."

He and Alain picked up Tibor again and headed off along the corridor, and Markus and Hansi came and helped me to hobble along between them, and somehow we got down the stairs, across the main hall and out to the smaller room that served as the Capsule station. And none of the barriers was working any longer.

We piled into the train, closing the door behind us – that still worked, at least – and Oli and Stefan went into the cab.

"There are eight cyan lights and one flashing yellow," Stefan reported to me. "Do you think we should risk it?"

"I think we have to – after all, now the barriers have gone there's nothing between us and the soldiers Ssyrl will be bringing up here in the next few minutes, and nothing to keep the guardians out, either. Let's just hope eight and a half lights is enough power to get back."

Stefan ducked back into the cab and told Oli, who had taken up his previous position in the driver's chair, to try moving us. For a moment nothing happened, but then the train started to move and I began to relax a little. I tried not to think about what would happen if the train conked out somewhere between the stations, especially if I'd been right about the maglev system and there was a vacuum outside – but, as I'd said to Stefan, there really did seem to be no other choice.

I slipped my backpack off and sat down, and then I saw that there was a large black spine stuck into the back of my bag. I remembered being hit in the back outside the cave and realised that one of the guardians – a Type Two, to judge from the size of the thorn – had hit me. Gingerly I opened the bag and found that the spine had gone right through the rear pocket and was sticking a couple of centimetres out into the main part of the bag. If I hadn't been wearing the bag, or if it had been made of a thinner material, I'd be dead by now. I carefully removed the thorn and dropped it in a corner of the carriage, out of everyone's way.

Stefan came back into the carriage and sat down next to me, and Alain went up front to keep Oli company. Of course there was no reason for anyone to remain in the cab, but Oli liked being able to see where the Capsule was going, and so he stayed in the driver's seat.

"So what happened up there? What happened to Tibor?" I asked.

"A couple of guardians came through into the cave before we could get everyone through the door," he told me. "There was a Type Two and a nasty little black one that we haven't seen before. Oli was trying to hit the big one, but the light was bad because we only had the one torch, and his first shot missed. And so Tibor and Hansi deliberately went and stood in front of him to protect him, because we all knew that Oli was the only one of us who could kill them. It was really brave – they didn't even hesitate. Anyway, Oli got the big one with his second shot, but the small black one hit Tibor before Oli could kill it. Tibor just collapsed. He's alive – I can feel his pulse – but he's unconscious, so it looks as if there's a third type of guardian that nobody told us about, one that carries a knock-out drug."

Tibor had been laid across three seats, and Hansi was sitting on the third one with his friend's head in his lap.

"Is he going to be okay, do you think?" he asked us.

"I'm sure he will," said Stefan. "After all, the Type Twos are the ones that kill. There'd be no point in having a third species that does the same thing. He'll probably wake up before we get to the other end."

"I hope so. And… where is the other end? I mean, where are we going?"

"There's another Hub at the end of this line, and some of the portals there are still working – at least, I bloody well hope they are. We can escape into a different world. I'm not sure that coming with me would be the best answer – for starters, Jake won't be able to – but if we can find the way to his world, or another peaceful one, you'll be fine there."

The train kept going, and the longer it kept moving the happier I felt. But then Oli called to say that all the lights were now out except one, and that one was flashing, and a couple of minutes later the train started to slow down. It got slower and slower and finally just stopped, and the lights dimmed down, all but a couple of them going completely out.

"I think this is as far as it's going to go," said Oli, coming through to join us. "All the lights are out – there isn't even a flashing yellow one this time."

"Are we anywhere near the station?" I asked.

"I don't think so: it just looks like the rest of the tunnel we've come through so far. When we came out of the station last time we went round a long curved bit first, but there's been nothing like that this time."

"Then I think we're going to have to get out and walk," I said: after all, it had taken the Capsule a month to recharge up to eight lights, and we sure as hell didn't have a month this time – I reckoned the Greys would be on the way already, and even if we'd got most of the way to the Vosges it wouldn't take trained soldiers more than a couple of days to reach this point.

"How?" asked Stefan: the panel by the door had gone dark and putting his hand on it was doing nothing.

"There has to be an emergency exit," I said, trying to remember how this worked in the London Underground, "or a manual handle to open the doors. If there was an accident people would have to be able to get out somehow."

Not if there's a vacuum out there, said a nasty little voice in my head. But I kept that particular fear to myself because I didn't want to demoralise my friends.

Stefan, Alain and Markus looked along the sides of the carriage, trying to find a switch or handle, and some of the others went into the second carriage and did the same thing. But it was Oli who finally found the emergency handle: it was in the cab, to the side of the driver's chair, and when he pulled the handle there was a hiss from the door in the side of the carriage, and when we pushed at it we were able to slide it open. And there was air outside, so at least my worst fear had not been realised.

We found that there was a narrow walkway running alongside the train, and a short distance ahead of the door there was a white arrow painted on the wall, pointing in the direction in which we had been moving. Stefan and Alain went to scout ahead and came back a few minutes later to say that there was an emergency exit about a hundred and fifty metres [500 ft.] down the track.

"The door leads out into a service tunnel," Stefan reported. "It seems to run alongside the track. I think it's probably going to come out in the Capsule Station in Hub Two – remember the little tunnel at the end of the room? I think this is where that led."

"Is there anything to indicate how far we have to go?" I asked.

He shook his head. "If the little lights mean that we got eight-tenths of the way before the train stopped I would guess we're about twenty kilometres [12 miles] from the Hub," he said. "But there'll be some climbing to do at the far end, because the Hub is quite high up in the mountains, and at the moment we're still below the level of the plain. It'll probably take us a couple of days, considering that we'll have to carry Tibor to start with and your own leg won't be back to normal for a while yet."

"It could be worse," I said. "He could have broken it. And I might easily have mentioned the bomb to him, too, and that would have been a disaster, because then they'd have found it before it went off."

"What bomb?" asked Markus.

So I explained about the bomb, and the Kerpian boys looked at each other.

"You mean we might actually be able to get rid of the Greys?" asked Frank.

"I hope so. And if it works this world will go back to how it was before the Greys arrived, I should think. So maybe some of you would want to stay here. I'm sure there's a way out at Hub Two."

"No, thanks," said Markus. "If the Greys went I'd just end up back in the House of Detention, where I was before. I wasn't very good at stealing cars and I got caught more than once. So if you don't mind I'll come along and see what your world looks like."

"I'm pretty sure Tibor would say the same thing," said Hansi. "He was in the House of Detention, too. I wasn't: I was just in the town orphanage, but if Tibor decides to go with you, I will, too."

"So will I," added Radu. He didn't speak much: he came from the other end of the country, from a town called Tulsher not far from the Black Sea, and his accent was a little difficult to understand. "There is nothing for me here."

We never got the whole story of how he came to be so far from home, except that it involved running away and making his way along the Danube – which ran close to his former home – all the way to this area. He had then been caught stealing food and sent to the orphanage.

"I think we'd prefer to stay, if we can," said Frank. "Shander and I weren't in trouble before, so I think it would be okay for us to stay here."

"Tommi?" I asked.

"I'll stay with you. You helped me."

So that would be nine of us leaving and two staying – if we managed to get back to the Hub safely, of course.

"It's late," said Stefan, "and we all worked a shift today, so I think the best thing we could do would be to stay here in the Capsule and get some sleep: I don't think we'd get far trying to walk in our current state. And if we're lucky Tibor will have woken up by morning and Jake will be able to walk better. So let's take five kends. I was going to say we ought to post a guard, but I don't see how the Greys could get this far in less than five kends, so let's just all try to sleep. Jake, does that watch of yours have an alarm?"

I nodded.

"Then set it for six hours," he said. "That'll be close enough."

Everyone took a row of three seats and lay down and I set my alarm – noting that the stop-watch was still counting the time left before the bomb went off (around eleven hours, I reckoned) – for five o'clock in the morning. Then Stefan led me into the second carriage, where we would have a little privacy.

The seats were too narrow for us to be able to lie down side by side, so we sat together for a few minutes.

"What are we going to do if the portals back to your world and mine have gone?" I asked.

"We'll have to take whatever is left. If the worst happens we could go back to the dead Orschwiller, or even to Alain and Oli's world – provided we don't go back to Irtengarde we should be okay. We'll be all right."

"I hope so. I feel sort of responsible for everyone now – after all, if I hadn't said anything they could all have headed off for Ulm with the others."

"Yes, and for all we know they've been caught and sent back by now. There's no point in worrying about it, Jake. Let's just try to get some sleep."

I tried lying down, but with no pillow it was very uncomfortable, and after watching me wriggling about for a few seconds Stefan said, "If I sit in the corner, like this, you can lie down and use my lap as a pillow."

"But you won't be able to sleep like that," I argued.

"Yes, I will. I'm tired out. Come on, let's try it."

So I put my head on his lap and found it was much more comfortable, and even though I was still seriously worried about what lay ahead of us I fell asleep quickly.

***

The alarm woke me up next morning. I felt better, and when I stood up I found I could walk unaided. I wasn't sure that I could manage twenty kilometres [12 miles], but at least they wouldn't have to carry me all the way.

We went back into the other carriage and roused everyone, and here we found that Tibor was awake, too. He felt groggy and said that he had a headache, but he was able to stand.

"Can I have a drink of water?" he asked, sitting up and holding his head.

And that's when I realised that we had no food and no water… or at least, not very much, because it turned out that the ever-efficient Stefan had filled his water-bottle the morning we had left Hub Two and had hardly touched it since.

"One mouthful," he said, offering it to Tibor. "This is all we've got, so it's got to last all day. The rest of you, try as hard as you can to manage without. If you really can't keep going without, ask me, but once this has gone, there won't be any more until we reach the Hub."

We made our way out into the service tunnel and stood quietly for a moment listening, but we couldn't hear anything, which we thought was good news. And then we started walking. The tunnel was quite dark – there was only a dim light about every fifty yards – and it was obviously as daunting for the others as it was for me, because we all just walked along in silence.

"This is too slow," said Stefan, after about fifteen minutes. "Let's try marching for a bit – we'll make better time like that."

He formed us up into three columns of three, with himself at the side and Markus bringing up the rear on his own. It took a while before everyone got the hang of keeping in step, but once we did we did seem to move faster. Stefan called out "One, two, one, two," for a bit to keep us in step and then started singing something that was obviously a marching song. The rest of us couldn't join in because he was singing in German, but it was easy to keep in step with, and it kept us going for a while. When he finished I asked what it was, and he said it was the party anthem, and that it was called the 'Horst Wessel Lied'. I'd heard of that, although I'd never heard it sung before, and I didn't suppose too many Jews before me had marched along to it.

Unfortunately none of the others knew any marching songs, because none of them came from a country with a military tradition. My own repertoire was limited, but I managed to give a not-too-shaky rendition of the Marseillaise, which Stefan said he knew, though he declined to join in. And a couple of minutes after I finished the tunnel began to curve slightly, and at the same time it began to climb, though at a fairly shallow angle: not even a maglev train can go up a very steep incline.

"We got further than I had thought," said Stefan. "We must already have reached the mountains – now it's just a matter of climbing back up to the Hub."

However, that wasn't as easy as it would have been if we had been well-fed and fully fit. Tommi and I were in better condition than most of the others because at least we'd had plenty to eat in the Grey world, but on the other hand my leg was getting sore again and Tommi was a couple of years younger than anyone else, and so none of us was finding it easy. Stefan drove us for as far as he could – he had a good repertoire of marching songs – but then told us to rest, and we all collapsed to the floor of the tunnel.

We went on like that for the rest of the morning and into the afternoon: march, rest, march some more, rest for a bit longer. During one rest break my stop-watch told me that the bomb should now have gone off, provided that nothing had gone wrong, but to balance that out it was during that same break that the water ran out. Somehow we kept going, until finally the tunnel straightened out and stopped climbing, and there ahead of us was the door that led into the Hub Two Capsule station. And we were really pleased to find that there was still a barrier across it, even though this one was barely a metre [3 ft.] thick.

Oli threw off his clothes and went through to deactivate it and the rest of us followed him – at least now there was something between us and the Greys. And the barrier on the arch leading back into the main hall was still working, too – Oli had run ahead to deactivate it as soon as he had opened the first one for us.

The lighting in the hall was a lot dimmer than it had been when we had left, but it was still bright enough to show us that one of the doors on the opposite side of the hall, the ones that led back to the Nexus Room, was lying on the floor, the tunnel it had guarded having collapsed. A second door was hanging on by one hinge: that tunnel, too had been destroyed. And the third door wouldn't open at all, demonstrating that its tunnel had also gone. Quickly we ran upstairs to the other two doors. The black jerry-can was still standing in the corridor outside our door, but the door itself was blocked solid, and when we tried the final door it only opened a couple of centimetres. All five tunnels back to the Nexus Room had gone. We looked at each other in dismay.

"Now what do we do?" asked Alain.

"The emergency exit," said Stefan. "We've got to get out of here. Once we've done that we can try to find another way into the Nexus Room – there has to be a hut out there. Come on."

He ran to the far end of the corridor and started looking for the panel that would open the emergency exit, but even when Alain and I joined him we couldn't find it anywhere. And then Stefan drew his knife and dug it into the end wall – and found that the wall was a normal stone wall: there was no door there at all.

There was no way out.

Sorry, it's yet another cliffie, and so yet another case of "Don't miss next week's thrilling instalment…"

Chapter Fifteen

This doesn't look good: there seems to be no way out of the Hub and the Greys are coming. Jake has managed to come up with a couple of good plans previously, but can he think of a way out of this mess?

"Now what?" asked Alain.

"I don't know," I admitted. "I can't believe they didn't put in an emergency exit, especially since we know there was one at the other Hub."

"Maybe they closed this one before they left, for security reasons," suggested Stefan. "Perhaps they thought it wouldn't be safe to leave any direct entrance to the outside world if they were going to be leaving the Hub unmanned – well, except for Dead Guy, of course. Perhaps they bricked this tunnel up before they left."

"Then we'll have to unbrick it," I said, "because… well, it's a safe bet the Greys will find the service tunnel, and then they'll come here, and I don't want to be here when they get here. We'll have to find some tools."

"If I'd been in charge I would have destroyed the tunnel with explosives before bricking up this end," Stefan said.

"Then we'd better hope whoever was in charge was a worse soldier than you. Look, let's get back to the office. That'll put another barrier between us and the Greys, and it'll give us a chance to look at the control board. At least then we'll be able to see which of the tunnels is still open."

So we took everyone back downstairs and into the main part of the Hub, and this barrier still seemed to be as thick as it had been when we had left. Oli stripped off again to deactivate it, and then Stefan went to open the inner office.

"Alain, why don't you and Oli take everyone upstairs?" I suggested. "There's water in the kitchen – there's still some left in the jerry-can even if the water supply had been cut off. And I'll come up and join you in a bit, and then you and I can sort out something to eat."

I went to join Stefan and found him looking at a very worrying control board: there were lots of magenta lights now and only a couple that were better than steady yellow: the barrier control was still flashing cyan, and the accommodation area was still only flashing yellow. But fourteen tunnels were now showing steady magenta, two were flashing magenta and the last four were steady yellow. We couldn't tell which was which because Stefan's numbers didn't correspond to the ones on the board; we had simply randomly assigned the number 3 to Alain and Oli's world because it was the third world we were going to visit together, and Stefan had later added all the other numbers counting clockwise from that door.

We switched the computer language back to Kerpian, since everyone now spoke that, but it looked no better in another language, and after a minute or so we left the office and started to climb back upstairs: in the absence of any obvious way out it seemed best to get something to eat and have a proper rest.

I went straight to the kitchen and found that the power was still on, which was really good news. And because I was now acquainted with the Kerpian calendar I now knew that it was less than a year since the Hub had been abandoned, and that meant that all the tinned food would definitely be safe to eat – and I could now read the labels, so I knew what was inside each tin, even the ones without a picture on. And that was most of them, presumably because these were wholesale supplies obtained by the militia. So, with Alain's help, I started making a risotto – we had more rice than I knew what to do with, and there were plenty of tinned vegetables and some tinned meat as well. It might not have been the greatest dish I ever cooked, but there wasn't any left over afterwards, and that suggested that everyone had enjoyed it – or maybe they'd just been so hungry that they would have eaten any old rubbish… Still, the ones who did comment on it seemed satisfied enough.

"Right," said Stefan afterwards. "It's still quite early, but I think the best thing we can do will be to get a good night's sleep, and then we can try to find a way out of here tomorrow. I'm fairly sure the Greys won't get here for at least another day…"

"More, probably," I interrupted. "Their stamina isn't all that good."

"Good. That'll give us more time to come up with a plan. Now, before you go to bed I'd suggest you take a shower – there's no time limit on the one here, and you'll sleep better if you feel clean. And I also want you all to come with me now down to the laundry – again, you'll feel a lot better with clean clothes to put on in the morning."

Alain and I dumped everything in the dishwasher and turned it on and then followed everyone else through the third dormitory and down the stairs to the laundry. Stefan insisted that everyone put all their clothes into one of the machines – we thought it would be better to use only one of them to save power – and then he turned it on and took us into the store-room to collect a towel each (there was a pile of them next to the bedding). And then he led us upstairs and back to the shower we generally used.

That hot water felt wonderful, and having Stefan there to wash my hair for me again – which he did with no signs of embarrassment – felt even better. And looking about I could see that everyone else felt the same way: they all looked happy, and one or two were smiling for about the first time since I'd first met them. Oli and Alain were playing their usual game of chasing each other, and soon some of the others were joining in.

It was the first time I'd seen some of them naked: three or four had previously kept their underwear on in the shower, the same way Tommi had done, and it was nice being able to enjoy the view… at least, it was until my body started to betray its interest, and then I had to turn round smartly and concentrate on washing Stefan's hair for him. That didn't make me lose my erection, but at least now only he could see it.

Actually it didn't matter that much, as by the time the chasing and fighting was over several of the others had erections, too, and so nobody commented on mine. Some of them did comment on the state of Tommi's bottom, but now he was not afraid to tell them that "a bad man, a Lettrian who married my mother, did that to me," and their universal sympathy and anger at his abuser just reinforced what I had already told him, that it was nothing for Tommi himself to feel ashamed about.

Finally we got out of the shower and dried ourselves off, and now that everyone was standing still it gave me a better chance to check everyone out. I put my glasses back on before even starting to use the towel and started looking around.

Only Markus was appreciably better developed than Stefan: he was the only one with thicker hair, for a start, and his cock and balls were a bit bigger, too. But then he was a year older than Stefan. Tibor and Shander had a little hair, too, though neither was any further along than I was, and the rest were still hairless. And Radu was the only one who was circumcised. I wondered if it was a religious thing – even if he might be a Jew, because obviously we Jews have been around since long before the fall of Rome, and just because Christianity didn't exist here it didn't mean that Judaism didn't, either. So I went and asked him about it.

"I don't want to talk about it," he said. "Except… I can see that your skin was cut off, too, so… what happened to you? Maybe it was something similar."

But before I could answer Stefan told everyone to leave their towels on the table by the door and follow him through to the dormitory. I hung back with Radu to answer his question, explaining that I was Jewish, and so it was something that had been done when I was a week old in accordance with the laws of my religion.

"Oh," he said, "you're religious. Are you like those damned Lettrians, then, like the bastard that hurt Tommi?"

"God, no. I'm not very religious at all, to be honest. It's the way I was brought up, that's all. But we never try to inflict our beliefs on other people, so we're nothing like the Lettrians."

"That's good."

"So what happened to you?"

He wasn't keen to speak about it at first, but I was interested now and pressed him, pointing out that I'd told him about mine, and now he ought to tell me about his. And finally he gave in.

"I went out fishing with a couple of my cousins," he said. "This was about a year ago, when I was still living near Tulsher. Anyway, we found a good spot and started fishing, but I didn't catch anything and got bored. It was a hot day, so I said I was going swimming. They said I shouldn't, because it would disturb the fish, but I took my clothes off and jumped in anyway. I had a good swim, but they didn't catch anything while I was in the river and it made them angry, so when I got out they grabbed me, tied my hands behind my back and then shoved a hook on a line through the skin on the end of my thing, from underneath and coming out at the top, so it made two holes in the skin. It hurt like hell, and when they pulled me up and down the bank by it for four or five huszaks it hurt even more.

"And after that they pulled me into the woods and tied the line off around a tree, so high up that I had to stand on tiptoe to keep the pressure off the hook. For good measure they took their belts off and strapped my bottom a few times, and then they left me there for ages – it must have been nearly two kends – while they went back to their fishing. And there were flies biting me, but every time I wriggled about to try to get rid of them it pulled on the line and hurt my thing.

"In the end they came and untied me, but that hook had been stuck through worms and maggots and fish guts before it went into me, and so I got infected and the doctor had to cut the skin right off. And the worst of it was that nobody blamed them at all: they said it was my own fault for scaring the fish. That wasn't the only reason I decided to leave home, but it was one of them."

There didn't seem to be anything I could say about that, so I settled for putting my arm around his shoulders and giving him a quick hug.

Stefan led them over to the side of the dormitory about halfway down the room and suggested that everyone grab a bunk for the night, but instead they pushed eight bunks together.

"We're used to sleeping together," Markus explained. "If you wake up feeling bad or have a nightmare or something, it means you've always got friends around you. It's kept us going for quite a long time now."

They took a blanket each and climbed onto the bunks in their usual order, Team Three to the right and Team Four to the left, just as we had done in Hintraten. I quietly suggested to Tibor that there were some smaller rooms available if he and Hansi wanted some privacy, but he just smiled at me.

"I think I'm still feeling too tired to do anything tonight," he said. "And, besides, nobody minded when we did stuff together back at the mine. Radu slept next to us, and he certainly didn't – did you, Radu?"

Radu shook his head. "I didn't mind at all," he said. "That sort of thing really doesn't bother me. Actually it was fun to watch."

"Didn't you ever want to join in?" I asked.

"Not really. It wouldn't be fair to them. After all, I bet you and your friend wouldn't want a third party butting in, would you?"

"Well, no, now you mention it," I said.

So I left them to it and went to join Stefan, although he wasn't quite ready for bed yet: Instead he went back to the shower room, collected all the wet towels and took them down to the laundry. The machine with the clothes in had almost finished its cycle, and so we waited for it to finish and then emptied the contents into a large basket that was obviously designed for the purpose. Then we dumped the towels in the machine, selected the 'white' cycle and switched it on.

We carried the clothes up to the dormitory and laid them out on the four bunks closest to the shower-room ready to be reclaimed in the morning – and then, finally, he was ready to go back to our room and close the door on the world outside.

And at last I was able to put my arms around him, hug him hard and kiss him without any fear of what anyone else might think about it. And he kissed me back and led me to the bed. I got in and he dimmed the lights and got in beside me, snuggling up to me and putting his arms round me.

"What are we going to do, Stefi?" I asked him.

"We're going to get some sleep," he told me firmly. "We'll worry about tomorrow when we get there, okay? For now let's just make the most of having a quiet room and a decent bed to sleep in."

"And we've got each other," I said. "That's important."

"Yes, it is." And he hugged me, and somehow having him there was enough to get me to stop worrying and fall asleep.

***

He woke me up next morning with a kiss, which has to be the nicest way to be woken up. He'd obviously woken up a little before because he'd turned the lights up a bit.

"I hope you don't mind, but I borrowed your watch," he said, taking it off and putting it on the little stand beside the bed with my glasses. "I wanted to set the alarm for a sensible time, so that we would wake up before everyone else."

"Why would you want to do that?" I asked.

"So that we would have a little time together before the others are around."

"That sounds like a brilliant idea. How do you think we ought to spend this little time?"

"I thought this might be a nice way to start." And he slid a hand down to my groin and started to explore.

"I think you're right," I said, and did the same thing. And then I thought that this might be the perfect time to try out what I'd practiced with Alain, especially since I didn't know how much time we had left together… I put that thought firmly to one side and pushed the sheets back so that I could see what I was doing, and then I rested my head on his stomach so that I could examine his most important part from close range while I stroked it. And it looked wonderful, and so I rolled over between his legs and slipped the tip of it between my lips…

"Jake, what the hell are you doing?" he gasped, pushing my head away firmly.

"I'm going to suck your cock."

"What do you mean?" He sounded almost panicky.

"I'll show you," I said, and lowered my head once more.

"But… ohhhhh…. Jake, no! I mean… oh, God…"

He didn't try to stop me again and so I got on with it, trying to do everything I had practised with Alain, and Stefan lay there making incoherent noises that suggested I was doing a reasonable job. And soon he was moving beneath me, and then he was holding my head, and then… then I got a proper taste of him, not just a tiny amount scooped up with my finger, but spurt after spurt after spurt… I swallowed it down, keeping him in my mouth and licking slowly at him until I was sure he had finished, and then I slid it out of my mouth and moved back up the bed to lie beside him. He pulled the sheets over us and turned to face me.

"Why did you do that?" he asked.

"Because I love you and wanted to make you feel good. Did it?"

"Yes, it did. But how did you even know how to do something like that? I had no idea that such a thing was possible!"

"I think maybe my world is a little more relaxed about sex than yours is."

"I think it must be. See, we get taught about having normal sex with girls in order to produce babies, and older comrades have told us how good that feels. And we know how the warm brothers… sorry, gay boys, fuck each other in the arse, but that's only because we make jokes about it. And we get told that it's possible to stimulate yourself by hand, though we're told we shouldn't do that too often, because we ought to be saving our sperm for the girls we're going to have sex with when we get a little older. But that's all. I'd never have dreamed that it was possible to use your mouth like that."

"But it was okay, wasn't it?"

"Jake, it felt really exciting. It's just that… I don't know, it made me feel that I was using you, somehow – making you do something really perverted just to make me feel good."

"Well, you weren't, because it was entirely my idea. And, okay, you might call it perverted, but pretty much everything two boys do together is going to be called 'perverted' by some people. And I don't care what anyone else says about us. Although I don't think anyone will say anything while we're in this world – they seem to have a much more relaxed view of sex here."

We lay quietly for a while.

"I'm really sorry we can't get back to the Nexus Room," I said. "I wish I could find a way to get you back to your own world."

"Well, it looks as if that isn't going to happen. Still, if we could find a way out of here, maybe this would be a good place to live – at least, if your bomb went off and they get rid of the Greys, it could be. The people here seem decent."

"Not all of them," I said. "I don't think we'd ever find a perfect world, even if we had access to all the doors in both Nexus Rooms. Okay, this world isn't bad, but people here can still do horrible things – like what happened to Tommi and Radu."

"What happened to Radu?"

So I explained briefly. "And that was just people being cruel – it's nothing to do with how this world is now, because both Tommi and Radu got hurt before the Greys arrived. And my world still has wars, and kids our age bully each other, and the same thing happens in the Grey world – and in the first world we went to the whole human race had wiped itself out. Maybe the only perfect world would be the one we read about on the computer here, the one where the human race never evolved in the first place."

"I don't think so. Okay, there are some bad people in every world, but most people are good – look at our friends here: they're all decent kids, aren't they? And even when people do bad things, it's often because they think they've got good reasons for doing it. Tommi got beaten because his step-father honestly believed the gods he believed in wanted him to act that way, and Radu's cousins just wanted to fish in peace – okay, maybe they went overboard a bit, but they didn't know the hook was going to infect him. And even when Master Clerk wanted to sacrifice one of us at Quarter Day he was really only thinking of protecting the kids of his own commune. And… and in my world…" He tailed off.

"In your world your leaders did what they did because they genuinely believed it was best for Germany to get rid of all the Jews?" I said. "Well… okay, but they didn't have to kill them. If they'd really resettled them somewhere else, that wouldn't have been so bad. Still, I've already tried to explain that it happened ages ago and it wasn't your fault. Maybe your world now is a good place to live."

"I like it. I feel I fit in there – I have a place and a career ahead of me, and the Reich is prosperous, and there's no likelihood of war in the near future."

"And you're happy there?"

"I'm not sure that 'happy' is really the best word. 'Content', perhaps. If I'm honest, the only time I've been truly happy has been since I met you: exploring together, visiting places I would never have seen otherwise, sharing things with you… and sharing a bed with you especially… That's made me happy. I've never opened up to anyone the way I have with you, and I've never cared about anyone the way I care about you. Even when things have been bad, like almost not escaping from Olivier's world or being captured here and sent to work in the mine, having you with me has sort of made it all worthwhile. So if we really are trapped here and… well, you know… I think I can face it now."

I hugged him hard. "And… do you think we are trapped?" I asked.

"Probably. But this was a military post, and so there ought to be some weapons here somewhere, and if we can find them we might be able to defend this place until help gets here. After all, if the bomb did work there can't be that many Greys coming after us."

"Stefan, there are eleven kids here including us, and probably ten of them have never handled a gun in their lives. The only way we'll survive is going to be if the barriers stay up, and we already know the power is failing."

"I know. But I'm not giving up without a fight."

"Then neither will I. And I know that if anyone can find a way to defend this place it'll be you."

"Well, I'm going to try. And now I'm going to try something else." And he threw the covers off again and started to wriggle down towards my groin.

"Stefi, no! You don't have to do that!" I said.

"Neither did you, but I'm glad you did. Now tell me exactly how to do this."

So I gave him a crash course in how to perform oral sex (as if I was an expert!) and he did everything I suggested until what he was doing felt so amazing that I couldn't really speak coherently any longer. And when I finally lost control my orgasm seemed to go on for ever – well, I'm convinced I managed to spurt four times, anyway, which was yet another new record.

When it was over he came and lay beside me once more, and I kissed him and told him again how much he meant to me, and we lay together holding each other for several minutes.

"We'd better get up," he said, finally. "I need a pee, and then probably we ought to get the others up. I want to make a proper search for weapons today, and it'll go faster if everyone joins in the search."

"Okay. But I want everyone to get a decent breakfast first, so I'll go and wake Alain up and then we'll get some bacon and sausages on the go."

So we tiptoed past the sleeping boys – though I think they were so fast asleep that we could have ridden past on a herd of elephants without disturbing them – and went to the washroom for a pee and a wash. We got dressed in the same clothes as yesterday – of course we had access to the rest of our wardrobes now that we were back here, but the previous day's clothes were freshly laundered and so we were happy to keep wearing them – and then we went to wake Alain up. We found him and Oli curled up together, and they looked so peaceful that I didn't have the heart to wake them up.

"Come on," I whispered to Stefan, "you can help me today. Let them have another fifteen minutes in bed – it might be the last chance they get."

So we went to the kitchen and I got to work on a mountain of sausages and bacon – and because I could now read the labels on the tins, this time I was able to add some tinned tomatoes. I'd found some cooking oil, too – it was in a tin and not a bottle, which was why I hadn't spotted it sooner – and that meant I could fry some of the food while grilling the rest, and that speeded things up a lot. When it was almost ready I got Stefan to go and wake everyone up, telling him to bring them straight to the dining area: washing and dressing could wait until they had eaten.

Okay, maybe that was a little selfish of me, but watching them queuing up in front of me stark naked did make me feel good – and, after all, it was still warm in here, so clothes weren't really necessary. And in fact once everyone had finished eating Stefan stood up and explained that it would be better if everyone stayed naked for now.

"I want us to do a thorough search of this place," he said, "and that's going to mean going through the barriers quite a bit. I don't want to keep activating and deactivating them in case that uses more power, but if we've got nothing on we won't need to – you can go through a barrier if you're naked and not carrying anything. The Greys can't, so if they do appear suddenly you'll be able to escape a lot more quickly if you haven't got anything on: you'll be able to run straight through instead of waiting for the barrier to be deactivated.

"Those of you with watches, rings, bracelets, necklaces and so on, you'll have to take them off, because the barriers stop anything non-organic. In a moment I'll divide you into teams and assign you to various areas, and then I want you to search as completely as you can – you're looking for hidden doors and cupboards, hidden caches in the floor, anything like that. We're looking for two things: first, an emergency exit or other way out of here, and second, a weapons store.

"If you find anything, come to the barrier that goes out into the main hall and shout. Jake, do you want to sort out the teams? You know them better than I do."

"Okay," I said, standing up. "First, in case you were wondering, Stefan's in charge because he has military training: he was at a military school in his own world, so he's the only one of us who has any idea of how to fight – which we might end up having to do. If anything happens to him it'll be Alain in charge, because he's the oldest of us…"

"No, thanks," said Alain, straight away. "I can manage to look after a few street kids, but I have no idea of how to organise things the way you and Stefan can."

"Well, okay, but I don't think anyone here has even that much experience. So it's you, then Markus – is that okay with you, Markus?"

"I'd sooner not, because I've always worked on my own."

"Yes, but I've seen how you look after your team, so I know you can do it. And then it'll be Hansi, because he was Team Leader back at the mine."

"I'm too young," objected Hansi. "I only took over Team Four a week before you arrived."

"I don't care. If you end up in charge, just do the best you can, okay? So, the teams for the search will be Alain and Oli, Tibor and Hansi, Frank and Shander, Markus and Tommi…"

"No, I've got a special job for Tommi," interrupted Stefan "Make it Markus and Radu, and that'll leave you and me. Oh, and in case there's any doubt about it, Jake's our real leader: he's been to all the worlds I have, and he's cleverer than me. I don't mind trying to do the military stuff, but he's the real boss, okay?"

I didn't want the responsibility, but I couldn't really say so after that.

"Anyway," Stefan continued, "I want Tommi out in the Capsule station watching out for Greys. Tommi, the moment you hear or see anything, come back into the main hall and yell as loud as you can. Then I want Tibor and Hansi out in the main hall and the upstairs corridor where we were yesterday; Frank and Shander, the capsule station and the main hall – work out with the others which walls you're going to check; Markus and Radu and Alain and Oli, the dormitories and other accommodation areas, and me and Jake will take the generator room and the office. Okay, let's go – and remember to be thorough: we're probably only looking for an operating panel like the one down by the arch into the main hall. It isn't very big, so make sure you check every centimetre…"

"Shardihersp," I corrected.

"Right, that. Okay, let's go. When you finish your area and you're absolutely certain there's nothing in it, come and find me and Jake. We'll either be in the office or down in the basement."

Stefan and I went back to our room to undress, removing our chains and necklaces, though I kept my watch on – I could always throw it off if I had to cross a barrier, and I wanted to keep an eye on the time. And I kept my glasses on, too – after all, we wouldn't have to cross the barrier until we'd finished our own part of the search, and I thought it was important for me to be able to see properly while we were searching. And then everyone dispersed to start the search.

Stefan and I decided to start in the basement – I remembered that Dead Guy had made a reference to the sub-basement, and that was a room we had not yet found. Maybe there would be a way out through it.

The generator was still making humming noises, but now there was also a sort of grinding sound, as if something was rubbing against something else, and the machines around the walls were carrying far too many magenta lights for my liking. There were a couple of pieces of wall with no machines against them, but we couldn't find any sign of a control panel anywhere near them. But in the far corner of the room we found a square piece of floor that looked as if it was covering something, and an examination of the machine closest to it revealed a switch marked 'Inspection Hatch', and when we pressed it the square piece of floor swung down just like the trapdoors in the huts.

For a moment we found ourselves hoping that this would lead to a tunnel that would take us out of here, but instead it led us into a small square room with more machines in. There was also a door in one wall that led us into another room, and in fact there was a complete maze of inspection tunnels, small rooms and heavy machinery down there, including a couple of places where pipes apparently led down into the bowels of the earth. It was uncomfortably hot in there, but we stuck it out long enough to make sure there was no other way out.

Eventually we got back into the generator room, sweating even though we were naked.

"Well, it would be stupid to put an emergency exit right down here, anyway," I commented.

"True. And you wouldn't store weapons anywhere as hot as this, either. I was hoping maybe there would be some sort of inspection tunnel that would take us outside… oh, well, let's try upstairs."

We checked the bottom of the stairwell thoroughly and prised the lift doors open – the power was off – to check that there were no buttons above the one for the dormitory level. There weren't, even though we prodded and poked at the sides of the lift in case there was another hidden panel there. In the end we gave it up and walked back up the stairs to the office level, though we checked every centimetre of the walls of the stairwell on the way.

There was nobody looking for us when we reached the office level, so obviously nobody else had found anything, either. So we went into the office to continue our search. The control panel wasn't looking any better this morning, but at least it wasn't looking any worse, either – no more tunnels appeared to have closed overnight, anyway. But it was still bad having to look at it and knowing that we couldn't reach the tunnels that were still open, and so we cleared the screen and went back to the primary menu. And then we started a thorough search of the office.

There was a corner of the room with no machines, and I remembered there being a similar place in the Hub One office as well. I'd thought there was something there, and I was suspicious of this corner, too: somehow when I tapped the wall it didn't sound right. But no amount of probing around revealed a panel cover, and in the end I gave up. And the rest of the inner office also failed to reveal anything hidden.

We moved out into the outer office and started to go over the walls, though again there was no sign of any hidden doors, hatches or panels.

"Let's try thinking logically about this," I said, once we were convinced there was nothing hidden in the outer office. "On the floor below this there's nothing except the generator room and some of the power equipment. On the floor above this we've got the three dormitories, the dining room and kitchen, the briefing room and the officers' rooms. And on this floor we've only got this office. Okay, it's logical to dig out most of the complex close to the surface, because it's easier to get rid of the spoil that way – though that would mean that while the place was under construction there must have been an opening to the surface…"

"But it would have been sealed off again once construction was over," Stefan pointed out. "And we searched for an exit at Hub One without finding anything in the dormitories."

"True. But maybe this place is different. I suppose if it is the others will find something up there."

We sat thinking for a while. Then Stefan said, "This office isn't the only thing on this floor – the laundry is below the third dormitory, so it must be on this level."

"That's true. I wonder why it's under the third dormitory and not the first one? Okay, this office is under the first one, but the office isn't very big. There'd be plenty of room for the laundry as well. So perhaps there's something else on this level, next to the office or under the second dormitory…"

"We've got people searching the second dormitory. If there is a hidden staircase, they'll find it. And the same goes for the laundry: if there's a secret door there I'm sure the boys will find that, too."

"Right. But – and I'm thinking of an armoury here, not an exit – wouldn't it be more sensible to have your weapons close to the centre of the complex? If you had to traipse upstairs and then down to the laundry and through another door to find your guns, it would take ages. It would be a lot more sensible to have them here, where you can get at them quickly, don't you think?"

"But we've already checked the office."

"Not all of it." I got up, went back into the outer office and through it into the kitchen alcove. This wasn't very big: as we'd seen on our first visit, it contained only the sink, the hob, and a couple of cupboards, the smaller one of which contained some pots and pans, and the larger, which was a closet in the corner of the room, contained a couple of brooms, a mop and bucket, and some smaller cleaning equipment. The first time we'd been here I'd barely glanced into it, and I almost did the same thing this time, too – and then something struck me.

"Why would they need brooms and stuff?" I asked. "We know there's an automatic system here, so there's no need for mops and buckets. So let's have a closer look…"

The closet was about a metre [3 ft.] square, so I was able to step right into it and start checking the walls. And after a minute or so I found a hidden panel on the back wall, and once I got it open I found myself looking at a barrier control panel.

"Yes!" I cried, and I slapped my hand against the panel. The glass dome – there was only one here – lit up and scanned me, and then the right hand wall of the closet slid upwards, revealing a tunnel blocked a couple of metres in by a barrier. There was another control panel just inside the tunnel, and this one removed the barrier. We ran down the tunnel, which made a sharp left turn and opened out into a small armoury. It looked as if Regulus Janiq and his cohort had taken most of what the room had once held, but he had left us around twenty rifles, a couple of pistols, and several boxes of ammunition.

Stefan pushed past me and started to examine the nearest rifle.

"This is a bit primitive," he commented. "We stopped using these about eighty years ago. It's a single shot type with a bolt action and a small magazine. But at least they're easy to use – you just point it and pull the trigger. I think all the boys should be able to handle one of these. Let's get a dozen of them out into the office, and then this afternoon I'll start teaching everyone how to use them."

We carried twelve of the rifles out into the outer office, and then went back for some ammunition, and here we found that one of the ammunition boxes contained grenades instead of bullets, and that discovery brought a big smile to Stefan's face. We took that case out to the office, too.

We checked the armoury to make sure there wasn't another exit anywhere. I didn't think it was likely, but I wanted to be absolutely sure, and eventually I was satisfied that there was only the one way in and out. As we headed back to the office Stefan picked up the two pistols, which were in holsters, and handed one to me.

"No thanks," I said. "I'd probably shoot myself in the foot, or something."

"Wear it," insisted Stefan. "You don't have to load it if you don't want, but you're our leader and if you're wearing a pistol you'll look like an officer."

Reluctantly I took the holster, thinking that I was about the last person anyone would put forward as officer material.

Once we were outside I set the barrier and closed the door once more, replacing the brooms and mops in the cupboard. I don't really know why – it wasn't as if there was a lot of equipment left in the armoury for the Greys to steal, and if they got this far we'd probably all be dead anyway. But it seemed to be the right thing to do, so I did it.

We stacked the rifles, pistols, ammunition and grenades in the inner office. I removed my watch and glasses and left them on the desk and then we went out into the hall to see if anyone had found any sign of a way out. But the two pairs out there were winding down their search, and neither had anything to report. Next we went through into the Capsule station. Tommi wasn't there, but when we called his name he emerged from the mouth of the service tunnel and came to meet us.

"I went a little way in to listen," he said. "I can't hear anything, though."

"Good," I said. "I didn't think they'd be here just yet, but it's better to be careful."

Once the hall search parties had finished their sweep we all went back up to the dormitory and waited for the other two parties to finish their search, and once they had – and nobody else had found anything useful – we got everyone together and told them that we had found some weapons.

"We'll have something to eat now," Stefan told them, "and then we'll meet in the briefing room after lunch and I'll show you how to use a rifle. And then we'll get some practice out in the hall."

And so after lunch – I just made some sandwiches for everyone – we all went to the briefing room and watched as Stefan showed us one of the rifles we'd found, explaining how to load it, where the safety catch was, how to hold it and the right way to squeeze the trigger. As I had feared, only one person apart from Stefan had ever handled a firearm before, and that was Radu who, in happier times, had been taught to use a shotgun by his father and taken on hunting trips to shoot some game birds for supper. But they all looked excited by the prospect of learning how to shoot, even though once we got started in practice, shooting the length of the main hall at targets Stefan made using bedding, it very quickly became clear that none of us could hit a barn door at ten paces – even though I had my glasses on (we had to deactivate the barrier to take the rifles through, of course) I was still hopeless. And the way the stock recoiled against my shoulder was painful, too.

"Hold the rifle firmly!" Stefan told me. "That way it won't recoil and break your shoulder!"

We were lying on the ground to fire, because Stefan was worried about guardians as well as Grey soldiers, and it would be a lot easier to hit guardians if we were on their level. Plus, lying flat would give them a smaller target to aim at.

He coached each of us in turn, encouraging us and smiling. If I'd been in his shoes I'd have been screaming that we were a bunch of useless imbeciles who had about as much chance of hitting a guardian as we had of flying to the moon, so his patience with us impressed me a great deal. Personally I thought my only chance of killing a guardian with my rifle would be to throw the damned thing at it, but I kept plugging away until at least I was hitting the target with every second or third shot.

After supper he took us back to the briefing room and told us that we probably had no more than one further day before the Greys reached us – if they were coming, that is: in a perfect world they'd have been called back as soon as their portal was destroyed.

"But we have to assume they're coming," Stefan went on. "And it looks as if the only way out of here now is going to be back the way we came, along the service tunnel to Hub One – and that will mean getting past any Greys coming after us. So we're going to stay here for another three or four days, provided the power lasts that long – at least here we've got the barriers to help protect us. If the Greys haven't got here by then I think we can assume they're not coming, and we can head off back to Hub One. We'll keep practising with the rifles, and I have one or two other ideas to help defend this place, too.

"One other thing: you're all Kerpians, and you have a right to fight to defend this establishment, and I think that if you're in uniform the Greys should respect the rules of war and take you as prisoners of war if the worst happens. So in a moment I want you all to come down to the laundry store. We'll find the smallest uniforms they've got and cut them down to fit, more or less. And from now on you wear them, over the top of your normal clothes if you want, or instead of them.

"And we'll be posting a watch in the Capsule station, too. Probably we're safe for tonight, but I don't want them getting here, finding a way to deactivate the barriers and catching us all asleep, so we're going to keep watch all the same. We'll watch in pairs, the same pairs as today, and each pair watches for two kends. I'll pin the rota up on that board over there shortly. Tommi gets tonight off because he spent most of the morning on watch. Any questions?"

There weren't, so we went down to the laundry store and kitted ourselves out with uniforms. Obviously everything was far too big, so we got each boy outfitted with a pair of trousers and a shirt and then hacked the trousers off somewhere close to ankle length and the shirts at the elbow – as long as we were all wearing something that was basically the same colour and design it would qualify as a uniform. Most of the boys had belts to keep the outsized trousers up, and we improvised with rope for the others: Stefan sacrificed part of one of his climbing ropes. And at least we all found a hat that fitted.

Stefan posted a list in the briefing room to show who had which watch, and I saw that he'd given us the hardest one, in the middle of the night: we'd get woken up just about as we fell asleep, I thought. But I suppose officers have to lead by example.

He borrowed a Kerpian watch from Markus – obviously our own watches weren't calibrated in kends – and gave it to Frank, who was taking the first shift with Shander, telling him to pass it on to Hansi when the shift changed, and then Stefan and I were able to retire to our room and shut the door once more.

"We're not going to get any more nice, peaceful nights, are we?" I asked.

"Probably not – at least, not until we get out of here."

"But we are going to get out, aren't we?"

"Well… not if we have to relying on our shooting ability. As long as they only have a couple of guardians with them we'll be fine, because I should think Olivier can deal with those on his own. Radu can shoot a bit, and Markus isn't too bad, but the rest of you… not really. Still, maybe all those bullets flying about wildly will scare the Greys off."

"Then let's make the most of the time we've got," I said, and I stripped off and got into bed. And he got in with me and snuggled up to me, and once again having him there helped me to relax and fall asleep. Except this time I was shaken awake again. It felt as if it was almost at once, but checking my watch I saw it was three in the morning.

"We're not taking this watch every night, are we?" I groaned as I rolled out of bed.

"No, but I thought we ought to take it the first night. Come on."

Tibor was standing by the door holding the watch, and Stefan took it from him and told him to go to bed. Then he and I walked naked out to the Capsule station – we were standing watch naked because that way we would be able to run straight back to the dormitories to raise the alarm without having to worry about the barriers. Of course we had to deactivate the barriers to take the watch and my glasses through, but in an emergency we'd just abandon them in the station and run.

It was quiet out in the service tunnel – in fact the whole place was quiet. The lighting out here was dim – by now only the emergency lights were working – and it felt strange being there on our own. In fact it was almost like being back in dead Orschwiller when only Stefan and I had been there, except that here we were underground, and it felt even more isolated.

"Could we try walking through the Capsule tunnel?" I asked. "If we kept very quiet we'd be able to walk right past them, because I'm sure they'll be in the service tunnel, not the actual train tunnel. And Greys don't have particularly good hearing: it's one of the things I beat Issin at comfortably. Okay, they see better than we do, but if we weren't in view, maybe their eyesight wouldn't matter."

He thought about it. "I think it'd be too risky," he said. "If I was their leader I'd be inclined to cover the tunnel – I'd probably put a guardian or two in there at least. No, it'll be safer to stay here and use the barriers. Anyway, let's not worry about that for now. As long as we don't go to sleep we can do anything we like while we're here, and we know we won't get disturbed – so, got any ideas?"

I certainly had, and so had he, and the shift passed very pleasantly indeed, even though it wasn't quite as good as doing it in a comfortable bed. But later, after we'd gone and woken Markus and Radu up to replace us and had returned to our room, the seriousness of our situation closed in on me again. And I clung to Stefan for the rest of the night, because I was starting to believe that, unless something miraculous happened, we'd all be dead in the next couple of days…

In the next chapter the Greys reach the Hub. Can Stefan's limited military training find a way to defeat professional soldiers? Don't miss, etc.

Chapter Sixteen

Things get desperate in this chapter: apart from Stefan, Jake and his friends know nothing about fighting, and there are professional soldiers (not to mention a whole lot of guardians) coming after them. Can they possibly survive?

The Greys didn't arrive that night, and the following day passed uneventfully, too. We went on practising shooting – there was plenty of ammunition, so that was no problem – and I thought I was actually getting a bit better at it as the day went on, though I was nowhere near as good as Stefan himself, and still some way behind Radu, Markus and Hansi, too. But I thought that, given enough time, I would probably be able to hit a guardian eventually – as long as it was a Type Two that liked standing absolutely still for at least five minutes on end…

In mid-morning Stefan and I took a couple of grenades up to the corridor where the emergency exit should have been and used them to demolish part of the wall, just in case Janiq and his men had simply built a wall across the tunnel beyond. But when the dust cleared we could see that there was no tunnel: in fact it didn't look as if there had ever been a tunnel there at all, as beyond the wall there was nothing but solid rock. And we certainly didn't have enough grenades to try to blast our way through that to the surface.

We were pretty sure that if the Greys were on their way they'd be arriving any time now – we'd escaped late on Sunday night, and it was now Wednesday. The bomb had – hopefully – gone off on Monday, and that might have thrown them into disarray for a bit, but I thought even a race with the stamina problems of the Greys wouldn't need more than three days to march a hundred kilometres [60 miles]. But the Wednesday night also passed peacefully, and by midday on Thursday I was starting to hope that maybe they weren't coming at all: maybe the bomb had persuaded them to give up.

Stefan wasn't so sure: he said that if their own portal had gone it would provide the Greys with even more of an incentive to follow the tunnel to see if it led to another way back into their world. And I suppose he had a point, though I sincerely hoped he was wrong. But after lunch on Thursday he said that we ought to send a probe into the service tunnel to try to find out if the Greys were on their way or not.

"What sort of a probe?" I asked.

"A human one. It's all we've got. So, who here is the fastest runner?"

I knew I wasn't bad – at least I knew I could outdistance a Grey, provided he didn't catch me in his first sprint. If I could stay ahead for the first fifty metres [150 ft.] I should be okay, I thought, and so I volunteered. Most of the others seemed willing, too, so Stefan arranged a series of races to the far end of the hall and back, and as a result of those he chose Radu to accompany me.

"Are you sure that you wish to do this?" he asked me in English. "I would not want that I lose you. Can you not agree to send someone else with Radu?"

"Stefan, you've said I'm in charge, so I have to do this. Besides, running is about the only thing I'm any good at. There's no way that even an adult Grey can outrun me."

"But… what of your bad leg? Surely you cannot run properly on it?"

"It's fine – it was only like a bad dead leg. I'd say I'm fully recovered – certainly I can beat a reptile in a foot race."

"What about the guardians?"

"I'm just as sure I can run faster than an overgrown insect."

"Very well. But please be careful." He switched back to Kerpian and said, "The rest of us will be waiting in the hall, and I want someone… Oli, you're used to operating them – I want you standing next to the arch barrier to turn it on as soon as we're through. I'll wait in the Capsule station with Markus and Hansi so that we can provide covering fire if Jake and Radu need it."

So Radu and I went up to the dormitory and undressed – we both felt happier knowing that there would be no need to stop for the barrier at the end of the service tunnel. I gave Stefan my glasses to look after for me and then we headed off carefully into the tunnel itself. We didn't speak, and to start with we tiptoed forward, but after a bit we found that too slow and so we started to walk normally. Our bare feet made no noise on the floor of the tunnel and so our advance was virtually silent.

We had walked for about ten minutes when Radu put his hand on my arm to stop me, and as we stood still I heard what he had heard: a sort of rustling sound. We were in the section of the tunnel that curved as the Capsule track spiralled down to the level of the plain, so we couldn't see very far ahead of us, but that sound strongly suggested that someone or something was coming.

We stayed where we were and waited for a couple of minutes, and then, even though the light in the tunnel was very dim, we saw movement: a couple of guardians appeared around the corner ahead of us. And that was enough for me: if there were guardians coming, I wasn't going to stay around to see if there were any Greys with them. We turned and began to run back towards the Hub.

I don't think the guardians even saw us, because there was no sign of pursuit: when we turned round to check a hundred metres or so later, we saw that the guardians were once again hidden by the curve in the tunnel. So we jogged steadily back towards the Capsule station.

We were confident that the danger was some way behind us, so it came as a surprise when we emerged into the station and Hansi started yelling at us to run. And why were Stefan and Markus pointing their rifles at the ramp that led down to the train – or would have done, had there been a train there? So we ran, and as we reached the ramp we saw that the barrier was flickering wildly and that there was a Type Two guardian less than five centimetres [2in.] from the top of the ramp: obviously the barrier was on the point of complete failure. So we ran straight past and out into the main hall, and Stefan and his two colleagues began to back away after us. But before they reached the ramp there was a muted 'bang' from the barrier and the guardian emerged into the station. Stefan shot it, but there were more behind it, and so the three boys just dived back through the barrier and Oli, who was waiting with his hand poised, turned it back on.

"You were right not to let me use the train tunnel, then," I commented.

"Looks like it," said Stefan, handing me my glasses. "Are there any coming up the service tunnel?"

"Yes. We didn't wait to count them, though, and we didn't see any actual Greys, so maybe we've only got the guardians to worry about."

The first guardian had now reached the far side of the barrier. It could see us, even though the air between us was distorted, and so it flicked a sting at us, but the barrier stopped it

"If there were only a couple of them we could wait for them to run out of stings and then open the barrier and kill them easily," mused Stefan. "But we'd better not risk it if there are more than two or three, just in case we miscount."

The guardian now tried to run at us, but the barrier stopped it. But the barrier started to make a humming noise, and when a second guardian appeared alongside the first one the noise got a little louder.

"I think that we are in trouble," said Stefan in English – obviously he didn't want to scare the others. "If there was no power drain I am sure that the barriers would hold out without limit, but now… now I think they will fail. If the guardians continue to press against it the power will be drained, as happened with the barrier to the train."

"Then we'll have to kill them," I said.

I ran to the far end of the hall and collected some of the bedding we had been using for target practice, and then I went into the office and brought back one of the chairs. With these I made a sort of shield, wheeling it up to the centre of the arch and standing behind it.

"Oli," I said, "you take the one on the left with your catapult. Stefan, yours is the one on the right. Both of you, stand off to the sides – I want them aiming at me. Someone stand by the barrier control – thanks, Alain. Right – ready, you two? Okay, Alain, now!"

Alain turned the barrier off. The right hand guardian managed to fire a sting at me before Stefan killed it; Oli didn't give the one on the left time to do the same thing. Alain reactivated the barrier and we relaxed. The sting had embedded itself in the blankets, so I removed it carefully and tossed it off to one side.

But more guardians were arriving, and before we could repeat the exercise there was a shout from the far end of the station, and we saw a pair of Grey soldiers pressing against the barrier at the end of the service tunnel.

"Okay, let's fall back," said Stefan. "Jake, you and Radu had better go and get your uniforms on. I don't think this barrier will fall too quickly: it's a thick one, much thicker than the one out there, so we've got time to do a little planning. I want everyone to get into firing position between here and the arch into the accommodation area. Just relax – I'm sure they won't break through yet. Markus, Alain, Hansi – I want you to come up to the briefing room. Jake, join us there as soon as you're dressed."

So we ran upstairs and got dressed. As soon as he was ready I sent Radu back to the hall to take charge – he was the best shot we had apart from Stefan – and then I headed for the briefing room, stopping on the way to grab my watch and Stefan's neck chain, which I'd left in our bedroom. As soon as I reached the briefing room I gave it to Stefan and asked him to do it up for me, and he put it back round my neck.

"Thanks," I said. "If this is it, I want to be wearing this when… you know."

He wordlessly showed me the Star of David around his own neck.

"Okay," he said. "We don't know how many Greys or guardians we're dealing with here, but it looks as if there are more guardians at least than I had hoped for. Maybe it's a good sign in a way: Jake and I think that if the portal back to their own world has gone they'll probably come here to try to find another way back home, and so if there are a lot of them it probably means the bomb worked. On the other hand, it'll be our bad luck, because it means we'll have to fight more of them than would have been ideal. Still, I've got a couple of ideas to hold them up. The plan is to hold them in the hall as long as possible and then retreat in here and try to hold the arch downstairs. If we can kill enough out in the hall they might give up…

"Anyway, as soon as we finish here I'm going to get everyone to move some of the bunks and bedding down into the hall for us to use as cover. Alain, I want you to go and get the jerry-can from up in the corridor and bring it back to the hall, and Jake, I need some bottles: there must be some wine in the kitchen stores somewhere.

"I'm going to get Tommi to act as ammunition runner: we'll get the magazines out of the rest of the rifles in the armoury and issue them as the first ones run out, and then he'll have to try to reload the empty magazines as fast as he can. I might get Shander to help him, because his shooting isn't too good.

"Finally, anyone who is injured should retreat into the lobby outside the office. Right, any questions?"

We looked at each other, but nothing occurred to me at that point, and so I headed to the kitchen store – I'd seen some bottles in the cool store at the rear, although I hadn't looked at them very closely: I usually prefer soft drinks, and although I'd shared a bottle of wine with Issin and Haless I would just as happily have drunk Coke or orange juice. I knew nothing about the quality or otherwise of the contents of these bottles, and nor did I care. There was a sort of automatic corkscrew on the wall next to the wine rack, and I used it to open half a dozen bottles, after which I poured the wine down the sink.

I picked up the empty bottles and ran back down to the hall, in time to meet Alain coming from the other direction with the black jerry-can in his hand. And then I had to run all the way up to the kitchen again to find a funnel, because pouring the petrol into the bottles without one would have been very difficult.

Half an hour or so later we felt we were as ready as we were likely to get. We had six Molotov Cocktails standing against the wall and there was a solidly-constructed barricade of bunks and bedding (reinforced by the door that had been blown off its hinges when one of the tunnels collapsed) which we had set up in an arc around the arch leading to the accommodation area, for us to shelter behind. We'd brought the remaining rifles out of the armoury and filled the magazines: we'd decided it would be easier just to hand each rifleman a new weapon when he ran out of ammo, rather than have him fumbling about with magazines, and Tommi and Shander were standing by to reload each empty weapon that reached them.

At that point Stefan and I went back over to the station arch to see what was happening, and the answer seemed to be 'not much': there were a couple of guardians still trying to get through the barrier, which was still making that same humming noise, but they didn't seem to have got more than a few centimetres into the arch. At that rate, I thought, it'll be hours before we have to worry about them. But beyond them, in the station area, we could see ten to twelve Grey soldiers, as well as quite a few more guardians: clearly the small barrier at the end of the service tunnel had also failed. And as we watched more soldiers appeared at the end of it.

"We've got a problem," I said. "I don't think we can fight all of them."

"We're going to have to. I don't think they're interested in surrender, somehow, considering those guardians are mostly Type Twos. If they wanted us to give up they'd use the others, not the killers."

And as if to emphasise that point, a couple of the Grey soldiers noticed us standing at the barrier and began firing their weapons at us. The barrier successfully repelled their bullets, but the humming grew a little louder.

We walked back to our barricade.

"They won't be through for a while yet, so I think some of you can stand down for a bit," Stefan said. "So, Team Four, you can go and have a rest, have something to eat, or whatever you like. You've got two kends, and after that we'll swap over. Alain, you and Oli can rest, too. Team Three, you'll have to stay here just in case, but you can relax a bit."

Stefan and I walked back to the office – we'd left the final barrier deactivated for now – and sat down: I'd rescued the second chair from the main hall.

"Well," I said, "it's been fun… Look, do you think if I went and surrendered they'd let the rest of you go free? I mean, I was the one who blew up the portal."

"You'll do nothing of the kind! First, I don't think it would stop them coming after the rest of us, and second, you're not walking out on me now! Besides, we haven't lost yet."

"We're going to, though. Oh, shit, Stefi, I don't want to die! Especially not now, now that I've met you… it's just so… so…"

And I started to cry, and Stefan put his arms round me and held me, and that somehow just made me cry even more. So he helped me up the stairs to our room, closed the door and sat me on the bed, and there he just hugged me until I managed to get myself under control.

"If I hadn't met you," he said, "my life would have rolled along boringly for the next fifty or sixty years: I'd have done all the things I was supposed to do, like graduating, joining the SS, having a safe, predictable, boring career, getting married, having children, and eventually dying in some dull retirement home… and it wouldn't have meant a thing. And you'd have gone on being invisible, like you told me, and you'd have had a dull job like your father's, and it wouldn't have meant a thing, either. But instead, we've had an amazing time, visiting worlds nobody else from our own worlds will ever see, making friends from places that don't even exist as far as our families are concerned… and we've done it together. The last two months have been the best part of my whole life. So if we are going to die, I'd say it's almost worth it."

"Almost?"

"Yes, almost, but not quite – which is why we're not going to die. I've got a couple of ideas that ought to even things up a bit. Now lie down and relax – and maybe you ought to get undressed first. I'm just going to run back downstairs to tell Markus he's in charge for the next two kends, and to make sure our Grey friends aren't in any danger of breaking through just yet, and then I'll be right back."

So I got undressed and lay on the bed, and five minutes or so later Stefan came back in and started to remove his own uniform.

"No change at all," he reported, getting into bed next to me. "The guardians are creeping forward and the barrier is slowly giving way, but at the current rate of progress it'll be hours before they break through. We'll have to run a double watch through the night, because even if the Greys stop to sleep I'll bet the guardians won't, but I think we're probably safe until early tomorrow. So right now I think we ought to find a way to relax a little. Roll over onto your front and I'll see if I can work out how to give you a massage."

I don't know if he'd actually been trained to do this or not, though it really wasn't something I associated with the SS. But if he was making it up as he went along he was doing a great job: starting with my shoulders he rubbed and pressed all my muscles, kneading my flesh and then stroking it, and it felt great. And when he'd finished with my back he gently rolled me over, but instead of working on the muscles on this side he just lay down on top of me. And for the next half hour or so we just cuddled each other like that.

It didn't work quite as perfectly as it had previously: I don't think anything would have made me completely forget what was happening downstairs. But somehow it seemed less immediate while I was holding him in my arms.

"Now," he said, "there's one other thing I can do to help you relax…"

He wriggled downward until his head was level with my groin. It was a measure of how relaxed I was already that I wasn't even stiff when he got there, but it didn't take long for that situation to change. He drew it out over the next ten minutes, and I don't think I'd use the word 'relaxing' to describe the experience: quite the reverse, in fact. But it felt absolutely incredible, and when I finally couldn't hold it in any longer I thought it was the greatest feeling I had ever had – and the first time hadn't been bad at all.

And then I relaxed, and this time I really did feel relaxed all over. I tried to change places with him, but he wouldn't let me.

"Not yet," he said. "You just stay there for ten minutes or so. After that I won't mind at all if you want to do it for me, but first you need to rest for a bit."

He moved back up to lie beside me, putting his arm around me, and I simply lay there quietly for a bit.

"Okay, now it's your turn," I said, finally, and I moved down to take up a position between his legs. And he was clearly ready for this before I got there, because I didn't have to do anything to get him hard. I kissed it all over and then set to work, and my only regret is that I couldn't keep it going for as long as I would have liked: I hadn't learned to read the signals properly, and as a result I pushed him beyond the point of no return a little too quickly. The number of spurts he gave me seemed undiminished, though.

"Sorry," I said, returning to my previous position. "I didn't mean to finish it off that quickly."

"It was perfect," he said. "And now we can relax properly."

And we did – in fact I was able to relax so thoroughly that I fell asleep, and I didn't wake up until he shook me awake much later – six hours later, in fact, as I saw when I looked at my watch.

"Why did you let me sleep for so long?" I asked. "I should have started making supper two hours ago!"

"Alain has made supper," said a voice by the door, and there was Oli. "Markus said we should let you sleep: he said there's nothing much happening downstairs, and he knows you two will insist on keeping watch through the night, so he thought you should sleep now while you can. He swapped the teams over a little while back: Team Four is eating supper now, and then they'll go on duty while Team Three eats theirs and then sleeps. Markus is waiting for you in the briefing room now."

We got up and put our uniforms back on, and I have to say I felt far better than I had for a while: obviously a good sleep had made a lot of difference.

"Thanks," was the first thing I said to Markus, who looked surprised: I think he'd expected us to complain about not being woken up earlier. "You were right. I think if the situation downstairs merits it we should let Team Three sleep for at least four hours, and longer if possible. I feel a lot better after that. So, how far have they got into the barrier?"

"I'd say a little under halfway. They're not really trying very hard – it's just a couple of guardians pushing the barrier. If they hit it with all their weapons as well it could easily speed things up, though, so you'll have to watch it carefully."

"We will. Okay, we'd better go and eat."

Alain had made a sort of thick stew. I'm not sure what was in it, but it tasted okay, so obviously I would be able to rely on him to look after some of the cooking in future – if we had a future, of course… I took the opportunity to congratulate him, and he clearly appreciated it.

"I hope you and Oli got some sleep," I said to him.

"Well, some," he said, grinning. "This didn't take too long to cook, so I didn't have to get up until a short while back. But before we went to sleep…"

He lowered his voice and switched to French. "It's the first chance we've really had to try out… you know, what we practised together. We've been too tired until now. But I wanted to try it today, just in case… well, you know."

"And?"

"And it was stupendous! I did it for him first, and he squealed so loudly at the end that I'm surprised it didn't wake you up. And when he did it for me I found out why, because it was unbelievable. Thanks, Jake – whatever happens now, at least we both got to find out what that was like first."

"You'll get to find out about it again," I said, firmly. "Stefan's got a couple of things up his sleeve. Anyway, hang on here for a bit: we'll swap the teams round and get the other lot fed, and then maybe Stefan will tell us what he's intending to do."

Stefan took Team Four downstairs and returned shortly afterwards with Team Three, who set about Alain's stew hungrily. And it turned out that we had timed the meal almost to perfection, because just as Team Three were finishing off all the lights went out. The emergency lighting kicked in a couple of seconds later, but when we tried turning one of the cookers back on, nothing happened.

"I think that's our last hot meal," I commented. "I'll get the rest of the bread out of the freezer and let it defrost, because we'll probably be eating a lot of sandwiches from now on. And without any butter, either."

Team Three headed for the dormitory. I promised to let them sleep for as long as possible, and then I helped Alain tidy up – we couldn't turn the dishwasher on, of course, but we dumped all the dirty stuff into it anyway. Then we went downstairs.

Stefan and I went into the office and quickly pulled up the control board. There were still four tunnels on steady yellow, and the barriers were on steady yellow, too, but otherwise there were magenta lights everywhere, some flashing and some steady. We replaced the display with the primary menu again, because I didn't want to just stand there waiting for the barrier lights to turn magenta.

Out in the hall not too much had changed: the guardians were about halfway through the arch, but the soldiers behind them didn't seem too concerned with their progress: some seemed to be asleep, and the rest were just sitting around.

"I'm going to wake those bastards up in the morning," promised Stefan. "It's a pity we don't know how much ammunition they're carrying, otherwise… actually, come to think of it, I'll bet they're not carrying that much: there's no sign of any large boxes out there, and if they set out just to try to chase us down they wouldn't have stopped to collect anything extra…"

"I don't know," I said. "If they'd just come chasing straight after us I think they'd have got here sooner. This looks more like a properly constituted effort – I mean, it must have taken a while to round up all those guardians, for a start."

"Well, maybe. But there are still no ammo boxes. Okay, maybe they're playing safe and keeping the spare ammo in the service tunnel, but maybe not – after all, as far as they knew they were just chasing a bunch of unarmed kids… So maybe I won't wait till morning. I'll give it a couple of hours, until about two in the morning – that'll give our boys upstairs a chance to get some sleep, at least. Depending on what happens, we might need them after that.

"I haven't thought to ask this, but – are the Kerpians likely to help from their end? I mean, you said it was Narj who gave you the bomb, so will they be coming to help us?"

"I don't know. I suppose it depends how many of them are armed and ready to fight, and how many Greys are left on this side of the portal. It would probably be best not to count on them turning up for a good while yet, though."

"Pity. Oh, well…"

We let Team Four doze behind the barricade: Stefan and I were fairly fresh, and so we were able to keep watch. And a little after two o'clock we strolled over to the arch and found things quiet beyond it: apart from the two guardians under the arch there wasn't a lot of movement, just a couple of bored-looking Greys on their feet and a lot of others lying down on the station floor.

"This is where they find out we're not unarmed after all," said Stefan.

He went back to the barricade and roused Radu and Hansi, getting them to bring their rifles and to lie down on the ground facing the arch, each aiming at one of the guardians. Then we got Alain to stand by the barrier control. And finally Stefan took two grenades from the box and showed me how to arm them.

"These are the same sort as we use in Germany," he explained. "You unscrew this cover at the bottom of the handle and you'll see a piece of material come out. When you're ready to throw the grenade you pull the material hard and then throw. German fuses are about four and a half seconds long, and we'll have to hope these aren't a lot longer or they'll get a chance to throw them back. Do you think you can manage one?"

"I think so," I said, nervously.

"Good. Okay, you stand to the left of the arch, I'll stand to the right. I'm going to count to four: on 'One', Alain opens the barrier. On 'Two' Radu and Hansi kill the guardians and you and I pull the fuse. On 'Three' we throw the grenades into the station, and on 'Four' Alain closes the barrier again. Everyone got that?"

We said we had. "It seems a bit bad, though," I said. "Those poor bastards are asleep."

"Serves them right for not taking proper precautions," said Stefan. "We're at war, after all. And if we don't kill them now, they'll probably kill us once the barrier comes down."

"I suppose so," I admitted. "Okay, then."

We took up our positions and Stefan and I unscrewed our grenade handles, and the fuse appeared as he had told me.

"Okay?" said Stefan, quietly. "Then One! Two! Three! Four!"

It worked exactly as it had been supposed to. My grenade didn't get too far because it clipped the far end of the arch, but Stefan's landed halfway up the room. The two guardians were both hit before they could fire their stings, and the unfortunate sleeping Greys had no time to react, though the two on their feet yelled a warning and dived for the floor themselves. And then there were two loud explosions, almost simultaneously, and the room turned to carnage.

For a few seconds we actually thought we'd killed every one of them, but then some began to stagger to their feet, and others started to yell for medical assistance. And a whole lot more emerged from the service tunnel and we realised that we'd just thinned them out a little: there still seemed to be plenty left. And they weren't happy, either: some of them started shooting at the barrier, until an officer angrily told them to stop and conserve ammunition. And that was good news, at least, because it meant that their ammunition was limited, as we had hoped it would be.

Three more guardians emerged from the arch leading down to the tracks and came to press against the barrier, and we realised that the guardians had been down on the rail tracks and so protected from the blast.

"Don't worry," said Stefan, when I mentioned this. "I've got something else planned for them."

We went back to the barricade. The noise had woken up Oli and Tibor, who had not been involved in the action, but we reassured them that everything was well and they settled down once more.

We went and got the rest of the party up at five o'clock. I handed round some preserved meat sandwiches, which they ate on their way downstairs, and we allowed Team Four to take a ten-minute breakfast and toilet break, but by half-past five everyone was up, dressed and as ready to fight as they were ever going to be. When we went to look at the arch we saw that the guardians were now only about ten centimetres [4in.] from the end of the barrier, so apparently some of the soldiers had also been trying to push their way through during the night, and as a result the barrier was close to failing. And there was a platoon of Greys waiting at the far side, their weapons in their hands. I counted twenty-two, but of course I had no way of knowing whether there were any more lurking in the tunnels. There were also several more guardians standing between the Greys and the arch.

"Good," said Stefan. "I was hoping they'd send the guardians through first. Come and give me a hand with the jerry-can."

We carried the jerry-can to a point to one side of the arch, out of sight of the Greys, and there Stefan sloshed a large puddle of petrol across the floor in front of the arch. It was no longer as hot in here as it had been when we had first arrived, and so Stefan said there was no serious danger of the fuel evaporating before we needed it.

He carried the can back to the barricade – there was now only a little left in it, and so he could manage to carry it easily – and put it down next to the six Molotov Cocktails.

"There's no danger of setting the whole place on fire, is there?" asked Markus, nervously. "I don't fancy getting burnt to death."

"No, there isn't anything over there to catch fire," Stefan pointed out. "It's all stone. And the fuel will burn itself out quickly enough."

He pulled his lighter from the pocket of his trousers and placed it on top of the barricade where he could get at it in a hurry, and then we just waited for the barrier to fail.

It was obvious looking at the others that most of them were as scared as I was, though they were trying hard not to show it, and I tried hard to look confident.

"Don't worry," I told them. "This ought to take care of most of the guardians, and that'll just leave the Greys. And they're so big that even a bunch of lousy shots like us can hardly miss them!"

That got a grin or two… and then there was a thud and the barrier disappeared. Stefan grabbed his lighter in one hand and a Molotov in the other and lit the fuse, and then lobbed it in the direction of the puddle of fuel. He didn't lob it high enough and the bottle failed to break, but the burning fuse hit the petrol and that produced the same result: the fuel ignited, and the four or five guardians advancing across the puddle were engulfed in flame. Then the bottle exploded and a large sliver of glass hit the wall above our heads.

"Hey, you're supposed to be trying to kill them, not us!" protested Alain.

And then the first Greys appeared in the archway and we were shot at for the first time, and it was terrifying: we cowered behind the barricade as bullets – lots of them: clearly the Greys had automatic weapons – thumped into the front of it and smacked into the wall above our heads. We'd left a couple of very narrow gaps in the barricade to shoot through, and Radu and Markus managed to hit a couple of Greys. Stefan threw a grenade towards the arch, and that bought us a moment's respite as the Greys ducked away from it, but then they threw one of their own which went off close to the end of our barricade. Hansi cried out as a couple of bits of shrapnel hit him, and the sight of the blood was truly frightening: now we could no longer fool ourselves into thinking this was anything other than a real battle with real casualties.

Stefan threw another Molotov at the arch and this one broke, feeding the dying flames, and under cover of it he had Alain and Tibor drag Hansi back through the last arch into the lobby outside the office. Another Grey grenade exploded just in front of the barricade, and then more continuous fire, and our return shots sounded feeble as a response. Stefan lobbed another Molotov and then said it was time to go, and he and Markus kept up a covering fire of sorts while the rest of us scurried back through the arch. Another grenade exploded just as I reached the arch and there was a cry of pain from behind me, and I spun, terrified at the thought that Stefan had been hurt. But in fact it was Markus who came staggering past me, clutching his right arm. Stefan threw a final grenade in the general direction of the enemy and came through the arch dragging the box of grenades with him, and as soon as he was safely through Oli closed the barrier. And now that all the bangs and thumps had stopped we could hear a klaxon sounding. Thanks, I thought, but I think we can work out there's something wrong without the sound effects.

"Did we get enough to stop them, do you think?" I asked, grabbing a bandage from the first aid kit and trying to see how bad Markus's arm was.

"Probably not. I don't think we did badly, but we only took out three or four, unless I got lucky with one of my grenades. We did better with the guardians, but they're not the ones carrying guns and grenades. How's Markus?"

"It fucking hurts," reported Markus, "but I don't think it's broken. It took a chunk out of my upper arm, that's all. How's Hansi?"

Hansi didn't look so good. Tibor had slapped bandages over the two wounds, one in his chest and one in his hip, and at least the bleeding seemed to be slowing. But the wound in his chest worried me: if it had penetrated the lung he would be in deep trouble.

And then the barrier through to the hall started to hum, and I saw a guardian and two Grey soldiers pressing against it – and a couple of other Greys were doing something close to the far end of the arch. And when they all suddenly ran back into the hall I realised what.

"It's an explosive!" I shouted. "Everyone get down!"

There was a loud bang and part of the arch collapsed, though the part that was left still seemed to have a barrier. Greys appeared at the far end and started to clear the rubble away, and while they were doing it some more started to plant more explosives.

"Oli, open the barrier when I say," ordered Stefan, grabbing a grenade and arming it. "Now!"

The barrier came down, Stefan threw the grenade and the barrier went up again, and this time two or three Greys were visibly caught in the explosion.

"That should persuade them to keep their heads down for a bit," said Stefan. "Let's get Markus and Hansi into the office."

Between us we carried the two injured boys into the office. We parked Markus in one of the chairs in front of the computer and laid Hansi on the floor.

"I'm going back to throw a couple more grenades," said Stefan. "Tibor, could you come and move the grenade box into the outer office? And then we'll have to try to find a way to barricade the outer door – maybe we can use Dead Guy's bunk? I'm sure he's past worrying about falling to bits by now…"

"They're going to break through, aren't they, Stefi?" I asked, in English.

"Yes," he admitted in the same language. "They are. I will get everyone into the outer office once I have thrown these grenades, but after that there will be nowhere to go."

"Okay," I said, reverting to Kerpian. "Go and kill some more for us, Stefi."

"I will. And try to turn those bloody sirens off – they're giving me a headache!"

"If I can find the switch, I will," I said, as he disappeared. "Except I've got no idea where to look."

"Try asking the computer," suggested Markus.

"Markus, in a couple of huszaks this place will be full of Greys. I haven't got time to hunt through all the menus until I find the one that includes 'sirens'.

"Then use the search function. That's what it's for."

"What search function? We never found one."

"Just do this," he said, hitting the Escape key at the same time as the one that bore the Kerpian symbol for 'sz'. "There you are – a search box. So let's try 'sirens'."

That got no response.

"Try 'Emergency' suggested Tibor, who had just reappeared carrying the remainder of the grenades. "That ought to find it – after all, the siren is presumably there to tell us there's an emergency going on."

"Okay," agreed Markus, typing the word in clumsily with his left hand. And this time a drop-down box appeared.

"That's better," he said. "Now, let's see what we find if we scroll down here… let's try 'emergency siren' first…. No, there's no such entry."

"Try 'emergency alarm,' I suggested, looking over his shoulder as he scrolled back the other way. He got all the way back to 'a', but there was no 'alarm', either.

"What about 'klaxon'?" suggested Tibor.

Markus started to scroll again – and suddenly I yelled "Stop!" in his ear.

"What? I'm right here, you know – you don't have to shout!"

"Scroll back up again… stop! Click there!"

"What, on… oh, no, it couldn't be…"

"Click on it!" I insisted, so he hit the entry that said 'Emergency Exit'. And up came a little box that asked, 'Do you wish to use the emergency exit? Y/N'

Markus hit 'Y' without waiting for me to react, and a panel on the desk slid away, revealing a barrier control hand outline. I thrust my left hand onto it, and a large panel in the corner of the room – the corner I'd been suspicious about all along – slid to one side, revealing a ladder. But it was going down, not up.

There were a couple more loud bangs from outside the room and Stefan reappeared.

"I got a couple more, I think, but the next grenade they throw back will probably finish the barrier off. Someone help me barricade the door, and then… let's just try to take some of them with us, okay?"

"Let's not," I said, pointing at the ladder. "Let's just get the hell out of here."

"Where does it go?" he asked.

"Who cares? It's out of here, and right now that's where we want to be. And they can only follow us one at a time, and the guardians can't use ladders… come on, Stefi, let's go!"

"Okay," he said. "Jake and I will barricade the door. Alain, you and Oli lead the way. Markus, can you manage a ladder with one arm?"

"Watch me!"

"Okay, then. Tibor, if you and Frank can get Hansi down the ladder somehow, do. We'll come and help as soon as we've fixed the door."

Alain scrambled down the ladder and disappeared and the others started to follow him. Tibor swung Hansi onto his shoulders in a fireman's lift and climbed down, and at that point Stefan and I left them to it. There were a couple more bangs outside that suggested the Greys were almost through the barricade, and we grabbed Dead Guy's bunk and wedged it against the door. And then Stefan took one of the last three grenades, removed the cap and hooked the fuse onto the door handle, tucking the grenade itself into Dead Guy's armpit.

"Take the buggers with you," Stefan enjoined him. "It's been nice knowing you."

There was a final crash from outside and a couple of seconds later something thumped into the door from the far side. We ran back into the office and I scrambled down the ladder, and Stefan paused for a moment at the top before sliding down to meet me at the bottom, where there was a tunnel leading away, with dim lights every few metres.

"I chucked the second grenade under the desk," he told me. "I didn't want them getting at the computer. So I think we should get down."

We did that, hurriedly, and a bang from above, followed by debris falling down the ladder shaft, suggested that the grenade had done its job. We started to run along the tunnel.

"We're going to look very stupid if this tunnel doesn't actually go anywhere," I said.

"I'd sooner look stupid down here than be dead back up there," he replied, and of course he was right.

We caught up with Tommi, who was the back-marker of the column and who said he had been holding back to make sure we were okay.

"I'd have come back for you, Jake," he assured me.

"Well, I'm glad you didn't have to. Come on, let's catch up with the others."

We ran for a while, long enough to be away from the Hub, I felt sure. Stefan kept an eye out over his shoulder, but there was no sign of pursuit, so hopefully the grenade in the office, or the one we had left with Dead Guy, would have dissuaded the opposition from advancing further without a proper reconnaissance.

We caught up with the others and got them to slow to a walk, and Stefan persuaded Tibor to let him carry Hansi for a bit. And then came a shout from Alain, who was scouting a short distance ahead.

"There's another ladder," he told us.

So there was, and the tunnel didn't go any further, so the only way out seemed to be up the ladder.

"Okay," I said. "Let's see where this goes. If we're lucky it'll go all the way to the surface."

I scrambled up, but it didn't go very far at all – about five metres [15 ft.] up the ladder stopped. There was a control panel on the wall near the top, and when I put my hand on it the tube above my head rose away – and I saw that I was in the Nexus Room: the tube was the black pillar in the centre of the room.

I climbed out and yelled to everyone else to follow me, and then I started to circle the room, trying to find a tunnel that had not yet collapsed. Alain climbed out behind me and helped by going the opposite way round, and by the time the rest of the party had joined us we had discovered that there were four doors still available to us: numbers One, Seven, Twelve and Thirteen. All the others were blocked. Seven was the one that led back to Stefan's world, so he would be able to go home – and I wouldn't, because I knew my door was no more than two away from his.

There was a bang and a rumble from down in the tunnel, and a moment later Stefan climbed up, looking pleased with himself.

"I used the last grenade to block the tunnel," he told us. "So, what's our choice? Are there any of the worlds we've been to before?"

"Yes. The door back to your world is still open," I said. "And three others, but we don't know which worlds they go to."

"Oh, wow, I can go home!" he exclaimed, smiling broadly. "Except… it's like we said before: I don't think any of you should come with me. You have no papers. And you're Jewish, and they'll think Radu is, too, because he's been cut; and Tibor and Hansi are gay… I think you should choose a different door. Which one will you choose?"

"We can pick between one, twelve and thirteen," I said. "Thirteen is supposed to be an unlucky number – but one could be lucky. Maybe we should…"

"Number Twelve!" interrupted Oli. "That's the one I picked, remember? That's our lucky door!"

"Okay," I agreed, pushing Door Twelve open – after all, we knew nothing about any of these three worlds, so it was pure luck where we ended up. "Let's go to Oli's lucky world. Oli, you and Alain had better lead the way: you know how to get out of the tunnels. And…"

Suddenly the lights in the tunnel ahead of us started to flash on and off, and mist began to appear close to the floor. And I could hear a humming noise, like the one the barriers had made when they began to fail.

"Run!" I yelled to Alain. "The tunnel's going to collapse! Run for it!"

Tibor took Hansi from Stefan and ran off into the tunnel behind Alain and Oli, and the others ran after them. Tommi hesitated, but I waved him away.

"You know I can't come to your world, don't you?" I said to Stefan, once we were alone.

He nodded. "It would not be safe for you. For me, it is home, but for you it would be too dangerous. But I shall never forget you, Jake. And I will always love you."

"And I love you, too. Good luck! Be a great soldier for me!"

He hugged me and we kissed, and then he pushed me away, towards the tunnel. "Run, Jake!" he said. "Run before the tunnel fails!"

And somehow I forced myself to run, though I couldn't see where I was going because I was crying too much. An hour ago I'd expected to die, and now I was going to live – but I was going to have to do it without Stefan. Somehow I would have to survive in this unknown world without him. And we hadn't even had time for a proper goodbye…

I'd have run right past the ladder room had it not been for the fact that Tommi was waiting there for me, and when he grabbed me I managed to wipe my eyes and follow him up the ladder. At the top I pushed him out of the hut and urged the rest of the boys to get a safe distance away – I didn't know what would happen when the tunnel explosives detonated, but I didn't want to be too close to it.

The explosion, when it came a couple of minutes later, was muffled, and somehow the hut even stayed standing, though a cloud of dust blew out of the open door.

"Well," I said, "I suppose we'd better go and see where we are now…"

Chapter Seventeen

Well, Jake's alive, but he's lost Stefan. How is he going to cope in this unknown world without him?

Of course, the first thing I was going to have to do was to find our way out of the forest and to some sort of civilisation – and quickly, because although Hansi seemed to be breathing without too much difficulty, he was still losing blood and needed proper medical care. Naturally I had no idea which way to go: Stefan, with his customary efficiency, had kept his bag on his back right through the final battle, and so he would be able to find his way back to Orschweiler (as it was in his world) straight away: I was sure the compass would be in its usual place in his bag. Quite how he would account for the two months during which he had been missing was another issue, but at least he would be able to get out of the forest.

I, on the other hand, had barely escaped in the clothes I stood up in, and consequently had neither compass nor any idea of which way led back to Orschwiller. And I remembered walking round and round in circles up here the day I had stumbled upon the first hut…

I looked at the hut, trying to remember the way down. Usually we had walked away in… roughly that direction, I thought. Okay, time to trust to luck again…

"This way," I said, trying to sound confident. "It's not too far…."

"Hey, Jake, stop!" cried Oli. "Look!"

He was pointing back at the hut, and for a horrible moment I thought one or more of the Greys had somehow managed to follow us: there was a figure in the doorway. But it looked too small to be a Grey… and then it fell forward onto its face and I started to run.

"Stefan!" I yelled, reaching him and kneeling down beside him. "Are you okay?"

I rolled him onto his back and saw that there was a gash on the side of his head, though a quick check revealed no other injuries. We'd left the first aid kit behind, of course, but Tibor had apparently stuffed a couple of bandages in his pocket in case Hansi's dressings needed changing, and he held one out to me. But before I could put it on Stefan gave a groan and opened his eyes.

"What are you doing here?" I asked him. "Why didn't you go home?"

"I couldn't go home wearing a Star of David, could I?" he said, managing a weak smile. "And… I got a short way into the tunnel that led back home, and then I thought about what we said to each other last night, how life back home is safe and dull and pointless, and how being with you for two months has been the only part of my life that meant anything. And then I realised that I couldn't let you go."

He sat up and took off his bag, and inside was his water bottle. He handed it to me and I used a little water to wash the blood off his head before applying the bandage.

"So," he continued, "I decided to carry on with the adventure and stay with you. After all, I knew that you could never go back to your world now, so you need someone sensible to keep you out of trouble in this new world."

"What happened to your head?" I asked. "I mean, getting blown up in a collapsing tunnel doesn't seem very sensible to me."

"I was already in the hut when the tunnel blew up. I think it was a piece of wood from the trapdoor that hit me. I got dizzy for a moment and fell over, but I'll be fine now. And wanting to stay with someone you love seems completely sensible to me."

He got to his feet and hugged me hard, and the rest of the boys cheered and clapped – I think Stefan had actually forgotten that they were there when he made that very public profession of love. But it was obvious that they were entirely supportive. I wondered if that would be true of the rest of the population of this new world.

Stefan took the compass (so I'd been right about that!) out of his bag and pointed off in a direction not too far from the one I'd been about to take before he appeared. "Someone ought to scout ahead," he said. "If this world is hostile we shouldn't just walk off blindly. Did anyone bring a rifle with them?"

Nobody had – they'd just dumped them in the office and run. But Stefan and I were still wearing our pistols, even though mine was not loaded. This meant that between us we had two handguns and ten bullets.

"Stefi, I don't think guns are the answer," I said. "We're not equipped to fight a war – even with time to prepare and grenades and petrol bombs we still got chased out of the hall in about two minutes. Out here in the open… let's just go and see what happens. And if the natives are hostile, I think we should just surrender."

Stefan didn't seem too keen on the word 'surrender', but the rest of the boys were nodding in agreement: clearly they'd seen all the fighting they wanted to see.

So we didn't bother with an advance scout after all: instead we just kept together. But before we left the hut we removed the front door – one of the hinges was hanging off, and the other responded to Stefan's little screwdriver – put the mattress from the bunk on top of it and used it as a stretcher for Hansi. We all took a turn at helping to carry it – with one on each corner it wasn't too heavy.

It didn't take us too long to find our way back to the road. The tarmac here was jet black rather then the usual grey, and when we touched it it seemed almost sticky, but it was a road, and that meant civilisation. So we started to follow the road in the direction of Kintzheim – it was easier to carry Hansi on a tarmac road than it would have been following another track through the woods down to Orschwiller.

After a kilometre or so we stopped for a rest. Once again we had no food and no water except what was in Stefan's bottle, but this time we didn't care: we were so glad to be alive that such minor discomforts seemed unimportant. I checked on Hansi and found that he seemed to be breathing steadily, so it looked as though the chest wound hadn't punctured the lung, though I was still concerned about blood loss, and so after we had rested for about fifteen minutes I said that we should keep moving until we found a telephone or some other means of summoning help.

So we kept moving, and to my delight we finally reached a point where I could see rooftops: there was a village ahead.

"I'm going to run ahead and try to get someone to call for help," I said. "I hope someone here speaks a language I can understand – if not I'll mime, or something."

I started to jog down the road, but before I got more than twenty metres [60 ft.] I saw a party of cyclists heading towards us. I stopped and waited for them.

"Bonjour!" I greeted them, once they reached me.

"Sorry," said the leading rider, a boy a little older than me. "I'm just visiting, and my French is pretty feeble. I don't suppose you speak good English, do you?"

"I definitely speak English," I replied. "Look, I know this is going to sound like a really stupid question, but what country is this?"

The half-dozen cyclists looked at each other and laughed.

"You're right," said the leader, "it is a stupid question. This is Europe, of course – where did you think you were?"

"Europe?"

"Yes, Europe. This little bit of it is called the State of Elsass, but it's all Europe."

"Okay. And what year is it?"

"Hey, look, you haven't escaped from the local asylum, have you?"

"No. We've been… away, that's all. So, what's the date?"

"It's Friday August 28^th. 2009, before you ask."

"Thank you! Now… we've got a couple of injured kids here and we need medical help. Can one of you ride back into the village and call for an ambulance?"

"I can do better than that," said the leader, and he pulled a small mobile phone from the pouch around his waist and hit a couple of keys.

"Yes, hello?" I heard him say. "I've got some kids up here with me who need medical assistance… what's wrong, exactly?" he asked me.

"Bleeding – a couple of shrapnel injuries," I told him.

He gave me a very strange look but relayed this information down the phone.

"Okay," he concluded. "Have you got my position? Great, thanks."

"They reckon a little over five minutes," he told me. "So, who are you guys?"

"We're the Mad Hintraten Stokers' platoon, survivors of the Grey invasion of the Kingdom of Kerpia and Transkerpia in the year 2762," I told him. "Actually, my name is Jake Stone and I'm from England. These are my friends."

"Oh, right – have you been playing some sort of role-playing game up there?"

"Not exactly. So what about you? What are you doing here?"

"We're on holiday. We're staying at the camp-site in Schlettstadt, and today we thought we'd ride up and have a look at the castle. My name's Colin Jordan. Maybe when you've got your friends sorted out you can drop in and see us – later this afternoon, perhaps?"

"Okay. Then you can fill us in a bit on how things work around here."

"Right. Hey, what's that symbol round your neck?"

My swastika was showing again, and the fact that he didn't know what it was showed that, once again, history was different round here.

"I think it's a Hindu symbol," offered one of Colin's friends.

"Hindu?"

"Yes – you know, it was one of those old-time religions way back when – from out East somewhere, I think. India, or somewhere like that. We studied them in history a couple of trimesters ago. Except… I think this one's the wrong way round."

"Oh." Colin didn't seem very interested.

"Do you recognise this one?" asked Stefan, stepping forward and displaying the Star of David.

"Yes, of course. That's the Jewish symbol. That's one of the old religions that's still around, so I'd reckon everyone will know that one. Got any more?"

But the Kerpians came from a secular society, and so none of them was wearing any sort of religious symbol. And at that point the ambulance arrived. It looked pretty much like an ordinary ambulance – it even had the word 'Ambulance' stencilled on it – though the fact that the crew spoke English was a little more unexpected. They examined Hansi, had a quick look at Markus's arm and then said they needed to get Hansi into hospital to control the bleeding and to check properly for other damage.

"Where are you taking him?" I asked as they loaded him aboard.

"To the hospital in Schlettstadt. Do you have his parents' address?"

"He's an orphan," I said. "And he doesn't speak English. Can you take Markus – the boy with the arm injury – as well? He doesn't speak English, either, but it'll be easier for Hansi if there's someone he can talk to when he wakes up. We'll get there as soon as we can so we can translate."

So they drove off with Hansi and Markus aboard. Colin told me where the campsite was and then rode off with his friends, and the rest of us carried on down the road to Kintzheim.

I went into a shop in the village and asked if the shopkeeper could let us have a bottle of water. I tried paying in Euros, but the shopkeeper had never heard of that currency, and the same went for Sterling. I didn't even bother asking about Reichsmarks – if nobody in this world knew what a swastika looked like I thought it was a certainty that they wouldn't accept Nazi currency. In the end the shopkeeper gave me a couple of bottles on credit, which I thought was pretty decent: I didn't think that would happen in too many places back in my own world.

We walked on down to Schlettstadt and found it looking a lot better than on my last visit, when it had been called Sélestat and had been inhabited only by corpses. This town looked modern and clean, and all the cars seemed to be electric powered, rather like the ones in the Grey world. We asked where the hospital was – everyone seemed to speak English – and received helpful directions, and when we got there nobody seemed too put out at having a crowd of young boys dressed in tatty uniforms (and one in a little blue dress: Oli had been wearing his dress under his uniform, and had wasted no time in dumping the military kit – except for his hat, of course – as soon as we were out of the hut) walk into the reception area.

We had to wait for quite a while, but eventually a doctor came out to see us.

"The chest wound was only superficial," he told me, "but there was a nasty piece of jagged metal in his hip. What happened?"

"It was a grenade," I explained. "We were in a fight… look, I suppose we need to report to the authorities, or something, because we need to explain who we are and try to find out what to do next. Is there a police station around here?"

"Not close by – it's on the other side of the railway, in the town centre. Look, I'm off duty in half an hour, and I admit I'd be really interested to learn how you managed to get into a battle when there hasn't been a war anywhere on the planet in thirty years – so if you'd like to wait you can tell me your story and then maybe I'll be able to advise you on where to go next."

And maybe you'll just call the local loony bin to come and collect us, I thought. But aloud I said, "Thank you, Dr…?"

"I'm Doctor Feldela," he told me.

"I'm Jake Stone – or Stone Jake, if you do it that way round in this country."

"Personal name, then surname," the doctor told me. So apparently I was back to being Jake Stone.

When he returned half an hour later Markus was with him, though the doctor said it would be better to keep Hansi in overnight to make sure his blood pressure was back to normal and to give him a chance to rest his leg. When I translated this Tibor insisted on staying with him so that Hansi wouldn't wake up alone in a strange land, and the doctor said there would be no objection to that. So he took Tibor through to Hansi's room and then came back to Reception, collected the rest of us and took us to a fast food restaurant that served Frankfurter-type sausages and small disc-shaped fried potatoes. We all ate hungrily.

"Doctor, this is very kind," I said, "but one of our problems is that we haven't got any money. So I don't know when we'll be able to pay you back."

"Oh, money isn't important," he replied, which I thought made this a very peculiar world indeed. "So – where exactly do you come from?"

I took a deep breath. "I come from England; Stefan comes from a world where this place is part of Germany; Alain and Oli come from a world where it's part of France; and everyone else comes from a world where this is part of… I suppose it would be Hungary."

I sat back and waited for him to summon the men in white coats, but instead he said, "Uh-huh. And how did you get here?"

"There was a place up in the Vosges where the people of the Hungarian world had found a way to travel between different versions of reality, or different versions of history. I stumbled into it by accident, then I found Stefan, and since then we've been moving between worlds and collecting friends as we went. But there was a problem: a hostile race found the place where you can move between worlds – it's called a Nexus Room – and invaded, and it was while we were escaping from them that Hansi and Markus got hurt."

Listening to what I was saying I was tempted to call the fruitcake farm myself, but once again the doctor seemed unperturbed.

"So you found a parallel interchange," he said. "I'd heard there was some research being done into that, but I had no idea it was actually possible. Can you show me where this place is?"

"Well, I can show you where it was. It's gone now, though – the power failed and the whole place blew up. So we can't get home, which is why we need to find out what's going to happen to us now."

"Maybe it's as well it has gone if there are violent people on the other side," said the doctor.

"You mean, you actually believe me? I thought you'd reckon we were all insane!"

"Well, I did wonder. But after hearing your friend with the injured arm speaking – it's clearly a proper language, but not one I can recognise – and examining their injuries, which are consistent with grenade explosions, I have to accept that this is possible. And, like I said, I know that this sort of movement between realities is theoretically possible. And somehow you don't look like a fantasist, or sound like one, either. So, yes, I think I believe you.

"As for where you go from here… we'll have to speak to the proper authorities, but I'm sure it will be possible to find you a place in a Youth Residence somewhere. And once you are able to start studying again you'll start to earn some credits, and that will give you some independence. Er… you do use computers in your world?"

"Yes – well, all of us except Alain and Oli. But the problem is going to be the language: Stefan and I are the only ones who speak English. Which is a point: how come everyone here speaks English? This is a part of France… or Germany… isn't it?"

"No it's a part of Europe. Europe is a single country in this world, and English and French are the common languages – French for historical reasons, of course, and English because it's the language the non-European world uses for trade. It is true that there are several different states in Europe, and each state has its own language, so everyone here speaks Elsassisch. But we can all speak French and English, and here in Elsass we mostly speak German, too. And it won't be too hard for your friends to learn French and English: we have a sort of computerised instant translator system they can use to help them learn. And if their language isn't in the database there are specialists who can study it and work out what it means, and then gradually build up a module for it."

"I speak their language fairly fluently," I said, "And so do the rest of us who don't come from their world. They've got a method of implanting linguistic knowledge directly into the brain."

"Now that would be useful! I'm afraid we haven't got anything like that, though, so it will mean study. But I'm sure you and the others can help them. Now if you would excuse me a moment I'll see about finding you somewhere to stay tonight."

He pulled out a mobile phone and started to talk to someone in a German dialect that I couldn't begin to follow, though Stefan told me he understood some of it: it was, he said, the local version of German. The Party didn't really approve – it wanted everyone to speak proper High German – and so Stefan had never learned the local dialect himself, though some of his friends at primary school had used it.

It took Dr Feldela three calls, but after the third one he told us that he'd found us a community hall we could sleep in tonight, and that one of his friends was trying to find us somewhere permanent in one of the other towns and cities in the state.

"Thank you very much," I said. "Look, there are a couple of other things we need to know – about culture here, mainly. See, a couple of my friends… well… look, what's the attitude to sex in this country?"

"What do you mean, exactly?"

"Well… if two boys wanted to… to do things together, would they get into trouble?"

"Oh, I see! No, not at all. It's perfectly normal, and everyone recognises it as such. Obviously boys shouldn't get girls pregnant at your age, and of course you're not allowed to make anyone do something he or she doesn't want to, but apart from that it's your business and nobody else's."

"Great!" I caught myself and tried to rein in it a bit. "That is, um, Tibor and Hansi will be pleased to hear that. And the other thing is that none of us have got any papers – well, none that would be recognised here, anyway. Is that going to be a problem?"

"Not really. You'll be asked to attest formally as to how you got here, and after that you'll be classed as refugees – not that we've had any of those in this country for over twenty years – and issued with some new papers. And after that you'll be full members of the community. But don't be surprised if a lot of scientists and similar types want to talk to you about the parallel interchange, though – they're bound to want to learn anything you can tell them about it."

"It won't be much, I'm afraid: we saw some technical stuff on the computer at the Hub, but neither of us understood a word of it."

"Oh, well, I'm sure they'll still want to see you. Now if you'd like to come with me I'll take you to where you'll be staying tonight."

He took us outside the hospital. Along the front of it there was a row of tram stops, and he took us to one of these and subsequently onto a number 4 tram. We changed trams in the town centre and got onto a number 6, and this took us out towards the southern edge of town. And on neither journey did the doctor seem to make any payment, and nor was there a conductor on the tram.

"How are you paying for the tickets?" I asked him, just before we got off the second tram.

"Pay? You don't pay for tram rides – they're free. It means that most people don't need individual transport at all – the public transport network covers the country well enough for most people."

"But… how is it all paid for? Does it come out of central taxes?"

"Well, partly, though taxes here are fairly low. I think it would take too long to try to explain the economics of our world now, and I'm not exactly an expert, anyway. Just accept that things are different here now to how they were thirty years ago, and how they probably are in your worlds. All you need to know is that public transport is generally free."

I was starting to like this place a lot, though I couldn't understand how you could operate free services without some fairly massive taxation somewhere. But I wasn't going to let it bother me too much.

Once we had left the tram the doctor took us a short way along a street to a small hall. He knocked on the door of the house next door and had a brief conversation with the man who answered the door, and the man then opened up the hall and took us inside. It was quite a small hall, but there was plenty of room for nine boys to sleep on the floor, even if they didn't want to stay close together the way we generally did.

"A friend is bringing some sleeping bags round in a while," the man told us. "And we're trying to find some clothes for you, too, in case you want to get out of those uniforms. Those might not arrive before tomorrow morning, though."

"That's okay – and thanks very much for everything you're doing for us."

"I'm working tomorrow," the doctor told us, "so I can't come with you myself, but if you'd like to come to the hospital in the morning we'll arrange for someone to meet you there to escort you to whichever Residence can take you. Here's my phone number in case you need me in the meantime." And he handed me a card and left.

The sleeping bags arrived shortly after we got there, and although it was still only mid-afternoon we hadn't had a lot of sleep lately and several of the boys just wanted to go straight to bed. But I wanted to find out a bit more about this place, and so Stefan and I asked our host how to find the camp-site and then took another free tram to within walking distance of it.

"What did you think of the castle?" I asked Colin, once we had found his tent.

"Interesting. It's strange to think that there was a time when people had to build massive castles to keep other people out. It must have been scary living in a world where war could break out at any moment."

"Well, the last big war here wasn't that long ago," I pointed out.

"I suppose that depends how you define 'not long ago'," said Colin. "I reckon two hundred years is a pretty long time, myself."

"Two hundred years? Is it really that long?"

"Didn't you do history at school?"

"Well, yes, but I suspect my version of it is a bit different from yours. See, we don't actually come from this world at all."

I thought that would draw howls of disbelief, but in fact his reply had me gaping.

"Do you really come from off-world?" he asked. "I thought the Tammids were the only other race we've met so far, and you're obviously not a Tammid. Which planet do you come from?"

And that was asked totally straight: it was a genuine question, not some sort of sarcastic put-down.

"Well, this one, just not this version of it… you mean, space travel exists here?"

He stared at me. "Of course it exists! Where have you been for the past thirty years?"

"That's a long story. Do you know what…" I tried to remember what Dr Feldela had called it. "A parallel interchange is?"

"Sorry."

"Yes, you do, Col," said one of his friends. "You know, it's that theory that says there are other versions of this world, and that it should be possible to move between the various versions."

"That's right," I said. "Except it's not just a theory, because in the world I was in last it's a reality."

"Wow, you mean you're from a different version of Earth?"

"That's right. Actually, me and my friends are from four different versions of Earth. This is the seventh… no, wait – the eighth version I've been in."

So I told them a bit about the worlds I'd seen, and though one or two of them seemed a bit sceptical at first, the detail – and, of course, the injuries they'd seen on Hansi and Markus – soon convinced them.

"So there's a version of Earth where we're all descended from reptiles?" asked Colin. "That must have been hideous."

"Actually it was a lot like this one – electric cars, buildings with curvy architecture… but the Greys themselves didn't think the way we do, and their view of life is very selfish – sort of 'if you've got something I want I'll take it if I can get away with it'. That's why they invaded Kerpia, to help themselves to the uranium there. So – tell me about the space travel, because as far as I know none of the other Earths I've been to had that."

So they explained that around thirty years ago an alien spaceship had crash-landed in Sweden. And instead of doing all the things Hollywood has suggested would happen, involving things like tanks and nukes and medical experiments, the people close to the crash site had helped the aliens repair their ship and, eventually, depart unmolested. And so they came back, and clearly these were Close Encounters aliens, rather than Mars Attacks or Independence Day aliens, because they spoke to the Swedish government, who were entirely receptive to them, and one thing led to another, most importantly to the giving of the technology for faster than light travel.

"Lucky they crashed in Sweden and not in Moscow or the Nevada Desert," I commented. "I bet things would have been different there."

"Why?" asked Colin, and so I learned that the Cold War had never happened: America was a peaceful farming and industrial country that, like every other country, had no army to speak of, and Russia had been an integral part of a peaceful Europe since Napoleon had conquered it…

Yes, here Napoleon had ruled the whole of Europe, including Britain and Russia, and though the French Empire had gradually reverted to a lot of independent states over the next hundred and fifty years, they all remained in a general alliance, and there hadn't been a war of any sort in Europe since the Revolt of the Two Sicilies in 1843. And that had been put down within a month.

So for the past twenty years the human race had been able to travel far beyond the solar system and so had access to almost unlimited mineral resources. Plans were already under way for permanent colonies on some of the uninhabited planets that had been discovered, and the Tammids – the aliens who had started all this by crashing in northern Sweden – had been able to direct their human allies to suitable places to colonise safely.

And that was why the economy here was so different: humans were no longer dependent on dwindling resources; food could be grown off-world, where whole planets could be given over to the cultivation of crops; and, once the colonies were established, over-population would cease to exist. I didn't understand the economics of it all, and I don't think Colin and his friends really did, either, but the bottom line was that this was going to be a really good place to live. And maybe I would even get to visit other planets in the future, not just different versions of this one.

"When we get back to the hall," Stefan said to me afterwards as we walked back to the tram stop, "I think we should both give Olivier a massive hug and a kiss, because this looks like a truly good world."

"Okay," I said. "Obviously I don't want you to get into the habit of kissing other boys, but I think perhaps this time you're right."

"I'm always right. I nearly wasn't: I nearly didn't come with you. But I got it right before it was too late."

"Yes, you did," I said, and I hugged him hard.

***

Next day our host gave us each a cereal bar for breakfast, which wasn't quite up to one of my sausage and bacon specials, but it did fill a hole. And just after that he presented us with a selection of clothes to choose from: apparently he'd had a phone round several friends and acquaintances for us. Oli decided to keep his dress, but the rest of us found tee-shirts and shorts that would fit, and it felt a lot more comfortable than our uniforms: the weather was still very warm. Radu selected a couple of extra sets for Tibor and Hansi, who would otherwise be stuck with their uniforms. We all decided to keep our army hats, though – we felt they were sort of like a campaign medal, somehow.

At the hospital we found Hansi up and about, though Dr Feldela told him not to walk too much for a day or so to give the wound a proper chance to heal. Also waiting was a boy of twelve whom the doctor introduced to us as 'my nephew Paul'.

"He's going to take you to the Youth Residence we've found for you," he told me. "I'm sure everything will go smoothly, but if you do need any help with settling in, you've got my number."

We thanked him very much and went with Paul to a tram stop and thence to the railway station, and here we caught a train heading south, still without having to buy a ticket. The first station we stopped at was called Hirtengaerten.

"Hey, Oli," I said, "this is where you come from!"

He looked out of the window at what looked like a big industrial estate in the middle of nowhere.

"I'm not sure I'd like it," he said. "It looks different, with all those big ugly metal buildings. Our farm was right out in the country, like this, but at least the buildings were proper ones made of stone. I liked it there – except for when they decided to kill me, that is. Since then I've decided I like being with you a lot more!"

The third station was called Colmer, and although this was a far bigger town than the one Alain had known – it looked more like the one I'd visited, briefly, with Jean-Marie two months earlier – Paul told us that many of the buildings in the centre of town were very old.

"Maybe that part of town wouldn't look so very different to the place where you grew up, then," I commented to Alain.

"Maybe. I think I'd like to come and have a look round sometime," he said to Paul in French. "Will I be able to?"

"Of course – once you've got settled in you can do whatever you want, except when you're studying, of course."

"I'm not sure about that," said Alain. "Studying, I mean. It sounds like hard work to me, and I managed to get through the first sixteen years of my life without bothering."

"It'll be different here," I told him. "For a start you'll have us to help you, and for a second, if we're going to stick together in the future you'll need to work. It'll be a lot easier for you than for the Kerpians, anyway, because you already speak French."

"That's true. And I have to set a good example to my little brother, I suppose."

And he proceeded to set a very bad example by grabbing Oli, tickling him and doing things he shouldn't have been doing – at least in public – beneath Oli's dress. Oli obviously loved it, wriggling and squealing happily. None of us was too bothered, and I was delighted to see that Paul didn't seem fazed by it, either: obviously the doctor had been telling the truth when he said that sex wasn't a taboo subject here.

Two stops after Colmer came Rufach, and as the train pulled out of that station it was Stefan's turn to look out of the right-hand window, telling us that the building that had been his school in his own world was just beyond the main road that ran on an embankment alongside the railway. And about fifteen minutes after that the train arrived at Milhüsa, which was called Mülhausen in Stefan's world and Mulhouse in mine, and here we left the train and took a tram out into the suburbs to the north-east of town.

"This is really close to where I used to live," Stefan told us as we left the tram and started walking. "There's a massive forest out to the east, and me and my friends used to play out there when I was little. And then later our Jungvolk troop did some training out there, too. It was a really good place – if it's there in this world I'll take you and show you."

He switched to French to ask Paul if it was still there, and Paul assured him that it was, getting a big smile from Stefan.

And so we came to the Youth Residence where we were going to live: it was a modern building on the edge of the city, with open country beyond and the edge of Stefan's forest visible in the distance. Inside the director made us feel at home straight away, and any fears I had about being stuck either in a big dormitory, or on my own away from Stefan, disappeared as soon as the director told us that most of the rooms had two beds, but that there were bunks available if we wanted to go three or four to a room. As there were eleven of us I was a bit worried that someone would get left out, but Tibor and Hansi immediately invited Radu to share with them – "After all," Hansi said, "we won't be doing anything you haven't seen us do before!" And I wondered if this time Radu might even get invited to join in.

Stefan and I had a small room on the top floor. The beds started out on opposite sides of the room, but we soon fixed that. And that night we were able just to relax and hold each other without worrying at all about what was going on in the world outside.

***

So that's how we came to start our new lives. I know I'm going to miss my parents, though maybe one day the scientists here will be able to find a way to open a Nexus Room the way the Kerpians did (perhaps the Tammids can help them), and then I might be able to get back to my own world, at least to visit. But here I'm not invisible any longer: now I have a group of friends who have been through some very tough experiences with me and who I know I can rely on absolutely. I've got a chance to have a great life in a world that seems free from most of the problems I knew back home. And I've got Stefan, and with him beside me the future looks wonderful. What more could I ask?

Well, of course I wasn't going to split them up – how could I possibly have done that? As I've mentioned at the end of other stories, I'm a sucker for a happy ending.

The End of Book I

Continued in Book II
THE SECOND NEXUS