David Clarke

The Second Nexus

Chapters 4-7

Chapter Four

In this chapter… actually, it might be easier if I stop telling you what's in the chapter and just let you read it…

I slept right through the night, so obviously our relaxation exercises the previous evening had been quite effective, and maybe that's why, after Stefan had woken me up with a kiss, we both thought it would be a good idea to practise them again. And that kept us occupied for another half-hour or so and definitely got the day off to a good start.

"Well," I said, finally sitting up in bed, "you taste great, but I suppose I ought to see if I can find something for us to eat for breakfast. It could be difficult, though: Greys don't go in for breakfast cereal, or even bread. We'll probably end up with corned beef fritters, or something."

"I think I could live with that," said Stefan, grinning.

We got dressed and went along the corridor, knocking on each door and telling the occupants to be up and ready for breakfast in ten minutes. When we knocked on Tommi's door he said that Sarleth was awake and wanted to speak to us, so we went in. The Grey boy was looking a lot more conscious of his surroundings this morning.

"This small mammal tells me I'm in Hilsstok," he began. "How did I get here?"

"We carried you."

"That's what he said. But why?"

"Because you were hurt and couldn't walk, and I never leave people behind if I can avoid it. Don't you remember anything of the last day or so?"

"Not really. I can remember my leg hurting, and I remember someone giving me something to eat, but I reckon that must have been a dream, because it was cooked and we didn't have any fire in the cave… unless it happened after I got here?"

"It did. You probably need more food today, even after the steak you ate last night, so if you're still hungry I'll get someone to help carry you to the base."

"No, wait – I still don't understand why I've been carried anywhere: I should have been left behind as soon as you realised I couldn't walk."

"Sarleth, we don't do it like that where we come from. We look after each other: if someone is hurt, we help him, because maybe next time we'll be the ones that need help. I don't know how much Tommi has told you, but we're mammals, and we're different from you in a lot of ways. I'm in charge of this party – not that I want to be, but for some reason the others seem to think I can get us out of here… anyway, while I'm in charge we all do things our way. So you don't walk anywhere until that leg is a lot better than it looked last night, for a start. I'll ask the doctor how soon you'll be able to walk again…"

I asked Stefan to go and find Marc, and when the two of them returned Sarleth stared at the curly-haired boy.

"That's a doctor?" he exclaimed. "You really are different – to me he just looks like a child. How old is he?"

"He's twelve," I said. "And he's not really a doctor, but he's the nearest thing we've got, and it's down to him that you're properly awake this morning."

I asked Marc how soon Sarleth would be able to walk and relayed the answer to him: in a couple of days he'd be able to get about using crutches, but he'd have to take it very carefully for a while after that so as not to risk reopening the wound.

"But I still don't understand why you took the time," said Sarleth.

"I know. But maybe you'll learn a bit about us if we're going to be together for a while. Anyway, Tommi will look after you, and I'll make sure someone brings you down to breakfast shortly."

I asked Stefan to get someone to help him carry Sarleth back to the dining hall in the base and then rounded up Alain and took him with me to try to find something for breakfast. And, as I had suspected, we ended up with luncheon meat fritters, though once again nobody complained about it, and Sarleth ate enough for me to think that he really was on the road to recovery.

After breakfast we sat down to decide what to do next. Stefan wanted to take one of the vehicles and get back to the Feldberg, and I thought that would be sensible. There didn't seem to be any point in everyone coming, though, so I suggested that those who were staying in Hilsstok should get plenty of rest, but could also usefully spend some time sorting out equipment for everyone: extra clothes, sleeping bags, water-bottles, and so on. I also suggested that Oli should try driving one or two of the Grey vehicles, getting Torth to help him if necessary: the more drivers we had, the better, and I knew Oli had picked up driving very quickly indeed when he had been given his first chance to operate a 'magic carriage' back in Dead Orschwiller.

I was going to go on the scouting expedition with Stefan and Verdess, who had told us he knew about vehicles and intended working as a driver when he left school. I left Alain in charge in Hilsstok – I knew he had a tendency to be lazy, but I also knew he could be relied upon to look after everyone else. He was sixteen now, and was starting to behave in a much more mature way, though he still looked barely older than me or Stefan. And I told Tommi he was the official Grey liaison between Torth and Alain.

We took the jeep-like vehicle, because I was pretty sure we would have to divert off the road to get around the ruined town halfway between Hilsstok and Grey Hintraten, and I wasn't sure if there would be roads right to the top of the Feldberg, either. We took some water and a couple of tins of meat, just in case, and Stefan brought a rifle along with him, too, though he didn't try to persuade me to bring one and I didn't suggest it myself. I'd had more than enough of guns.

Verdess drove and Stefan and I watched him closely, but it seemed no harder than driving the automatic Peugeot we had used in Dead Orschwiller: there was an accelerator pedal and a brake pedal, and on the dashboard there was a closed handle that served as a gearstick, with a position for forwards, reverse, neutral and parking. Buy the time we were out of Hilsstok I was confident that I could drive this vehicle if I had to.

Getting around the ruined town took a while: we had to drive in a wide semi-circle through fields to the east of the town, and the ground was quite muddy. But there was a four-wheel drive option available, and that was sufficient to get us back to the road.

We skirted the edge of Grey Hintraten and carried on up the mountain, and the road looked as if it had gone all the way to the top at one point. But the entire top of the mountain had been blown to pieces: it looked as if someone had dumped a full plane-load of heavy concussion bombs on the summit, because the road stopped dead at the edge of a crater, and the area beyond was a moonscape of shattered rock and deep holes.

"I'd guess there was a post of some sort up here," said Stefan, as we got out of the jeep and continued climbing on foot. "I can't imagine why anyone would bomb it otherwise. But they've made a hell of a mess – and it's probably ruined any chance we had of finding a portal, too, because I seem to remember that the geography in both worlds has to be the same for a portal to form, and I doubt if the Feldbergs in any other worlds have been smashed up like this."

We walked on to the highest point we could reach. There was no shelter up here at all, and the wind was cutting.

"We can't hang around up here," said Stefan. "Even if there was an outside chance of a portal forming, we'd freeze while we were waiting. I suppose we could huddle up in a bomb crater, but we wouldn't be able to see anything if we did, and it would still be far too cold. And there's no wood anywhere close to hand to build a fire: we'd have to drag it up here from the forest where we first came through. Sorry, Jake, but I think your idea of hoping for a portal up here is a non-starter."

"You're right," I agreed. "It's a pity, but we'll have to come up with something else. Let's go back – and we can stop on the way to see if anyone's found your message. If they have I'd say our worries are probably over anyway."

Stefan had a look round before we left, using a pair of binoculars he'd found in the base stores in Hilsstok. There was quite a good view, but he couldn't see anything moving.

"If the Southern Bloc are coming, they're not coming this way," he reported, as we headed back to the jeep. "So I suppose things could be worse."

He took the wheel himself to drive back to the point where the malfunctioning portal had dumped us and managed it easily: clearly it was no harder than driving our Peugeot had been. When we reached the right spot – and it took him a couple of tries to locate it – he showed me that he had buried a note written in Kerpian, German and English, and marked it by dragging some dead branches out of the forest and forming them into a large arrow pointing at the place where the note was buried. There was no sign that the ground had been disturbed in our absence, so he dug the note up again.

"Have you got the two maps with you?" I asked. "Good. Then take the Kerpian one and draw a line between here and the Vosges above Orschwiller, because that's where we're going next: we can't wait here, but we know the other Hub was on the fault-line too, so we'll go there. It'll be easier to shelter there because the cabin was in the trees, not out in the open, and with any luck it'll be out of the war zone, too. Stick some arrows on it so they know what we're doing and bury it – if they do manage to find this place they'll know where to look for us."

So Stefan did that and then I drove us back to Hilsstok – and it really was no harder than driving an automatic petrol-driven car. The only real difference was that this vehicle was almost silent.

After lunch – a snack consisting of some tinned meat with a few chips (potatoes, at least, were not unknown to the Greys) – I called everyone together in the dining room to discuss what we were going to do. Stefan had found some Grey maps elsewhere in the base, and he still had the one we had brought from home for comparison purposes.

"We can't wait on the Feldberg," I told them. "There's no shelter, and it's been damaged by bombing to the point where we don't think portals could form. So we're heading over to the Vosges: we know there is another place there where portals might form, and it's more sheltered than the Feldberg, too. I want to take plenty of kit with us, especially tents, blankets and sleeping bags – we might be there a while – and we'll want to take lots of food, too. And I think it would be sensible to take more than one vehicle, in case one breaks down. We should have enough drivers…"

I switched languages. "Torth, what are you three going to do?" I asked. "By tomorrow Sarleth should be able to get about on crutches, though he can stay with us for a bit longer if he can't… so are you going to head north to get back to your own people?"

"I don't think so. If we do that they'll almost certainly stick a rifle in our hands and tell us to fight, and that doesn't seem to be a good way to stay alive. So I think we'll stay with you for a bit longer, at least until we're out of the likely war zone."

"Okay. So…" I reverted to Kerpian. "We've got five drivers – I know Verdess can drive and I'm guessing that Torth can, so we can take five vehicles if we need to. Three will probably be enough, though – the jeep and two trucks, I suppose. That'll let us carry all our stores easily."

"We could take a tank," said Oli. "I had a go this morning and it's not too hard to drive – and then if the lorries get stuck in the mud or something the tank will be able to pull them out."

"I don't think so," I said. "I'm sure the tank would be really slow, and then we'd have to keep waiting for it to catch up."

"It's not that slow," persisted Oli. "But there's a lorry you can put it on – then you just unload the tank when you need it. Come on, Jake, please? It'll be fun!"

This was typical Oli, of course: here we were in the middle of a war zone, with no way of getting home and enemy troops likely to arrive at any moment, and he thought driving a tank would be 'fun'. But I suppose there's nothing wrong with looking on the bright side of things, and maybe a tank would be useful if we got bogged down in mud, so:

"Okay," I said. "But only if we can get everything else on the other vehicles."

"Great! Thanks, Jake!"

The next question was which way to go.

"You don't want to keep going along this road," advised Torth. "There's a large town called Var Thelvoss about thirty khirokubs up the road. It's sure to have been bombed, and if not it's likely that our troops will have come back to try to defend it, so one way or another the roads will be blocked and we're likely to be stopped. The three of us will be conscripted to help the defence, and you lot will be locked up if you're lucky, or shot for food if you're not."

That sounded like an experience to avoid, and so I spread the maps out and looked for a way to bypass the town, which was in more or less the same place as Freiburg in our world. It looked as if we could either bypass the town to the north or to the south, but Torth advised us to take the southern route, as we would be more likely to meet Grey troops on the northern side. Once we had bypassed the town we would be able to cross the Rhine – provided the bridges hadn't been bombed, of course – and then it should be fairly easy to cross the Plain of Alsace without going into any towns. I discussed a route with Stefan and Torth and we settled on one that led through the hills to the south of the town and came out not too far from what was marked on the map as a bridge over the river.

We spent the afternoon loading one of the trucks up with supplies: tents, bedding, spare clothes, food (lots of it, including three full crates of tinned meat), medical supplies and (at Stefan's insistence) some weapons, and Oli managed to get his tank onto the back of the tank transporter, and then Verdess showed us how to plug the vehicles into the battery chargers overnight. That, he said, would give all of them, including the tank, a range of what I translated as around two hundred and fifty kilometres [150 miles], well beyond what we would need to reach the Grey equivalent of Orschwiller. Once that was done we relaxed for a while, though Stefan spent some time learning to ride a Grey motorbike, and once he was satisfied that he could manage it he loaded it onto the second truck.

"It could be useful for scouting," he said, and I supposed he was right.

I cooked us all another full-sized meal for supper, and all three of the Greys had some: I guessed they had to refuel a bit after several days' subsisting on bats and mice. And after supper we went back to the apartment block for the night, where I slept a lot better than I had expected to: I had spent most of the afternoon and evening worrying about what we would do if we made it across to the Vosges but then were unable to find a portal, because this was still the only way I could think of to get us home. What if we camped out for weeks until our supplies ran out and there was still no portal? Where could we go then?

But, as I say, I slept fairly well, and next morning I didn't have time to sit around thinking unpleasant thoughts. I fried us all some corned beef for breakfast and then we went to the garage, unplugged all the vehicles from the chargers, settled Sarleth into the back seat of the jeep and then drove out of the base, heading for the hills to the south of Var Thelvoss. Stefan and I went first in the jeep; then came the truck with most of the stores, driven by Verdess and with Tommi riding shotgun (though not literally: Tommi had shown no interest in carrying a rifle); next was the second truck, with Torth driving and Radu and Marc as passengers; and finally the tank transporter with Oli driving and Alain beside him.

Away from the main road there were no houses: Greys tended to congregate in towns, and the scattered hamlets that Stefan told me existed here in his world were absent. This of course helped us, because no houses meant no bombs, and so the roads were clear. We were on the edge of the Black Forest here, but still the roads were quite tricky for inexperienced drivers, and we took it very slowly and carefully. Finally, though, we began to drop down into the last valley – the Munstertal, Stefan called it – that would bring us down onto the flatter country that lay close to the Rhine. The road became straight and flat as we left the valley, and I began to relax, thinking the most difficult part of the journey was now behind us.

Some ten kilometres [6 miles] from the entrance to the Munstertal there was a bridge across the Rhine, and we headed straight towards it, though taking a route that avoided the towns shown on the Grey map of the region. And we reached the bridge without difficulty, approaching it from the north down a road that ran alongside the river. I stopped the jeep just past the turning that led onto the bridge – both Stefan and I thought it would be sensible to have a look at the other side before blindly driving across: after all, the Alsace end of the bridge might already be in Southern Bloc hands.

We got out of the jeep and Stefan scanned the far bank of the river through his binoculars. Nothing seemed to be moving, but there was a fold in the ground on the far side of the river and he wanted to be sure, so he went and unloaded the small motorbike from the second truck.

"Be careful," I said. "I want you back in one piece, so if you see anything you shouldn't, don't hang around over there."

"Don't worry. I'm not going to risk dying before we've…"

He noticed that everyone else was listening and tailed off. Of course, our friends all knew about what we had planned, but that still wasn't a reason to talk about it quite so publicly – and Marc, who didn't know about it, would doubtless want a translation, and the Greys might, too. So I shooed Stefan away, and he grinned at me, started the bike and rode off across the bridge.

The rest of us stretched our legs a bit, and a couple of us went across to the far side of the road and peed into the ditch. Torth spotted us, and at first I thought I was in for another long discussion on how humans can actually use their reproductive equipment to unload waste water, as had happened with Haless and Issin, and maybe that would have happened subsequently. But first he obviously realised he needed to do go himself, and so he headed a short distance down the road to the south of the turn-off for the bridge, to an area where there were some small bushes growing beside the road, and he disappeared into them.

He re-emerged a couple of minutes later and started strolling back towards us. And then there was a bang from somewhere beyond him. I didn't realise what was happening at first, but then there were a couple more bangs and something smacked into the jeep beside me, and only then did I realise that we were being shot at. Torth looked over his shoulder, and as he did so a couple more shots rang out and he crumpled to the ground.

"Get down!" I yelled at my friends. I took a couple of steps away from the jeep, intending to go to help Torth, but the next bullet pinged off the ground a foot away from me and I realised that it would be suicide.

I tried to think what to do, wishing that Stefan was here to make the decisions, but he was still on the other side of the river somewhere.

"Verdess, get the stores truck across the river," I shouted. "Wait for a moment, though…" I switched languages and told Radu to grab a couple of rifles from the back of the lorry before Verdess drove off. At least we'd be able to return fire and make the enemy keep their heads down – well, Radu could: I couldn't have hit the side of the truck. I thought some more.

"Oli, can you get the tank between Torth and the enemy?" I asked. "If we can get him up onto it and behind the turret we can get him out of there."

"Why not just leave him?" asked Alain. He saw my face and continued, "All right, you don't want to leave him. But… wait, Oli!"

Oli had already run back to the transporter and was hitting the quick release levers on the chains keeping the tank on the back of it. Alain ran after him and, to his credit, helped get the tank unchained, and then they both disappeared inside it.

Radu reappeared with two rifles and Verdess started the truck.

"Wait!" I called. "Take Tommi, Marc and Sarleth with you – get them over the river and out of sight!"

Marc and Tommi both tried to argue, but Sarleth of course simply dragged himself to the truck and waited for someone to help him into it, and after a few seconds I persuaded Marc and Tommi to do just that. The truck began to move off onto the bridge. There was some shooting at it, but Radu started shooting back, and I grabbed the other rifle and popped off a few shots in approximately the right direction: I knew I didn't have a hope of actually hitting anything, but I hoped that, with a bit of luck, the shooting might make the attackers keep their heads down.

The tank rolled past us and pulled up just past where Torth was lying. I told Radu to stay where he was and to give us covering fire if he could see past the tank, and I stood up and sprinted to where Torth was lying – now it was between me and the people who had been shooting at me. I dropped the rifle as I reached him and tried to lift him onto the back of the tank. He was unconscious and his head was bleeding, and he could have been dead for all I knew, but I wasn't leaving him behind. But he was too heavy for me.

"Alain, come out and give me a hand," I yelled, and the hatch cover opened and Alain climbed out. And Oli took it into his head to follow him.

There was another flurry of shots from the enemy, who of course could see the boys on top of the tank, and Oli gave a yell of shock, spun right round, fell onto the deck, hitting his head as he landed, and rolled off the side of the tank.

"Oli!" cried Alain, jumping down beside him.

But Oli was unconscious, and his right arm was bleeding and was also, to judge from its unnatural angle, broken. His head was bleeding, too, but when I wiped the blood away I realised that this was just from where he had hit the deck of the tank as he fell.

I grabbed his feet and yelled at Alain to take his shoulders but to be careful of his arm, and somehow we got him up onto the deck of the tank. Alain climbed up after him and tried to get him comfortable, though Oli was clearly unconscious.

"Alain, come and help me with Torth!" I shouted.

"Sod Torth!"

I tried again to lift the unconscious Grey on my own, but I simply couldn't do it. And then the motorbike slid to a stop beside me and Stefan was there at last. He shoved the bike into the ditch out of the way, grabbed Torth's legs and helped me hoist him onto the tank. He climbed up himself and saw Oli.

"I don't suppose you can drive this thing, can you?" he asked me.

"No," I said, grabbing the rifle and handing it up to him.

"Then I suppose I'll have to try to figure it out myself, because otherwise we're all fucked."

I don't think I'd ever heard Stefan use that word before, in any language, and it showed that he really thought things were bad – and when I looked down the road past him I realised why: there were soldiers running up the road a couple of hundred metres away, and behind them an armoured vehicle of some sort.

"I think I can drive it," said Alain, dragging his eyes away from Oli for a moment. "Oli was showing me how."

"Then for God's sake get in there and do it!" cried Stefan, emptying his magazine at the advancing troops. Radu, who had run forwards, dropped to the ground beside the tank so that he was firing from a prone position, as we had practised in Hub Two, and started shooting as well, and the enemy soldiers dived for cover into the bushes beside the road.

There was some swearing from inside the tank, and then Alain found reverse gear and the vehicle started to back up in a series of erratic zigzags. He backed up a little too far and reversed into the second truck, but I was prepared to forgive him for that: in fact I was astonished that the previously mechanophobic Alain had managed to make the thing move at all.

Stefan and I, with help from Radu, got Oli and Torth off the tank and into the jeep, with Oli propped up in the front seat and Torth lying in the rear – and then the enemy armoured vehicle fired, and something whistled over our heads.

"Get the jeep out of here," Stefan told me. "If there are any shells in this thing we'll see if we can shoot better than they can, and then we'll follow you. Now don't argue – go!"

So I jumped into the jeep and started it up, and in the rear-view mirror I saw Stefan and Radu disappear inside the tank. And then I just concentrated on getting over the bridge. At least the enemy weren't shooting at me: they had a bigger target now, which I would have felt happy about if three of my friends hadn't been inside it…

At the far side of the bridge the road dipped down briefly, took a right hand turn and then swung left and followed another bridge across a canal, and on the far side of that there were some earthworks, in the shadow of which I found Verdess's truck. I screeched to a halt, jumped out of the jeep and scrambled to the top of the mound to see what was happening across the river.

Alain had got the tank onto the bridge and was apparently finding it easier to drive forwards than backwards, as the tank was travelling in more or less a straight line. Beyond it I could see soldiers moving, though they were still some way short of the bridge, and the armoured car was there too, which suggested that Stefan either hadn't managed to work the tank's main armament, or that he had missed. But he had found the heavy machine gun in the turret, and he had reversed the turret so that he could spray the road with bullets, preventing any close pursuit.

The tank came off the first bridge and ducked into the dip between the river and the canal, and there to my surprise it stopped. The turret moved a little, and then there was a tremendous crash as the main gun fired at the bridge – and even a complete novice like Stefan could hardly have missed at that point-blank range. The bridge wasn't a very wide one, only one lane across, so by the time he had hit it three times, in virtually the same place every time, it was clear that nobody was going to be able to follow us across unless they could swim.

The enemy armoured car, which had reached the far end of the bridge, stopped and reversed back onto the road, and then it moved off northwards, and the soldiers, after checking the lorries we had abandoned in case there was anything useful in them, followed it. Alain drove the tank carefully across the canal and stopped beside the other two vehicles, and then he scrambled out of the hatch and ran to where Marc was trying to do something about Oli's arm. I slid back down and joined them.

"I can't deal with this," Marc was saying. "The bullet has smashed the bone and there's bleeding inside as well as out. He needs a hospital."

"There isn't a bloody hospital!" shouted Alain. "You'll have to do it yourself!"

"I can't!" Marc replied, his voice trembling. "I can try to stop the external bleeding and I can try to splint it, but I think the bone has broken in a couple of places, and I can't do anything about the damaged blood vessels. He needs a proper doctor."

"Well, at least stop the sodding bleeding, can't you? What are you waiting for?"

"Don't shout at him!" yelled Radu. "He's doing his best, which is a lot more than you could do, so just go away and shut your bloody mouth!"

For a moment I thought Alain was going to hit him, but instead he stood up and ran off beyond the parked vehicles. And I went after him, which in retrospect was bloody stupid, but at the time it seemed like a good idea.

I caught up with him just beyond the truck, but I barely even opened my mouth before he turned on me.

"You!" he shouted. "This is all your fault – you care more about the fucking Greys than you do about us! If you'd got us across the bridge as soon as the shooting started we'd all be fine, but no, you had to be a hero! That Grey's probably dead anyway, so what was the point?"

"And he might not be. I wouldn't have left you behind, and I didn't want to leave him behind, either."

"He'd have left all of us behind without even thinking about it! You and your bloody stupid nobility… if Oli dies I'll fucking kill you, understand?"

"If Oli dies I'll let you. Do you really think I don't care about him?"

"If you cared you wouldn't have let him go where people were shooting at him! And we wouldn't even be in this stinking world if you hadn't wanted to go and get a fucking medal from the king of bloody Kerpia – we were happy in Elsass, so why did you have to drag us all along with you? If you wanted to play the hero you should have gone on your own, not…"

And at that point words apparently failed him and he just hit me, hard, on the jaw. When I came to my jaw was hurting and I found I had a broken tooth, and emotionally it didn't feel any better – okay, Alain was being a bit unfair, but I could understand it. I sat up groggily and saw Alain standing a few metres away, and Stefan was with him. They had their arms round each other and Alain was crying. I got to my feet and moved towards them, but Stefan saw me coming and shook his head almost imperceptibly, and so I went back to the others instead, feeling awful. And things weren't a lot better there, either: Marc was crying in Radu's arms, Oli was still lying on the ground unconscious and with blood all over his arm, Torth was lying next to him with blood all over his face, and Sarleth was standing propped up against Verdess, both of them looking grim even by Grey standards. Even Tommi, who was normally bubbly and smiling these days, looked more like he had the day I found out about what his stepfather had done to him.

And I realised that this shambles really was my fault. Okay, I hadn't been responsible for the portal failure – though maybe I should have mentioned the open tent flap before Stefan pressed the button – but I was supposed to be in charge, and I'd let us walk straight into enemy troops. No wonder Alain blamed me for what had happened to Oli.

At that moment I simply didn't know what to do, and I was even contemplating walking back to the bridge and hoping the Greys would shoot me. I felt worse than I have ever felt, I think, even worse than when I thought we were all going to die in Hub Two: at least I wouldn't have felt half as responsible if that had happened. I stood numbly, not knowing what to do or say.

And then Tommi ran towards me and threw his arms round me.

"It's not true, what Alain was saying," he said, and I realised that Alain had been yelling so much that everyone had heard him. "It's not your fault – in fact, we're all still alive because you sorted things out so quickly."

And Radu and Marc came and put their arms round me too, and at that I simply burst into tears, standing there while my friends held me for… well, I'm not sure how long it was. I don't think it could have been that long, because when I pulled myself together I saw that Marc had left us and was working on Oli's arm, except that now he looked as if he was in better control of himself, too. Stefan reappeared, though without Alain, and went to help him, and soon the arm looked a lot better, with proper splints from the medical kit and bandages. Next Marc cleaned the cut on his head and bandaged that, too, and finally he moved on to Torth, and by that stage I felt up to going to help him.

"I think the bullet just grazed his skull," said Marc. "I can't feel any real damage, though I don't know enough about these creatures to be sure his skull isn't cracked. And I can't tell from his eyes if there's a serious problem or not: in humans if the pupils are a different size you know there's pressure on the brain. In his case the pupils aren't round, so I'm not sure if the same thing would happen. Really he needs an X-ray and a proper doctor, just in case – all I can do is to stop the bleeding."

By the time Torth was properly bandaged up Alain had returned. He didn't look at me, but he did say "Sorry" quietly to Marc.

"I know you're doing your best," he added. "I shouldn't have shouted at you."

"We should be moving out," Stefan said to me quietly. "I don't think the Greys across the river will bother looking for boats to come after us – by now they'll expect us to be kilometres away. And the next bridge isn't until whatever the Greys call Breisach. But we need to get to the Vosges – unless you think we should drop Torth off at a hospital on the way? Only that would mean going into a town – assuming there are any towns here that haven't been bombed flat, that is – and I'd prefer not to do that."

"Let's ask Verdess and Sarleth what they think," I said, and so I went and did that.

"I think we should stay with you for now," said Verdess. "The Southern Bloc will be coming up this side of the river too, if they're not here already, that is, and if they catch us the three of us will be shot or enslaved, and they'd probably kill you, too. And if our own lot find us first we'll end up having to fight, like Torth said. I'd sooner stick with you for now. Except… where are you heading for?"

"There's a place where we might be able to get out of this world completely," I said, "the same way as we came in. That's where we're going. I'd say it's about another hundred khirokubs or so, though we'll probably have to wait quite a long time when we get there, and we might not be able to leave at all… but we're going to try. Are the southerners likely to bomb this area? Obviously we don't want to be anywhere they're going to use those ultrasound bombs."

"I don't think so. This is farm country, and if they use ultrasound beacons or gas they'll kill all the cattle – assuming the cattle haven't already been evacuated northwards, of course. But if they're still here the south will want them, so no gas and no ultrasound. And probably not too many concussion bombs, either."

Well, that was good news, anyway.

Of course we were down to three drivers now, or four if I included Alain's ability to drive the tank. I wasn't sure about taking the tank: there would be plenty of room for everyone in the truck and the jeep. But on the other hand it had already proved its worth, and so even though it might slow us down – the transporter had, of course, been abandoned with the second truck back across the river – I decided to take it.

"Okay, we're leaving," I announced. "I want to get across to the Vosges as fast as possible, and certainly before nightfall. I'll take Oli and Torth in the jeep, and Marc if there's room, so he can keep an eye on them; Alain and Stefan will take the tank; and everyone else goes with Verdess in the truck."

Five minutes after we left the canal I saw some cows in a field, and that made me feel a lot better: if what Verdess said was true we should be safe from bombing. I'd picked a route that avoided the few small towns on the map because I didn't want to have to stop before we reached the mountains. The small places we bypassed looked absolutely normal, and occasionally I saw people moving about, though we also passed close to a much larger town – the Grey equivalent of Colmar – which had been extensively bombed and was now burning, suggesting that the attack had been fairly recent.

The nearest we came to encountering troops from either side was when our small convoy was heading north and a rather larger convoy of tanks went by heading south on a parallel road about half a kilometre [1600 ft.] away. They didn't stop and neither, obviously, did we.

Eventually we drew close to the foot of the Vosges. We'd made quite good time: Oli had been right when he said the tank was capable of a good speed on flat ground. There was no town where Orschwiller stood in our world and no castle on the hill above it, but when we stopped briefly to confer Stefan was confident that we were in the right place. He had his notebook with him, of course, and was sure that he could find his way back to the place where the hut had stood in the other worlds we had visited. We were aware that there would be no hut here because we knew the Kerpians hadn't found this world, but if we set up camp in the same area…

I knew the odds of finding a portal weren't good, but I simply couldn't think of anything else to do. And at least now we were properly equipped with tents and food and warm clothes.

Stefan got Alain to move the tank to the front of the column and guided him along a track that ran up into the trees. The first part of this was quite steep in places, and we had to use the four-wheel drive of the jeep and truck to make it, but after that it levelled out a bit and we followed the contours of a hill for a while. Finally the tank swung to the right into a valley and stopped.

"The hut was up on that ridge to our left," said Stefan, once we had left the vehicles. "It would be better to set up camp here, though: we've got the stream for water and we're sheltered from the wind – and there are enough trees here to give us cover from aerial reconnaissance, too. And I don't think we'd get the truck up onto the ridge anyway."

We set up two tents, one to act as living quarters and the other as a medical centre, and as soon as this one was pitched we moved Oli and Torth into it and got them into sleeping bags. Both were still unconscious, though Marc said that this was probably a good thing in Oli's case, because he was sure that his arm would hurt really badly if he was awake. Marc said he would sleep in that tent too, in case he was needed in the night, and at that Radu declared that he would keep him company. Finally Alain said that nobody was going to keep him away from Oli, and that anyone who tried would have their face smashed it. Nobody tried.

The rest of us put our bags in the other tent, and then we pitched a third one to act as the kitchen store, with a couple of portable gas rings and the various pots and pans I'd rescued from the kitchen in Hilsstok. And I set to work straight away on preparing something to eat, while Stefan and Alain went up to the top of the ridge to scout around the site where the Nexus Room huts stood in other worlds. I was not surprised to learn that there was nothing there.

Both Torth and Oli woke up before we turned in for the night. Torth seemed to be okay except for a headache: he assured me, and I relayed it to Marc, that his eyesight was fine and that his sense of balance was unaffected.

"We'll need to keep an eye on him for a couple of days to be sure," Marc said. "And he shouldn't go off on his own for a while, either. If he still feels okay in a couple of days' time, he's probably not got anything seriously wrong with him."

Oli was a different matter: his head hurt, but his arm hurt a lot more. He tried hard not to complain about it, but it was obviously painful, and Marc had to give him pain-killers before he could get to sleep. But it had clearly cheered Alain up seeing him awake and talking lucidly, though he still avoided me for the rest of the evening.

Next day Stefan organised us into patrols, leaving only Oli, Sarleth and Marc in the camp. The rest of us fanned out, looking for anything unusual: patches of mist, places where the air was hazy, any place that looked in any way odd, and of course any people that might be around, especially if they were humans rather than Greys. And we went on doing that for the next four days, wandering about looking for something that, I was becoming more and more convinced, simply wasn't there. Occasionally we could hear the distant rumble of guns or bombs, and once there was a faint whining noise that Verdess said was an ultrasound device, though one that was at least forty khirokubs away. But nobody came near our camp.

By the second day Torth was more or less back to normal, and by the third Sarleth had joined our scouting parties, propelling himself along quite quickly on the crutches we had brought from Hilsstok, but each day Oli's arm was a little worse, and Marc was having to keep him semi-sedated for a lot of the time. And on the fourth day he took me to one side and said that he was running out of pain-killers. I was glad I hadn't asked for any to help me deal with the pain from my broken tooth – the tooth hurt, but at least I didn't now feel that I was contributing even further to Oli's pain.

"I don't know what to do," he confessed. "I'm scared the arm's going to… well, turn gangrenous, and then we'd have to cut it off. Except I'm sure I won't be able to do that, and I couldn't possibly deal with tying off blood vessels and all that if somehow we did manage to cut it off. I know that in the old days you used to burn everything closed, but I think in Oli's condition the shock would probably kill him. And if he dies Alain will go berserk, and I'm scared he'll blame me…"

"He won't," I assured him. "He thinks it's my fault, not yours. And probably he's right. Just make the pills last as long as you can and tell me when you're down to the last three or four."

He agreed to do that, though I had no idea what we could do after the pills ran out. I thought he was right about amputating the arm: I didn't see how Oli, in his already weakened condition, could possibly survive such a traumatic event. I went and asked Stefan, but he had no answers, either.

"I suppose we'll have to try to remove the arm, then," I said. "But I think I should do it. At least then Alain will only have one person to blame."

"Leave Alain to me. I'll find some way to stop him going out of control. And I think I should do the operation: I'm probably stronger than you, and I could get it done faster than you could."

I didn't want to argue at that stage, but I was determined that if anyone was going to face Alain's grief if Oli died it would have to be me. Though I thought I'd sooner cut my own arm off than have to do that to Oli.

Next morning the scouts went out as before, and as before they came back at midday with nothing to report. Oli was moaning in a sort of semi-stupor and it was doing nothing for anyone's morale, but Marc was trying to ration the last pain-killers, which meant keeping Oli at least semi-conscious.

I tidied the cooking materials away and prepared to head out for the afternoon patrol, but when I came out of the kitchen tent I saw Stefan, Radu and Tommi staring past me. I spun round to see what they were looking at – and saw a bank of mist less than fifty metres [150 ft.] further up the valley.

"Is that what we're looking for?" asked Radu.

I looked around, but there was no sign of mist anywhere else, and I took a step towards it, convinced that it was exactly what we had been looking for. And then Stefan grabbed my elbow and pulled me back.

"Wait," he said, firmly. "If it is a portal, I'm going to scout through it first – after all, there could be poisonous gases on the other side, or it might come out on the edge of a cliff or in a glacier or something. If we all just rush into it we might all die. Don't worry – the guy who found the first portal said it lasted a couple of days, remember? This one hasn't been there a couple of hours yet."

He went and got some rope – no doubt it had come from the stores at Hilsstok again – and tied one end around his waist. Then he handed me the other end and set off towards the mist.

"I should have picked up a gas mask while I was in the store-room," he said, demonstrating that he was actually fallible after all. "I'll just hold my breath and hope for the best." And he grinned at me and strode into the mist.

I moved to the edge of it and held the other end of the rope firmly, fearing the worst. The worst was that something horrible would be on the far side of the portal – a volcano, a radioactive wasteland or a pack of tyrannosaurs, or something similar. The second worst was that this would just be a random bank of mist and that there wouldn't be a portal at all. But when Stefan returned a couple of minutes later he was smiling happily.

"It's a portal, and it's a big one," he said. "And there's a building not too far away, so maybe we can get some help for Oli. Of course, there might not be any people there, or the people might not be friendly, but it has to be better than here, hasn't it?"

"I should think so," I agreed. "Let's get packed up, anyway."

"One more thing," said Stefan. "I think we should take the vehicles. I'm pretty sure the portal is big enough – it's certainly wide enough, anyway. That way we'll have the tank if the natives are hostile, and if the worst comes to the worst we could point the tank at them and say something like 'Sort out our friend's arm, or else!' Obviously it would be better if we don't have to, but it would be sensible to make sure we do everything we can for Oli, wouldn't it?"

That made sense. But before we did anything else I thought I should ask the Grey boys what they were going to do.

"We don't know what's through there," I said. "It could be a world where your people live, or ours, or both, or even another species entirely, and in any case it might not be safe. At least here you know you're with your own race, even if it isn't too good here at the moment. But it's up to you: if you want to come with us you certainly can, and if it's a human world we'll do our best to make sure you're safe until you can come back through again."

They conferred briefly, and then Torth said, "I think we'll come with you. This place is going to be dangerous for ages, and there might be more bombing. And it might be interesting to see another world."

"Okay. In that case, you can keep driving the truck, Verdess."

We cleared the camp at top speed, stuffing the tents and everything else into the back of the truck any old how, and then we jumped into the three vehicles and drove into the mist. And when we emerged on the other side we were in a greener valley which seemed to have been landscaped into a large, semi-wild garden, with shrubs dotted here and there and a track winding along beside the stream. The trees had been cut back in places and removed completely in others, and it made it easy for us to follow the track towards the building Stefan had seen. And as we got closer I could see that there were a couple of people standing outside waiting for us. And they were human, not Grey.

For better or worse, we were in another new world.

Chapter Five

I stopped the jeep just short of the building and got out, and now I could see that both men were dressed in long black robes. The older of the two stepped forward and greeted me – in Latin. I could make out a couple of words – "Pax vobiscum," at least – but since I only studied Latin for two years it would be fair to say that my knowledge of the language was rather incomplete.

"Salvete, domini," I replied. "I don't suppose you speak English, by any chance?"

Apparently they didn't. There was a flag flying just beside the door to the building, and that was of a gold eagle on a red and black background. Eagles to me say 'Germany', so I called Stefan forwards and suggested he try that language, and it worked a treat: soon there was a proper exchange going on.

"We're in the Holy Roman Empire," Stefan told me – actually I'd understood a little of this, too, because I'd spent three and a half months immersing myself in Elsassisch, and the dialect of German being spoken was very similar. "These are monks, and this place is a sort of outpost from their main monastery in Oberehnheim. And the portals are the reason it's here: it was built to help travellers who stumbled through the portals from other worlds. So they've met Greys before – apparently the portal we came though appears quite frequently. Generally this place exists to give the travellers a place to rest until the portal reappears and they can go home – the monks here see it as their duty of hospitality. And now I'm going to ask if they can do something about Oli's arm."

He spoke with the two monks for a bit longer and then called for Alain to bring Oli forward. And the two monks took one look and hustled Alain and Stefan into the building, Alain still carrying Oli in his arms. The rest of us simply waited where we were.

Five minutes or so later the younger monk came back outside. As Stefan wasn't with him I thought we had a communication problem, but I'd forgotten that there was someone in the party whose Elsassisch was a lot better than mine: Marc stepped forward and asked in that language what was happening. The monk spoke to him briefly, and Marc turned to me and gave me a French translation, telling me that the hospitaler thought the arm could be saved, but that he wasn't equipped to deal with it here… and at that point the monk interrupted him and asked me in French if I could understand him. I told him that I could.

"Then I can ask you direct," the monk went on in French. "We need to take your friend to the infirmary in Schlettstadt for treatment – we don't have the equipment here for proper surgery. May we do that?"

"Of course – you can do whatever it takes," I said. "Can all of you speak French? See, the injured boy is a native speaker, and his brother, the one who was carrying him, is too. If they can understand what's going on it will be a lot easier for them."

"We don't all speak French, but enough of us do that we can tell them what is happening. Wait here for a moment – I'll go and tell Brother Gottfried that we can get him to the infirmary."

He went back into the monastery and returned a couple of minutes later with Stefan.

"They're taking him to hospital," Stefan told me. "And they're sending a French speaker with them so that Alain can be told what's happening. And the hospitaler is pretty sure it's not too late to save the arm, too."

"I know," I said. "This brother told us."

"I'm Brother Paul," the monk told me. "And if you'd all like to come with me we'll find you somewhere to rest while you wait for your friend."

He took us into the building. I have to say that it didn't look much like a monastery: it was more like a cheap hotel, with a reception desk close to the door and what appeared to be a lounge to one side, and it was the lounge that he led us into, telling us to sit down and relax. The chairs were surprisingly comfortable – again, I would have expected a monastery to supply only upright wooden chairs, or maybe church pews. But I suppose that if this place catered for lost travellers perhaps the usual rules didn't apply.

"Now," said Brother Paul, "I'd really like to hear your story, because we normally only see a lone traveller, or maybe a couple, who got lost in the mist. And you came out of the reptile world, and we have never seen humans come through that gateway before, let alone an organised party of humans and reptiles, complete with a war machine. So how did you get there?"

"Hold on a moment – you know where that portal goes to?"

"Of course – it appears frequently, and in the early days of our house we carried out short explorations of the world beyond. We did that for each of the gateways."

"Each of… you mean there are more? How many – and where do they go?"

"There are three that appear frequently and another two that are much more erratic. The reptile world gateway appears perhaps every two weeks. There is the gateway to the hot world and the one to the frozen world – those both appear every four to six weeks. And then there are the two that appear irregularly, and not very often: one to a world of machines, and one to a green world, though we know little about these because we dare not explore them in case we are cut off when the gateway fails. We have never had a visitor from the green world, so we know nothing of that one at all. But you have not answered my question – how do humans and reptiles come to be travelling together?"

"Well, we shouldn't have been in the reptile world at all: we went there by accident. See…" And I explained what had happened, how we were travelling home from Kerpia when the portal failed. I didn't bother explaining why we were in Kerpia, or how we had originally met, because I thought it would take too long.

"So there are more gateways in other places?" asked Brother Paul. "And some of them can be controlled by men? That sounds interesting, though I'm not sure if Father Abbot in Oberehnheim would approve: he sees the gateways as the work of God, and not something to be tampered with. Mind you, he can be a little old-fashioned: it took him a long time to accept that the reptiles are true people like ourselves, and not demons of some sort. Those of us who work here have seen enough of them to know the truth, and some of us have managed to speak with them a little, too, even though their language is strange."

"It's not that strange," I said. "Of course, I didn't have to learn it in the usual way… so some of the brothers can actually speak Grey?"

"'Grey'? That's what you call their language? Well, I wouldn't say we can speak it, exactly: we've simply learned a few basic words, like 'rest' and 'eat', which are useful when one of them stumbles through the gateway by accident."

"Oh. Well, I expect we can teach you a few proper phrases, if you like."

"That would definitely be useful. But before that we should get you registered – Father Abbot likes us to keep a clear record of our visitors. So may I start with your names?"

So I supplied everyone's names, though I didn't bother asking the Greys if they had numbers after their names, the way the ones in Haless's world had – I thought their single given names would be adequate.

"Thank you," said Brother Paul. "In a moment I'll show you to your rooms, but first there are a few basic rules we like you to keep while you're staying with us. First, please keep to your rooms during the night, and vacate them at First Bell. Breakfast will be served in the refectory – I'll show you where to go in a moment – and after breakfast you may use this room, or walk in the grounds as much as you wish. You'd be welcome to join us for services in the chapel if you are members of the Roman church, or there is a small prayer room for those who are of the Lutheran or other Protestant persuasion. That may seem strange to you, but although we are a Roman order, the Dekapole – that is the Ten Cities, to which both Schlettstadt and Oberehnheim belong – are Protestant. We therefore cater for Protestant visitors.

"I know that the reptiles follow no known religion, but you others would be most welcome if you wish to join us. Except…"

He had caught sight of the Star of David, which had somehow found its way outside Stefan's shirt.

"I'm sorry," he went on, "but Jews may not enter this house. Really you are supposed to remain in the Jewish Quarter in either Strassburg or Mühlhausen, and we can arrange transport for you to either tomorrow if you wish. But for tonight…"

"Don't worry," said Stefan. "I'm not Jewish. This was given to me by a friend."

Brother Paul looked uncertain. "Forgive me," he said. "I don't wish to doubt your word, but I have never seen that symbol worn by anyone who wasn't Jewish."

Stefan unzipped his jeans and demonstrated that he wasn't circumcised.

"Satisfied?" he said. "Though in any case I can't see the problem with admitting Jews. They follow the same God, don't they?"

"The Jews have rejected Our Lord!" declared Brother Paul. "It is one thing to accept travellers who have no god, but we may not admit those who have actively rejected the one true God. In any event, you aren't Jewish, so we needn't worry ourselves about it. So, the other rules are simple: don't make too much noise – there are brethren here engaged in contemplation and prayer at all times – and abstain from sins of the flesh while you are here. I'm thinking more of the reptiles in your party when I say that – they have unconventional practices at times. Perhaps you could ask them not to indulge while you are here. Now if you'd like to come with me I'll show you your rooms."

He took us further into the building, up some stairs and along a corridor that had doors all the way along, like in a hotel. But when I saw the room I was going to be staying in I decided that maybe it was more like a prison than a hotel: the room held a narrow bed, a small desk, an upright chair and a very small wardrobe. At the far end another door led to a room containing a shower, a toilet and a tiny washbasin. There was a narrow window at the end of the room next to the desk, with a view of the forest, and there was a plain wooden cross above the bed. And that was all there was – no TV and no radio, though I did subsequently discover a copy of the Bible in the desk drawer. It was in German, so I wouldn't have been able to make much of it even if I'd felt like reading it.

We moved our bags into our rooms, and then Brother Paul took us to the refectory, which was on the ground floor, and told us that supper would be served there when the Third Bell was sounded – which, he told me when I asked, would be at around six-thirty. First I went and spoke to the hospitaler and got the remains of my tooth pulled – he said it was loose already, and pulling it out was the best way to deal with it. That took all of five minutes, which still gave us around four hours to kill, so Stefan and I went for a walk around the grounds.

"I didn't like that bit about sins of the flesh," I said. "I'm not sure if I'll be able to resist, especially with you being right next door…"

He smiled at me. "I'm glad you feel like that," he said. "But… I don't know, maybe we ought to keep to their rules, at least until Oli is back with us. There's a camera in the corridor, or didn't you notice? And that means that if we start slipping into each other's rooms they'll know about it, and I don't think we should do anything to annoy them until Oli is back to normal. Besides, there's barely room for one person to sleep in those beds, never mind two. We can always sneak off into the woods if we want to do anything we shouldn't."

"Yes, but it's cold outdoors."

"It is, isn't it? I hope the vehicles will be okay if we're not going to use them for a few days. Perhaps we should check."

"Surely they're built to survive being outdoors?" I said. "These are army vehicles, after all."

"True, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to be sure. Come on." And he grinned at me and headed off to where we had parked the vehicles.

He declared that the truck and jeep would probably be fine but that the tank was a bit more of a worry, because it used a much bigger battery than the other vehicles, and we could hardly push-start it if the battery went flat. He grabbed a couple of blankets from the back of the truck and strode on towards the tank.

"Come on," he said, raising the hatch and dropping down inside. And I followed him in – in any case I was curious to see what it looked like inside. And I still didn't get it until he closed the hatch after us and spread one of the blankets out on the floor.

"I shouldn't think anyone will interrupt us here," he said. "'Just remember to mind your head if you stand up."

There wasn't a lot of room inside: there was a place for the driver on one side at the front, a place for a gunner next to him, and a couple of tip-up seats behind them for the remainder of the crew. Where we were was underneath the main armament, and Stefan was right to point out that if you stood up too quickly you'd probably brain yourself on the breech. The back of the tank was largely taken up with the batteries – two of them, extremely large ones – and the shells for the main gun. There was just about enough room under the gun for the two of us to lie down side by side.

It wasn't particularly warm to start with, but because this was a Grey vehicle and Greys don't function well in cold conditions there was a heater in the main compartment, and once Stefan turned this on it soon became more comfortable. He also turned on a light so that we could see what we were doing, because with the hatches all closed to keep out the cold it was very dark in there.

That floor was very hard, though, and so after a couple of minutes Stefan ran back to the truck and returned with a couple of sleeping bags, and lying on top of those it was a lot more comfortable.

"So," he said, once the heater had done its job, "about those sins of the flesh you mentioned: what did you have in mind?"

"Well, we could just try taking our clothes off and see what happens."

So we did that, and then we wrapped the other blanket around us, turned the light off again – it was sort of fun being together in the dark – and cuddled for a bit, and that led us to doing other things…

There was no doubting that Stefan had rather more hair now than he had when we first met some five months previously. I mean, I'd seen him undressed several times in the meantime, but now that it was just my fingers doing the exploring instead of my eyes I was aware that it was thicker. I suppose my hair had grown a bit too, come to think of it… anyway, running my fingers through Stefan's hair felt nice, and when I moved from his hair to his erection, that felt even nicer.

I started to wriggle down, but the space wasn't big enough, and so instead I reversed my position so that my head was in line with his feet and then wriggled the other way, and this time there was enough room. I'd never tried sucking this way round, but it seemed to work perfectly well, to judge by the noises Stefan was making. And then, while I was still sucking him, I suddenly felt my own erection engulfed in his mouth, and I was so shocked that he was lucky I didn't bite him.

Until now we'd never considered doing it to each other at the same time: instead we'd always taken it in turns. Now I found out what we'd been missing. It felt amazing, and the only problem was that we both got too excited too quickly.

"You know," Stefan told me when I'd finally stopped writhing against him, "you've got a lot more sperm now than you had last summer: I reckon you could mark two or three doors if we were down in the Nexus room. Of course, I could mark ten or eleven…"

"You wish. Next time we'll leave the light on in here and check out exactly how much we've both got, because I reckon I've caught you up."

He gave a splutter of laughter and wriggled round so that we were facing the same way again, and then he pulled the blanket back over us and hugged me. And I hugged him back, and we held each other until we had recovered enough to start again.

We were in the tank for most of the afternoon, doing things both manual and oral, though we still held off from doing what we had planned for December 12^th – even though in one way it would have been interesting for our first experience to have been in a Grey tank parked outside a monastery, we still wanted to wait until we were home and in our own bed once more.

And after we were both too spent to do anything else Stefan turned the light on and we just cuddled some more.

"Do you think Alain will forgive me?" I asked.

"There's nothing to forgive, and I'm pretty sure Alain knows that. He's just terrified of losing Oli, exactly the same as I would be if it was you who had got shot, and you don't think straight when you're in that frame of mind. Once Oli has recovered Alain will be fine."

"I hope so. I know if I lost you I wouldn't want to go on living."

"Hey, don't talk like that! First, you're not going to lose me, but second, even if you did you'd survive – and eventually you'd find someone else and be happy. "

"No, I wouldn't. I've no idea how I survived thirteen years without you, and I don't want to try carrying on without you."

"Look, I don't want to think of you killing yourself if anything happens to me. Even if you don't think you'll meet someone else, there are other things you could do with your life. Perhaps you could join a monastery – I'm sure Brother Paul would appreciate your ability to speak Grey."

"He wouldn't appreciate the fact that I haven't got a foreskin, though. It sounds positively medieval here, making the Jews live in a ghetto in Strasbourg or Mulhouse…" I broke off, but of course the damage was done.

"It wasn't just in the Middle Ages, Jake. There were Jewish ghettoes in the Reich before the Jews were sent to the east and…"

"Okay, Stefi, we don't need to go there again," I interrupted. "Let's just say that I won't be advertising my origins to Brother Paul and his colleagues, and then we can forget all about ghettoes and go somewhere else instead. You heard what he said – it looks as if we have a choice of portals here, so where do you think we should go next?"

"I don't like the idea of a frozen world much, and the portals to the world with the machines and the green one sound a bit too erratic. I think maybe we should try the hot one next – as long as it's not too hot, of course – because if we don't find another one going back home there we can always come back here. We'll have to ask Brother Paul how hot is hot – if we're talking about the inside of a volcano we'd probably do better to wait until the one to the machine world appears again, even if that's a long time off. Maybe a world with machines will be advanced enough to have its own portal system."

"If the hot one is just warm I think I'd like to try that – it would make a nice change from the weather round here."

"And it would be a good idea not to stay here too long anyway, just in case the people here dislike Jews enough to do more than just putting them in a ghetto. We'll have to make sure we tell Radu and Marc to keep their clothes on in public, too, just in case the Brothers think they're Jewish."

"I don't think they do a lot of running about naked," I said. "At least, not when the weather is like this. I will make sure they all stick to their own rooms, though – that way there shouldn't be any danger of them being caught without their trousers on."

We lay quietly for a while in each other's arms, and when we finally emerged – and we only left the tank because we were in danger of missing supper if we hadn't – I felt a lot better. Stefan turned off the heater and light so as not to drain the battery, though we left the sleeping bags and blankets where they were: we both thought we'd be using the tank again if we were going to have to stay here for any length of time.

Supper was basic but edible – a piece of chicken accompanied by some unexceptional vegetables, and it really needed a proper sauce… but it was hot, and that was the main thing. The Greys didn't join us for the meal: apparently they had recovered sufficiently for their usual three-day eating pattern to have reasserted itself. Before the meal the older brother we had met on arrival stood up and gave a brief blessing in Latin, and during it another brother read a passage from the Bible. As it was in German and I have no knowledge at all of the New Testament I was unable to make anything of it.

After the meal I told everyone I wanted to talk to them in the lounge next to the entrance, and when we got there we found the Greys already there. I explained to everyone, first in Kerpian (and today Stefan translated for Marc) and then in Grey, that we were going to be staying here until another portal was available, and that I wanted everyone to abide by the house rules and stick to their own rooms at night. The two older Greys seemed a little disappointed – I suppose Sarleth was well enough now to resume playing the female for them – but they agreed, all the same. Afterwards I impressed upon Radu and Marc that they should be particularly careful, explaining why, and they said they'd be sure not to let anyone see them undressed.

It was only about nine o'clock when Brother Paul came and told us that we should go to our rooms.

"We keep the old monastic hours here," he said, "and that means that breakfast is likely to be earlier than you are used to. You'll be woken in time to wash before breakfast, but I would advise you to go to bed now or you won't get enough sleep."

So we went to our rooms, and that bed was very narrow and very hard, but I managed to get to sleep in the end. And in what seemed to be no time at all a bell rang – in my room, I thought, because it was very loud, but on further investigation later I found a small speaker built into the wall above the door – and I managed to drag myself out of bed and stumble to the washroom. The water in the washbasin was cold, which certainly woke me up but didn't encourage me to try a shower. I washed and dressed, and was just doing up my shoelaces when the door opened and Brother Paul looked in.

"Oh, good, you're up," he said. "Can I leave you to rouse your friends? Breakfast will be in the refectory in ten minutes – and don't be late, because we have to be at Prime shortly afterwards and we have to clear everything away before we go to the chapel."

I went down the corridor, knocking and putting my head around each door. Stefan was already up and dressed; Radu's room was empty but I could hear his shower running; Marc was just in the process of pulling a shirt over his head; and Tommi was still lying in bed, and when I told him to get up he made a rude noise at me and rolled over away from me. So of course I went into the room, dragged the bedclothes off him and tickled him, which was easy because he was sleeping naked, a bad habit I had got him into when we had shared a bed in Haless's school. He also had a very solid erection, which he made no attempt to hide from me.

"Come on, Tommi, get up, or you'll miss breakfast," I said, and when he made no attempt to move I picked him up and carried him into the washroom. I ran some cold water into the basin, picked up his flannel and threatened him with it, and at that he succumbed to the inevitable and grabbed the soap.

"You just wait," he said. "One day I'll drag you out of bed when you're all nice and cosy, and we'll see how you like it!"

"If you missed breakfast you'd be sure to complain," I pointed out.

"Well, you could bring me something to eat in bed, couldn't you?"

"Tommi, you are so lazy. Anyway, if I did that you'd get crumbs in the bed and then they'd keep you awake the next night."

"I don't drop crumbs."

"You're not going to get the chance. Come on, Tommi, please get washed – I've still got to go and get the Greys up."

"I shouldn't think they'll want breakfast," he pointed out seriously, starting to wash. "They don't normally, do they?"

"You're probably right, but I'd better go and make sure they're okay anyway."

"Say 'good morning' to Sarleth for me. Tell him we can go for a walk later if he likes – it'll give him a chance to see how his leg's doing, and if he can't manage I can let him lean on me."

"You like him, don't you?"

Tommi shrugged. "I think he's nice. Maybe when his leg stops hurting he'll want to play with me."

"Tommi, you know Greys don't think like we do, and… well, they don't really have friends the way we do. You can't rely on them."

"I know. But I had some fun with Trethar that time, and I think maybe Sarleth would like to have someone to talk to, even if they don't make friends properly like we do. And… well, I'm sort of on my own otherwise: there's you and Stefan, Alain and Oli and Radu and Marc. I'm feeling just sort of spare."

"You're not just sort of spare!" I said, spinning him round to face me and hugging him hard, even though his hands were dripping. "You're our friend, Tommi, you know that, and we all… hell, we love you, okay? You're one of us, the Mad Hintraten Stokers, and we always stick up for each other, don't we? I haven't forgotten how you were ready to come back for me when we escaped from the Hub office, or how you stopped me from running right past the ladder afterwards. You're special, Tommi. Okay, I know the rest of us are sort of paired off, but you mustn't think you're some sort of spare part, because that isn't true! Okay?"

"Okay," he agreed.

"Right. And if you ever think we're ignoring you or anything, come and remind me of this, okay?"

"Okay," he said, again.

"Good. Now finish getting washed and get dressed, and I'll see you in a moment."

I left him washing his face and went to see if the Greys wanted breakfast, finding, as Tommi had predicted, that they weren't hungry. They said they would get up shortly, though, and Sarleth said he'd take Tommi up on his offer of a walk round after breakfast. I went back to Tommi's room to tell him so and found him sitting on the bed in his underwear trying to undo a knot in his shoelaces. While I was waiting for him I found my watch in my jacket pocket and put it on, and I found to my horror that it was only twenty-five to six.

We were at breakfast five minutes later, yawning, and I have to say that the porridge we were served seemed hardly worth getting up for, though the milk that accompanied it was really nice and tasted far better than the usual stuff. I mentioned this to Brother Paul later, and he told me that the monks kept their own cows – which probably meant that what we had been drinking would have been condemned out of hand by the safety-obsessed food industry back in the version of England where I had lived until six months ago.

The monks disappeared as soon as breakfast had been cleared away to say Prime in the chapel – apparently we had already missed Lauds, which had taken place before breakfast – and that left us to our own devices. I was tempted to go back to bed, but I supposed that would probably be against the rules of the house or something, so instead I went to the lounge and started playing chess against Marc, who had brought his own pocket set with him from Elsass.

Most of the others drifted into the room over the next half hour or so – it was too cold to do very much outdoors, and it was still dark, too: at this time of year the sun probably wouldn't rise much before half-past eight.

A little later Brother Paul came to join us and asked if we would like to go down to Schlettstadt to visit Oli – apparently he'd just called the hospital and found that the operation had been a success and the arm had been saved, though the bone was now held together with screws and a metal brace. As there was virtually nothing to do where we were we all said we'd like to go, though Brother Paul said that the Greys should stay here: it might not be safe for them to go into a town whose people had never seen a Grey before. At that Tommi said he'd stay to keep Sarleth company, as long as we promised to give Oli his best wishes.

I hadn't seen much in the way of technology at the monastery: the lights were electric, but somehow you don't really notice those when it's what you're used to anyway, and there was the CCTV camera in the corridor, but still I had visions of being taken to town in a horse-drawn cart or something similar. Instead we were taken through to the other end of the monastery, where there was a sort of miniature tube station, with a one-wagon railcar sitting at the platform. We got on board, the doors closed and the railcar moved off, making very little noise. It reminded me of the Capsule between the two Hubs in the Kerpian world, not least because it started out running through a tunnel. But after two or three minutes it emerged into the open, and it was light enough now for us to see the landscape around us, which seemed to be largely given over to vineyards.

In another five minutes we were running through the outskirts of a town, and again my expectations were not met: somehow the words 'Holy Roman Empire' had led me to expect tall, crooked houses with exposed beams, like the ones in Alain's version of Colmar. Instead it looked almost the same as the version of Schlettstadt we had visited in modern Elsass.

There were trams here, too, and Brother Paul took us on one from the station to the hospital, though this wasn't in the same place as the one we had visited before. I thought the nursing staff would refuse to let us all visit at the same time – in most hospitals there seems to be a limit of two or three visitors – but nobody tried to stop us from piling into Oli's room. He was sitting up in bed and looking a lot happier, and Alain was sitting in the chair beside him.

"Hi, Oli," I said. "How do you feel – is the arm OK?"

"Well, it still hurts a bit. There's a metal rod inside it holding the bits of bone together, though the doctor says I'm young enough that the bone should repair itself eventually, and then they'll be able to take the rod out again. And – thanks, Marc," he added, switching to French. "Alain tells me you stopped most of the bleeding and kept it from hurting too much. He thinks I'd have died if you hadn't been there."

Marc shook his head. "I didn't do much," he said. "Stefan did the splints, and I only gave you pills and stuff to try to stop it hurting you. Anyone could have done that."

"I don't care. As far as I'm concerned I owe you a lot. So, Jake," (back to Kerpian again, so that most of the others could understand), "what are we going to do now? Does this place have a portal system, like the Kerpians?"

"Not a proper controlled one, no. But the monastery is sort of like a natural Nexus: there are five different portals that appear near it from time to time, and they all go to different worlds. Once you're out of bed again we're going to pick one of them and see where it goes – maybe there'll be a way back to one of our proper worlds from there."

"Okay. The doctors say I can probably come home… well, you know, come back to join you, tomorrow. Then we can go and have a look at another world, can't we?" And he smiled happily, and I smiled back, happy to see that our old, optimistic, cheerful Oli had somehow survived intact through everything that had happened to him.

We stayed with him for a little longer. Brother Paul said that we could have a look round the town as long as we were back at the station by half past eleven: he had to be back in time for the next office, Sext, at midday.

"Is there a library here?" I asked.

"Well, we have one at the monastery, though the main one is at the mother house."

"No, I mean a public library."

"Public library? I have never heard of such a thing. What would one do?"

"Well, it lends books to ordinary people."

He stared at me. "What, just anyone? What sort of books?"

"All sorts – stories, mostly, but books that help people to learn things, too."

"Stories? Things that aren't real? Doesn't the church forbid that sort of thing?"

"Well… no. I suppose the church doesn't have a problem with it. After all, there are lots of stories in the Bible, aren't there?"

"Yes, but those are real, and given to us by God! You obviously come from a very strange world. Here the church – well, the churches, because in this area the Lutheran churches form part of the government – decide what can be taught and what can be made available to the people, and in general we limit ourselves to the Bible and the teachings of Holy Mother Church. I believe that the King of France allows secular books in his kingdom, but even there the Church has a say in whether or not such books are permitted: anything unwholesome or contrary to the Law of God would, of course, be forbidden. We have a duty to educate God's children in the right way…"

He broke off and smiled. "I'm sorry, I'm preaching," he said. "I usually leave that to Father Abbot and Brother Prior. But I'm not used to speaking to someone from another world in quite such detail – after all, usually we only see the reptiles, whose language we can't speak properly, or people from the hot world, where they live a very simple life – and there, too, language is a problem. Anyway, there is no library here, though if you want to have a look at ours when we get back you'd be very welcome, though I'm not sure if you would find what you're looking for there: we only have devotional material from some of the doctors of the church, plus a little history. I suppose you might find that interesting…"

He said goodbye and left, and the rest of us stood in the hospital foyer debating where to go. Of course, we had no money that would be accepted here, and that rather limited our options, but we decided to just wander round for a bit, looking at the shops and anything else that might look interesting. We were heading towards the door when Alain suddenly appeared at my side.

"Hold on, Jake," he said. "We need to talk."

And before I could say anything he grabbed my elbow and propelled me down the nearest corridor and through the first door we came to, which turned out to be a broom cupboard. Alain turned the light on and closed the door behind us.

I wasn't sure what to expect: after all, Alain had studiously ignored me since smacking me on the jaw and breaking my tooth beside the bridge over the Rhine. So I didn't say anything and just waited for him to get his words in order.

"How's your jaw?" he said, eventually.

"Okay. Brother Gottfried sorted it out for me"

"Good." There was a pause. "Look, Jake… I'm sorry, okay? It wasn't your fault – none of it was. We both wanted to come when you said you were going back to Kerpia, so that wasn't your fault, and Oli getting shot… that was mine. I should have told him to stay in the tank. You were right to try to save Torth, too… in fact, you were right all the time. It's just… I was so scared, Jake… I think you and Stefan are the only ones who know how much I love him, and I didn't think I could survive without him – and later, after he woke up, he was hurting so much and there was nothing I could do… I've never felt so useless before: when things went wrong for one of the boys back in Columbarier I almost always managed to fix it, and at the Hub I could shoot back, even if I wasn't much good with a gun… I hated feeling like that, hearing him crying and not being able to do anything about it…

"Anyway, I'm sorry I was such a bastard to you, especially after everything you and Stefan have done for us. Are we still okay, you and me?"

I looked at him. "If Oli had died, would you still be saying this?" I asked.

He hesitated. "No," he admitted. "Probably not. But I'd still know it wasn't your fault, even if I didn't want to admit it."

"You can be a stupid bastard sometimes," I said. "Don't you realise that if something like that happened me and Stefan would be there to help you – and we'd need you to help us, too, because I don't know how I would cope if Oli… I mean, you know – you and him are like my brothers now."

"I know. That's why I hope you can forgive me – after all, brothers fight all the time, but even when they do I think they still love each other. There were two brothers in our gang in Columbarier, Achille and Ulysse, and they fought all the time, but they always made it up afterwards. So… are we going to make it up? Please?"

"Well… of course we are," I said, succumbing to the hangdog expression he was wearing. "Come here." And I hugged him hard.

"Thanks, Jake," he said, hugging me back. "I won't do it again."

"I bet you do. I know you, Alain – you often say things without stopping to think first."

"Well, if I do, you can hit me as hard as you like – or get Stefan to do it, because I think he'd hit harder than you."

"Are you calling me a weed?"

"No! I mean…"

"You're right, I am. So I will get Stefan to clout you next time you act like an idiot, okay? Now come on, or the nurses will start thinking we're having sex in here or something."

"I'm not that desperate!"

"I'll remember that," I said, returning his grin and opening the door.

We went back to the foyer. The others were still waiting, so Alain went back up to Oli's room and the rest of us went into town.

Now that I was aware of it I noticed the absence of bookshops, tobacconists – nobody we saw was smoking – and newspaper sellers, though there was a stand near the station selling a single newspaper. It was written in black-letter Gothic script, so I couldn't read it and even Stefan struggled, but when we found a discarded copy in a bin a little later he translated the lead story, which was about a proposed meeting between the Emperor Karl-Franz and the Tsar of Russia, which was supposed to resolve once and for all the status of Poland. The paper clearly considered that as Poland was a Catholic country it belonged inside the Empire, and that the Tsar had only a tenuous claim to its eastern borders.

The rest of the shops seemed rather old-fashioned: there were fishmongers and butchers and bakers and grocers, but no supermarkets; there were clothes shops for men and clothes shops for women, but no large department stores; and there were furniture shops and antique shops, none of which was very large. There seemed to be a single bank, which had a number of branches, and a couple of post offices, and cleaners and repair shops for clothing… but there were no shops selling electrical goods at all – no TVs, hi-fis, DVD players or computers. The closest thing there was seemed to be a small outlet selling (so far as we could see) nothing but lights and light bulbs.

"This place must be really boring," commented Marc. "If there's no radio, no TV and no computers, what do people do in the evenings?"

"Go to church, probably," I said, because there seemed to be no shortage of ecclesiastical buildings in the town. There was no sign of either a mosque or a synagogue, but there were plenty of Protestant chapels and a Catholic cathedral and several churches.

"Well, I'm glad I don't live here," said Marc. "You can't even read a book, unless it's that boring religious thing in my desk drawer."

Of course Marc's home world was largely secular now, so it was perhaps not surprising that he'd never read the Bible before.

"Well, with a bit of luck there'll be a portal we can take out of here before too long," I said. "Until then we'll have to survive with some long walks in the forest – though maybe you and Radu might like to help us by checking that the batteries on the tank aren't running down too quickly."

"Huh? What's the point of that – I mean, we can't charge them up here anyway – can we?"

"Probably not. But I reckon that it would be useful if you two were to spend an hour or so inside the tank every now and again, just checking it over and… stuff… You'll find a heater on the left hand wall, and we've left a couple of sleeping bags and a few blankets there, too…"

"Oh!" Daylight dawned, and a huge smile spread over Marc's face. He whispered in Radu's ear for a moment, and Radu started smiling, too.

"Thanks, Jake," he said. "We'll tell you when we go to carry out our, um, inspection, so we don't both decide to check it out at the same time… perhaps we should have a look at it this afternoon?"

"Okay. It'll be our turn tomorrow afternoon, in that case."

We strolled back to the station. I wondered how long we would have to wait for the next railbus back to the monastery, but it turned out that, since the line between the town and the monastery was privately owned by the church, we didn't have to wait at all: Brother Paul just stepped into the cab and pressed a switch as soon as we were all on board, and after that the train ran automatically, just as the Capsule had done.

The rest of the day crawled by. After lunch Stefan and I went out for a walk, though we kept well clear of the tank. It might have been fun to see what Radu and Marc were up to, but I didn't want them spying on us the following day, and so we politely kept our distance.

By the time nine o'clock came round I was so bored I was not at all reluctant to go to bed. I really hoped one of the other portals would manifest itself soon…

The following morning began in a way that was anything but boring: less than ten seconds after the bell woke me up a fully-dressed Tommi burst into my room and wrenched the bedclothes off, and then slapped a cold, damp flannel into my face. I pulled it away and glared at him, and he simply grinned.

"Told you," he said. "Now get up and have a wash."

I made a grab for him but missed, and he took hold of my balls – like him I was sleeping naked – and squeezed hard enough for me to stop struggling. He towed me into the washroom, turned the shower on and shoved me under it – and, as I had feared, the water was freezing cold. I was certainly awake by the time he let me out.

He handed me a towel and retired to the main room, and when I came out, still vigorously drying myself in an attempt to get warm, he grinned at me again.

"That's what you get for bullying," he told me. "Next time I'll pour a bucket of cold water over you."

"You do that and I'll leave you behind when we go through the next portal," I threatened.

"No, you won't," he said, confidently. "You're too nice to do that."

"I won't be nice if you pour water over me in bed. That would definitely be crossing the line."

I found my underpants and pulled them on. "So how did you get on with Sarleth yesterday?"

"It was fun. We didn't go very far because his leg is still a bit sore, and it was too cold for him really, even though he's got proper clothes now. But we found somewhere out of the wind and sat and talked quite a lot. I told him all about the school and the tests I'd done with Trethar, and he thought that sounded interesting. He didn't believe me when I said there were things I did better than Trethar, though, and he's challenged me to take some tests with him when his leg's better. I think he's nice. And it's okay, Jake, I know they're different, and he's probably not able to make friends the way you and me are friends, but at least it means I've got someone to talk to when the rest of you are doing boyfriend stuff."

I finished getting dressed and we went down to breakfast together, and another slow and not very exciting day went by, although Stefan and I kept ourselves amused in the tank for a large chunk of the afternoon. And when we emerged we found that Alain and Oli were back. They weren't pleased when I told them that they had to sleep in separate rooms, though they cheered up a bit when I told them about the tank. I thought if we all went on using it the batteries would certainly go flat, but at that point I didn't much care.

I spent a little while in the monastery library that evening, though I didn't stay long: almost all the books were in Latin, and I wasn't good enough at that language to read them. And that pretty much exhausted the leisure activities of the house. Still, now that Alain was back with us we could at least play cards, because he'd carried a couple of packs in his bag so that he and Oli could play during the train journey to Temishar and back. He taught everyone to play pontoon and poker, and we had some marathon games that at least kept us entertained for a while. Even the Greys eventually decided to join in, though playing cards were unknown in their country, and teaching them to play gave us something else to work towards – though once they had learned they proved to be good players.

Brother Paul and the others raised no objections, which surprised me a little until I realised that they had no idea of what we were doing – playing cards were unknown here, too, though when I explained Brother Paul said that he had heard that the French court enjoyed such pastimes. As long as we weren't actually playing for money he said he saw no harm in it, but advised us to stop if Father Abbot came to visit.

Another day passed, and it was now Christmas Eve. Nobody in our party actually celebrated Christmas: I'd already missed Chanukah, Stefan had missed Yule, Alain and Oli had missed the Midwinter Quarter Day (though I suspect that they hadn't minded that, bearing in mind that Oli had described the three non-sacrificial Quarter Days as 'boring'), the Kerpians had missed Kerpian New Year, which in our calendar fell on around December 21, the same day as Yule, and Marc usually only celebrated European New Year on January 1. But when the monks invited us to attend Midnight Mass, which they said was one of the two biggest celebrations of the year, we decided to go along to see what it was like. And it was interesting: the music was quite nice, the incense smelled good and all the candles in the chapel somehow gave things an interesting atmosphere. There was no danger of me wanting to convert, but I could see why the monks liked that sort of service.

All three meals next day were rather better than usual, too, but the best thing that happened on Christmas Day came in mid-afternoon, when Brother Paul came and found us in the lounge.

"There's a gateway forming," he told me. "We're fairly sure it's the one to the hot world, but we'll know for sure once it's finished appearing."

He took me into a room I hadn't seen before, and here I found a monk looking at a set of CCTV screens, one of which had a thin mist drifting across it.

"It's in the usual place for the hot world," Brother Paul told me. "The three regular ones all have a different place where they appear; the other two both seem to appear in roughly the same place. One of us will check as soon as the gateway is stabilised, in case it's one we haven't seen before, but if it is the hot one it would be safe for you to cross over tomorrow. The gateway usually remains in place for a couple of days, and you can expect it to reappear in about four to five weeks' time – so if you don't find another one to take you home you can always come back here."

"How do you know there's a gateway forming?" I asked.

"It's the mist. See, usually there's a temperature difference between the air in one world and the air in the other – if this is the gateway to the hot world their air is a lot warmer than ours. And when hot air meets cold air you usually get mist. Even when there isn't a great temperature difference between the two worlds you generally get a bit of mist. And we have cameras aimed at each of the recognised sites, and a couple of others checking elsewhere in the area in case a new one appears, and any time one of our cameras sees mist… well, you get the idea. And we know roughly how frequently the gateways appear, too, and we're about due an appearance from the hot world one.

"Of course, it's not that hot – if it was too hot we couldn't go into it. It's just rather hotter there in winter than it is in summer here, and in summer there it's like being in Africa in our world. But at this time of year it's probably not a bad place to be. I'm afraid we can't tell you too much about politics or anything else because we can't communicate with them very easily, but I expect you'll manage to get by.

"You won't need your war machine – it's a peaceful world, and if you arrive with one of those you'll probably just scare people. You can leave it here – if you don't come back we'll hand it to the Emperor's Guard, or perhaps just drive it back into the reptile world next time their gateway opens and leave it there."

So we decided to take the truck instead, and spent part of the afternoon tidying our equipment up sufficiently to make enough room in the back for seven passengers. I found it hard to get to sleep that night because I was too excited about the prospect of a new world and a possible route home, but eventually I dropped off.

After breakfast we sat around in the lounge until it got light enough to see where we were going, and immediately after Terce, the service which took place at nine o'clock, Brother Paul and another of the monks walked the short distance down the valley, past the point where the portal we had used had been, and on to the new one. They disappeared into the mist, and around ten minutes later they reappeared and confirmed that this was indeed the hot world.

We loaded up the remainder of our gear into the truck, retrieving the blankets and sleeping bags from the tank at the last moment, and climbed aboard. Brother Paul shook my hand and wished us good luck, and the Prior came out and gave us a blessing, which was a nice gesture.

"If you don't return on the next cycle of the portal, or send a message through it, we'll assume that you've found your way home," Brother Paul said. "If you have to come back, you'll be welcome to stay with us again."

"Thank you," I said. "Of course I hope we don't have to come back, but it's good to know there's a safe place to come if we have to."

Brother Paul nodded. "Go with God," he said, and stepped back. And Verdess put the truck in gear and drove us forward into the mist.

Chapter Six

We were aware of the change of temperature as soon as we were clear of the mist: it was like stepping out of a blizzard into the furnace room at the mine at Hintraten. Verdess stopped the truck once we were fifty metres [150 ft.] or so from the mist and we all got out and removed our jackets, scarves, pullovers and so on. We packed all our thick clothing away in our bags. Of course if we found a portal to take us home we'd need them again, but it didn't seem likely that we'd need anything more than a thin shirt and shorts until then. The problem, of course, was that none of us had a thin shirt or shorts: we'd left home in the middle of a European winter and had been dressed accordingly.

Once we'd removed our outer clothing we got back into the truck and drove on. There was a rough track leading from the portal up the valley, and we followed this for a hundred metres [300 ft.] or so until it came to a high fence. There was a gate in the fence, and next to the gate a small hut, and just as we reached the gate a vehicle arrived from the opposite direction. It looked like a golf buggy, though it seemed to be a bit faster than any I had seen before.

Two men in long white robes jumped out of it and came towards us, and the one in front ordered us, in heavily accented German, to stay where we were. Stefan and I got out of the truck and waited, and the man went on in hesitant German to say that we couldn't come in and would have to return to… And then he broke off and stared past us, and when I turned round I saw that Torth had got out of the back of the truck and come to see what the hold up was.

"Jesus H!" the man exclaimed. "What the fuck are you?"

"You speak English?" I asked, and he stopped staring at Torth and stared at me instead.

"Who the hell are you guys?" he asked. "And what's with the dinosaur in trousers? Where have you come from?"

"It's a long story," I said.

"Don't worry, this is a slow sort of country. We won't rush you… but maybe it would be better to discuss it in comfort. Okay, I'm going to open the gate, and then I'd like you to follow me up to St Mary. Don't stop, don't turn off, don't do anything to annoy me – I'd hate to have to hunt you down, and I'd be seriously pissed when I caught you. Okay?"

"Okay," I agreed, and we got back into the truck. The man unlocked the gate and pushed it open, and we drove through it and waited behind his golf buggy while he locked the gate again. Then, while his colleague walked over to the hut and went inside, he got back into the buggy, turned it round and drove off along the track, and we followed him. The track eventually led to a proper road, and that led up into the mountains in a series of zigzags, and at one point quite high up I glanced out of the side window.

"Bloody hell!" I exclaimed – we were high enough up now to be able to see over the trees and out across the plain of Alsace, except that the plain wasn't there: instead there was a vast expanse of water, apparently stretching all the way across to the Kaiserstuhl and Black Forest on the far side of the Rhine.

"That's interesting," commented Stefan. I thought that was something of an understatement, but he declined to elaborate – I suppose he thought we'd get the full story when we reached St Mary, wherever that was.

It turned out to be around fifteen kilometres [10 miles] from the portal. We went through a couple of other small communities first, and then arrived at a larger place. We followed the buggy into the yard of a large building in the centre of town and parked next to it, and then disembarked and waited for further instructions. If the man who had greeted us was surprised to see two more 'dinosaurs' at least he didn't say so: instead he led us into the building and to a room that was just about big enough to hold us all. There were benches around the walls, so at least we could sit down.

"Sorry it isn't more comfortable," said the man. "This is about the biggest room we have – it's actually the changing room for our exercise room. We'll try to find something a bit better, but this will do to start with. So – my name's Emile Schwarz, I'm a police sergeant, and this is where I work. Who are you?"

So I gave him everyone's name.

"Thank you. Of course, that was the easy bit," he said. "Now – what are you doing here?"

I gave him the brief version, which was that we'd landed up in the Grey world by accident and were trying to find a way home, and that the three Greys had come with us to escape the war that was going on in their world.

"Right," said Sgt Schwarz. "I was wondering, because we have an arrangement with the religious bunch at the other end of the tunnel: we try to stop people going from our world to theirs, and they try to stop people coming here. Except of course you're not from their world, and I guess that's why they let you through. But what makes you think you can get back to your home from here?"

"Well, I don't know that we can, but we have to try to find a portal – a tunnel, you called it – somewhere, and we thought this would be a good place to start looking. Normally we'd check around here, and if that didn't work out we'd head over to the Black Forest, because we know there's another area over there where tunnels often appear. Except it looks like that might be a bit difficult… where did all the water come from?"

"The ocean… okay, that's a bit too short an answer. Well, about sixty-five years ago the planet got hit by a large asteroid, and it had the effect of knocking the earth off its previous axis – so all the polar ice wasn't at the poles any more, and so it melted. I'm glad I wasn't around back then, because it looked for a while as if the whole human race might disappear, and billions didn't make it. First there was burning fallout everywhere, then the debris in the atmosphere blocked out the sun for about a year and a half. A lot of species died out completely, and, like I say, so did the vast majority of humans. The only ones who survived were the ones who managed to get into deep and well-stocked shelters up in the mountains. And even they were struggling to find food and fresh water for years afterwards.

"The Americans basically saved the rest of us: they were better organised and managed to secure supplies and animals and seeds and so on in huge bases in the Rocky Mountains. In Asia the British and Japanese, who had been fighting only a few weeks before, combined to build shelters in the Himalayas – the Japanese army had good engineers, and it made sense for everyone to join forces. Other nations did the same thing on a smaller scale. And after it was over and the sun was visible again the survivors came out and started to try to rebuild what had gone.

"And once they got their own house in order the Yanks came and bailed the rest of us out with food and equipment, and the British and Japanese did the same for as much of Asia as stayed above water. Things have been stable for the last twenty years or so: there are plenty of fish, and we can grow enough food to live on, and the Japanese developed a cheap desalination system, which means that fresh water isn't a problem any more either. We have solar and wind power to generate electricity, and here we have some geothermic energy, too. We get by – in fact to be honest it's not a bad lifestyle at all. It's a lot more relaxed than it used to be, according to the old-timers."

"And why is it so hot?" I asked.

"Because we're a lot nearer the equator now than we used to be. When the earth's axis moved it effectively shunted the Tropic of Cancer up to the Mediterranean, which means the average temperature here is about fifteen to twenty degrees – Celsius, in case you use something else [60-70 Fahrenheit] – hotter than it used to be. At this time of year that's nice, but in the summer it gets very hot indeed – in the high thirties [c. 100 Fahrenheit] most days – and we mostly stay indoors during the day. And you'll find that this sort of costume is a lot more comfortable than what you're wearing now."

"That could be a problem, because I bet you don't accept any of the money we've got."

"Probably not. Have you got anything you could sell?"

"Well, we've got a lot of thick clothes, but I'm pretty sure we wouldn't get many offers for those. And we've got some…"

I'd been about to mention our weapons, but then it struck me that this was a policeman, and so probably he'd just confiscate them, rather than buying them. So instead I said, "Food. Tinned meat, mostly. I don't know if that would get us very much, though."

"You might be surprised – we don't have anything like as much meat as there was before the asteroid, because most of the cattle and sheep died. The Americans managed to keep some lines alive, but meat has become a lot more expensive. If you have some proper tinned meat you might find that there's a good market for it. I know a couple of dealers who would probably give you a good price – I'll ask around for you. And you're going to need some money because you'll need somewhere to stay."

"Well, we've got tents," I said. "If you've got a camp site or something we can stay there."

"That will save you some money, then. Let's just wait until we find out how much you can get for your food, and then we'll know what you can afford. If you don't have too much money you can always earn some – they are usually looking for help cleaning fish, for a start. That pays about three dollars an hour, I think."

"Dollars?"

"Yes – everyone uses American dollars now, because we don't have the facilities to keep changing money from one currency to another. It's why we all speak English, too: it's the international language for everyone, even the Japanese – and they say almost ninety percent of their population is completely fluent now. We mostly try to keep our old national languages alive, but only at home, or in those specialist bars where people care about it enough to make the effort. Anyway, if you'd like to go and find me a sample of your tinned meat I'll start calling round for you."

"This is very kind," I said when I got back a couple of minutes later with a can in each hand.

"Not really. If you've got money you'll be no trouble to anyone. If you haven't, you might be tempted to beg or steal or hustle or something, and that would make work for me and my men."

He took the tins from me and peered uncomprehendingly at the labels, which were of course in Grey. "What exactly is this?" he asked.

"Corned beef," I told him. "That one is straight corned beef, the other one is beef and kidney."

"That sounds unusual… wonder what it tastes like?"

"Open it and try," I invited him, so he went and found a tin-opener, opened up and dug a knife into the contents. He transferred a little to his mouth and chewed, and it was obvious from his expression that he liked it.

"I'm sure there's a market for this," he said. "Wait there and I'll go make those calls."

In due course he came back to tell me that he had an offer of ten dollars a tin for the straight corned beef and twelve fifty for the other one.

"And if he's offering ten it means he knows he can get at least fifteen, if not twenty," he told me. "Offer him twelve and a half and fifteen and I'm sure he'll agree. Come through to the office and you can talk to him yourself."

So I did that, giving the prices the sergeant had suggested, and the dealer on the phone hemmed and hawed for a bit and then agreed. "How many have you got?" he asked.

"A case of each," I told him. "I'd have to check, but I think it's about a hundred tins to a case."

"What about a discount for bulk buying?" he asked.

"If you didn't think you could sell them all you wouldn't take them. But… I don't know, I suppose I could go five percent off for cash?"

"Ten."

"Seven and a half."

"Done!"

I took his address and said we'd be along shortly. If I'd known there was that much money in Grey army rations I'd have filled the truck with them, though I supposed we could try stocking up with meat from the butchers' shops in Schlettstadt and then bring it back next time the portal was available… Still, I reckoned we weren't really here to make money.

In actual fact we had more than two cases: there was a third one which we'd been using since we left Hilsstok. But I wanted to hang on to that one – after all, if we didn't find another portal we might have to feed ourselves until we could get back to the monastery, and that might be five or six weeks away.

So I went with Verdess and Sgt Schwarz – who I thought probably wanted to keep an eye on me in case I decided to try disappearing – to the dealer's address. I got Verdess to wait in the truck – there was no point in raising unnecessary questions – and the sergeant and I carried the two cases inside.

"I've brought you a free tin to try," I told the man. "After all, I wouldn't expect you to pay for something you haven't tried for yourself."

And after he'd tried it the dealer seemed even more enthusiastic about the deal, which made me wonder how much he was going to sell the tins for – would it be like expensive caviar back home, where people pay ridiculous money for small tins of the stuff? But then I decided that the price we were getting was good enough: if it was five times the hourly minimum wage it would be worth around thirty pounds a tin back in the land of my birth. If he could sell it for more than that, good luck to him.

Although it was both a Saturday and Boxing Day the shops and, more importantly, the banks, were open. French banks generally opened on a Saturday morning, and Boxing Day wasn't a holiday in most of Europe in my original world, so I wasn't too surprised about this. And it meant that, with Sgt Schwarz along to guarantee that everything was above board, I was able to take the dealer's cheque to his bank and draw cash. In fact there had been a hundred and twenty tins in each case, so I walked out of the bank with three thousand and fifty-two dollars and fifty cents in my pocket, which I thought ought to be enough to keep all ten of us going for quite a long time, especially if we were going to be living in tents.

When we got back to the police station I gave Sgt Schwarz the odd fifty-two dollars as an agent's fee, together with five tins of meat. I don't know if that constituted a bribe or not, but I supposed it would do no harm to have the local police sergeant looking out for us. And he seemed very happy with it.

By the time the shops closed for lunch we'd bought ourselves some more suitable clothes: shorts and tee shirts, and also a long white robe of the sort that the sergeant and most other people on the streets were wearing. As we weren't used to the sun he also advised us to get hats with a sort of cloth hanging at the back to cover the neck, rather like the ones the French Foreign Legion used to wear. And we also bought plenty of sun-block. This all cost rather less than I had expected, which suggested that corned beef really was this world's version of caviar.

We'd been a bit worried about taking the Grey boys with us, but the sergeant assured us that, once people got over the initial shock of their faces, they'd be accepted. "We're very easy-going here," was how he put it. And he seemed to be right: although the shopkeeper stared at them he managed to maintain his aplomb throughout. He didn't have hats that would fit them, but they each took a robe like ours.

"I'd suggest you find somewhere to put up your tents next," the sergeant said. "You might want to go back down towards the shore – there are plenty of areas down there where nobody will bother you. Just go back the way we came, and when you get to the fence, turn left. And if you need any help with anything, you know where to find me."

"Thanks," I said. "Look… it's obvious you know about the tunnel back to the Empire – but have you ever seen one going anywhere else?"

"Sorry. That one appears fairly regularly, which is why we've fenced it off and put up a camera and a guard post, but I've never heard of any other. You're welcome to look around, though. And if you want to go over to Greater Bavaria later on and have a look there, like you said, just let me know. There are boats that make the crossing most days, or if you want to go a bit further inland on that side there's a passenger airship every Wednesday."

So we got back into the lorry and drove back the way we had come. I didn't recognise all of the trees we drove past, but there were a couple of olive groves, which I didn't think had existed in the Vosges previously. And as we got closer to the water there were palm trees of some sort, too.

We found a fairly flat clearing for our camp a hundred metres [300 ft.] or so from the beach. The first thing we did was to change into our new robes, because thick winter trousers are not a good idea when undertaking physical work in a hot climate. Oli, predictably, declared that he didn't think there was any point in wearing anything underneath the robe, and so he dumped his underwear in his bag with the rest of his clothes before pulling the robe over his head, somewhat hampered by his right arm, which was still in a sling. And he said that it felt so nice being naked under the robe that we all decided to do the same thing, and I have to say that Oli was absolutely right: it did feel nice.

Once we were all changed we set up the tents. We only had four of them, the three we had used before entering the Empire and one other small one, and that meant that not everyone was going to get the privacy they might have wanted. But Torth said that he and Verdess could sleep in the truck, provided we gave them some sleeping bags to sleep on, and provided also that Sarleth didn't mind coming to visit them from time to time.

"Okay," I agreed. "But not until his leg's better."

"I'm fine now," said Sarleth. "And I find sex pleasurable, so there's no reason for me not to spend time with Torth and Verdess."

"Oh, right," I said, surprised: at Haless's school the boys had taken the female role for each other, but none of them except Ssyrl had actually enjoyed it, as far as I could make out, because they had found it shameful to play a female role. Apparently that wasn't the case in Sarleth's world.

So I gave the small tent to Sarleth and Tommi, since they wouldn't need a lot of extra room, especially if Sarleth was going to be sleeping in the truck a lot. Stefan and I took the one I had used as the kitchen, and the other two went to Marc and Radu and Alain and Oli.

"Can we go and see what the water's like?" asked Radu, when everything was set up and our bags had been put away in the tents.

"Sure – in fact that's a really good idea." I turned to Torth. "Do you guys swim?"

"Of course. All reptiles swim."

"And do you find it pleasurable?"

"When the conditions are hot, I think it would be."

"Then let's go and find out."

And the water was really nice, warm and clear and not too rough. Oli couldn't do much more than sit in the shallows and paddle, and Marc couldn't swim and so stayed and kept him company, but the rest of us swam and dived and splashed each other and raced and generally had a brilliant time. Even Sarleth came right in: Marc had put a waterproof dressing over the wound on his leg, but the healing was coming along nicely: Brother Gottfried, the hospitaler at the monastery, had checked it over and said that Marc had done a first-rate job. And the Greys were excellent in the water, too, and won all the races we organised.

Afterwards we dried ourselves off, applied sun-cream (except for the Greys, who said they didn't need it) and sunbathed naked on the beach for a while. And I thought that this was a really nice place for a holiday, and that even if we didn't find a portal I'd be quite happy to stay here until the one back to the monastery reappeared… and quite possibly for longer than that. Okay, maybe this world had problems we didn't know about yet, but on first sight it seemed really nice.

I wondered if the brothers who had come through the portal in the early days of the monastery had been tempted to stay. I supposed that would have been breaking their vows, but even so… or perhaps they thought nude swimming and sunbathing hideously sinful? Well, they didn't have to do it nude. And maybe the monastery could run holidays here, charging wealthy citizens of the Empire a nice sum in exchange for letting them come through the portal for a five-week holiday in the sun. I decided that if we did have to go back I'd raise the question with Brother Paul.

We rested in the tents for a while after a quick lunch – I thought we ought to take it a bit careful for the first few days until we started to tan a bit, because we certainly weren't used to the sun being this hot. But later in the afternoon we went out for another swim, and this time while we were splashing about in the water a couple of kids came down the beach to join us. They were about eleven or twelve years old, had deep tans like kids from the south of Italy or Spain in my world, and they weren't wearing a stitch, so clearly there was no taboo on nudity here.

"Hi," said the first one. "I'm Eddie, and this is Bobby. We were wondering about your pets – what sort of creatures are they?"

"I'm Jake. The Greys, you mean? They're not pets, they're more…" I wasn't sure that 'friends' was the right word, but I couldn't think of a better one. "They're our friends," I went on. "They're intelligent, same as we are, but they come from a different world."

I expected that to attract howls of disbelief, but apparently the kids here knew about the portal, because the boy nodded.

"Right. They don't normally let people use the tunnel, though, so how come you got through?"

"We don't come from the religious place, we come from another world altogether. We're lost, and we're trying to find a way back to our own world, and the Grey boys came with us because there's a war going on in their world. The monks let us through so that we could try to find a way home, and the police here agreed."

"Gotcha. Say, do the lizards understand English?"

I shook my head. "They have their own language. I can speak theirs, but they can't speak any of ours."

"Good, because I was wondering… you said they were boys, but… well… how come they don't have a dick?"

"They do, but it's kept inside the body until they need it. Same with their balls. It means kicking them in the groin doesn't hurt, which they think is a good thing, and I guess they're right."

"Wow… I bet Jeff wishes humans were like that, huh?" And the two boys looked at each other and laughed. "See, we got this friend called Jeff, and he's got a seriously little dick. He gets teased a lot, so I guess he'd like it if nobody could see it. Say, can you ask one of them to show us what it looks like?"

"I don't think so. They're not generally keen on non-Greys seeing them. Maybe when we've been here for a bit longer and they relax a bit they might, but I doubt it."

"Pity. Still, we're usually around here quite a bit, so if they change their minds about it we'll probably not be too far away. You gonna be here long?"

"Until the portal – the tunnel, I mean – reappears, probably, unless we find another one first. I don't suppose you've ever seen another one, have you?"

"We haven't even seen that one. What does it look like?"

"Mist, mainly. If you see mist where there isn't usually any it might mean there's a tunnel in it."

"We don't get a lot of mist here, but we'll watch out anyway, and I'll tell my friends to keep an eye open, too. Anyway, we gotta go. We'll probably be back tomorrow."

"Okay. Come and see us whenever you want."

The next three days passed in a similar way: we took it in turns to patrol round the area of the portal in pairs, checking over outside the fence – we were confident that the police would already be aware of any other anomalies inside it – and spent most of the rest of the time on the beach. We caught some fish – there was a hut selling rods and lines half a kilometre [1600 ft.] further up the beach – and it turned out that the Greys liked fish, and that enabled us to keep our stock of meat intact. I was a bit worried about how long it would last in these temperatures, and so on the Monday Stefan and I drove up to St Mary and asked Sgt Schwarz if he could find us somewhere to store it. He agreed to find it a home for the rental of ten dollars and one tin of corned beef a week, and subsequently told us where we could buy a cold box, big enough to hold several tins, that we could run from the truck battery.

"I've been worrying a bit about that," I said. "Is there somewhere we can recharge the battery?"

"Sure – you can use our charger. If the connection doesn't fit I'll get Officer Maurer to rig something up that will work – he's a genius with electricity. And we'll only charge you… say two tins a time?"

"You really like that stuff, don't you?" I said. "Anyway, you're on – and thanks. Now, there's one other thing: I want to go over to the Black Forest, like I said. Can you tell me where I can get tickets for the airship on Wednesday, and where it leaves from?"

"The airfield is just outside the town – keep going the way you're facing and you can't miss it. And there's a ticket office there."

So I bought two return tickets, and on Wednesday morning after breakfast Stefan and I prepared to drive to the airfield. Before we left I took Alain to one side and gave him the bulk of our money.

"You're in charge while we're gone," I told him. "I know you can manage the cooking for a couple of days. Keep looking for a portal, but otherwise just relax and enjoy yourselves. And I know you don't like Greys, but try not to get into a fight with them, okay?"

"Hey, you can trust me… no, really! Anyway, I don't mind these three: they generally do what you tell them without arguing, and that's good enough for me."

Stefan and I drove up to the airfield, and now there was an airship tethered to a mast in the middle of the field. I'd never seen one close up, and it seemed larger than I had expected. I'd seen photos of the old ones, the Graf Zeppelin, the Hindenburg and the R101, and it wasn't as big as that, but it was big enough.

We got into the gondola with five other passengers and settled into our seats, and shortly afterwards the airship rose into the air and started to turn towards the east. And as we rose we had an incredible view: when I was nine we'd gone on holiday to Crete, and the view below the airship now reminded me of the Aegean – a large blue sea with small islands here and there. To the west beyond the Vosges it was mostly water, with just the odd little island here and there; to the east and south-east were the land-masses of the Black Forest and the Alps.

We flew steadily across the Sea of Alsace, and then we were over dry ground again, and not long after that the ship turned into the wind once more and sank towards the ground. And once it was tethered to the mooring mast the door opened and we were able to walk down a set of steps. And the first thing I saw when I looked up on reaching the foot of the steps was a terminal building that was decorated with two huge red swastika banners.

I felt a chill run through me, and I had to force myself to walk forward instead of turning and running back into the gondola and hiding under a seat. Beside me Stefan looked equally shocked, though he was quickly back in control of himself.

"Let me do the talking," he said, as we approached the terminal building.

"Wait!" I hissed in his ear. "Take off your star!"

And that did make him turn pale: he'd forgotten that he had a Jewish symbol round his neck. Fortunately it was under his robe, so nobody had seen it, and so he was able to undo the catch and slip it into a pocket without anyone realising what he was hiding.

We moved into the building, and there were men in uniforms there – those same uniforms that I've seen in countless films and documentaries about the Holocaust – and I was almost paralysed with fear: I was sure that I looked archetypically Jewish, and I was convinced they were going to step forward and grab me at any moment. But the uniformed types never moved, and the man at the reception desk was wearing a far more practical white robe like ours, even if he did have a swastika armband on his left sleeve.

"Welcome to Greater Bavaria," he told us, in English. "Will you be staying long?"

Stefan shook his head. "We'll be going back on tomorrow's ship," he said. "We're just here for a short visit. We don't have a hotel booked, but we hoped there would be something available not too far away."

"I'm sure there will be," said the man, handing Stefan a brochure. "This lists the hotels in the nearest towns. You're best chance would be in Hinterzarten – there are several hotels there and I'm sure they won't all be full."

"Thanks. Is there a bus, by any chance? We don't mind walking, but a bus would be quicker."

"No, but there's a cable car that will take you most of the way. Turn left when you leave the building. Do you have enough money for your stay?"

"Definitely," said Stefan looking at the prices in the brochure.

"Then have a nice stay." And he looked past us to the next arrivals.

Stefan got me moving again and we headed for the exit, but before we got there an officer in a black uniform intercepted us, and I almost wet myself.

"Your friend doesn't look too good," he said to Stefan. "Is he sick?"

"He doesn't really like flying – he gets airsick," Stefan replied. "He'll be okay when we've been on solid earth for ten minutes or so."

"Oh. Well, if you're going to vomit, young man, make sure you do it outside, okay?" And he grinned at us and stepped back, and I was able to breathe again.

We made it outside and turned left towards the cable car station.

"I thought he was going to ask for our papers," I said. "And, let's face it, the name 'Jacob' would have had them jumping all over me, wouldn't it?"

"I was pretty sure they wouldn't do that, because I asked Schwarz last time I saw him if we needed passports to travel, and he said that we didn't. And if they'd asked anyway I suppose we could have said that we didn't have any – if they're not generally needed I'd guess that most people don't have one. But still… are you okay, Jake? That must have come as a bit of a shock…"

"You can say that again. I wonder how the hell that lot can possibly be in charge here?"

"If we can find a library, perhaps we can look up the history. We might as well, because I don't think we're going to need to spend a lot of time searching for a portal."

"Why?"

"Because this is the Feldberg, Jake – don't you recognise it? And it's all built up, except for that bit off to our right where the goats are, and I'll bet every inch of the place has people close enough that they'd spot it in an instant if a portal appeared. I suppose we could have a look a little further down the mountain, but I'm pretty sure there aren't going to be any places remote enough for a portal to appear without anyone knowing about it, unless it's an absolute one-off. And that wouldn't be any good to us, because I don't believe for a moment we're going to step through one without all our friends."

"You're right about that – I'm not leaving anyone behind."

We reached the cable car station and paid a dollar each for the trip down into the valley. And we could see from the car how built up the mountain was in this world: there were houses and larger buildings everywhere, with just a few fields between them occupied by either animals or crops. I guess if land is scarce you make full use of whatever land there is.

The lower station was half a kilometre [1600 ft.] or so from the town – I suppose they couldn't take the cable any closer because of a wooded ridge that reared up between the lower station and the town. But there was a shuttle bus service, and as that only cost twenty-five cents each we took that. Once we arrived in the town centre Jake consulted his brochure and booked us into a twin bedroom in a three-star hotel – not the best in town, and not the worst either. He used his own name to book in, and when the desk clerk saw it she spoke to him in German, and I didn't understand too much of the conversation after that.

"Nobody's likely to bother us now, and we'll get good room service if we need it," he told me once we were in our room. "Most people here still speak German, and they much prefer it. You can imagine that the Party wouldn't be happy to see the German language die out, so they encourage people to speak it amongst themselves as much as possible. But maybe we should stick to the separate beds tonight. In my world hotel rooms were often bugged so as to catch dissent or unpatriotic feelings, and it's possible that the same thing is true here. They won't understand us if we stick to Kerpian, so at least we can talk freely."

We left our bags and went downstairs, and the receptionist gave Stefan directions to the town library, and here, once we located the History section, we discovered why there were swastikas all over town.

The asteroid was discovered by American astronomers in the summer of 1944, and once they'd checked and double-checked their figures and confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was on a collision course with earth, everything changed: clearly the war had become meaningless if the entire planet was going to be destroyed a few months later. Stopping the fighting took a while, of course: the Democracies were convinced quickly, and Hitler was only too happy to accept a cease-fire which he hoped he could use to reorganise his armies, because the Germans were in retreat on every front at the time: this was after D-Day, of course. In the Pacific, the Japanese were equally happy for the fighting to stop: the Americans had just taken Guam and were clearly in the ascendancy. Stalin took rather longer to convince, but eventually he accepted that this wasn't an American plot to deny him his rightful victory over Fascism, and the Eastern Front also fell silent.

After a couple of top-level meetings between all the major powers it was agreed to stop the fighting permanently. In the Pacific theatre it was agreed that both sides would maintain their current positions for now, while in Europe Germany agreed to return to its September 1939 boundaries (except for the Danzig Corridor, where they dug their heels in and eventually got their way). And then the best scientists on all sides tried to find a solution. Germany and America had been running neck-and-neck in the race to the atom bomb, and working together they overcame the remaining problems and produced a viable weapon early in December 1944. But the delivery vehicle caused far more of a problem: only the Germans had a genuine rocket technology in development, and that hadn't got very far as yet. Again there was international co-operation, and finally a rocket was launched from Peenemünde in February 1945 that successfully escaped the earth's atmosphere.

But there was no time left to develop a guidance system, or at least, not one that worked, and when the asteroid was on its final approach there was no way to aim the rockets carrying the atomic warheads at it accurately. Even if they had taken the ultimate step of adding a pilot there was no way to steer effectively. Four rockets were launched from Peenemünde, each carrying an atomic warhead, but none of them hit the target, and so the asteroid reached earth, with the results that Sgt Schwarz had already told us about.

But because of the ceasefire and agreement to end hostilities while the asteroid was on the way the Nazis were still in government when the asteroid struck, and so they were the ones to preside over the rebuilding. Of course there was no question of restarting the war afterwards: it was all the survivors could to do hang on until outside help arrived. And when the Americans demanded assurances as to the future from the Nazis in exchange for their aid, Hitler – who had survived the cataclysm in the Bavarian Alps – had accepted. Even he could see that this was a completely different world, and his surviving population was in any case now so small that there was no need at all to seek Lebensraum for them.

There was no mention of the Holocaust anywhere in the book, and that suggested that the Democracies either didn't know about it, or that they had no proof, because I was sure they would have demanded a change of government before providing aid to Germany – or rather, Greater Bavaria, because large chunks of Northern Germany had disappeared under water, and others were de facto independent – otherwise.

And it appeared that since then the Germans had played ball with everyone else nicely. Hitler had been quietly eased aside and replaced with a more pragmatic figure, and although the basic Nazi philosophy didn't seem to have changed, it was fairly clear that – for now, at least – the policy was to be satisfied with what was available and to accept the same mutually-beneficial trade agreements as everyone else.

Nonetheless, I had no wish to stay here any longer than we needed to: just seeing that flag and those uniforms made me feel profoundly uncomfortable. Of course, since there seemed no chance of finding a portal here there was nothing to keep us, and so we could catch the airship back to Vogesia, as it seemed to be called officially, the following afternoon.

We had lunch – fish, which seemed to occupy most of the slots on the menu – in a small restaurant near the station. I didn't particularly want to spend the whole afternoon just sitting in the hotel room, so after we had eaten we went for a walk round the town. This was the fifth incarnation of Hintraten/Hinterzarten that we had seen, if I included the rubble of the second Grey version, and it was fascinating to see how different each was from the others, though some things remained in the same place: the railway station (or bus station, in Grey Hintraten Two) seemed to be a constant, and the mine that we discovered on our walk that afternoon was in the same place as the one we had worked in.

This was a larger place than any of the others, though: the built-up area extended much further up the valley than in other worlds, and a lot of the surrounding forest had been cleared to allow buildings to be put up. A lot of these were wooden: I supposed that wood was in fairly plentiful supply, whereas other building materials might be harder to come by.

Eventually we went back to the hotel. I found it difficult to be alone in a room with Stefan and yet unable to act normally towards him in case there was a hidden camera there, but then I had a thought.

"If we're going to eat in the restaurant this evening I think we ought to look presentable, don't you?" I said. "Perhaps a shower would be a good idea."

"Good thinking. Perhaps I should come and, er, clean my teeth or something while you're in the shower, and then we can swap over…"

We felt confident there was no camera in the bathroom, and even if there had been we were soon generating clouds of steam, and the result was a really nice shower. We didn't spend that much time actually washing ourselves, even though we must have been there for at least half an hour, but I still came out feeling a lot better than when I went in.

The meat dishes on the menu in the hotel restaurant were expensive, but I saw no reason not to splash out a bit – after all, the following day I would be back to cooking for myself and for everyone else. So we had a large steak each, together with a lot of what our Grey friends call 'garnishes', and I thought it was really good – though perhaps it helped that I hadn't actually had to cook it myself for once. As I said before, I like cooking, but I prefer not to have to do it for every meal every day over a long period.

I didn't like having to sleep in the same room as Stefan but in a separate bed – sleeping in separate beds was happening far too often for my liking lately, what with having to use single sleeping bags in Baden-Bayern and individual cells in the monastery. The sooner we got home to our own room in Milhüsa, the happier I would feel.

I tried not to contemplate the possibility that we might never get back there, but it was starting to look as if the only portal we could use in this world was going to be the one that went back to the monastery, and then we would have to wait for another portal to appear, and there was no guarantee that we could get home from any of the other worlds accessible from the monastery portals, either.

Still, I thought, tomorrow we'll be back camping on the beach in Vogesia, and if you have to be stuck somewhere there are a lot of worse places. And on that happy thought I finally fell asleep.

We decided that we needed another shower next morning, and that got the day off to an excellent start, and after breakfast we settled the bill and took the cable car back up to the top of the mountain. The airship was supposed to leave at eleven-fifteen, but they told us that it was running late due to adverse winds in the Alps – the route started in Garmisch. The delay was expected to be of around an hour and a quarter.

There wasn't a lot to do while we waited, though as is the case with stations and airports everywhere there was a small shop selling newspapers and books. Stefan bought a copy of a newspaper called The Popular Observer, and I found a paperback thriller called Across the Line by a writer called Theodor Köninger. I'd never heard of him, but the first couple of pages looked quite good, so I bought it and went into the waiting room with Stefan. Half an hour later I was getting nicely into the book: the hero was a military policeman in the immediate post-Apocalypse world, when everything was chaotic, who inadvertently stumbles on a plot by a group of dissidents to steal the main food reserve which would have enabled the people of most of the Alpine communities to survive.

I finished a chapter, put the book down beside me and went to use the men's room, and when I had finished I diverted to the information desk to get the latest news on our flight, and after the person behind the desk had made a couple of calls I learned that the ship was now expected to arrive at around twelve-fifteen. Oh, well, I supposed we weren't in that much of a hurry…

I turned to go back to the lounge, only to find my way blocked by the black-uniformed officer who had spoken to us when we arrived, and the close proximity to that uniform had the same adverse effect on me as before: I could feel myself trembling and sweating, and if I hadn't just been to the men's room I'm sure I would have wet myself.

"You're not looking too good again," the officer told me. "Strange, because the airship hasn't even got here yet. I wonder if there could be something else bothering you?"

I mumbled a denial, but he ignored it. "Tell me, is this the first time you've been to this country?" he asked.

"Well, yes," I managed to say.

"Thought so. And I think I know why you look so nervous, too. You're a Jew, aren't you?"

Yes, I'm afraid I've succumbed to the cliffhanger disease again. Still, Chapter Seven is only a week away…

Chapter Seven

I stammered out a denial, knowing that he wouldn't believe me, and sure enough he didn't.

"Come with me," he said, turning and heading for a door beside the information desk.

There was no point in running, because there was nowhere to run to: the airship still hadn't arrived, and there were soldiers in the building anyway. I considered yelling for Stefan but dismissed the idea straight away: there was no point at all in drawing the officer's attention to him. If we were lucky the airship would arrive before the officer thought to ask about my friend, and then Stefan could escape. I was afraid he wouldn't, though: I knew Stefan well enough to be virtually certain that he'd come looking for me, and would probably end up under arrest for helping me – but there was no need to make that happen sooner than it had to.

The officer led me through the door and into a small office, waving me to a seat on one side of a desk while he took the rather larger chair on the other side. There was a nameplate on the desk that read 'Hstuf Fischer', which didn't tell me much, and a couple of very old – pre-Apocalypse – travel posters on the walls, extolling the wonders of the Baltic Coast (now presumably rather further south than when the poster had been made) and the Bavarian Alps (now not so far above sea level). There was also a bookcase against one wall, but I wasn't close enough to read the titles, even if I didn't have sweat trickling into my eyes and near-blinding me.

"My name is Lothar," he told me. "Lothar Fischer. What's yours?"

There didn't seem to be too much point in making something up – after all, my ID card from Elsass was in my wallet, and they were sure to search me.

"Jake Stone," I told him.

"That doesn't sound like a name from Vogesia, or even the rest of what used to be France. Where do you come from, Jake?"

You wouldn't believe me if I told you, I thought: answers such as 'Elsass' (under water), 'The Holy Roman Empire' (gone these past two hundred years), and 'Kerpia' (never existed) ran through my mind – to say nothing of the Grey world, and I had no idea what they called it themselves. But the last thing I wanted was for the Nazis to know about the portals: I wanted them safely locked away here, clinging to their mountains.

"I'm English," I replied.

"Ah, that explains your accent. I thought there was hardly anything of England left, though, apart from the odd little chain of islands."

"You're right, but there are bits – what used to be the Pennines, for example – and that's where I come from."

"And what are you doing here?"

"Just travelling, seeing something of the world."

"With your friend?"

Damn, I thought, he's remembered Stefan.

"Not really," I said, hoping to keep Stefan out of this. "I only met him on the airship. We got talking because we're about the same age, that's all."

"And where is he now?"

I felt I had to change the subject if I was going to keep Stefan out of it, and so instead of answering the question I said "What makes you think I'm Jewish?"

"Well, I could say that your glasses make you look Jewish, but that would be a lie, because really they don't. Or I could say it's because of the rabbit in headlights act you've done every time I've come near you. But really it's because you're circumcised."

"What? How… I mean, why do you think that?"

"Didn't you notice the old man in the men's room? That's old Franz, who was ten when the asteroid struck, and so he was in the Jungvolk and had a lifetime's education under the Party behind him. And that robe you're wearing – it's difficult to lift it up to piss without exposing yourself, isn't it? And of course as soon as Franz noticed that you were cut he came straight to my office to tell me about it. So, let's get back to your friend. Where is he?"

This wasn't a large terminal, and all Fischer had to do was to step into the waiting room and he'd see Stefan straight away, so there was no point in pretending I didn't know.

"He's in the waiting room," I said. "He's flying back with me. I need someone with me because I get sick, and so I bought him a return ticket so that he could fly back to Vogesia with me."

That sounded totally feeble to me, but Fischer didn't comment. Instead he stood up.

"Let's go and see him, shall we?" he said.

That was obviously a rhetorical question, so I stood up and led him back to the waiting room, where Stefan was still reading The Popular Observer. He didn't see us at first, but then Fischer cleared his throat and Stefan looked up and saw the uniform, and instantly thirteen years of training reasserted itself: he jumped to his feet and came to attention.

"What's your name?" Fischer asked him.

"Stefan Kohler, Hauptsturmführer," snapped Stefan.

"Ah, you recognise our rank badges. How interesting. And that's a good German name you've got, too. Where do you come from?"

"Don't mention the portals!" I said in Kerpian, before Stefan could open his mouth.

"Huh? Oh, no, I… Vogesia, Hauptsturmführer."

"Really?"

"Yes, Sir."

"Right. Oh, you can stand at ease, by the way – in fact, why don't you come back to my office? Jake, you'd better bring your bag – we wouldn't want anyone to steal it, would we? Oh, and your book. He's good, isn't he, Köninger? Have you read The Opening Line yet? No? It's the first one in the series… anyway, come with me."

He led us back to the office, stopping on the way to pick up another chair from a store-room, and then installed us in front of his desk.

"So, Jake, what do you think is going to happen to you now?" he asked.

I shrugged. "I don't know, Sir," I said.

"Deportation to the General Government? Madagascar? Sent to live in a ghetto? Come on, have a guess."

I shrugged again, not saying anything.

"Jake, it's a different world," he said. "I expect your grandparents, or your parents, told you how things were before the asteroid, and it's absolutely true that back then the Party wanted the Jews gone from Germany, and from the rest of the Reich. There were reasons at the time which seemed good, but they're all part of a history that is long gone now. The injustice of the Versailles treaty, the hyperinflation of the Twenties, the threat of Communism: all that is as irrelevant today as Charlemagne or Frederick the Great. All that's left now is a world of small countries that have to co-operate with each other in order to survive. We have no ambition to interfere in the affairs of Vogesia, England or anywhere else – we don't even have an army any longer.

"So what's going to happen to you now is that you're going to get on the airship – if it ever gets here – with your friend and fly back to Vogesia. And you'd be welcome to come back any time you want, okay?"

"But… then why did you want to speak to me?"

"I just wanted you to know there's nothing for you to worry about here. Old Franz is part of a world that died sixty-five years ago. To me, his world is just pages in a history book. Among my other responsibilities is looking after tourists and visitors, and I wouldn't be doing much of a job if I let you go away too scared to ever come back, would I? So you can tell your friends, and your parents, that here in Greater Bavaria we welcome all visitors. Now…"

He stood up, went to the bookcase and came back with a book in his hand. He wrote something on the inside cover and then handed it to me, and I saw that it was a copy of Theodor Köninger's first book.

"Something for you to read while you're travelling," he said. "Now, let's go and see how much longer you're going to have to wait."

And he took us back to the information desk, ascertained that the ship had made up a little ground and was now expected in about an hour, and then led us back to the waiting room.

"I'll leave you in peace," he said. "Have a good journey – and I hope you don't get too airsick this time!" And he smiled and walked away.

"That was… unexpected," said Stefan, which I thought was something of an understatement. "Of course, I can see that what he said was logical, but still… are you all right, Jake?"

"Yes, I think so. I suppose that's called 'jumping to conclusions' – but I still think he could have told me straight away not to worry, instead of going through all that performance first. I thought my heart was going to pack up on me… Anyway, let's see what he wrote in the book."

The inside of The Opening Line was inscribed 'To Jake – you're always welcome in Greater Bavaria, Happy Travels, Lothar Fischer'.

"That's nice, but I still don't think I'll be coming back," I commented. "We've still got an hour to wait, so do you want to read this one, Stefi? We can swap over once we've both finished."

So we sat and read our books until the airship arrived, and then we flew back to St Mary, got in the truck and drove back to our campsite, where we found Alain clearing away after a meal.

"Everyone else is on the beach," he told us. "How did it go? Did you find anything?"

"It was an interesting trip, but… no, there aren't any portals over there. Any joy here?"

"Afraid not. We'll have to keep looking, but I suppose this place isn't too bad, is it? For a holiday, anyway – I expect we'd get bored with it if we were here permanently, but it is sort of nice just being able to lie on a beach all day."

"You're just bone idle, Alain."

"I know." He grinned at me. "And I like it that way. So you're cooking supper tonight, okay?"

"I suppose so. Any problems with the Greys?"

"No, they're fine. Sarleth's leg is getting better all the time, and the other two seem to be happy enough, as far as I can tell, because they don't say a lot. And Oli's arm is still sore, but he says he thinks it's getting better, too."

So we strolled down to the beach and found everyone else splashing about in the sea, which was probably the best place to be on a hot afternoon. We dumped our robes on the beach and went in to join them.

For the next couple of weeks we simply enjoyed ourselves, spending most of our time on the beach. Every day we would patrol around the area, looking for possible portals, but apart from that and cooking meals we just relaxed. At the start of the second week the local kids had to go back to school, but they still appeared at the end of the afternoon most days to splash about with us or to kick a football about, though we usually only did that when the sun started to go down, because it was too hot otherwise. Fishing, swimming, sunbathing and playing ball games kept us occupied during the day, and at night… well, each couple had its own tent. I can only speak for myself and Stefan, but we made the most of the privacy.

We again discussed doing what we'd planned for December 12, but although this was a much more comfortable environment than the tank had been, we still decided to wait until we got home: we both felt that to do it here would be tantamount to admitting that we thought we'd never get home. But we did keep doing the various things that Hansi and Tibor had taught us, so that we would be ready when the time finally came.

I can say that more than once I wanted to forget about waiting – after all, here we were on a tropical beach (okay, it wasn't strictly tropical, but it was warm enough), with a tent to ourselves, so surely this would be the perfect place? And sometimes I went further and actually thought that if we didn't manage to get home, so what? This was a good world… But then later I'd think that giving in to the temptation would be like giving up on returning home – and, although this world was good, it was also likely to get boring after a bit. And in the summer, according to Sgt Schwarz, it would be too hot to do anything. And eventually our money would run out, and then we might find ourselves having to gut fish for three dollars an hour, the way a couple of the local boys did, either because their families needed the money or because they had no families and so had to support themselves – apparently there wasn't much of a welfare system here.

I suspect that Stefan felt the same way, but he didn't say anything and so we both stuck to our decision to wait until we got back home. As long as that didn't take too long, of course…

As we became accustomed to the sun we began to tan, all except for Tommi, whose skin didn't seem capable of doing anything except burning if he went out for too long without lots of sunscreen on. But the rest of us began to get a nice healthy-looking tan, and Radu, who had been quite dark to start with, soon looked just like the local kids. We were now able to wear shorts instead of the robe if we felt like it, though unless we were going into town we normally didn't bother wearing anything at all – this was clearly the norm, as the first thing the local kids did when they got to the beach was to dump all their clothes with their school bags.

The Greys seemed content to bask in the sun for most of the time. As Alain had said, Sarleth's leg had improved to the point that he could walk and even run without his crutches, and although there was obviously going to be a permanent scar there, now that Marc had removed the stitches his leg looked almost normal again. And the fact that he could get about easily on his own meant that he had been able to resume playing the female for the other two. One afternoon I was helping Tommi by applying sun cream to his back when he surprised me by telling me that the previous evening Sarleth had invited him to go and watch.

"But I thought they didn't like being seen to play the female role," I said, remembering how upset Issin had become when I saw him on the receiving end.

"Sarleth doesn't mind at all. I think maybe these Greys are a bit different: after all, Trethar and the others were at a military school where everyone expects you to be sort of strong and tough, and when they found out that Ssyrl actually liked having it done to him they got sort of offended about it. But these three aren't like that – they don't seem so worried about looking…"

"Macho," I supplied. "No, maybe you're right. After all, even at Trethar's school they recognised that most boys did take the female role sometimes to help their colleagues, so I suppose that is normal for Greys. Perhaps this lot are less worried about what anyone thinks."

"I suppose so. Anyway, Sarleth took me along with him, and I got to watch, and it was obvious that the other two enjoyed doing it to him, and that Sarleth quite enjoyed it, too. And when we got back to the tent he said that if I wanted they would probably do it to me, too."

"And are you going to?"

"I don't think so. I think it would hurt – their things are really solid. And, besides, if I was going to let someone do that to me I'd prefer it to be a human, at least to start with. But then Sarleth said I could do it to him if I wanted: he says I'm definitely big enough. I'm not really sure about it, though. What do you think, Jake?"

"Whoa, don't ask me!" I replied. "It's your decision. I mean, I wouldn't, but that's because I've got Stefan, and he's the only person I want to do anything with. If I didn't have him… I don't know, but I'm still not sure that I would. It just seems a bit strange to me, doing stuff with a different species – though maybe that's just me. I don't think anyone with give you a hard time about it if you do decide to, though: everyone's very tolerant around here."

"Okay, I'll think about it. It'll be my birthday soon – perhaps I'll give myself a birthday present."

"Oh? When is it?"

"23 Serts – that's… wait a moment…"

He did the calculation in his head, translating from the Kerpian calendar into the one he had learned in Elsass. "January 15th, and I'm going to be eleven."

"We'll have to get you a present," I said. "A gigantic bottle of sunscreen, perhaps."

"I wish I could tan like the rest of you. You're all getting nice and brown."

"Well, maybe if we go to the cold world next you'll find that you keep warm better than us."

"I doubt it. Sometimes I hate having red hair."

"You shouldn't. You look really nice with red hair. If your hair was boring brown, like mine, you wouldn't look half as good."

He argued the point for a bit but still looked pleased that I'd said it, and when I'd finished putting the cream on him he ran off happily to join the others.

As usual there were some of the local kids on the beach with us: four or five of them came straight from school, and two or three others came round a couple of hours later after a stint at the fish cleaning factory. The first thing the fish-cleaners did was to jump into the sea and have a good wash, though the smell of fish still seemed to cling to them afterwards.

One of these, Nicolas, had a couple of times accepted an invitation to stay for supper: he'd told us that he lived in a shed on his own, and it was obvious to me that he found it hard to cope with looking after himself. And we weren't exactly short of meat or fish, and the vegetables available from the market in St Mary were cheap, varied and tasted good.

Another week went by. I managed to get the ingredients to bake a cake for Tommi's birthday, and he was enthusiastically flung into the sea, still wearing his robe, by the local boys – it was a tradition, they told us, and indeed five days later they proved it wasn't just something they'd invented for Tommi's benefit by doing exactly the same thing to one of their own number. I decided that if we ended up staying in this world I wasn't going to tell anyone when my birthday was, though Jeff – the boy in question – emerged from the sea laughing, and as soon as he'd removed his robe and spread it out in the sun to dry he started chasing his attackers, trying to push them into the water.

Jeff had turned out to be rather different from the way I had imagined him when Bobby and Eddie had first mentioned him: I'd expected a small, downtrodden kid who resented being teased about his undersized genitals, but instead I was introduced to a tall extrovert who seemed to find his lack of development as funny as everyone else did – at least, he made as many jokes about it as anyone else. He was fun to be with, often organising games and telling amusing stories about things that had happened at school, and even though he was now thirteen he didn't seem to mind in the least when his friends pointed out that part of him at least didn't seem to have had any birthdays since turning three. I asked him once when the others weren't around if it really didn't bother him.

"Nope," he said. "I'll get there in the end. It might take another year or so, but since I'm in no rush to have kids of my own I don't really need it to be in full working order yet, do I?"

I wondered if Alain felt like that – after all, he was sixteen now and still had no visible hair. Certainly Alain didn't seem to be worried about it, and in fact in terms of personality he was a lot like Jeff, sort of loud and outgoing, and the two of them seemed to get on really well with each other.

Soon we had been in this world for a month, but still there was no sign of any other portal appearing, and I had more or less given up on it. We still patrolled the area every day, but then there wasn't a lot else that had to be done, so it was no hardship – in fact, having a quiet stroll in the hills in pairs was nice. To start with I'd always gone on patrol with Stefan, and that let to us stopping for a cuddle every now and again, which was really nice. But then I'd thought this would be a good opportunity for us all to get to know each other a bit better, and so I started varying the teams. At weekends some of the local boys came with us on our patrols, and that gave me a chance to find out a bit more about this world. And the more I found out, the less inclined I was to stay permanently.

"It's nice here, but there really isn't much to do," was Eddie's verdict. "And in the summer it's too hot to do anything but stay indoors, unless you want to spend the whole day in the water. I think you're lucky to come from a more interesting world."

We'd told the local boys a bit about the worlds we had originally come from, the one we were trying to get back to and the ones we'd seen on the way, and they'd thought it interesting but a bit scary, too.

"Doesn't it worry you, going through a tunnel with no idea what might be waiting on the other side?" asked Eddie. "Like walking into the middle of a war, like you did with the lizard place?"

"Well, yes, I suppose so. Maybe we've just been lucky so far. But we have to try, anyway, unless we want to give up on ever getting home."

"I don't think I'd risk it," said Eddie. "Okay, this isn't the most exciting place, but it's safe."

"I bet people thought that here before the asteroid came," said Nicolas. "You never know what's going to happen. Personally I think I'd risk it for a chance to go somewhere better, like the world Jake and his friends come from."

"I bet you'd be happy to go to any world where there weren't any fish," contributed Jeff, getting a laugh: as usual Nicolas had removed his robe and put it some distance away, but the whiff of fish still clung to him.

"Those fish have kept me alive," Nicolas pointed out. "Of course I'd prefer a world where fish didn't stink, but then maybe if I could get to Jake's world I wouldn't have to gut fish any more anyway, so I wouldn't care what they smelled like."

That night Nicolas not only stayed for supper but spent the night with us, too, sharing the tent with Stefan and me. We found this a little inhibiting, but I felt sorry for Nicolas, living alone as he did, and thought it would be nice for him to share food and accommodation with us for a bit – after all, I expected us to be on our way back to the Empire shortly. And in fact when he and I strolled up to the police hut next morning the officer on duty told us that there were signs of mist forming.

"It'll probably be there by midday," he said. "There's no rush – it generally lasts a couple of days – but if you guys are going back you probably ought to start getting packed. The sergeant will be down shortly, and I expect he'll want to speak to you before you go."

So we went back to the beach and I called everyone together.

"The portal's back," I said, "so we can go back to the monastery and wait for another one to appear if we want – or we can stay here. So, who wants to go, and who wants to stay?"

Nobody seemed to want to be first to answer that, but eventually Alain asked, "What are you going to do, Jake?"

"I'm going back. I want to try to get back home."

"Then…" Alain looked at the others. "I guess we're all coming with you. We've been together too long for us to leave you now."

Oli was nodding vigorously, and so was Tommi, and Radu and Marc obviously agreed with the sentiment, too.

"What about you?" I asked the Greys. "This isn't a bad place, and you lot function best in warm weather. And the locals seem to accept you, too."

They put their heads together for a few seconds, and then Torth said, "We'll go back. Eventually the war will end and we'll be able to go back home. And in the meantime we're content to stay with you. It's interesting to see how your species does things."

"Okay. Then we need to get packed. Let's go back and get the tents down and loaded – we can always come back here for a last swim before we leave."

So we returned to the camp and started to pack everything away. The four local boys who were with us – it was a Saturday – came and helped, and eventually the tents were stowed in the truck and our bags had been packed, though we left a change of clothing out: I remembered how cold it had been at the monastery, and I thought driving into the portal wearing nothing but a thin robe would result in us all catching pneumonia or something.

Once the truck was loaded Nicolas said he had to go, he had a shift at the fish factory to do. So I gave him my robe – we were close to the same height – and told him to keep it for non-work occasions, so as to keep it fish-free. He was very grateful, and even more so when I slipped him twenty dollars and told him to use it to buy something nice. I'd have given him more, but at this stage I thought we might end up coming back here ourselves if a better portal didn't materialise, and that made me inclined to hang on to what was left of our money.

I also gave ten dollars each to the other three, Eddie and Bobby and Jeff, and then we went back to the beach and swam and splashed about for a bit. Finally we went back to the truck, put on our thicker clothes, said goodbye to the local boys and drove back to the police hut, where we found the gate open and Sgt Schwarz waiting for us.

"I just wanted to wish you luck," he said. "I hope you find your way home. If not, come back any time – just make sure you bring some more meat with you. I've brought you the crate you left in our refrigeration unit, less the storage fees, of course."

"I'll make sure we stock up if we do decide to come back," I promised, and called for someone to get out of the back of the truck and load the remains of the crate. And once it was on board we said goodbye to the sergeant and drove forward to the portal. We stopped just short of it long enough to put on our jackets and coats, and then Verdess drove us into the mist and out the other side, and there was the monastery ahead of us up the valley. We parked the truck next to the tank and the jeep and walked to the door, and Brother Paul opened it and ushered us inside.

"Welcome back," he said. "I know you'd prefer to be somewhere else, but we'll be happy to look after you until you get a chance to move on. I assume you didn't find what you were looking for in the hot world?"

I shook my head. "There weren't any other portals there," I said. "We'll have to wait here until another one appears."

"Well, you seem to have had a nice break, anyway: you're a lot browner than you were. Anyway, sit down and make yourselves comfortable, and I'll go and make sure the rooms are ready for you."

After lunch Stefan and I went out for a brief walk, just to check that the tank's battery hadn't gone flat in our absence, but it seemed to be fine: the heater still worked perfectly, anyway. Of course we thought we ought to check its efficiency by taking our clothes off for a while, but the heater coped adequately. And when we had got dressed again and turned the heater off we saw that the battery charge meter was still showing almost fifty percent.

We got out of the tank and closed it up, and then we went back to the monastery lounge and told Alain and Radu that the tank battery was still fine, but that it would be a good idea if we kept a close eye on it. They got the message straight away, and soon we had a rota drawn up for the next week or so at least.

The following afternoon Alain and Oli went out to check on the tank, but when they came back they were not alone: Alain had a prisoner.

"He was hiding in the back of the truck," he told me, pulling Nicolas into the lounge behind him. "He was under a pile of blankets and sleeping bags, but it didn't stop him sneezing just as we got out of the tank."

"Oh, hell," I said. "We'll have to take him back. Is the portal still open?"

"I'll check," said Stefan, getting up and heading for the monks' CCTV room.

"Please, Jake, let me stay," begged Nicolas. "I hate it back there, the way I stink of fish guts all the time, the way I keep cutting myself with the gutting knife, the way everyone laughs at me because my clothes are tatty – I mean, how would you like it if all the other kids called you 'Fishy Nicky' or 'Stinker' all the time?"

"Yes, but, like we told you, it's dangerous being with us. And the sergeant told me he has an arrangement with the monks to stop people moving between the worlds, so I should think they'll send you back whatever we think."

"Then let me go and I'll run and hide until the tunnel closes – then they won't be able to send me back!"

But that option was lost before I even had time to consider it, because at that point Brother Paul came into the lounge.

"Hello, who's this?" was his first reaction. Of course, Nicolas was wearing a Vogesian robe and was wrapped in a blanket, which made it hard for him to blend in with the rest of us.

"His name's Nicolas," I said. "He's an orphan, and he stowed away in the back of our truck. We've only just found him."

"Ah. We're supposed to stop people coming through, you know."

I didn't need to translate this: apparently Paul's school still taught French, even though it was as a 'foreign' language and so subordinate to the teaching of English. "Yes, but… please?" he replied, in the same language. "I'll be good, I promise, and I'll keep really quiet. You won't even notice I'm here."

"What do you think, Jake?" asked Brother Paul.

"It's true that he doesn't have a great life over there," I said. "I've warned him that it's likely to be dangerous being with us, but he still wants to stay, and I suppose one extra person doesn't make a lot of difference to us. It's not really my decision, though, is it?"

"Well, I'll have to ask Father Abbot," said Brother Paul. "Unfortunately I know he's away from the mother house at the moment, and by the time he gets back the gateway will probably have closed, and if that happens you'll just have to wait until it opens again. And if Jake finds another gateway and decides to leave before that happens I don't suppose there's any good reason why you can't go with him – provided Father Abbot agrees, of course."

"Great – thank you, Sir!" replied Nicolas.

"Just 'Brother' will be fine. Jake, can you find some clothes for him? If not we can go down to Schlettstadt on Monday and buy something there."

So apparently we had a new recruit. In a way I was quite happy about this: I expected the Greys to want to return to their own world eventually, and that would leave Tommi on his own again. Maybe Nicolas could take Sarleth's place. I knew Tommi was the sort of kid who would try to make friends with anyone, and Nicolas would almost certainly be glad of someone to talk to, even if Tommi's English wasn't exactly perfect.

A couple of days later – by which time Nicolas had been outfitted in the sober but comfortable clothes of the Empire – the portal back to the Grey world reappeared, but its appearance also seemed to cause anxiety among the monks. When I asked about this Brother Paul told me that there were sensors around the portal, and that something had triggered an alarm. Two of the brothers went into the portal carrying various pieces of equipment, and when they came out again it was clear that something was wrong. They went into the monastery, and some ten minutes later Brother Paul came and spoke to us, asking me to translate for the Greys.

"You won't be able to go back," he said. "The war has obviously got a lot worse, because someone has detonated a radiation weapon of some sort, and that means you'd die if you went back. We're going to have to try to block the gateway until it's safe to go back, but that is likely to be several months, and there probably won't be much left to go back to even then."

The Greys stared at me when I gave them the news.

"What should we do?" Torth asked the other two. "Should we stay here until it's safe to return, or go back to the world we just came from?"

They discussed it for a couple of minutes, and while they were doing that I realised that this meant that we were truly on our own now: even if the Kerpians managed to work out where we had gone they couldn't come after us through a land where a nuclear war was under way.

"We've decided to stay with you," Torth told me. "If you find a portal going on to a new world we will come with you, and if not we will go back to the hot world with you. But following you has already saved our lives twice: you kept us from dying in the cave, and you took us out of our world before the radiation bombs were used. It would appear that following you is a sensible course to take."

"They're going to stay with us," I reported to Brother Paul. "And I'm curious: this seems to be a peaceful world, so how do you know about radiation?"

"It's a peaceful world now, but we've had our share of wars in the past: with the French, with the Tsar, with the Swedes. The Swedes first used a nuclear bomb against the British about forty years ago, and the British retaliated, which is why the Swedish capital is now in Gothenburg: Stockholm no longer exists. Since then all the monarchs have signed a treaty forbidding first use of nuclear weapons, and so far that treaty hasn't been broken.

"There are those who think the use of such weapons indicates that Our Lord is close to returning: there's a passage in the Second Letter of St Peter that talks about the elements melting with extreme heat. I know that Father Abbot believes the return of Our Lord to be imminent, and he has preached on that passage more than once. For myself, I'm not certain, but it's as well to live in a state of grace, just in case."

I wasn't going to be drawn into whether or not I was in a state of grace, so I said nothing at that point, though I suspected that what Stefan and I had been doing in the tank the previous day was not entirely consistent with being in such a state.

We settled back into life at the monastery, rising at an appallingly early hour, dining on similar food each day, and spending most of our time sitting in the lounge reading (I'd finished both Köninger books by now and was reading the first one for the second time, since there was nothing else available that wasn't in Latin or German), playing cards, going for walks and visiting the tank every couple of days, which at least kept me sane.

Nine days after we returned Brother Paul told us that a new portal was forming.

"I very strongly advise you to make a short scouting trip first, rather than just rushing straight through," he told me. "The frozen world is a very hostile environment, and we don't know if anyone lives there or not. The gateway is stable, and it always lasts for at least a complete day, so it would be safe to check before taking the whole party through. But you should put on several layers of the warmest clothes you possess first."

If he was trying to worry me he was doing a good job, but I still thought we had to check. So once the portal was fully formed – and this one was halfway up the ridge, rather than on the valley floor – Stefan and I wrapped up warm and went to investigate it. It wasn't very warm outside the monastery, probably a degree or so above freezing, but once we emerged on the far side of the portal we found it considerably colder – twenty-one degrees below zero [-6 F], according to the thermometer Brother Paul had lent us. And that was with no wind at all – I thought that if we got out of the shelter of the valley and into the wind the wind chill would make it seem colder still.

There was snow on the ground, but not so deep that we couldn't walk through it, and so we went down into the valley. There were no signs of life other than trees – there were still plenty of those, evergreens that were presumably adapted to survive in sub-zero temperatures – and certainly no building where the monastery stood in the other world, and so we walked on, following the bearings in Stefan's notebook that would have brought us to Orschwiller, had such a town existed. And indeed there were some ruins there, but they seemed to have been abandoned centuries ago: there was little left except for a few low walls.

By that stage I was feeling too cold to take much notice of anything else, and in any case I'd had to take my glasses off and put them in my pocket because they were getting iced up; but Stefan scanned the plain with his binoculars and found more ruins but nothing indicating current human life.

"Let's go back," I said. "I'm freezing."

"Okay. There doesn't seem to be much here, anyway."

So we trudged out way back the way we had come, following our footsteps between the trees. There were no other tracks visible in the snow, not even so much as a bird's footprints. By the time we got back to the portal I was feeling like a side of meat that had been in the deep freeze for too long, and although Stefan conscientiously climbed to the top of the ridge for a quick look around I simply waited for him by the portal. And when he came down again shaking his head I just grabbed him and hustled him through into the comparative warmth of the Empire.

Back in the monastery we sat in front of the lounge fire and tried to get the blood flowing again.

"I don't think we can survive through there," I told the others. "It was minus twenty-one [-6 F] there in the daytime with no wind and the sun out, so at night and in the wind it would be unbearable. Unless we had the sort of equipment used by Antarctic survey teams we'd all be dead within a couple of days."

"I'd say there's no life there," Stefan added. "Or not on the surface, anyway. If there are any people there they would have to be living underground, and it would be really hard to find them. It's possible that other portals do appear there, but I think Jake's right: we couldn't stick around long enough to find one, unless we were amazingly lucky and one appeared less than a day after we got there."

"So we're going to forget about this one," I said, glad to discover that Stefan felt the same way I did. "I don't know if that's a world where there's an Ice Age going on, or if somehow the planet is further away from the sun – though I doubt that, because it looks as if there were people on the surface at one time – or maybe the sun itself is dying. But whatever is responsible, we can't go there. So we'll have to wait and see what the other two have to offer."

Of course there was a major drawback to the remaining two portals: both were erratic and unstable and didn't appear at set intervals, and that meant that if we committed ourselves to one of them we might not be able to get back easily: it might mean camping out right next to the portal site and hoping not too many weeks or months – or years – went by before it reappeared. And if the world turned out to be hostile we might find ourselves trapped there. For a while I considered throwing in the towel and just suggesting a return to Vogesia, but then I thought about what we had in Elsass and decided that I wasn't ready to give that up without a fight. No, I thought, we'll at least try one of the others first.

I wanted to make sure that everyone else felt the same way, though, so I put it to the vote. And apparently everyone shared my point of view – at least, nobody voted the other way, not even the Greys. And that at least meant that when we found ourselves in deep, deep trouble a month or so later I could honestly say that it wasn't just my fault…

That sounds ominous… but then given their past form it probably won't come as too much of a surprise to learn that Jake and his friends are about to find themselves in yet another fine mess…

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