At The Mountains Of Cuteness Being a H.P.Lushcraft tale, transcribed and edited by Simon Barber. It is not without great hesitation that I break my self-imposed vow of silence, and put before the world at last the true facts, as far as I witnessed them, of the Grimslaithe-Nakajawa Expedition of '34, from which I alone returned. And it was not wholly ficticious, the loss of memory which I claimed before the investigating team and the relatives of those who had left the English shores with me three months before ... a fractured skull was my own souvenir, and it was long before more than hazy outlines of those final hours returned to mind. Even now, I would keep my silence, preferring to forget forever what I now recall with such hideous clarity. But from Asgarth University there are solid plans being made for another expedition ...... and they will be heading into the same peril, if they follow our route. To their leaders, I beg publicly, avoid those deadly waters, if you value your souls and your sanity ... for lives are the very least of what stand to be lost, if you enter there ! But I must start at the beginning, with the facts and events that can be proven, if I hope to convince those brave, foolish explorers. There was a time when I was as brave myself, before my nerve went, and as for foolish - I was not merely ignorant, but worse, I closed my eyes to events I should have noted, and refused to draw conclusions that might have saved my sanity and my companions' lives. It all seems so long ago, now - but the calendar counts only sixteen months before any of it began. My snout was free of any trace of white fur, back then. It was a telephone call that began it for me, as I returned home late one evening. I had been working late at the University, in the final days of my postgraduate course in Practical and Applied Theology. There was just one interview to write up, and a dozen e-prayers still to be sent off in thanks, and the final draft would be complete. "Glad I could catch you at last, me old hound !" I recognized the booming tones of Huddesworth Senior, one of my class who had also stayed on, though in the PseudoScience department. "Got a vacancy coming up, I thought you might be interested. Professor Grimslaithe's little boating trip out West, seafloor surveys for a couple of months. They've had a couple of folk drop out at the last minute - are you in ?" My eyes fell on the calendar, with two dates underlined in red. The next week, when my final paper had to be in - and the end of the month, when my grant funding ran out. One of those dates I could face without worries, but the other - "Count me in," I nodded to the phone, my tail thrashing happily. "I'll be round first thing tomorrow with my toothbrush packed!" Of course, things took rather longer than that. Huddesworth had thought of me for the crew due to my handiness with improvised machinery - the previous year I had won the Heath Robinson Scholarship by building the most eye-catching, nitro-burning dragster unicycle to ever pull twelve "g" straight off the start line. Persuading the actual organisers that they wanted me, was another matter, and it was the day after my last paper was handed in that I was accepted, and learned exactly what I had volunteered for. "Undersea mapping," I blinked as I stood on the harbour of Asgarth town,looking through the expedition plans with Mr. Grike, from the Vague Engineering department. "But ... surely that's all been done ? Both ways, from the top down and the native maps upward." I nodded greetings to Cth'Rhy'Gac Junior, as the handsomely squamous philosophy professor climbed out of the harbour. A world-renowned leader in his area, he was never out of his depth. A deep one, certainly. "Aha..." Mr. Grike tapped his own tusked boar-snout, turning to wave at his icthyitic colleague. "That depends. Most of the basic work that surface-dwellers could do, certainly was finished before the Milennium, and then of course after that we had access to first-hand accounts. But - there's a few parts that .... weren't ON the sea floor then." He opened up the chart to show where he meant, and I winced. Not long after the Milennium, following the newly discovered Cup-Handle Principle of geological instability, various "Sticking-out bits" of the continents had broken off and fallen into the ocean. For a few seconds we both stood there by the harbour wall, somehow feeling slightly chilled despite the Spring sunshine. All around us, was the normal routine of the town and harbour, peaceful right out to sea where a heavy swell showed something huge was undulating just beneath the surface. A mile-long tentacle waved cheerfully on the horizon, and the feeling passed. The boar coughed. "Actually, we've been asked to investigate the whole area - here." He pointed on the map. "It seems there's still a lot of geological activity, with some very strange sea-mounts reported from a distance. The local .... government want us to map it out thoroughly before any of them swim over and take a look. Surface-dwellers only on the active team." I nodded, a little relieved. It made perfect sense - in the general run of events, none of the expedition members would expect to see their fourteenth decade - I knew, as we all did, how much more in terms of centuries Cth'Rhy'Gac Junior and his relatives stood to lose if a dangerous expedition went wrong. (The University had needed to introduce a new category of "Mature Student", to cope with those who were only 2 percent into their expected life-spans, but still could lecture on most of recorded history as seen first-hand.) "So, we're going for a bit of underwater sight-seeing ? " I looked at the expedition outline, and my ears raised in surprise. "It's scheduled to experiment with using ice-dam techniques, in the open ocean ? I've heard of that ... freezing a caisson of ice all the way to the ocean floor and pumping the water out .... that'll need a hell of a ship to provide that much refrigerating power !" Clint Grike's rock-solid features split in a stony grin. "Won't it just. One hell of a ship." It was Barnstoneworth who filled me in on the details, as we retired to the pub that evening, the Eurocrat's Head. The tavern was old, comfortably so .... I noticed three of the Historical Architecture students in the corner, textbooks out, arguing over the date of a well- preserved leatherette coffee-bar. All around us was history, some of it dating back to the fabled 1960's era ... rumour had it that a band of ghouls exploring deep in the sub-basement had once come across a real aluminium barrel for pressurising ale. I looked around the room, drinking in the familiar sights - the upper floor was new, having been gutted in a firefight with armoured assault units of the Salvation Army just before the Liberation ten years ago - but down here, things looked much as they had done for merrily Eldritch centuries. "Cheers ! Eh, but it'll be good to see the sights a bit." The great bristling badger set two brimming pint tankards down. "I've been here ten years, like, time for a change. And ..." he looked around, taking in the memento-packed room, the air rich with hops and the sharp scents as pints of absinthe were poured out, " it's a bit o' history that'll be taking us out there, an' all. A Macro-ship, that's what we've found, left ower from the War .... enough of it left to salvage, for what we want." I almost choked on my ale. "A Macro-Ship ? There's one survived in one piece ... and they just let us Have it ? HOW ?" For I had only once seen one, the size of a small town on tracks, far off on the horizon in the final days of the EC Liberation, heading south towards the nightmare land that our ancestors had shudderingly called Belgium. He chuckled, his sharp teeth gleaming. "For this trip, like, you might say we've got friends of Influence, who want to see it go smoothly. Friends in high places, 'cept they're down there at the five tonnes per square inch level, like. And .... you might say, it needs a little ... work on it, to get it going." How much work, and the scale of the problem in every sense, I found out the next weekend. There were twenty or so of us on the quayside, looking out into the rain-swept drizzle that faded into grey evening out to the East, where we strained our eyes every few minutes. Suddenly one of the engineers, a white cat in a fluorescent yellow boiler-suit that would probably show up from orbit, pulled off his pocket stereo and grinned around at us, whiskers twitching. "Got a neutrino detector patched into the left channel," he tapped the pocket-sized box smugly. "Someone's running a reactor out there, or I'm an ape-descendant. Take a listen." The box was passed around us eagerly, and we had to agree. The Bulky Disc was still running in one ear, one of the "neo Prog-Rock" albums that modern digital recordings have made so popular, allowing the bands to explore musical frontiers involving eleven-hour guitar or even drum solos. But in the other ear, there was a slow, random ticking as ultimately tiny particles passed through the world's mass unhindered till they met the "Virtual V " of the detector's force-field. Swinging the set, I stared out with the rest of us to the rolling fogbanks of the North Sea, where something was definitely fissioning its way towards us. Half an hour later, our thoughts of damp fur and freezing paws were forgotten. The wind had sprung up in sudden squalls, just as the last of the light touched the moors and altar-stones high above Asgarth town behind us. And there, suddenly churning through the grey waters towards us, was a quarter of a million tonnes of sentient armoured fighting vehicle, its wrap-round tracks each the width of an autobahn, driving straight out of the pages of History and onto our dockside ! There was a massed sigh, and night-vision glasses were raised as more of it came out of the cloaking fogbank, its grey-black armoured bulk blending into the darkening horizon. And then someone coughed nervously, and passed the glasses around. From the first we had seen of it, I had thought there was something .. strange about it, apart from the tracks rotating in the "wrong" direction, slowing it for a docking rather than an overrun attack on Asgarth. I saw the cat in the yellow suit wince, as he stared out at our class project. He handed me the glasses, and I could read the name "Eckingthwaite" on his nametag. "It's something like a Class Twenty-Six, as far as I can tell," he murmured. "At least... it might have been, before someone was .... Unkind to it." The next morning, I stood aboard our new home as it lay aground at low tide, still three hundred metres offshore. This was the last surviving fragment of "I" deck, four turrets leaning out over the deeply scarred glacis plate that sloped down into the choppy Spring waters some eighty metres below. "Not a lot left of the upperworks." Clem Eckingthwaite, the feline I had met the day before, carefully set up a laser theodolite. "There was J and K decks above where we're standing, as this was first built. But .... we're not sure what happened to them. In fact, we're not sure about any of this ship .... no documentation, and .... it looks .... all wrong. It's one of ours, a macro-ship, but .. the style." I nodded, for I had surveyed the rear decks, and found traces of Dimensional Shearing. This vessel had been fought to a standstill in the war against the EC, as its huge scars still showed. Thousands of tonnes of mass were .... missing, in no sane pattern : evidently it had been caught by a near-miss from a Psychotronic Bomb. I voiced my suspicions, and Clem's ears drooped. "I ... can't see how it would have survived at all, a target this size. Not unless - unless it'd been in action right at the end, when we'd overrun most of their Summoning sites ... by then, they had to fire from the far side of the territory they'd got left. Did you ever see one of those ? I did. Or, I saw what was left of it ... the energy release takes a sort of arc outside Space, a bit like a hyperspatial mortar. Shorten the range, and eventually you're pointing the thing almost straight up .. one miscalculation, and it drops down the back of your neck." There was a silence between us, though in the background I could hear a portable set tuned to Radio Liechtenstein's most popular wavelength - no adverts, no Disc Jockeys, just good honest Yodelling twenty-four hours a day, Every day. Clem's ears picked up a little at the refreshing sound, and his expression was more puzzled than horror-struck. "That explains the back hull.... all the turrets must have been blown apart like a street-mime. But ... I've studied these vessels, and ..... I can't quite put my paw on it, but.... " he shook his head worriedly. "There's something very Different about this one." For eight weeks we laboured, exploring and renovating. Fortunately, all macro-ships has been designed to carry on despite massive damage: far from "restoring" it, half our work was more like peeling off layers, onion-fashion, till we reached the less damaged core. Three trips we made to the Dogger Bank in the middle of the North Sea, to dump the larger pieces we had stripped off onto the artificial reef the fisheries trade were building. "Only thing you can do with it, really..." it was Clint Grike who spoke, as we watched the three-hundred tonne slab that had roofed H deck's #23 turret, vanish with a huge splash into the cold grey waters. "At least, it's non-polluting ... just processed igneous rock, don't you know, laser-fused. These ships pretty much build themselves.... get the first reactors and the Helm up and running, and all you need to do is point it at a mountain you can do without. No way could you spare the resources to make something this size out of metal." "The Helm ?" I queried "I've heard the other folk saying they couldn't find it anywhere. What is it - some kind of computer ?" He sat down, the spray glittering like jewels in his fur as he looked out over the flat expanse of ersatz volcanic glass that would be our final roof, "G" deck being the first truly repairable level we had found. The boar stared moodily at the tracked engineering vehicles in the far distance, and waved for me to join him. "Maybe I'm starting to romanticise things in my old age," he looked out into the hungry waves. "But .... these vessels aren't like any other machines. The size and complexity of its control systems and processors ... everything having to be routed in triplicate and quadruplicate, no single vital spot on the whole ship....." He broke off, and looked at me strangely. "When they built the first of these, they found out what you get if you link enough autonomous, intelligent units together, and program them to constantly reconfigure themselves, ready to take damage and carry on. The ship .... lives. Not in the way some folk had thought .. it's not the sort of intelligence you can hold a conversation with. But it lives, like maybe a coral colony .. no, more like a city, an old city that grew up to suit itself. The Helm was the main control device ..... that's what we can't find. Oh, we can control it - if you mean steering it around the place, that's been done. Somebody's been here before us, and ... put in overrides, we can patch into those. Funny, the way they had to do that." He stared out over the chill grey waters, and would say no more. Another two weeks passed, fourteen days of hard labour, three shifts a day of the intricate work of getting the Macro-ship ready to face the Ocean. I recall little more than a blur of climbing through ductwork, tracing leads and setting endless patch panels to link the ancient, decade-old electronics with our own systems. At least the drive reactors had survived, or the task would have been hopeless ... though they were solid-state coolantless affairs, each one buried in a block of Asawa-Zarkov thermocouple compound, transforming the simple fission core's heat direct to electrical drive for the huge tracks and the water-jets that drove it afloat. They were on B deck, far below the waterline .... but what was below them on the very keel of the ship was sealed off, the access doors welded shut with ten-centimetre armour plate. Pressure gages assured us that any leaks would be inward, not out. "What's down there, had better stay there," Clem Eckingthwaite winced visibly when I queried him about it. "For what we need, the B deck groups will provide quite enough power ... what's down there on most designs is the weapons systems reactors." I must have blinked, for he looked at me pityingly. "Believe me, you don't want to be in there. That's not a nice clean solid-state system, or even a liquid-sodium design ... I'm cleared to work on those. On "A" deck they never had mortal crew, just the maintenance robots who were sealed in and left there ... there's several boiling- potassium reactors, hundreds of tonnes of pressurised liquid metal down there. It's all cold and solid right now ... I don't think there's anybody left who even knows how to re-start one of those things. For which we can be grateful." That night, I worked late, and missed the ferry hovercraft back into town. There would be an hour or so until it returned with the evening shift, and I found myself alone, with just the great echos ringing in the ship's corridors, a kilometre long, for company. Shouldering my toolkit, I followed the ancient tyre tracks down the long expanses of lonely metal. Once this vessel had hummed with life, with purpose ..... its thousand-strong crew and its almost-living onboard systems keyed to desperate pitch as it ground its way across the EC federation's frontier, so that mortal life might endure against that which the Eurocrats had summoned from pastel dimensions of fluffy horror. I stood, in the middle of the corridor, and closed my eyes for a minute. There was the lonely sighing of wind through the hatchways, and in the far distance the cries of seabirds perched on the superstructure. The vessel seemed .... at peace, somehow, in the manner of an ancient crumbling fortress ... those of its crew who had died, had gone down in battle with their blood hot and their back-banners flying, and their spirits feasted forever at Odin's long hall. Very different indeed to many an area I had shudderingly hurried past on land, where the cordoned areas around sites of the EC's Political Correctness Enforcement Community Centres would be the psychic equivalent of cobalt-bomb craters for centuries to come. A wry smile came to my face, as I stopped to critically examine the new welding work on the electrical conduits and the fat, insulated liquid-air ducts that cooled the weapons systems. The pub I should be in right now on the bustling Quayside of Asgarth town, was known as the Eurocrat's Head for short .. but the full name on the licence read "Da Federalist Bastard Wiv 'Is Nut Ripped Orf An' A Gurt Bayonet Stuk Innit" - and according to Barnstoneworth (who had been in town just after the Liberation), the original inn sign had not been a Painting. "Well, Cheers, lad !" Toasted that very same badger, not ten days later, as we celebrated the ahead-of-schedule completion of our task. "All ready for sea, like ... just the supplies to finish loading, and we're off !" It was a wild, windy night outside the taproom of the Eurocrat's Head, where outside the bay we could see the riding-lights of The Good Ship Vengeance, as its rediscovered papers had named it. Enough power and control had been restored to get the town-sized battle machine ready - its solid-state reactors had years of working power left in them even now, and only the needs of its mortal crew remained to be filled. On the dockside, several hundred tonnes of frozen tripe, vindaloo paste and processed canned green mushy peas awaited calmer waters to be loaded aboard for the galley store rooms. I nodded, raising my mug of ale. "To the Vengeance .. swords turned into ploughshares .. or in our case, excavation trowels." We raised our glasses and drank, our tails swishing in time to the music as a party of cheerful ghouls hunched around the jukebox selecting from the latest Ungrateful Undead album. Barnstoneworth's snout furrowed in concentration, as he followed my gaze out into the blustery night, the air wet with spray and low cloud. "Eh, tha' finds Strangest things," he mused, tapping his luggable dataTome, where an ancient Bulky Disc of data was spinning wheezily, "We didn't re-name t' ship, that's what it were called in service ... but the Vengeance, isn't it's original name . After its first major damage, it was re-named and re-fitted ... major-like. Which explains a thing or two ... but not everything. It'd been abandoned for six months after t' North Sea third campaign, a track blown off by a nuclear mine, and left heeled right over in t' mud o' the Frisian island of Sylt." "Or perhaps in the Silt of the Island of Mudd ?" Clem Eckingthwaite called out across the room. He and a dozen of the electrical engineers had been celebrating all day with our Russian Exchange students around a portable Field Altar to Stakhanov, Patron Saint of Industrial Overachievers. It looked as if the Russian Unorthodox Church had made a few converts that day. Barnstoneworth glared at the cat, who was demonstrating to his fellow-believers that you actually Could drink the traditional "Yard of Ale" using vodka. He tapped the databook, his eyes still troubled. "We're missing half o' them technical notes, and there's nowt about it before its refitting," he looked at me over the rim of a quart of Kreakstones Kamikaze (as exported to the Imperial Family of the Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphereoid). "An' I mean, nowt. The Vengeance just ..... shows up in the earliest records I can find, as a salvaged wreck .... in urgent need o' fixin', and no crew listed as alive to rejoin it, like they always did. The funny thing is, tha' knows, half the salvage work weren't repairing battle-damage. I've got some of the manifests ... it LOOKS, more like it was ripping out working systems they just couldn't patch into. Which is barmy, like... them things were built on standard template, but here's a request for some adaptors because "The fastenings are all wrong, right down to the screw pitch". Those have been universal sizes for sixty years and more." I nodded, frowning. There was a lull in the conversation, and I swept my gaze around the pub. It might be a long time before I sat here again, I knew, and I fixed the calm scene in my memory . All was as it should be for one of our final evenings ashore: the scent of freshly drawn ale, the flickering of the firelight, and the background chatter of the radio in the other bar. Being a Thursday, it was that game-show where a randomly picked suburban family were given two weeks to plan and carry out the assassination of some famous sporting or media personality, using only common household tools and materials. Just then, there was a commotion from near the main door, and I recognised the strident voice of Phoebe Elsthwaite, a vixen I had known for several unhappy years ; being a Mathematical History specialist, I was not the only one she had enjoyed (from her point of view) a non- linear relationship with. Barnstoneworth caught my eye, his own ears twitching. "Wonder what she's found to Investigate this time ? She should have been one o' them Tabloid newspaper Reporters in the twentieth century .. before folk found out all them things were true any road, and lost interest...." But then there was no more time to talk, for the vixen herself had spotted us. She was hard to miss herself, being of an unusual shape for her species.... not precisely fat, in the standard Earth-Goddess proportions, but wide, solid and blocky. If anyone ever made a statue of her, their natural material would not be marble but heavily reinforced concrete. "So, they roped you into this as well ?" She clapped a paw on a shoulder of each of us, her voice that surprisingly delicate huskiness I remembered. "Don't say I didn't warn you ...." I blinked. "You haven't warned us, yet .... but I imagine you're going to. What about, this time ? The "Vengeance" is about as seaworthy as we can make her." Reaching into her shoulder-bag, she flourished a glossy magazine. "Journal of Conspiracy Studies ..... you can't be telling me you don't subscribe to it ? Article of mine listing the so-called "coincidences" that are following this whole project." "Conspiracy studies," Barnstoneworth gave a heavy mock sigh. "I should have guessed, tha'd be into t' Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory. If you can't explain something with tha' first piece o' paranoia, that's taken as proof a bigger and older one's t' blame. " Phoebe sniffed disdainfully, though I could see from where she held the cover, one article was earnestly re-creating pre-dynastic Atlantean politics from "An Inspired correlation of modern supermarket prices and fourteenth-century Venetian Inheritance Law." "I'm coming with you," her tail swished menacingly, and I saw half a dozen sets of ears and tails behind her droop like falling trees. "There's something strange about this whole mission, and I intend to find out what !" Suppressing a groan, I bought us all the next round, recalling how ten years before, buying a person of the opposite sex a drink had been a criminal offence under the Pro-social Homogenisation Enforcement Directives #4533778 to #4533986 bis, whether or not they had wanted or even asked for one. Hesitating as I looked back at the table, I ordered two more pints of Kreakstones and a carafe of Amerretoni for Phoebe. That was another well-remembered taste of hers I had not shared. Barnstoneworth's nose twitched as I set the tray down on the table. "Amerretoni,", he looked on, his muzzle wrinkling, eyebrows raised. "The most far-reaching export from that part of the world since Soya Substitute. An expensively priced, yet unpleasant, experience, it manages to combine an authentic eighteenth century recipe with the up- to-date flavour of something bootlegged by bored engineers in an Eastern Block oil refinery." The vixen gave one of those special grins that could damage exposed electrical circuitry, as she raised her glass of the blue, oily- looking liquid. "Cheers ! Last chance we'll have for awhile .... on board, there'll only be the usual half-a-pint of rum in our daily rations." She looked over at the engineers, and her ears dipped. "Weapons crew and reactor personnel get two-thirds of a pint nominal, of course, scaled up or down to their body mass." For a few minutes there was a reflective silence .... something with an albedo of about .85, my training told me. Then I noticed Phoebe leafing through her contract, the same commercial class as mine. My ears must have raised a little at the sight - for she waved the papers depreciatingly. "I need the money too, you know..", she sniffed. "The Conspiracy Studies Department won't fund my new project .. I'm having to get it researched and printed privately." She leaned over and looked around the bar, conspiratorially. "I've got a hot lead on this story, that's going to blow holes in History as we know it. There's this pile of old songs I found, recordings from the early 1960's, mostly ... I don't think anyone can ever have analysed them properly. As soon as Anyone sets foot on any sort of transport ... motor-cycle, car, aircraft ... chances are they're dead before the last verse. Scale that up with the known traffic levels of the time ....." She looked across at me, her eyes gleaming, ears pricked up. "It must have been ten times worse than the Plague, the Black Death and the Los Angeles Ebola, rolled into one ...... and not only do the official records overlook it totally, but .... " her grin was triumphant "I've talked with old folk who must have been amongst the handfull of survivors .... their minds have been wiped completely, every single memory of the events removed ! Now, that's what I call Proof." She sat back, her arms folded, and emitted what my grandfather's pre-computer games would have described as a (Grin + 6, Save Vs. Gaze Weapon). "Probably masterminded by a loose association of the Bavarian and Wurtemburger Illuminati, the Wilfriedian Society of Gugnunks, and the last desperate survivors of the Sigue Sigue Sputnik Fan Club." Barnstoneworth's muzzle twitched resignedly. I exchanged a sympathetic glance: it was not my choice of company to take into the howling wilderness, far from the cheerily bright altar-fires of our own yodelling civilisation. He nodded towards the corner, and I followed him there, to where the pub's games machines flashed and bleeped. He looked over at me, and edged behind a NanoBall game being played by a Slow Lorris and a transonic-in-a-dive Lemur. The lights of the display twinkled in his eyes, as the players' Five-a-side nanobot teams earnestly kicked a BuckminsterFullerite carbon molecule around a transistor playing field forged from a chunk of old 1586 DX processor. "It's a good thing they've got the traditional launching ceremony sorted out for the Vengeance," he gave a wry grin, one ear up and the other down. "Much better than wasting a champagne bottle, tha' knows... our Reverend caught one o' them Sociologists hiding out in Australia, and us Ministry of Certain Things was kind enough to gi' 'im ower to us. They'll stake him out in front of the tracks first thing tomorrow, before we roll." In the corner of the room, I spotted our local Vicar, the Reverend Archibald "Machete and Hammer-Job" Naismith, earnestly explaining something to our flag officers. We had wanted him to come along, but he had been impressed by what he had seen on his antipodean trip, and was joining the full-time watch for dimensional invaders in the area of Australia's Ramsey Street public open-air nuclear testing range. I sighed with relief, looking around the room. It was a good thing these days that our Vicars could relax a little, as spacetime recovered from the pounding it had taken in the EC war, where so many Psychotronic bombs were used that the area around Brussels was still slightly fractal even now. "Well, at least that's One thing sorted - a proper sendoff. I have a feeling we'll need all the good luck we can get." Grey Atlantic swell stretched in all directions eleven days later, as we got under way after a morning's halt. It had been a good trial run for the landing-tanks that we had found coocooned against corrosion on "D" deck: the little ninety-tonne runarounds we hoped would prove useful in the unsettled area we were headed for. Slipping below the horizon was the giant Mid-Atlantic memorial marker that had been put there after the Liberation of Europe had allowed the various nations to set their affairs in order. Clem Eckingthwaite looked into of the ElectroEpiscope, the synthtic-aperture porthole that was our only outside view from where we laboured below decks, fine-tuning number Eighteen starboard reactor. The cat's tail swished. "Heh. There we go, past the midpoint. Forty-one degrees longitude, latitude thirty .. bang on course. You should have come with us, paid our respects ! Monument to common-sense, that, where they let the Fifty-first Staters decide which way they really wanted to go. It's Traditional, to show our respect .... all the ships coming this way stop over." I shook my head. Just because there was nobody left back home who affected a mid-Atlantic accent or culture, was no reason to preserve the memory of such things. "Well, dropping them here and letting them swim either direction they wanted, was a good way of getting them to finally making their minds up, even if it was a bit final..... did you have a fun trip over ?" There came a feline grin. "I'd say so. I won eight shillings betting against Phoebe ... she was sure that big Wolverine marines officer could hold out till we got there to pay our "respects" on the monument, but I'd seen how much water he'd been swallowing to get ready ... and a kilometre trip in a small landing-tank over those seas .... Oh dear." I looked around, glad the Vengeance's huge size damped out even the long ocean swell. My own cabin was a small windowless section in the depths of D deck, which still smelt sickeningly of explosives after all these years - and despite it being handy for the kitchens and bathrooms, I was resolved to find a better one. Directly above me were the great tank hangars of E deck, currently home to a Girl Scout regiment we were transporting to Bermuda - and the sound of joyriding main battle tanks pulling handbrake turns was a little loud at times. They were a cheerful but boisterous lot - their leaving party at Asgarth had resulted in a high-spirited artillery duel and the burning down of The Tentacle And Firkin, the main rival to the Eurocrat's Head. Clem's tail swished, and his whiskers twitched as he looked along the great slab which had once been the floor of F deck. In the distance, a "step" of F deck itself had been left intact, looking like the bridge of one of the giant tankers of old. His eyes were suddenly troubled. "You haven't been..... working overtime, down there ?" He asked uncertainly. "Things have been .. altering, and I've talked with about everyone else." I shrugged, reminding him of the workload that we had agreed on. It was a hard life, below decks ... handling hollow charge explosives and thermite charges which were about the only rapid way of "remodelling" the tough, siliceous composite the ship's structure was extruded from. "If it wasn't for the double rum ration, we'd have trouble enough getting through the work as it is. No, I'm not moonlighting on this trip." He nodded, slowly. "Maybe it's nothing. But, you know, one thing I've got is an eye for detail. I used to work in the holidays for an architect, before my Asgarth course started ... restoring executive studio flats and second homes into working field barns and dock warehouses. You get to .... notice when things have - shifted round, even if it's only just a bit. It's not that I'm complaining ... but I keep finding wiring routes altered, circuits changed .. and my team's not done it." "Sabotage ?" My ears must have pricked up. "I heard there's another University who were turned down for this mission .. maybe they're ..." But he shook his head. "I'd have reported that. It's something - stranger. When I test the systems that look .. a bit odd, they work. And a couple of the heavily damaged ones - well, I can tell you, we didn't know how to fix them !" Night fell, and after our usual communal meal of curried tripe and chapatti bread, I felt oddly disturbed. The meal had been excellent, and the pitching of the vessel was hardly noticeable, but as I lay in my cabin, I could not relax. Irritated, I flung the door open, and looked out into the long, dimly lit corridor which stretched the length of D deck, its blast-proof doors all open in ring after ring receding into the distance like a surgeon's optical probe looking down some immense gullet. This side of the ship was little occupied: the four cabins next to me were used by engineers on the early morning shift, who were off preparing for work right now - and despite my canine ancestry, I was not on the Dog watch. So I fixed my eyes on the distant far corner of the corridor, lit here and there by worklights with long sections of shadow between, and started walking. Whether it had been the strange events of the day, or whether the usual triple tot of rum after the meal was having some unusual effect on me, I hardly knew. But as I slowly walked down that great ringing hallway, I found my ears pricked up, my nose sniffing unconsciously as if for something that I knew was there - something standing there in the passage with me. In the darkest section between the pale nightlights, I stopped, and closed my eyes. I stood there, nose twitching, straining my senses .... and very slowly, I began to relax, opening up my mind. It was a sound that first began to change. The solid-state motors that propelled us across the ocean, through the churning tracks and water-jets, gave no more than a distant whispering this far from the hull. But they seemed louder ... and further away, as if the sound fell from some distance not measured in metres, another sound shook deep in my bones. It was nothing I had heard before, in waking memory .. a deep tearing bellow, like the tearing apart of a cloth big enough to cover worlds. I listened, and the space around me seemed to fill with presences, as if I was suddenly transported hooded into the middle of a packed railway station, unable to see or hear the crowd, but knowing now that I was not alone. There came a sudden jerk, and I opened my eyes to silence and the normality of the empty corridor. That jolt, had been .... like a few times when I had been falling asleep, I had suddenly jolted awake as if picked up and dropped onto a hard floor. But looking around, I felt wide awake, more so than I had been all evening. My tail shivered. This was a job for an Arcaneologist, not an Engineer like me. I turned, and walked back, passing the point where a last stand had been made by Blast Door #57, before the attackers had swept through.... "What the ... ?" I exclaimed aloud, my voice echoing. And my fur began to bristle outward, as I looked carefully around. Since the refitting of the "Vengeance" in the final week of the EC liberation she had acted as long-range artillery, never getting into line-of sight with that which the Belgians had called up to aid them. Barnstoneworth had told me that much, adding that the ship's turret rings were too small to take anything better than 485 mm cannon, which even in triplex mountings was woefully underpowered to face that which had been Summoned just before the end. The ship had never been attacked directly - at least, not since it appeared on our record books. Before that - our records were as silent as the dim shadows that surrounded me. And yet ... I knew what had happened here, like I knew my Grandsire's name or my breeches' tailgusset size - as a solid fact. Dropping to my knees, I examined the floor carefully, just around the doorway. I found myself hoping that my strange fancy was nothing more than that - until I found something, just where I expected it to be. The grey fused rock of the ship was incredibly tough, as I had found out the first time I tried to chisel a conduit through it - the laser-fused igneous rock had partly been spun into fibres, cemented together in a silicate felt that nothing short of explosives or thermite would make much impression on. And yet here it was riddled with holes like a fine cheese - not splintered as by solid shot, but smoothly fused. Taking my worklight from my belt pouch, I shone the beam down the near-vertical shaft, about the size and shape to swallow a pencil. Something glittered brightly at the bottom - and as I crouched there, I knew I would not be resting that night till I found out what. "Tungsten," Clem Eckingshaw nodded, taking what looked like a silver-grey ball-bearing from out of his analyser, and hefting it in the palm of his furred paw. "You found this six or eight centimetres deep in the decking ?" He whistled, his whiskers twitching. "I can tell you one thing .. this was molten when it went through that stone like a hot knife through lard ..." I nodded, showing him the scans I had made of the area with a metal detector. "That was the only piece I could get loose - the rest are fused tight into the rock. What do you think caused it ?" The feline's tail swished, describing a slow metronome-like beat as he looked at it in frustration. "Nope. No idea. But whatever happened .... was enough to volatilise kilos of this stuff.. . they don't melt it even commercially, they powder-sinter the stuff." His eyes widened. "That's one HECK of an energy release you're talking about!" He looked around the room, one of the arched, tunnel-like structures that ran the length of E deck. It was bare apart from the rows of testing instruments and three lab chairs, and our voices echoed oddly. The two of us looked at the silvery sphere, and then at each other. I thought of telling him about the sensations I had felt standing in that long, gullet-like corridor .. not only did I know what had happened there, in a clear but distant way, but I had a .. feeling, that I knew who had fought there as time and hope had ebbed away. It was a shadowy background cast on my own memories, like the recollection of my classmates in my first school at the age of four .. names, events and faces had faded beyond recall, though I knew that they had been there. But Eckingshaw was a card-carrying Sceptic, I told myself, and believed nothing except his instrument readings ... much to the dismay of the tax officials, who had to take him on a tour of the Gross National Product every year before he agreed to contribute to it. Suddenly, he smiled. "Still, that was a long time ago .. whatever it was, is long over. Our archaeology isn't due to start for another week .. though I suppose there's no harm in getting a bit of practice in. In fact, I already have .. you should have heard Barnestoneworth last night. He'd found the remains of an internal weapons turret on B deck, two decks below the waterline now ... said it looked like it had been ritually destroyed, not just put out of action .... if you can imagine that." I could tell he had been missing some of his homework for this trip. I had read a few books myself, starting with Professor Grimslaithe's own work on the Bronze-age sites of our native moors, and the civilisation known as the early Bronze age Beaker culture. Grave goods had been ritually "killed" to follow their owner into the afterlife; fine pots smashed, swords and jewelry broken. Which reminded me of something else .. but not until much later, did I clearly recall exactly what. Later, of course, would turn out to be much too late. Three more days passed, and we had our first sight of land .. though we were only two-thirds of the way to our final destination, we were stopping over at Bermuda, almost exactly on our great-circle route across the planet from the friendly monolith-crowded moors of Asgarth. I checked the navigation station: 33 degrees North, 65 East ... hurriedly re-setting my watch, as I did now every day we sailed. Most of us were on deck, lined up outside the "step" where the surviving deck rose a level some kilometre abaft of the great crennelated glacis plate and the thick stubs like amputated wrists that jutted out fifty metres as a double bowspirit on each side of the track's drive sprockets. They had once bravely held out the ship's thousand-tonne spiked fighting roller like a warrior's shield before her breastplate (we had left most of that area intact, to keep the macrotank in balance for its ocean crossing.) The long swell had broken into dancing, foam-capped wavelets tossing white in the cheery sunshine, and our spirits were high. Even some of the Ghouls were daring the sunlight: on my left I could see a pair of young ghoulkins wearing big shady hats and dark glasses, playing with their "My Little Bony"(Tm) dolls, cheerfully wrapping the little equine skeletons' tails in festive black ribbons. Spirits sank a little as Phoebe joined us, swaying slightly - she waved towards the blue smudge on the horizon. "'Been saying bye to the girls," she nodded owlishly, "Wishin' them a good holiday out there." Barnstoneworth's striped tail twitched in annoyance, for he had doubled as public Relations officer for the elite Girl Scout armoured division now getting ready to disembark. "I'm sure they'll 'ave themselves a grand time," he said finally, shading his eyes as he looked out into the westering sun. "Which is more than t' natives will ... I've radio'd ahead of us, so when they hit town an' start pickin' fights wi' bouncers, folk can't say we didn't warn 'em...." I looked on, smiling slightly, as Phoebe swayed along to the massed battle-hymn drifting up from E deck through the open hatches ... she hummed, and then sang along, the old Robynist hymn that the Scouts had sung all the way from the massed armoured breakout at Thirsk Salient on the great North Yorkshire plain, to the final apocalyptic encirclement of Brussels from which none had returned both alive and sane ..... "Sometimes I wish I was a pretty girl... So I could wreck myself in the shower ... Sometimes I wish I was a pretty girl .. Been on my own so long, I can't tell left from wrong .. Bloody red pus ! Squelching Offal ! Foaming mutilations, and the kiss of Death !" * Many of the folk around us sang along, but I was silent .... for this ship had seen it all, and of all the teeming crew it had first carried, none would sing again. Sunlight beat down on us the next morning, as we berthed at Fort Charles, Bermuda. The landing-craft had ferried the tanks and artillery of Battle Group Hetty_Olmthwaite ashore at midnight, towards the ivy- covered walls and staff of the New Miskatonic, that hallowed hall where the Girl Scouts would be taking over security duties. * "Sometimes I Wish I Was A Pretty Girl", (c) R. Hitchcock 1984 Barnstoneworth was looking much happier, as that burden was raised from his stripy shoulders. "Aye, an' mebbe it was worth the trouble, for the ferry price they paid us." he nodded. "And we've two days shore-leave, like, to recover." We strolled along, passing coraline sand beaches and waving palm trees . Phoebe instinctively waved back, but then, she had tended the Venus Tank-traps of a Vegetable Warfare unit throughout her cubhood, and had never really readjusted. I shuddered. None of us had, really, after growing up in the Occupation and the Liberation of Europe .... it had taken years to re- accustom myself to entering a strange room without instinctively wanting to spray the windows with suppressing fire and lob a grenade in first .. in my pocket I still carried a placebo, a foam-rubber ball that I found myself throwing in ahead of me at times. Phoebe gave a low murr of pleasure, looking around. "It's been awhile simce I saw any vegetation this .. exotic." Her eyes widened, and her tail swished. "We were training the genespliced Neo-Triffid stock, they had to be ... socialised, so they wouldn't simply attack anything without chlorophyll. It was sort of Interesting, as a job." Barnstoneworth's ears raised, wryly. "I heard of them. Wasn't it the batch they bred from african edible tubers, got the most - social ?" The vixen grinned. "I should say. Some of them turned out as absolute sex Maniocs." Suddenly Barnstoneworth stopped, his nose twitching. "Ey up ! Ah know they're re-stockin' ship's galleys wi' fresh food, an' all," he said, eyes gleaming. "But we've cash to spend .. and I smell a restaurant that'll make us a nice change!" An hour later, three very large and very empty plates were pushed aside as we relaxed, warm trade winds ruffling our fur. Barnstoneworth gave a contented sigh, which I echoed. "All Ingredients freshly caught locally, and prepared by our own chefs," he read from the menu, and turned a wistful eye on me. "When I were a lad, we used to Dream o' eating food wi' Ingredients in it. Nowt but E numbers, in them days." Phoebe nodded, looking around. We sat in a shaded arbour in front of the wide-open doors of the restaurant, shaded by thick vines growing up a latticework dividing the area into open-air "rooms", one per table. "Same here," her ears drooped " We couldn't afford much, either. I remember I got a jigsaw to play with one New Year, when I was little ... I had to wait for my birthday before I got any blades for it." My ears drooped, as if a shadow had fallen over us. While Phoebe had still been playing with jigsaws, I had joined the Resistance after losing my own family, victims of the Pro-Social Homogenisation Directive #4533789. They had committed the capital crime of playing Tubular Bells in the local marching Brass Band - and Tubular Bells were forbidden, being obviously Phallic Cymbals. But the moment passed, and I smiled again. Drifting down the wind came the cheerful notes of Lurs and Alpenhorn, one of the big turbojet-pumped models by the sound of it. Somewhere Outside, friends would be listening, although only after the Milennium had the world at large discovered the aid to be summoned by dressing in rune-graven leather shorts, climbing steep lightning-crowned hilltops and Calling Out To The Hills in a properly supported yodel. We looked at each other, relaxed and content for the moment. It was a moment I think I will always remember - we were sinister but we were happy, and you can't say that of everybody, can you ? Then I turned, and looked Westwards, to where the horizon darkened oddly in a heavy haze. We were at rest for the moment, but our real task had not yet begun. Down on the dock, we saw Clem Eckingthwaite deep in conversation with a stranger, a cheerful-looking Human girl, obviously Japanese by her pure blonde hair and three-inch wide eyes. She was sitting on a bench next to a strangely unfocussed patch of space, that seemed to twist and shimmer in writhing, sinuous patterns. Next to me, Phoebe nudged me. "Rich kids," she growled softly "I'll bet that's her aircraft we saw going over us this morning ... the custom job with the Japanese registration." I nodded, having seen it parked on the runway we had passed a few kilometres back ... one of the Classic Planes, obviously uprated far beyond its design specification to judge by the characteristic charring patterns of atmospheric re-entry on its plywood wings and reinforced chipboard nosecone. "Looks like it .... it's a long hop to get here from anywhere civilised, let alone Japan.... this is about the only place to touch down between the Greenland Anarchist Non-State and the Anti-Nowhere League's Caribbean territories." The strange human waved cheerfully, and her non-Euclidean friend bulged a little closer into our spacetime. From what I could see, it was somehow poured into a traditionally styled male Student's black uniform tunic, the collar daringly and disrespectfully left flapping undone. Barnstoneworth looked on, recognising the classical motifs we all saw regularly in the films ... the Orient had survived the horrors of the Milennium better than our part of the world had, and its tight society had been the first to rebound. In that part of the world, though Rebellious youth was permitted, it organised itself into synchronised formation rebellion, with clearly recognized ranks, competitive exams and designer-casual uniforms. His snout wrinkled a little in disapproval at the Juvenile Deliquescent. Clem waved us forwards, smiling. "Come on over, folks ... I've been looking all day for someone with up-to-date information about where we're headed. This is Miss Leclerc and her friend .. they're here on business." The Anime girl nodded her pumpkin-shaped head, and pulled out a satellite photo of the new coastline to the South-West of us. "That's right!" Her French was almost accentless, but held a slight Normandy lilt to it. "Me and [ ] here .... he's one of the Unspeakable Ones, but we don't talk about that ..... we were just over there, checking for any news of last year's expedition." Phoebe's tail twitched. "You send folk over there ? " Huge eyes sparkled, as Miss Leclerc nodded again. "It's our Peace Studies course, they run field trips ... " She pointed to the new coastline, close to where we were headed. "The area used to be called .... umm, something like Azerbaijan or Armenia, I think. This bunch from my Academy go out every year to mediate between warring tribes of drug- frenzied cannibal hillbillies .... as far as we can tell, they must be doing really well. The tribes don't raid around for food for, like, Ages after one of our study groups get in there..." I nodded. Fortunately, my French was good enough to follow the conversation, despite it having ... certain unpopular associations, as the internal language of the Brussels Empire. But still, I reminded myself, even Belgium had not been wholly decadent, and had produced notable folk in the previous centuries .... from Felicien Rops (the so- called "decadent" Artist who had drawn from life the first modern Cthuloid entities interacting with willing mortals long before it had been fashionable to do so) to the alternative war-hero Leon Degrelle (who merited a whole week in Phoebe's Conspiracy Studies course, or so I had heard). Clem Eckingthwaite waved a sheaf of aerial photographs, and a Bulky Disc. "I'll hand these over to the Professor ... we're short of current landform data. " He looked at us meaningfully. "Ah .. these are freely given, but the young lady IS collecting for a charity.." He fished in his pocket for spare change. Miss Leclerc pulled out a large collecting box, and rattled it meaningfully. "Lead-Mining residential holidays for Over-Priveliged teenagers," she said hopefully. "It's a worthy cause .. after a few months, you should see the benefits ! They start out unhappy with life unless they've got all the latest Neo-Neo Tokyo cyberwear fashions ... by the time they leave, they're sincerely happy at simple things like water, fresh air and a few minutes of light a day." We dug deep in our pockets .. indeed, after today there would be nowhere we could spend our change, and it was certainly a worthy cause. I recognized the logo on her charity box, having donated before to the same institution's "Seaside holidays for the Criminally Insane" back home. Phoebe smiled, dropping a hefty golden shilling into the box - deflation was a problem these days, and we were threatened with golden sixpences by the time we returned to Asgarth. "I've read about that charity ... it's a classy operation .. they spend a fortune recruiting the right staff for the residential areas ... they couldn't find enough local talent around the Siberian labour sites, so they had to bring in Indonesian and Paraguyan workers." She shook her head wonderingly. "And persuading folk with those career records to leave the Secret Police can't have been cheap or easy. Wonder how they did it ? " Her tail swished excitedly, and a familiar gleam came to her eyes. I saw her reach for her notebook, and as she scribbled 64-bit encrypted shorthand she muttered something about "Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Freemasons, Enslaved Plumbers and the Ovalteenies fan club," before I managed to get out of earshot. In a few minutes we boarded our vessel, the silcrete deck of the Vengeance firm and steady beneath our booted paws. I turned and waved to our new friend on the dock, and faintly heard her parting blessing - "May you live in Fortean Times!" The four of us stood looking at each other for nearly a minute, feeling the warm winds in our fur. At last, Barnstoneworth voiced what I think we were all feeling. "It's been a right good stopover..." his voice was wistful, "But - now, it's back to us work." It was twelve days after our return to the ship, almost to the hour .... when at last, we saw what we had come to find. The "Vengeance" had made good progress beyond Bermuda, steering South-West to the strangely .. unsettled area of lost land and unready waters where our mission took us. As we dropped anchor, I re-set my watch for the last time, and looked at the readouts - 27 degrees North, 83 degrees East ... over seas that had once been lands. We moored some thirty kilometres offshore - not that the shore was easily defined, for the sea had not had time to wholly take this area to itself, and the ruins of buildings that had been tall before the Milennium, still stuck up making hazardous shoals. I had spent three days testing liquid air connections, all the while cursing the massively duplicated, quintiply-redundant systems that made this ship so resilient - about every fifty metres was an independent high-capacity cooler, able to pour perhaps fifteen tonnes an hour of liquid air into a great arterial system that had once cooled the ships' batteries of 485 mm automatic weapons. Now, the turrets were all gone - but we had another use for the air supply. "Hidy!" Came a voice from just behind me - not a voice that I knew. Standing up too suddenly, I banged my head on the great curving buttress supporting C deck's Coolant Pump 447. I turned, and looked. Looking up at me appraisingly was a short canine .. almost Anime, but with something more - exotic still, about her large eyes. Her white head-fur was a curled mop, and the rest was in a "poodle-cut" such as you see pictures of from before the Milennium. But her fur was not the surprise - she wore the brown uniform jacket and yellow neck-tie of Battle Group Hetty_Olmthwaite, all of whom I thought had left us at Bermuda. In her paw she carried a paper cone of chips, evidently from the F deck chip shop - but there was a sharp, unfamiliar scent to them, as if mayonnaise had been poured over them. I shook my head, realising how silly the idea was. She grinned, following my eyes as I took in her Accomplishment badges, several of them enhanced with extra orders and what must have been a dozen of the rarely-given Frenzy stars. "I'm on leave ... I tagged along with my Troop, for the free trip ... I'm interested in this sort of thing." Phoebe, of course, knew all about her, or so she said - but then, Phoebe made it her business to learn every true and untrue story she could cram into her computer and wetware. "Minette, Minette DuClos, that's her," the vixen growled, her ears dipped. "Yes, she's paying her own fare, yes, she's a listed volunteer. So we're stuck with her." Barnstoneworth raised an eyebrow, and said nothing. We three were sitting at the bow, hidden in the refreshingly cool fog flowing from the great ice caisson that now reached down to the ocean floor. In the distance, pumps laboured, emptying the seawater from the tube and filling the Vengeange's main coolant tanks, the extra weight pressing us firm against the seabed. Phoebe gave a sniff. "I wouldn't trust her. She's a Neo- Revisionist ... thinks everything in recent history's made up .. anybody who was actually there is automatically biased. Heretic!" The badger gave a quiet cough, and looked at her. "But that's what you always do, eh ?" "Yes .. but this is Different ! I'm on a Quest for Truth, about why things Happen - I don't just go around denying they ever did!" I looked around, through the eddying mists, and suddenly stiffened. I pointed, to a secluded spot of the main deck, where a great loading gantry towered forty feet tall. There was a figure standing where only we could see her, and only for instants through the vapour. "That's her, isn't it ? But what's she doing ? " Recognisable with that ancient haircut even under a steel helmet, Minette was looking up at something on the loading gantry high above her. She pulled out what looked like a metre-long piece of pipe, and suddenly I realised what it was - for the major sporting broadcast these days was no longer Pro- Celebrity Golf, but Anti-Celebrity Archery. Barnstoneworth gave a deep chuckle. "That's all it is. Keepin' her skills up, nowt wrong wi' that. An' it's a tricky shot she's makin' , straight up like that." But Phoebe had frozen, her tail fluffed out in shock. She looked at us searchingly, her eyes scanning from face to face. "I .. I can't remember where I've read it," she whispered, eyes half-glazed. "But I know for a fact, there's a terrible .. Association somewhere, involving vertical archery." It was a popular duty, to actually work on the archeological "dig" - at least, in the blazing sun, to be at the bottom of an ice- walled dry hole in the ocean was a welcome relief. Twenty metres of seafloor were exposed, frosted over near the caisson walls, but easily cleared with water-jets and suction hoses. There was a constant thumping of pumps, and around us the sharp cracking of ice under pressure - it had been alarming at first, but soon we accepted that the supercooled ice really Did re-freeze any cracks instantly, the circulating liquid air effectively making it a self- repairing structure. "Hmm." I looked round, to see Professor Grimslaithe absent- mindedly scratching his head with his excavation trowel. He was staring at a readout held in his other hand, turning to look at what we had uncovered, a water-worn fragment of road, as if trying to make sense of it. "Attention, people ..." he called out to the twenty or so of us who were busy clearing and labelling the finds. "I'd say we're in the wrong place ...." he waved his hand, as a general groan arose - "but ..... the telemetry says otherwise. This is the right piece of the planet, to within five metres ... but this road isn't on the map." One of the senior students held up a polythene bag, with specimens that had been part of the deposits in a culvert under the road, and spared the scouring effects of the tidal waves that had swept the area under. "Artifacts check with what we'd expect, sir ... dated to the Sheet-Metal age, Styrofoam Cup Culture." He shivered, and not a few of us did likewise. The age of the site was appalling ... there had been life here far post-dating civilisations, in dread non-Elder decades lost to knowledge in the Pastel Years. The professor nodded, glancing through the polythene bags of the days finds. In the top layer was an aluminium can of aggressively generic carbonated beverage, its garish logo still proclaiming "Tilt - with the Totally Typical Taste". On board the Vengeance, there was equipment that could probably read enough of the printing to make out the sell-by date, for an exact date fix. I looked at the road - we had picked up its trace on the ship's sonar, spotting the smooth concrete even buried under three metres of mud and debris piled up from the catastrophic floods. Certainly, it had gone somewhere ... it was three lanes wide each way, and here and there were the jagged, corroding reinforced concrete stumps of street- lights. A road well-lit, and much used, but in an area that had been mainly swamps and lakes even when it had lain under the sunlight. And a road that for some reason, I knew, had been wiped off the map. That night I lay in my bunk, unable to sleep. It might have been the stillness, for we were held fast to the ocean floor; the gentle motion was missing that even in dock offshore of Bermuda, had lulled us asleep. It was hot, too, a thick muggy warmth that penetrated the great corridors even far below the water-line. I sighed, as my watch beeped two in the morning. Earlier, I had tried my radio, but we were too far from any radio stations .. ghosts of distant voices drifted through my head, fading in and out. For maybe ten seconds there had been one clear burst .. the great Alto Tenor yodeller Ernst Straintz, with that pure vibrato tone that Barnstoneworth had called "Like drivin' a tractor crossways up a ploughed field wi' a pair o' breezeblocks tied to 'is privvits". But that had dissolved into static, leaving me looking around the bare silcrete room. Restlessly, I stood up, heading out towards the ship's #47 heads, a few hundred metres away. My footsteps echoed eerily, as I walked down the darkened corridors. The change was so gradual that I can even now hardly put words to it. Once again, it felt as if I was no longer alone with the skeleton crew and ghoul passengers that were my companions ... the feeling of company was there, as if I would turn any corner and find it packed with people, though I can not say if I exactly heard or scented anything. It was more ... as if I had already heard a roomful of busy people, that had fallen silent for that second .. a second that dragged on for minute after minute of straining silence. Turning the corner, I blinked, looking around. Somehow, I had taken a wrong turning .. the nearest Heads to my room were halfway down a corridor with two air-pipes running along the starboard wall at waist height, and this place had only one. And I was walking towards a dead end, a blank wall of silcrete. What happened next, I can scarcely explain or easily describe. The floor was even, and well-swept ... but I lurched forwards, not stumbling, but AS IF I had stumbled, I put my hand out against the smooth wall. There was a click, and a door opened - inside it was darkness, and a smell of mold, a forest scent of things long-dead. Reaching up to steady myself on the doorframe, my hand went straight to a switch hidden in the darkness ... before I could draw breath, the light was on. I saw a small chamber, faceted like the inside of a cut jewel. It was sharply pointed, the walls rising vertically from a twelve-sided floor some four metres across .. white marble or something like it lined the room, inlaid with silvery metal tracing strange patterns that could have been circuitry or some arcane and unknown script. In the centre of that chamber there was a chair - no, a throne, raised on two steps of white marble, the chair itself high-backed and flowing, glittering steel curved and moulded like clay drawn up by a skilled potters' fingers. That was a throne, indeed - and it was not empty. Still upright in the throne of steel, was what once had been a canine like myself - Time had reduced him to mummified dry flesh, the bones jutting hard under the shrunken hide. He wore a uniform, a white and silver one, its primary colours still tinted like hard steel chips on endless icefields. As I looked, something clicked in my brain ... I had served with our armies, fought all our foes and seen allies come in from all over the world. This uniform - was nothing I had ever seen before. And here, in the hidden heart of one of our own ships, I knew that there was something terribly wrong about that. "There's something terribly wrong about this," Clem confirmed the next day, looking around the room I had found. "Not that it's missing from the plans ... we don't HAVE any detailed plans. But this place .." he scanned the strange inlay on the walls, and his whiskers drooped. "There's electrical activity here, and I've no idea what any of it does." "Right," nodded another of the Engineering team, his head encased in the helmet display as he ran a surface-piercing radar up and down the walls. "These inlays aren't mechanically plugged in, or I'd take one out and get some more tests made. The energy pathways and data routes .. look like they're cast in as part of the structural keel .. short of the ship's back breaking, there's just no way of tracing where they go. Or why." We stood aside, as the medical team carried away the ancient husk of one who had known the answers we sought. The morning was spent running tests on the faceted room, but nothing was found that made any sense. Only a few of the circuits had power in them, and those intermittently - and what pattern did emerge, suggested the whole place was one tuned system, rather than the network of separate black boxes that we had installed to run the ship. I remembered what Barnstoneworth had said, about the earliest records we had of the Vengeance - that its repairers had patched and spliced into an existing system that was incompatible with what had been standard techniques and dimensions used for half a century and more across the known world. Our watches bleeped, and Clem straightened up. The cat slung his testing probe over his shoulder, and his ears dipped wryly. "Lunchtime. We can't spare any more time on this .. whatever it's doing, it's not causing us any trouble. I'm recommending we just seal the place for now - if anyone breaks this thing and it turns out we need it, THEN we'll be in trouble!" The next two days passed busily, as the archeeologists finished with the first caisson site and moved on. It was a simple matter, only needing to stop the flow of coolant to the lowest caisson ring, and waiting for the frozen grip on the seafloor to release. I was standing on the deck, monitoring the gradual closing off of the liquid air valves - when the world gave a sudden lurch. In an instant, there was a splintering crack from the caisson, and all the sirens on the ship began to scream. "Earthquake!" Someone yelled over the speakers. "All hands below deck ... hatches sealing in one minute!" There was just time to switch off all the air lines, right back to the stub arms that held the caisson structure together, before I unplugged the remote unit and sprinted for the nearest hatchway. The deck heaved again, and I looked round to see an incredible sight at the prow of the ship. The shock had snapped the weakening base of the ice tube - leaving the ocean to roar into a seventy metre hole, the high- pressure surge pulling in hundreds of tonnes of bottom silt as it shot up the caisson's bore and jetted into the clear skies as a colossal waterspout. Then I dived down the hatchway, red flashing lights warning me as the emergency doors slammed shut - and three seconds later was a deck below rubbing a twisted ankle as the great muddy eruption cascaded down amongst the decks of the Vengeance. Seven of the excavation team were not so lucky, being caught in the avalanching waters. Though we searched all afternoon, there was no trace of them to be found. It was a subdued ship's company that met that evening, with Professor Grimslaithe chairing the meeting. We met in the great tank repair shed of "E" Deck, those of us who were on duty watching through the ship's comms system. "While the earthquakes continue," the elderly baboon summed up, "further caisson work is just too dangerous. But ...." he waved a hand, as many of us groaned aloud, "we can carry on with the Mapping work, using the ship's instruments. I propose we head towards the new shore .... although that is where the shocks seem to be originating." It took very little time for Phoebe, at least, to bounce back. "Earthquakes ?" She clicked her claws derisively, as we sat down together for our usual supper of black pudding and mucky-dripping sandwidges "We're in a Macro-ship, I mean ! This is built to take a bit of hammering. Ran over a nuclear landmine, it did, and kept on fighting." There were answering nods from the tables around us - as Phoebe patted the solid silcrete wall of the dining hall. "This has been through worse than earthquakes." Barnstoneworth's eyes took on a strange, fathomless look. "And she held off the foe, even crippled as she was, though they built a subhuman pyramid to swarm into her wounds.. " I blinked, looking at the badger. "Beg your pardon ?" But he was staring straight ahead, as if looking at the unseen horizon beyond the ancient, decades-old armour. "... And those of her friends she could protect, she shielded with her shields and weapons, until the last of them died fighting before the great iridium doors ... she tore open her own body to finish those of the vermin that remained inside.. and then when there was nothing to do but resist, sixteen days she fought on, all alone......" suddenly he gave a twitch, and looked around. "Eh ? Tha' were sayin' ?" My ears rose in interest. "You've found out more about the ship's history ?" But Barnstoneworth only looked puzzled. "Nowt like that. Why'd you ask ?" For once, Phoebe's obsession with Conspiracy Studies failed to drive me out of the room. It was half an hour after our friend had departed to his bunk, pleading dizziness, and we sat alone in the sparsely furnished dining hall. After the day's events, the ship was hushed, and those of us off duty were in little mood for leisured chat. The vixen frowned. "Evidently, he didn't remember a thing about it. If only .. there was some way to .. confirm or deny what came out. He's not the kind to make things up .. I don't think he HAS an imagination under that flat cap. Badger stripes on the brainbox certainly aren't 'go-faster' strips......" I hesitated - and was about to tell her of the strange memories that had washed through my own mind, since boarding the Vengeance - nightmarish memories as if seen by some observer that had seen it all - yet I told myself it was absurd, for none of the crew had survived to transmit their impressions. And just then, a certain yellow- neckerchiefed figure waved cheerily from the entrance, as Minette strolled in carrying a tray full of mugs. "So many long faces !" The poodle beamed, putting the tray down on our table. "I thought you looked like you needed company... so I've brought over my Special recipe ale." She looked across at Phoebe, and her tail twitched, the round pom-pom of fur swinging. "I'm sure I don't know how I've offended you .. but I'd like to bury the hatchet." For a moment, I saw Phoebe's gaze flick aside to the wall, where a fire-axe hung on the emergency racks next to hosepipes, decontamination equipment and both physical and mental first-aid kits. Then she mastered temptation and nodded, her ears pulled up by force of will. The vixen waved Minette forward, no doubt with teeth gritted too tight to speak. Minette slid into the chair opposite be, and brushed back the curly white head-fur from her eyes. "I think it's so Exciting, don't you ? We're going to see the real coastline, and maybe .... we'll find something Interesting." "Such as ?" I asked cautiously. She turned her large eyes towards me, and I suppressed a shudder .. as if some odd and unhealthy association in my distant memory surged unquietly towards the light. "Oh ... I've heard there's all sorts of things in this part of the world." Again came that secretive smile. "You might say it's come down as a family tradition. My grandmother worked over here for a season, before the milennium, as waitress at a drive-by cafe." Phoebe snorted. "Get your history right, can't you ? You mean 'drive-in' - a 'drive-by' is where folk cruise past in vehicles and spray the place with automatic weapons." The poodle nodded. "That's right. They had a lot of very dissatisfied customers." I winced, as I took a sip at the beer in the mug. Phoebe seemed to be supping it without comment, but then, she liked Amerretoni. This concoction was hardly ale as I knew it .. though obviously somebody, somewhere had thought that flavouring it with cranberries would improve it. After three uneventful days of surveying the sea floor through the ship's sonars, at last we stopped again. The ship's tracks made muddy contact with the sea bed twenty metres underwater, as we ran gently up onto a shallow bank that once had been the top of some low hill. "Weather's closed in," Clem Eckingshaw commented, as we stood on deck. "Can't abide this sort of fog. Like a sauna bath, sort of .. gone wrong." I looked out into the cloaking banks of warm fog, the vapours foetid with the wind-bourne exhalations of coastal swamps, only a few kilometres away through the mists. I shivered, my ears pricked up, at the sound the indolent breeze brought with the scents ... a distant monotonous drumming, the first sign we had heard of the natives. Professor Grimslaithe joined us on the prow, where I had been checking the liquid air feeds for damage. He rubbed his hands together, and looked out at the two-hundred metre circle of grey steaming water that was our world. The swell looked long and oily, somehow uninviting - and since we had driven onto solid land, there had been three clearly- felt tremors. "Meteorological computer's on the blink," he grumbled, his fangs showing in his wrinkled face. "It says we should be having bright sunshine right now, not this fog. And the location system keeps jumping our reported position like a frog on a frying-pan .. if we didn't already know where we were, we'd not find out now." Through the fog all that day came the sinister thudding beat of the Natives' drum-and-bass machines, penetrating the first layers of the ship. Phoebe threw down her anti-fashion magazine, her ears down. "The drums .. the drums ... don't they ever stop drumming ?" Her tail swished, as she looked longingly at the headphone sets one of the sonar operators had securely clamped to his head. "Two hundred and eighty beats per minute .. it's driving me mad. Mad, I tell you !" I looked around, surveying the cluttered wardroom, and peered out of the electroepiscope at the wall of greyness outside. The hot, sticky fog worked its way everywhere, my fur feeling glued as if by rancid fat worked right down to the skin. I shuddered, and then suddenly had an idea. "Until the earthquakes calm down, they won't need us to work on the caisson feeds." I suggested, ears rising as I thought of a useful way to pass the time, "So why don't we take a look at the folk over there ?" After a quick consultation with the ship's Flag officers, they let us into one of the few areas of the ship cordoned off against casual intruders. This was a great lift-shaft, rising from the empty magazines on C deck to the cut-off top deck, where it had led to the land-torpedo turrets we had removed at Asgarth. "Bit of luck, really .... " Clem waved his hand at the lift, a cramped structure barely big enough to turn a landing-tank round in, "When this ship was salvaged, they found a few thousand tonnes of ammunition left, mostly in turret feeds that had got jammed. But they also found - these." "Panjandrums!" Phoebe's tail rose in delight, looking at the great three-metre rocket-driven fighting wheels, resembling a giant cable-drum, or a squashed excercise dumb-bell. Two wide wheels were separated by a two-metre diametre drum, its fat "axle" housing the electronics and warhead. "I saw one of those fired at the siege of Bromley .. chased an EC running mecha down the spiral ramp of a multi- storey car park, and dropped right in after him when he tried hiding in the lift-shaft. Neat !" "Do these still work ?" I asked cautiously, "They're rather old by now ... and they're wartime stocks, they weren't built to have much of a shelf-life." Clem smiled, and handed me the control console. I recognised a converted video-games controller - for most of the new weapons forged in the EC war, it had proven essential to give them controls that the unskilled users already understood. "Blue button .. this one's got battery power still, just needs the fuel tanks filling and the diagnostics say it's ready to roll." I pressed the "start game" button, and the giant street-fighting missile gave an oddly gentle bleep ... whirring into wakefulness, its ancient electronics woken from long slumber. At the axis of each wheel was a hemispherical camera cover, supposedly of bulletproof plastic, but more usually made from a pyrex glass mixing bowl .. and I was rewarded with a small but surprisingly sharp view of the lift, my two comrades and the three other panjandrums still sleeping on their launch cradles. "I've never run one of these .. " I must have broken out in a wide grin, looking around at them, "But today seems like a good time to learn !" As we towed the big pinwheel down the long, echoing corridors of the ship, we felt the decks lurch beneath us. "Another one!" Phoebe yelled, her paw slamming down on the locking brake of the launch cradle, before dodging out of the way. "This feels the biggest yet !" The three of us sprinted to the next corridor junction, our legs almost buckling as the floor came up and hit us - as if we were in the aisle of an aircraft slamming through turbulence, not a massive tracked mountain firmly grounded on the planet. I tumbled, hitting the floor, and then I recall trying to do nothing but hold on as shock after shock rattled the solid frame of the Vengeance. For fully half an hour the ship rang like a bell, as the earth trembled and jolted us, again and again as aftershocks rattled around the neighbourhood. At last, it grew calm. We looked around at each other, slightly dazed - listening to the ship's comms system calling for damage reports. Clem struggled to his feet, dusting his fluorescent overalls down with one paw. He grimaced, smoothing down his tail-fur, and stuck his head round the corner. "Well, at least that didn't fall over .... we'd never be able to get it upright without lifting gear," he commented, as we followed him to check the panjandrum. "And I think we'll be too busy with fixing the ship to do that today, at any rate." By the time we finished making our checks that evening, it had turned out that little had been damaged aboard the Vengeance - the main casualty had been the sleep of the second shift, who yawningly turned out to help run diagnostics. So before I turned in myself, I saw the big fighting pinwheel fuelled and drawn up to one of the landing-tank ramps on B deck, its airlock door hinged to float it out into the ocean at first light. Dawn showed a changed scene. Where there had been unbroken, choppy waters, now low banks of mud reared out of the mist like beached whales, with rushing runnels of water between them. The earthquakes had heaved this part of the world back to the surface - and I shuddered at the sight of hideously un-cyclopean architecture revealed on the nearest bank. Just as I arrived at the launching ramps, I heard again, faint but shockingly clear, the distant, dismal pounding of the natives' drum- and-bass machines. "It's coming from about North-North-East .. " Clem waved a map at me, the printout from the disc we had been gifted with under the clear skies of Bermuda, now seming a long time ago. "There's high ground that direction - must be pretty high, the tsunamis after those tremors must have been something fierce. " "Just the backwash off the land was up to "D" deck on us," one of our flag officers pointed up to a muddy tide-line two decks above us. We stood in the launch bay, which the day before had been a deck and a half underwater - now the hatch stood open to the mists, a ten-metre wide ramp leading down to the shallow muddy waters, scarcely a metre deep. I stretched, limbering up my fingers like a concert synth player - settling down in the loader's chair which had served the 250 mm spotting rifle for this turret's main guns. The panjandrum was pushed to the edge of the ramp, and Clem stood clear, giving me a cheery "thumbs-up". There were four of us in the launching bay; Clem, the flag officer and two other engineers, looking intently at the screen, an old 4096 by 4096 38" monitor of the kind they give away with games cartridges these days. I pressed the "Game start" button, and the towering drum gave a loud whine, as its internal rotors spun up. Clem nodded, looking at it vibrating under the growing power of its rocket-tipped rotors. "I forgot ... you've used this technology before, haven't you ? Your unicycle runs on the same principle." As the whining note steadied off, I nodded, my fingers poised over the port and starboard clutches. "That's right.. but these have two rotors, contra-rotating - like ... this....." With that, I cautiously let in the clutches, hearing the rotors change tone as the electromagnets picked up the power, and the great wheel rolled down the ramp with ever-increasing speed. "Whoa! " But it was too late - the ramp was steep, and in a second there was a huge splash as the panjandrum dug deep into the exposed ocean bed, mud and water flying. Cautiously, I halted it and checked the diagnostics - everything reported as well, and I gave one last look around at the expectant faces of the crew. The flag officer checked his watch, preparing to rejoin the bridge, but the engineers, a rat and a polecat from the Duke Of Argyll's Regiment, looked on in interest. "Well.... here we go." And with that I pushed the clutch levers forward, and the giant fighting-wheel rumbled off into the mists. For two hours I stared into the screen, watching the little digital readout updating its position. A hundred and twenty, then a hundred and thirty minutes of steering the panjandrum at walking speed over flat, featureless mudbanks, shattered masonry, and deep rills of running muddy seawater draining still off the unseen land. And all the while came that sinister, monotonous bass-beat from beyond the walls of fog, where the unseen drummers mocked at us (and any sane or wholesome musical taste.) At last Clem tapped my shoulder, pointing to a blinking amber light. "Fuel's getting low. Better bring it back ... "Control-Shift- Home" will do it automatically." I nodded, rubbing my eyes. This was the only Scout model we had, with a nail-down inertial guidance system and extra fuel in place of much of the warhead - apart from a tiny self-destruct charge, less than three hundred kilos of aluminised cyclonite, it was wholly unarmed. "About twenty minutes till it gets back, if it finds a straight-line course. Good thing it floats .. just paddle-wheels right across anything it finds." Standing up, I waved to the two engineers who were standing by with the fuelling hoses, idly watching the screen. "Give me a shout when it's back, I'll lend a hand getting it onboard again." As luck would have it, we had restored one of the Ready Rooms that the original gunnery crews had used, barely twenty metres away from the open hatchway. Phoebe and Minette arrived together as we sat abusing the hot drinks machine, an old and unrepentant model. Clem pulled a face, his ears right back as he sipped from a neo- classical plastic cup. "Don't try the "Animal Soup" .... I 'm not sure I WANT to know what species went into it." "The vegetable ones aren't much better," I felt my own taste buds clog like a tank's tracks in shingle, as something reddish-brown and sludgy sluiced over my tongue. "If this is genuine tomato like it says, it must mean it's made from real photographs of them ...." Just then there came a scream from down the corridor - not just a scream, a ripping, throat-tearing howl of terror that went on and on in a rising wave of tortured sound. The four of us froze for a heartbeat - but only Minette was still in the room a second later as the rest of us sprinted towards the loading ramp, our reflexes remembering desparate years of street-fighing in burned-out basements and smurfed- out slann-shacks all across the battle-torn cities of Europe. We took up position, diving to the side of the door - Phoebe had grabbed a fire-axe, and Clem had the hose of one of the refuelling carts, fifty pressurised litres of pyrophoric borane fuel ready to spray. My own Swiss Army knife was out, the dim light catching the ion- densified edge of the twenty centimetre Eurocrat-whittling blade. As I tensed, ready to roll into the room, there came a crashing, popping noise from within - and the scream stopped. I dived, rolling in across the floor, adrenaline pumping. In that instant I saw what there was to be seen - both engineers, lying still. One, the lop-eared rat, was stretched out stiff as a board - the other, the custard-yellow polecat whose scream I was fairly sure it had been ... he was still standing, but he was surely dead. The popping noise had been when he had punched both fists through the screen of the old monitor, the stink of burned fur and electronics drifting in the air from the high-voltage discharge that had earthed through him, killing him instantly. And from the look on the singed face, I sudenly realised it must have come as a relief. All this had taken less than three seconds - and as Phoebe and Clem cautiously followed me into the room, there came a deep, rumbling boom from out of the fog. I looked around, my whiskers stiff with panic fear, bafflement in all our faces - and saw that the panjandrum's control screen suddenly read "No Signal". Clem's ears were pressed right back against his head. "It self- destructed. That shouldn't have happened..." he whispered. "I disconnected the firing switch on this console - and look - " he scrolled the command buffer back, showing us the last ten actions. "Nobody touched it, since you told it to come home - it was heading straight back to us, and those things DON'T have minds of their own !" As we stood looking at each other, hearing alarm bells ringing in our heads as well as through the ship's speakers, I realised that the distant drumming had stopped. An hour later, the four of us were crowded in one of the ship's galleys - Clem and Phoebe were shaking, and the ship's surgeon had prescribed a flagon of rum between us. Over a portable Console, we could follow the developments as the Flag Officers investigated, and answer any questions they put to us. Clem's eyes were bleak. "You saw the ... look on their faces. The defence system says nothing came near the ship ... whatever they saw, was on the monitor. And to have THAT sort of effect...." He reached for another big tumbler of the eighty-percent proof Naval spirit, and sank it like water. "It's been a long time since I saw anyone ... affected like that. And the things that caused it ... I don't even want to think about." Minette smiled condescendingly. "I see. Back in the so-called Liberation days, I expect." She sipped from a bottle of one of the exotic beers that she seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of, though none of us recognised them. Phoebe's eyes flashed. For a second I had the image of her fangs sinking into the young poodle's throat, but she calmed herself down with an obvious effort. "There's no "So-Called" about it.. as you'd know, if you'd been there." Minette's eyebrow raised, and her ears tilted wryly. "You're doing Conspiracy Studies, and you've never thought there was anything a little ... suspicious about the whole story ? You actually believe that the Brussels Empire was masterminded and then controlled by evil squeaky-toys from some so-conveniently 'other' plane of existence ? To which they naturally returned, before you, or anyone you know, actually saw them." She swished her poodle-cut tail, the white pompom waving like a tail-mace. "Rather TOO convenient of them." "There was folks as saw them." We turned, to see Barnstoneworth standing in the doorway. "I were in t' Pioneers, layin' track for an armoured tram assault on s'Hergtensbosch, like ... when they came ower the hill. Three macro-tanks went up in front of us, lost wi' all hands ... but I were detailed afterwards as stretcher-bearer for Duke o'Devonshire's 897th Airbourne that went up to plug us line. I saw them that'd been in contact wi' the Enemy." The badger shook his head slowly, painfully. "Good folk we had, like ... an' I found em' lyin' in a pool o' Sanity Points, some o' them too far gone to save .. we'd gone short o' transfusions since they hit Switzerland in the last week. Some folk had ......" he hesitated, " started to CHANGE. Us vicar had to shoot'em and burn the bodies on the spot, for their own good." "I see." The poodle smiled, nodding. "But you didn't actually see anything yourself ? Or meet anyone who claimed to ?" "Nay. I'm still here - tha' needn't chuck thisself ower a cliff to find out if it's fatal - seein' it happen to other folk is bad enough. Folk as dealt wi' them things and lived, were mostly us Vicars - an tha's welcome to try asking one' o' THEM about it." Phoebe's ears were pressed flat against her skull. "Minette - I AM doing Conspiracy Studies - and I can tell you as a fact, that ... even before the EC took over, there were .. events happening, that don't have any sane explanation. Not unless - something with a strangely unearthly sense of humour was behind things - like the Monaco/San Marino war. Explain that one away." I nodded, agreeing - the thermonuclear exchange between the two pocket-sized principalities had been almost as inexplicable as it was brief and final. And just as with so much of the Liberation, there was nobody left who could shed light on just what had happened there. The poodle's tail swished, as she stood up. "I suppose with you oldsters, I have to make historical allowances for your - skewed viewpoint. But I know there's no such thing as evil fluff from other worlds. After all, I .... " She hesitated, as if she was about to say something else and stopped herself just in time. The round pom-pom of fur on her tail tip swished again, and she gave us a pitying smile. "If you could only hear yourself, and how silly it sounds ! But some folk just won't be helped." With that she turned, blew us a kiss and bounced out, heedless of Phoebe's kilowatt stare at her back. There was a silence, and we all stirred uncomfortably. At last, Clem spoke. "How's the survivor, Barnstoneworth ? Has he said anything ?" The badger shook his striped head. "Nay, lad - he's gone catatonic. We've more chance o' contactin' the dead'un, than gettin' owt from him. An' we would - but there's a snag." Phoebe blinked. "What's wrong ? Surely we'll just feed the body to the ghouls, like always - the one that gets the brain, will find out whatever he last knew, if we hurry." She looked outside, as the grey mists pressed heavy across the waters. "Don't they have ghouls working the reactors all shifts, away from sunlight ? We needn't wait till dark." It was a useful trait of the Undead, their high resistance to radiation. "Ey. That's trouble, like. Chap joined us at last minute, didn't go through same paperwork as rest of us - his Doner Card says we can use him for Doner or Kebab, but not 'et raw." There was a gloomy silence, as we looked at each other. My eyes focussed on the comms screen, and suddenly my ears rose high in surprise. "They're asking for volunteers to crew landing-tanks, and do a manned reconnaisance," I looked around, my tail twitching. "Anybody interested ?" An hour later, the launching ramps splashed down again from "D" deck, and three Vickers-Matushita amphibious tanks waded into the mud and fog. I was radio operator and loader on "Vicious", with Barnstoneworth at the controls. Evidently the handling qualities were much like one of the trams he had driven from the Rotterdam landings to the final armoured battle, that big confused mecha brawl generally called Third Lille. "There they go .. out of visual," I called down into the cramped driving section. On my screens to left and right were the radar images of "Viper" and "Vilify", the only other landing tanks we had been able to get working. "Vilify" was to our left: it had suprised us when Minette had volunteered to drive, though I had noticed the Girl Scout armoured combat badge on the sleeve of her tunic the minute we first met. "Aye... keep thi' eyes peeled, lad.." Barnstoneworth called up. "Visual too - there's stuff that can spoof the detectors, tha' never knows." He tapped his screen, the camera showing a projected line ending three kilometres ahead of us still, the Panjandrum's incoming route and last reported position. Slowly we ground forward, the little landing tank riding high in the muddy water between low steaming banks of exhumed sea-floor. We were almost empty, the great troop-carrying compartment at the back containing only our thermos flasks and sandwiches, rather than the platoon of infantry or skateboard-riding scout mecha it was designed for. Outside the turret was a familiar view, to me at any rate - one screen full of fog and mudbanks was much like another I had seen earlier that sinister day. Suddenly, I frowned. "Barnstoneworth .... " I called down the cramped turret hatch, to where he sat on his reclining seat, "Anything on your radar ? I'm picking up something big about 10 degrees port..... can't make it out." Tapping the screen, I watched in horror as the image seemed to blur like a watercolour painting in the rain - in twenty seconds I had lost contact with our companions, and even the great slab- sided bulk of the Vengeance herself seemed to wave and bob like a dancing mirage. "Eee 'eck, lad ... what's up wi' us instruments ?" the badger grunted. "I saw same thing - looked like a great whaleback hill, before screen went daft on us .. but all this land was flat swamp, before the Milennium. Any road, I'll take us ower there." For another twenty minutes we ground forward, our instruments blind. All the diagnostics packages either blandly reported all was well, or gibbered an ever-changing litany of contradicting hardware and software errors that changed by the minute. It was as if - I had the disturbing sensation, that it was as if something very basic was altering out there, leaving our finely tuned mechanisms helplessly spinning like a compass needle at the Magnetic Pole. Suddenly we slowed right down. Peering out through the gunner's optical sight, I saw a steep slope looming ahead of us; easily a one in four gradient, stretching up into the vapours. We turned right and cautiously edged along its base, until a corner began to bend away from us pointing towards the regular shoreline. Barnstoneworth gave one last try at the radio, and shook his head. He looked up at me, his head some two metres below my shock- mounted seat in the front turret. "Well, lad .. what do you reckon ? It must be not so steep away back there, or us Panjandrum couldn't have got this far - by dead- reckoning, I say we're not two hundred metres from where it went off." As the engine shuddered to a halt, I popped the hatch above me and looked out. The slope ahead was abrupt, cliff-like in places, a sharp corner of fairly freshly faulted rock showing where it had been roughly thrust up from the ocean floor. And I remembered the first briefing I had heard of this mission - about the strange distant sea- mounts that had somehow disturbed the wise dwellers in the depths, even before this new resurrection to the land. The mud and ocean ooze covered the steep slopes, carved into gulleys from the drainings of the block above - and somewhere on that block, strange events had taken place. I hoped they were over. Sealing my coverall, I pulled the hood up over my ears, standing up in the bucket-seat while I swapped the useless communication helmet for a more practical kevlar model. Looking at it, I smiled, spotting the old insignia and dates; this had been part of a tram conductor's mechsuit - and for it to have returned from the Continent, its owner must have survived the campaign. A lucky omen, I hoped. "We're here to look around ... " I shrugged, looking down at Barnstoneworth as he wriggled up through the turret ring, squeezing past the breech of the main cannon and its co-axial 185 mm spotter gun, "So .. let's take a look !" Getting up the slope proved even worse than I had feared. The ooze was knee-deep in places, and flowed slowly down towards the devouring bogs at the foot of the block - we knew we had to stay on the steep but recognisable corner to avoid losing our direction entirely. The thought of getting lost out here, with the ever-present threat of another earthquake sending tsunamis washing over us, was in the back of our minds every second as we sloshed and laboured uphill, slipping and falling till our suits were foul with the glutinous ooze. "Ey .. I think we're not far off top, tha' knows," Barnstoneworth panted after fifteen minutes of desperate labour. "Looks lighter up ahead." "I think so .." I was a little ahead of him, but I had been concentrating on my feet as I scrambled up a steep slab of fractured limestone. "I think we're looking West into the sunset, unless I'm quite turned round ... as if we could tell in this fog." Soon, the slope abruptly levelled out. I stood on a sheer broken edge, with the torn chaos of rock and spilled sea-slime below me, as Barnstoneworth caught up. Suddenly I reached down and wiped some of the ooze away from an oddly regular slab of rock, torn apart at the edge of the block. It was concrete. We stood there, getting our breath back. The top of the block looked much like the land below - but as I scuffed more ooze away, I could trace the edge of the road, a fractured kerb pointing straight back the way we had come. Suddenly Barnstoneworth stiffened. "Hear that ? " He pointed urgently, away into the gloom. "Somethin' out there. Cries, sounded like." I fumbled, muddy-pawed, with my helmet straps, and pulled it off. "Can't hear anything .... are you sure ?" My companion unslung one of the throwaway rocket-launchers from his shoulder, an old Swiss "Miniman" by the look of it. He nodded grimly, extending the folding tube and flipping up the plastic sight. With a gesture he waved me forward, along the lines of the old road, visible as a depression in the muck. The sense of relief at finding a landmark to follow was tempered by a creeping doubt, as I looked at the cracked, weed-choked surface: this was in almost the right spot to be a part of that other mysterious road we had found before the mists closed in, which had vanished from the final pre-milennium map as if the cartographers had belatedly tried to shield the world from what had been there. It might have been two hundred metres, or a little more - we advanced cautiously, skirting the pools of standing water that would have been noisy to splash through. The fur on my tail was trying to stand straight out like a flue-brush inside the coverall ... my eyes, ears and nose were at their fullest alert as we advanced in turns, freezing at the slightest sound. Yet there was only the soft bubbling of the mud, and a distant background of water still escaping over the steep edge of the block away to our right. This time, I was first to freeze in alarm. I had been folowing a long, shallow furrow in the mud, when I came across another one, a few metres long and just perceptibly angled to it. With a few gestures, I told Barnstoneworth what I thought we were looking at, and he nodded - we stood at the outer edge of the Panjandrum's effects, where far-flung shrapnel had ploughed into the ground. Half-crouching, I stalked forward, as alert as any of my wild canine ancestors at the hunt, knowing wary prey awaited over the ridge. Then came a scent I knew well - high explosive and burned flesh, hanging sickly and heavy in the still air. Whatever had been there initially, was no longer a threat to us, I told myself. And then, faint through the mists ahead, the sinister pulsing of the drum-and-bass machines started again. "Nowt much left here." We stood a little later on the edge of a broad, shallow crater. Barnstoneworth looked around, trying to reconstruct what had happened. Here on the top of the block, there was a little more light. Cautiously we had circled the crater, until we found the remaining tracks where the great fighting-wheel had arrived on the scene. "It was heading straight for home, and happened to run up the shallow end of this hill," I mused, half to myself. "Its cameras were running - what did it see ? What was up here ? There's marks here of lots of people, coming from the same direction " - I nodded into the mists towards the mainland. The drumming seemed a little louder now, its sinister rhythm pounding monotonously through the blind clouds. "By the tracks, the people were here first .. all moving along the old road, to that point there." I looked at the great circular mud-splash, and something occurred to me. "Where are they - what's left of them ? I've not found a whisker of anything organic - but I can certainly smell it. This place would have looked like a Siberian butcher's shop, guts all over the place !" "Tha's right," the badger blinked. He waved a twisted shard of metal. "Piece o' the warhead casing. Biggest piece o' Anything we've found. An' it went off right .. here." He stood in the centre of the crater, deep in thought. His arms wrapped tight around his chest, then he suddenly flung them out, hurling the metal shard off into the mist. Then he looked at his feet, and bent down to examine the ground. "Stay there, lad ... there's tracks heading out o' this - fresh ones!" He dropped to all fours, his black nose sniffing. In a minute, he waved me over. "Look .. the crater rim's regular, but .. there. You see ? Headin' off to the far side, like ... but I can't make'em out. Something .. soft, but heavy." We followed the ill-defined traces to a point five metres away from the crater rim, where there was a small, shallower crater. My nose twitched with the smell of fresh blood and burned meat, and I pointed to the colour of the mud. "Looks like somebody ended up here .. or a fair-sized piece did, anyway. But .. then what ?" Barnstoneworth scratched behind his ears, snout wrinkled in worry. "Them funny tracks stopped, then go right past them ...... see, now we know what to look for, you can spot they're going all ower the place. Reckon we'll follow ?" For half an hour we paced across the explosion site, occasionally picking up metal fragments - and once, a shredded cap of odd design, such as you see in the films coming down to us from before the Milennium. The soft marks became oddly clearer, the impressions firmer in the mud - till they abruptly turned away and headed towards the far corner of the block, the steep side opposite where we had climbed. Standing on the edge, I looked out into the unknown gulf. Just as I was going to suggest following further, two things happened. There was a slight tremor beneath us - and somewhere very nearby, a second centre of the drumming broke out. Somewhere, I guessed, on this very block. And then another noise, softer but far more horrible - a kind of odd squeaking, filtering through the mists - a sound I instinctively knew I had never heard in waking life, but that sent panicked signals of hard-coded terror shrieking from the primal centres of my mind. In that second, I was suddenly very glad that the mists hid us from that which made the sound. I cast Barnstoneworth a glance, and he nodded, giving the "retreat" hand-sign and pointing to the far corner. A fur-prickling sensation was growing by the second, somehow warning us that this was no longer a place for any normal healthy living or undead folk to be lingering. We beat a hasty retreat, moving as fast as the mud and pools of water would allow us - this was no place to twist an ankle. About halfway back to the edge of the block, I spotted something - a single set of fresh tracks, running almost parallel to ours .. with a hiss of warning and a gesture I swerved our course to take a look, neither of us willing to drop below a jogging speed. "Ours ? Can't be .. we were together on this bit .." I panted, waving towards the road some ten metres to our left, our only guide in the cloaking fog. "But .. they're regular Issue boot prints ..... like ours." For perhaps five seconds we risked a stop, looking and sniffing carefully at where the prints angled away from our route, heading back towards the edge at the opposite side to where we had ascended. "Aye .. same tread pattern, an' all," the badger panted. "I recognise them old World War 3 Surplus hobnails anywhere. But we can't follow. Quick now ! " With that he started off again, bending back to the road. Three minutes later we were at the edge, and soon found our prints heading uphill. Looking down at the steep slope we paused again, scanning around nervously, ears and noses twitching. There was nothing to be seen, and with a sick shivering I realised it was getting darker by the minute, as the sun began to set behind the clouds. The drumming echoed around us, though mercifully there was nothing more of the squeaking ... but as I swivelled my ears, there was one sound that faintly reached us from downhill. It seemed to be the sound of turbine engines, but I could not be sure and said nothing. Barnstoneworth was sliding noisily down one of the flowing mud-gulleys at that second, and I doubt that he heard it - in a few seconds I was following him down. After a muddy but uneventful glissade down the steep face of the block, we soon reached the welcome metallic bulk of "Vicious", and without a word were soon stowing our muddy oversuits in the turret lockers and wriggling in through the cupola hatch. The heavy clang of the turret hatch locking above us was one of the most comforting sounds I have ever heard. I looked down at Barnstoneworth, and breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, that's that, I hope .. they can get someone else to volunteer next time." I switched on the electrics, and was pleased to see at least half of the sensors running again. "Back to base, green eggs and ham for tea tonight!" Barnstoneworth nodded, firing up the turboshafts and swinging us around in a lazy, wide turn to follow our outward trail. Below me I could see his striped face in the green and red glow of the instrument lights, muzzle wrinkled with concentration as he stared out into the deepening gloom. After about ten minutes of steady driving at eight knots or so, he stepped down through the gears, ears tilted back in worry. "Eh, lad, I don't like look o' this ... " he growled, bringing us to a halt. "I can see the Vengeance on the radar, all right, but she's moved - three klicks nearer land. She didn't ought to 'ave done that, not wi' landing tanks out in this fog. If us radar was still down, we'd be lost an' no mistake. Still, there she is - should be plain sailing back 'ome now." Relaxing, he reached down into the ITE rack (In-Tank Entertainment) for a Bulky disc, and soon the inspiring strains of mantra-filed oompah bands reverberated merrily inside the Vicious, theBagshot composite armour ringing tunefully with the sounds of fuel- injected euphoniums and aerospike trombones. In another ten minutes the great slab-sided bulk of our ship loomed out of the mists. As we drove around it, I noticed that some of the lights seemed to have gone out, and others on the top deck were the distinctive blue-white glows of emergency searchlights. "What the .. ? They've shut door on us !" Barnstoneworth's ears went right up in surprise and anger as we rounded the corner to the port side, where the big ramp from "D" deck's tank hangars was pulled up flush with the hull, leaving us parked at the foot of an unassailable eighty-metre wall. He hit the Transmit button to the Bridge frequency, and after a minute in which I learned several new words, there was a faint clunk on the outside of the hull. I popped the hatch and looked up - to see a thin wire ladder reaching up to the top deck. I sighed, switching off the onboard systems as I looked down at the badger in the warm, dry hull below me. "I didn't expect them to roll out the red carpet for us ..... " I gestured towards the narrow, twisting ladder already glistening with condensation from the greasy fog, "But this is ridiculous." "The ship went crazy, ten minutes after you left," Clem explained, after grabbing us off the deck and hustling us straight inside, "It was as if ... I don't know, as if a virus got into the control system. But we've checked, there's nothing like that. Systems starting up and shutting down, all over the place ... all the reactors on B deck switched on to full power, tracks engaged and we were running out of control towards the old shoreline ! Had to run downstairs and hit the manual resets we'd put in ... the automatic shutoffs just weren't taking orders." He led us to a room just off the "C" deck emergency bridge, one of the ubiquitous drinks machines and a dispenser for pre- staled biscuits taking up most of the room. "But wait till you see this. It just ... appeared." My tail fur bristled out in shocked suprise, as I looked in. I had worked in this room, a plain silcrete-walled cuboid not four metres along its longest side - there had been nothing in it, except the emergency equipment I had help install. Now there was. A panel had slid back, almost a metre high by three metres long, revealing what looked like an old low-tech LED screen, with a complex shape on it, an intricate meshing of multicoloured lines and planes. I blinked. "It's the Vengeance .... but - look, the fighting roller and everything's marked on it - it's the ship as it was first built!" I had pored over too many tantalisingly incomplete working surveys not to pick out the vessel's distinctive shape. "There ... all the parts in red are missing pieces, lots of orange, yellow and about ten percent green." I scratched my head. "Reactors are all green ... at least, the B deck groups.. could mean green are the fully working systems. But what's that ?" On the cutaway diagram that slowly rotated and shifted to display every surface, the keel of the ship supported eight huge structures displayed in light orange, running the full length of the vessel. They looked vaguely like giant cannon, for they had a straight barrel and a complex, breech-like structure at one end to which a tangle of various cables and coolant ducts led. But the other end was closed off, in a smaller but equally complex structure that finished behind thick armour plate, the whole system surrounded by giant water ballast tanks. Clem's whiskers drooped. "That's what's down there, locked away forever on "A" deck. Eight of the things! I thought maybe two or three ...... nobody ever put eight boiling-potassium reactors in a ship this small ! " His feline tail fluffed out like a great log as he traced the giant structures, cast into the very structural hull of the vessel. "Saint Stakhanov preserve us ... those must have pumped out enough power to make this ship do a wheelie......" Barnstoneworth tapped my shoulder, and pointed to a fine yellow line up on "D" deck. "That one there. I don't know what it is, but that were orange three minutes back. Changed slow, like ... but it changed, right enough." I cast it a glance. "Well, it could be anything. Could be its way of letting us know there's a water flow when the ship's Heads are flushed." I shrugged. "I don't recognise any of the symbols ... look a bit runic to me. " The badger nodded slowly. "Aye ... mebbe tha's right," he frowned. "But if I were in charge o' this, I'd have someone sittin' here wi' a Comms panel, keepin' a VERY close eye on this thing." We spent ten minutes staring at the panel, but nothing more happened that we could notice - except for the faint impression I got that the entire display was very gradually lightening. It was nothing I could point to exactly, and might have been nothing more than our eyes getting used to the otherwise dim room, and seeing better contrasts. At length, the portable console Clem carried gave an urgent bleeping as it tracked us down . Barnstoneworth answered it, and turned to me. "Prof Grimslaithe an' the rest want to debrief us, like," he jerked a striped thumb in the vague direction of the bridge, far above us on "F" deck. "Come on, lad, let's get us tails into gear." Professor Grimslaithe grilled us for half an hour as to what we had found, out there in the mists on the sinister shore. By his side were two of the Flag Officers, traditionalists in most things like most of their kind. Apart from their rank badges worn on armbands, the two big humans wore nothing but good honest British Woad, the blue plant dye providing a cool and healthy costume in this climate for folk with the figures to carry it well. At length, the baboon relaxed, motioning us to sit down. He waved apologetically. "Sorry to put you through it .. but the other tank, the Viper, found some equally .. disturbing things. " He pulled out a sheaf of instant photos, and a sketch map with our courses marked on it. "They found a large ruined concrete structure, and spent their time exploring it. It was one of those unnaturally large shopping complexes the aboriginal culture here had, years ago .. we could date it by the drive-in Psychosurgery studio, to the very last days, before the tsunamis rolled in." Barnstoneworth nodded, his ears pressed back. "Aye, Prof ... I knows about them. Folk had their brains modified to make themsel's more Statistically Average Consumers .. it were the accepted thing to do." He shook his head slowly. "They 'ad things called "Chat Shows", back then ... it weren't their fault, we know that now." The baboon's ears went back. "The Viper's crew found - these. " He put on thick neoprene gloves, and pulled out some objects, still half caked in mud, from a heavy lead case. Behind us, one of the human flag officers gagged at the sight, his face turning as pale as his fashionably limed hairstyle. What the objects were, I cannot bring myself to recall - except to say that I had thought them gone from this world after the thousand- bomber raids hit Namur, ostensibly to demolish the factories making chocolate teapots and trick melting teaspoons, innocent-looking things that we discovered almost too late to have such hideous ritualisic significance. I was very sorry, then, that I had read the Compte D'Isgny's soul-shattering "Cultes Des Schtroumphs" as a bet in my first year at Asgarth, secure in the friendly ghoul-scented stacks of the University's great Library. Even Barnstoneworth's stripes seemed to lose definition, and his stub tail drooped. "By 'eck ..." he choked out, and for a minute was silent. "But all this area was gone under the waves years before ... that stuff was ever made. Weren't it ?" Professor Grimslaithe shook his head ruefully. "Would that it had. We have evidence that in at least four sites around the world, there was a .. test run, you might say, made before Belgium was chosen as the place for the Invasion to start. The Vicars keep much of the knowledge to themselves, probably for the best ... but somewhere around here, we believe there was a major Site. Have any of you heard ", he hesitated, looking from one face to the other "of the .... Cleethorpes Fragments ?" Wordlessly, we shook our heads. He glanced around, and gave a nod. The two humans left the room and shut the door securely, relief clear on their faces as they left us to it. "Well, we have a few special texts kept under very secure lock and key, at Asgarth. This is something that was found in an ancient piece of furniture being renovated - it had fallen behind the drawers, you see." I felt my fur rising in fear, and suppressed a whimper. I had worked myself on restoring furniture, reviving stripped chipboard kitchen units and the like ... never suspecting there could be sinister secrets concealed. "What .. was it, Sir ?" The baboon turned away from us, his hands clenched behind his back, as he chose his words carefully. "There was a fair-sized sheaf of paper, one way and another. We traced the desk unit to a Cleethorpes travel agent, harmless in itself .. long gone now, of course. It was just one of the brochures, that makes reference to a place very near here, a very large complex that we've picked up very disturbing .. Associations with. There were photos .. from the angle of the sun, and a clock showing the date and time on three of them, our computers fixed the position pretty accurately. There were also some Inhabitants, that might have been people wearing costumes at first .... but not right at the end. Let's say that when they advertised a World Of Magic, they were much nearer the truth than anybody at the time could possibly have thought." Another long silence followed. I thought of the road we had found, back in the days when the sun had shone innocently above us, and all was full of promise. That six-lane road had served a substantial site that had not been a city, as all the maps agreed. Exactly what it had been, and its exact position, was not a comforting thought to those of us stranded here on the sinister shore. Suddenly, Barnstoneworth stirred. "What 'appened to the Vilify, Sir ? That couldn't have bin far off our track. What did they find ?" Professor Grimslaithe gave a dismissive shrug. "Miss Duclos typed in the report, I haven't seen her .... they only got four klicks away from the ship before their instruments packed in. They spent the whole afternoon parked on a mud-bank, trying to fix their radar, rather than risk getting lost. Even so, they were the last ones back." He frowned. "Very unenterprising, I would say. Next time, I'll send someone who's keener on finding things." As the fog-laden night darkened, I returned to my room. A hot bath washed some of the stains of the day's travel away, but still the very air felt thick and greasy with fog - and even in my narrow room on "D" deck, I found my ears straining to pick out the sinister bass-beat from Outside. Again, sleep eluded me. It felt as if the air was wrapping around me like a thick, foul blanket pressing close against my fur .. my tongue hung out as I panted in the humid air. Standing up, I stretched, and yawned. Exercise could do me nothing but good, I told myself, and strolled out into the echoing, night-shrouded corridors of "D" deck. As I walked, I pondered the events of the day. From the time when I had steered the Panjandrum out into the mists, strange things had happened .. as if I had poked a hidden nest of venemous insects, and they had come swarming out in response. But that was absurd, I told myself - this ship and its fighting-wheels had been dedicated to the extirpation of that which the Belgians had called, long after the healing waves had ended whatever nightmare had been planned here. Professor Grimslaithe's artifacts were a dread piece of history, to be sure, but that surely was all they could be. How long I walked, I cannot say. But I had gone far, circling past my room's uninviting door several times, when I felt a deliciously cool draft of air around my ankles. Dropping to hands and knees, I sniffed - there was no scent to it, rather a pure ice-fresh clarity, as if it had swept from great starlit slopes untouched since the Elder Ones had given up skiing holidays in remote geological fastnesses of Time. Half closing my eyes, I concentrated on my scent and the delicate touch of flowing air on my fur .. as I rounded several corners in search of its source. My eyes were closed for a few seconds, so I cannot say even now that there was a light ahead of me, unlike the dim fluorescent worklights strung by our paws throughout the ship. But I remember a sensation, as if there had been a brilliant white light a second before I opened my eyes and found exactly where I was kneeling. In front of me gaped the door that I had found, the crystal chamber. It had been sealed off while investigations were made - but now it was open, to the darkness. From that door, the cold air flowed. I stood, looking around. I was alone, poised on the threshhold of something unknown, with no witnesses or chance of aid nearby. Like anyone else would, I switched on the light, and stepped inside. The chamber was as I had last seen it, its strangely inlaid walls silvery- white, the high-backed chair standing empty. Empty, and somehow ... folorn, I remember feeling as I looked at it. For most of my life, and maybe longer, it had been filled by the canine whose body we had found there, faithful to death and beyond. Now it was empty, and as I looked, a sensation of loneliness swept over me that I had never felt on any solo mountain or glacier trek. The throne of steel was cool as I sat in it, the welcome coolness as of crisp sheets in a welcome bed. Smooth and hard it might be, but somehow not uncomfortable, the hardness of a sword hilt supremely matched and balanced to my grip. There was no draught here, nor do I remember seeing condensation outside the room as I would have expected with a cold wind flowing into the saturated miasma that filled the rest of the ship. Sitting there, my arms found themselves relaxed on the rests, which I saw now were finely engraved, that strangely ... developed Runic style that folk better qualified than I had fruitlessly puzzled over. It was like looking at printed modern Greek, if you knew only the most archaic forms four thousand years old - the letters were similar, but the language changed to reflect the new world it described. I yawned. This room was pleasantly cool and I had slept badly since we had left Bermuda, leaving me short several night's worth of true rest. Without meaning to, I fell asleep. Certainly, I slept soundly at first. When the dreams began, they were nothing out of the ordinary. It was a dream of motion, a landscape moving past me as if I was in the nose of a low-flying aircraft - trees and houses just below me, passing to each side. And yet there was no hint of being in any kind of vehicle, only the changing view flowing past on each side, always the same distance below. There was a feeling, too, growing stronger and stronger .. a sense of familiar company that reminded me of the thronged taproom of the Eurocrat's Head back in Asgarth, but more .... urgent, more earnest, and steeled to accept some stern purpose. Then the dream changed, or I saw it from a darker viewpoint. The land around stretched fair and smiling under the sun, but hidden things lurked and festered in secret. There was a Nature book I had read as a pup, with a cut-away drawing showing life in the soil, mortals and immortals playing on the grass above unsuspected things that coiled or burrowed beneath. Here, the sensation was the sam