Deep in the jungle, the continuing explosions now behind him, he was caught unawares when a white hand snaked out from behind a giant club moss to grab his shoulder. He thrust his weapon up towards a white face, and was a microsecond from pulling the trigger before its identity registered.

‘I thought she’d killed you!’ Tack exclaimed.

‘Apparently not,’ Saphothere replied, staring up at the mountainside Tack had just left.

Tack turned to look and saw two mantisals had just appeared. Later, learning that Saphothere had left his tent briefly while Tack dozed, he was grateful that even superhumans like Saphothere needed to take a shit occasionally. The traveller began climbing the tree they were standing beneath. Tack followed him up and soon they obtained a better view of their ravaged campsite.

Their packs had been propped against a rock face behind Saphothere’s incinerated tent. Even as they watched, the group of Umbrathane set their defences, then leaving behind only two, a man and a woman, the other six, including Meelan herself, began scouring the jungle below. Tack handed back the monocular Saphothere had passed him.

‘I recognize a couple more of them from Pig City,’ he observed.

‘Well, there would have been some survivors,’ Saphothere replied.

‘So what do we do now?’ Tack asked.

Saphothere’s face was locked in an angry grimace. Then he looked around. ‘It’s turning dusk. We hit them in full dark. Then you grab a supply pack and your weapons, and just go on from here.’

He scrambled down from the tree and Tack followed, knowing that when the traveller said ‘go on from here’ he meant the moment Tack grabbed those packs he must take his implant offline and allow the tor to take him back in time. From that point he would be on his own, if he survived the coming fight. Dubiously he considered their current collection of weapons. Saphothere had wisely taken a carbine with him into the jungle and had an assortment of proximity mines hooked on his belt, while Tack possessed only his hand weapon. Though containing a hundred-round clip of explosive ammunition, that was not sufficient if you went up against eight heavily armed Umbrathane.

‘What about you?’ Tack asked, as they pushed through undergrowth.

‘I survive—or not. But your mission is vital and you must carry it out.’

‘Why not just summon the mantisal here and we could get supplies elsewhere?’

Saphothere looked at him. ‘We cannot afford the time.’

There it was: another of those pronouncements that just didn’t make sense to Tack. Nevertheless, he nodded as if he understood.

Saphothere explained, ‘When Coptic and Meelan hit us first, I was prepared to accept that as just luck on their part. But her tracking us here and being so well-prepared, I am not inclined to accept as coincidence. They are getting inside help, but most importantly they are somehow securing the energy for accurate time-shifting.’

‘Cowl,’ said Tack.

‘Maybe,’ Saphothere replied. ‘Now, this is what you must do.’

Shortly afterwards Saphothere signalled that they should now proceed in silence, sliding through the foliage, stepping only on sure ground, utterly alert. Even their comlinks were unusable in this situation as they could be detected. But their clothing shielded them from infrared detectors, and the natural motion of the foliage from motion detectors. This was to be dangerous and bloody.

When Saphothere motioned for Tack to now head off separately, he did so. It was only seconds later that the firing started.

‘What is your name?’

Thote’s voice was calm, soothing.

‘Polly.’

‘It is good to meet you, Polly.’

Polly felt herself getting lulled.

Don’t go all slushy for the first dick you ‘ve encountered in a hundred million years, Polly. You can bet your arse he’s not just your tour guide.

Nandru’s words were iced water in her face and reminded her that always, in her past, whenever someone was being nice to her they wanted a piece of her.

‘If you’re here to help me, then start by telling me what the hell is happening to me,’ she suggested succinctly.

The man flinched visibly and got a distant look on his face. After a moment he smiled again and held out his hand to her.

‘Come with me to my camp and I’ll try to explain.’

Polly took his hand and allowed him to pull her to her feet. She noticed how his gaze kept straying to the arm on which the scale clung, concealed by her sleeve. Pushing for some clearer reaction she could read, she released his hand, pulled up her sleeve, and held out her forearm before him.

‘Do you know what this thing is?’

‘It is a tor: an organic time machine that is dragging you back to the beginning of time—to the Nodus. You are one of Cowl’s samples.’

Instead of asking the questions that clamoured for attention after such a statement, Polly said one thing only, ‘I don’t want to go-’

The man nodded and slowly began to walk away from her. She could feel a tension in him; that he was holding something back. She had much practice in reading men’s body language. She followed him across the rockscape to a campsite, where supplies were neatly stacked and a pot bubbled on a compact stove. Thote gestured to a blanket spread on the ground and Polly sat down, while he squatted by the bubbling pot and stirred it.

‘You are stretched out like elastic from your own time. There is admittedly a small risk in removing the tor; it is a living parasite and made to cling to and draw its host back in time until removed and read by its maker, Cowl. I too can remove it, though, and once it is removed you will immediately fall back to your own time. I take it you want to return there?’

Now that sounds a little too easy to me. Watch out for this fucker.

‘When I left my own time someone was busy trying to kill me.’

But no, she had dragged the killer along with her… and what did that mean? Would he still be there on her return? Would he have never left? Thote looked at her as if reading her mind.

‘You won’t return at the exact moment you left. You’ll arrive in what would naturally be your own time. You have been travelling for some days now, personal time, so that means you’ll arrive back the same number of days after your departure.’

Easy as sucking eggs. He’s lying to you.

Polly did not want to hear Nandru. It all seemed so perfect. She didn’t want to be chewed on by bad-tempered dinosaurs. She didn’t want to run into this Cowl, whose name alone sounded ominous. But Nandru was right—this whole situation stank.

‘Why do you want to do this?’ she asked the stranger.

‘I’ll do anything to thwart Cowl’s plans.’

Thote ladled what smelt like fish stew into a bowl and handed it to Polly.

‘Here, you’ll find this tastes better than anything you’d find on the shore.’

Polly took the proffered bowl and sniffed it. The food smelt delicious, with chunks of white meat and pieces of fibrous vegetable floating in a thick sauce. She dug in and raised a spoonful to her mouth. It was in her mouth and she was already chewing, when she noticed the avid look on Thote’s face. As a sudden bitterness froze her tongue, she spat the food out and threw the bowl at him, then stood, reeled, staggered back. He stood up also with a calm satisfaction.

He gestured then to a nearby rock crevice, where lay the remains of some other time traveller, the tor still wrapped like a coral on one arm, but gathered round bare bone. Empty eye sockets, bare ribs exposed through decaying clothing, some mummified flesh remaining, blond hair fallen from a bare skull.

‘That will be your future if you keep going. There’s a lot of time still between here and the Nodus, and few can survive the journey.’

Polly tried to shift, tried to suborn that webwork inside, but her will seemed flaccid and confusion was filling her head.