 
Reality Zero

By

Graham M. Phillips

Copyright Graham M. Phillips 2016

Smashwords Edition

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Chapter 1

Reality 5: Will Hunt

Will Hunt was feeling nervous. Whilst he had thought it was a good idea to meet his counterpart in this reality, he was beginning to have second thoughts. Judging from his experience with Kat Brown, who was walking beside him, he was beginning to realise that you neither could nor should expect your doppelganger to have the same traits as yourself. Just to add to his unease was the fact that he was jobless, homeless, had no usable money and was even wearing borrowed shoes. Everything he owned was still, he hoped, on Shackleton but he did have a few resources on Columbus, thanks to Billy and the navy. He was also hoping that the navy uniform he still wore wouldn't attract attention, as it wasn't the uniform used by the navy in this reality. Although it was similar, it was the wrong colour and the badging and other insignia were undoubtedly all wrong as well. Hopefully, anyone who took more than a passing glance at him would just think he worked for one of the many shipping companies that frequented the space station.

As they walked along the corridor towards his meeting with Bill Hunt and his wife Becca, Will realised that there was a slight air of neglect about the public corridors he'd walked down in Cantabrigia, compared to those in Shackleton and Columbus. There were small patches of rubbish in some of the corners, odd lights were flickering and clearly needed replacing and the walls and floors looked slightly worn. He'd also noticed the odd cobweb, though he couldn't work out how their inhabitants managed to survive on a space station. Even some of the advertising screens had dead pixels, making them look less than a perfect medium for promoting their wares.

He was also somewhat put out that, by disappearing from her reality, he hadn't managed to get to see Sarah Hirst again. He'd been hoping to get to know her better in fact, much better, but that looked unlikely now.

'I know I should've asked earlier, but what exactly do you want from Bill and his wife?' asked Kat, as they entered the central hub of the station.

There was no reply. She asked again.

'Sorry, miles away. I was thinking of someone I met in the last reality I was in, and realising I might not see her again. As regards Bill, I'm not really sure, to be honest. It seemed like a good idea when I suggested it in your apartment but I'm beginning to wonder if it was. Bit late to back out now, though!'

'Bummer. What was her name?'

'Sarah Hirst. We'd only just met but there was something about her, you know? I think it was love at first sight, although if you'd asked me before I met her, I would have denied such a thing existed.'

'Yeah, I know. A few years before I met Janet, I literally bumped into a girl in a cafe. We both finished up with coffee down our fronts and she came back to my place to clean up. That took a while, I can tell you! Unfortunately, she had to fly out the next day and I haven't seen her since. We kept in touch for a while but even that fizzled out. I've often wondered how it would have panned out had we had longer to get to know one another. Anyway, sounds like you're going to be floating the currents a bit then when we get there.'

Will looked quizzically at her. 'Sorry, I'm not familiar with that phrase.'

'All it means is that you'll make it up as you go along' smiled Kat.

'Ah. Yes. That sounds about right. We talk about winging it. I've been doing it all my life. Why change the habits of a lifetime?' he said, smiling back at her.

'While I can stay around for an hour or so, Janet comes off shift then and she'll wonder where I am if I'm not at home. If nothing else, I need to explain your presence to her, so she doesn't think I've gone straight!' she laughed.

'Wouldn't want that. Not a problem. I'm grateful that you're helping me out until I can get myself sorted out. Do you think you'll get a chance to talk to your boss about my communicator today? The sooner I can get some money and out of your way, the easier it will be for both of us.'

'Once I've talked to Janet, I'll call him and try and set up a meeting between the two of you. I think that, just as I was, he'll be mighty impressed by your communicator, especially the holo camera and projector. We've nothing remotely like it. Trust me, he'll see the potential of getting something like that to market. It would give us a real edge over the competition. It's got to be worth several million credits to the company.'

'Provided he can let me have some up-front funds so that I can get some clothes, some food of my own, and somewhere to live, I'm sure we'll be able to agree on a suitable deal. Some footwear of my own would be good, too!'

'I'm sure you will. Anyway, we're almost at the restaurant. It's just over there, next to the clothes store' responded Kat, pointing in the restaurant's direction.

As they got nearer, they could see Bill and Becca standing near to the entrance.

Bill was looking at the Menu in the restaurant window but Becca was looking in their direction. Will waved. Becca returned a wave and nudged Bill. Bill turned around and walked towards Will and Kat.

'Wow, I can't believe the similarity. Apart from the hair and your choices in beards, you could be twins' exclaimed Becca.

'It's closer than that' replied Will. 'I'll explain when we get into the restaurant but be prepared to be more than surprised.'

After they had chosen their meals and drinks, Kat invoked the table's privacy screen. 'I think that the best way to start my explanation is to show you a few things that will probably confuse you. They are the real thing and haven't been edited in any way, before you think they have' said Will, feeling slightly nervous about whether Bill and Becca would be comfortable with what he was about to show and tell them.

With that, Kat dimmed the booth's lighting level and Will laid his communicator on the table and showed them several holo movies, holo images and some 2D images of family and friends, including the images he had taken of Billy, Kate and Peter only yesterday.

When he'd finished, Kat increased the lighting back to normal and looked at Bill and Becca. They looked somewhat taken aback by what they'd seen.

'I have no idea how you did that but I think you need to explain it' said Bill, looking worriedly at Will.

'To be honest, there's no easy way of explaining this. I hope that what I say makes sense. My full name is William Richard Hunt. I come from another reality. In most respects it's the same as this one but, as different decisions are made, the realities fork in different directions. The differences between my reality and yours are fairly small, so the fork must have happened fairly recently. So, for example, I lived with my version of Becca in my reality for about five years but she was known as Becky and we didn't marry. We split up last year. Billy Hunt, who you saw in some of the images, is married to Kate and their son is called Peter. I dated a version of Kate in my reality at college but it only lasted a few months. Kat here is her version in this reality but lives with Janet Walters and has never met either of us before. Lots of little decisions leading events in slightly different directions. For all I know, there's a female version of Bill and me out there somewhere.

How I came to this reality, I have no idea. When I found myself in Billy's reality, I'd had an accident in mine and woke up with him looking over me. Luckily, we both had a communications facility in almost the same location, as we were on an asteroid. I'd have died otherwise, as I'd taken my helmet and spacesuit off when I entered our base. Last night I fell asleep on Billy and Kate's couch on their version of this space station and woke up in Kat's bed, much to both our surprise. Fortunately, Janet was at work, or I don't know what would have happened, as I was on her side of the bed!'

'I think I get the gist. Sounds like you're reality hopping. What do you want us to do, though?' replied Bill.

'I'll be honest, I'm more confused than anything. How many alternate realities are out there?' responded Becca.

Looking first at Bill, Will replied 'I'm not totally sure but I was just hoping for a friendly face and a helping hand. I'm not sure I can impose too much on Kat and Janet. I don't have any clear ideas as to how you can help me at this stage. It doesn't have to be much. As you can imagine, it's quite a shock to the system to have no usable ID, or even have no idea what the currency is. I've also got no idea how, independently, I could access the other basic things that most people take for granted, even food and shelter. I'm currently wearing borrowed shoes, for Pete's sake! I can't even claim to be a refugee. How would I explain to the average official where I came from? I'm not even sure where to start. At least in the last reality, the navy helped out. Don't think I'd get the same support from them here.'

Looking at Becca, Will said, truthfully 'I have no idea how many there are. Apart from my home reality, what I'll call Billy's and this one, I know there's at least one other. Billy and I found a base of the people from yet another reality on the fifth planet in the system. Billy called it Astraeus 5. In my reality, it's called Zeon. The base had two warships and a whole load of weapons and such in it. The people who put it there seemed to be preparing for some kind of war. I had the dubious pleasure of meeting their leader, the Exalted General Willem Gott. A most unpleasant individual. In that reality, they spoke a language called Esperanto, not English. He interrogated me and was very quick to get one of his guards to hit me with a rifle butt. Bloody painful, I can tell you. Then he had me thrown in a cell. Fortunately, Billy was able to get the navy from his reality to get me out of there and back to his reality after only a few hours. The whole experience was one I hope never to repeat. Thinking about it, it might be worthwhile someone having a look to see if there's a similar base in this reality. Any suggestions as to who I need to talk to, to warn them?'

'I work as a departmental head in station administration, so meet the Prime Minister quite regularly. A guy called Henry Allen. He comes up from Mercia once a week to meet the Station Managers. He could do it from his office on Britannia but likes to maintain the personal touch. I could see if I can arrange you to have a meeting with him. Would that help?' said Becca.

'Sorry, guys. Got to dash. Janet's due back from work anytime now and I really need to see her. Give me a call before you leave, Will. Think you can you find your way back to mine? We need to sort out where you can sleep. The apartment isn't really designed for three' interjected Kat, rising from her seat.

'We have a spare room, now that our daughter's left home' proffered Bill.

Becca gave him a quizzical look 'We'll need to clear it out, though. It's full of some of the things she didn't want to get rid of when she moved out and never got around to sorting through. Some of it dates back to when she was little and seems, for some reason, to have sentimental value. We'll need to look through it and see if we can tidy it up enough. Somewhere under all the crap, there should be a bed!'

'That sounds great. Kat and Janet would prefer that option, I'm sure. Where did your daughter go? I'm amazed that you have a daughter old enough to leave home' responded Will.

'Becca and I met at school and Jen came along when we were both seventeen. It wasn't an entirely planned pregnancy. Having finished college, she decided she wanted to work with animals, so went planetside earlier this year. We talk to her quite regularly, , and she's hoping to get up here to see us in a couple of months' replied Bill.

'If you would be able to manage that, it would my life a lot easier with Janet' said Kat, leaving the booth, giving them all a kiss on the cheek.

Chapter 2

Reality 3: Billy Hunt

'Billy, come in' invited Captain George VanDelden 'Take a seat. I've been asked to make you an offer I'd like you to consider.'

'I'm intrigued, Captain.'

'Thanks to your work on Astraeus 5 with Will, we now know that the theoretical scientists have been right to argue that there are alternate realities. The hand-held device you two found is being examined as we speak. However, early indications are that the electronics are amazingly old-fashioned for what they do and look as though they could be comprehensively improved upon. We'd like you to get involved in a small team we've started to put together to see what we can come up with. The work you did modifying the receivers that helped find the base suggests that your knowledge of electronics could come in handy. Does that sound like something you'd be interested in?'

'Sure does. How about Galacticomms? Won't they mind me being pulled off my normal job for this?'

'I've already had a word with your MD. I haven't given him the full details, as we need to keep the existence of the alternate realities top secret for now. I hate to think what can of worms that would open up. He's been told that we have a special project that we want you to help with and we've heard that you would be a real asset to the team. He thought that there were others in the company who could do at least as good a job as you but we were adamant, so he OK'd the idea, providing you were happy to get involved. We reckon that you will be on this secondment, as we're calling it, for no more than six months but that's only a guess at this stage. For the time you're with us, you'll get the appropriate navy pay. There are three of you in the team. As the other two are in navy research and have already started, I'd like it if you could start tomorrow morning. I can introduce you to the head of the team, Lieutenant Angela Loughlin, once I can get her down here. You'll hold the rank of Warrant Officer but the research team usually stick with just referring to each other by name, so you'll only need to worry about rank outside of the lab. The lab is a few levels up on the station, so you won't be ship-based, at least initially. Any questions?' asked the Captain.

'Wow, you don't hang about. If the MD is okay with it, then so am I.'

'Since we've already made a start and since we have no idea when General Gott and his cronies will get here, we need every advantage we can. For information, we also have another team working on the two ships you found to see if there's anything they have that we can make use of to improve our own ships. Although we're concentrating on weapons and propulsion systems at this stage, we plan to see if they have anything else on board that we can use to our advantage. We'll probably also put the ships to use as part of our own fleet in time. You may have some dealings with that team but your priority is to work with Angela on the handheld unit. I doubt I will be involved myself. As we'd already met, I was asked to act as a go-between. That may change, of course, depending upon what happens. If that's all, go grab a coffee or whatever and I'll call Angela down.'

'Thank you, Captain' replied Billy, not sure if he needed to salute as he headed for the office door.

Half an hour later, Angela took him to the navy research laboratory that she was using and introduced him to the third and final member of the team, Warrant Officer Dev Khan. As she showed Billy round the two rooms they were using as laboratories, she explained to him that, as yet, they had only been using non-invasive techniques to analyse the box's contents, so had yet to open it up to look at the electronics within. Using deep scans they had obtained a reasonably clear view of the components the box contained but were struggling to identify what each of the circuit boards within did, as there were a few components they didn't recognise. Once the box was open, they were hoping they could precisely map the circuits to identify what they did, so that they could reverse engineer them and then see if it was possible to improve upon them.

~~~~~~~~

The following morning, Billy joined Angela and Dev in the lab, wearing his new uniform.

'Now you're officially a member of the team, we thought it would be a good idea if we opened up the box to see what's really in there. By the way, Dev and I have nicknamed it 'Pandora', as we've no idea what it's going to do to society once we've opened it. We just hope it's going to work out for the best' said Angela.

'Okay. I suggest that only one of us does that, just in case it's accidentally triggered and switches us to the enemy reality. There's no telling whether they even have a space station such as this one and even if we were transported there, whether we'd finish up inside a wall or floor. When Sarah Hirst and I used the switch on Astraeus 5, we were as sure as we could be that the two universes would match up, as otherwise they would risk killing their own people. That's not the case here' replied Billy.

'Any volunteers?' asked Angela.

'In for a penny....' responded Billy, looking for a screwdriver with which to open the lid 'At least they made it easy to open. Better suit up, just in case.'

A short while later, he started to remove the lid, whilst Angela and Dev watched on a monitor from the other room. A minute later, he had the lid removed and provided the others with a commentary 'Glad that's done. We should be okay but just to make sure, I'm also going to remove what looks like the battery for it. Then we can see what we're really dealing with here.... Okay, I think it's safe now. Dev, can you pass me a meter, so I can just make sure there's no residual current lurking around before I consider it dead?'

After testing as much of the top-most circuit board as he could, he decided that, as far as he could tell at this stage, the device was inert and it was safe to consider how he might remove it from its enclosure. Now that the circuits could no longer receiving any power, he shrugged out of the spacesuit.

'Phew. Glad to be out of that thing' he said, as he hung it on a hook in the corner of the lab.

In each corner of the box was what looked to be a screw holding the circuit board in place. From the previous scans that Angela and Dev had run, they knew there were six inter-connected boards. He removed the screws and found, to his surprise, that all of the boards were now loose within the box, so he gently removed them as one unit and placed them carefully onto a rubber mat on the workbench. 'Well, that's the easy bit done. All we need to do now is work out the circuits, what they all do and whether we are able to recreate them!' he said, relieved that nothing had gone wrong so far.

'What surprises me is just how archaic these circuit boards look, compared to what we're used to. I reckon we have a good chance at miniaturising what's on these boards quite a bit once we know what it all does' said Angela, reflecting what Billy and Dev were thinking, as they looked at a selection of components and integrated circuits that none of them had seen for some time.

'When Will and I went into the office on Astraeus 5, there was a computer terminal in there that looked absolutely ancient. We concluded that their view must be that 'if it does the job, why change it?' I'm amazed that, even with this old-tech circuitry, they have somehow managed to have some control over which reality they're in' observed Billy.

'What surprises me more than that, looking at this little collection of circuit boards, is that they even realised that there were different realities they could access. I doubt we'll ever know the answer to that one but one thing does occur to me. We already know that there are at least three realities. If so, how come this switch only has one button? Why not have some kind of additional switch or button or something that allows them to select one of several realities?' said Dev, bending over the contents of the switch box.

'Good question. Until we know how this thing works, that's something we'll have to keep in the backs of our minds. We have no idea what it is that selects the two realities. At this stage, all I can imagine is that there is some kind of binary setting that allows some part of the circuitry to be in one of two states - their reality and ours. Until we manage to fully disassemble the thing and can recreate the full circuit, we won't be able to be sure on that' said Angela.

'First off, do we know what all these components are? Some look familiar, such as the resistors, diodes and capacitors but I'm surprised that they are as big as they are, never mind mostly discrete components. All the circuits I've seen of late seem to use integrated circuits with only a minimal number of far smaller discrete components around them when necessary. The biggest area of doubt is with the few integrated circuits that there are on the boards and that device with five connector legs' replied Dev, pointing at the strange component.

'Once we've managed to separate the boards, I suggest we re-scan them board by board, so there will be fewer blind spots than there were when you were scanning all six of them. This'll also give us a good chance of working out what the circuits are inside the few IC's there are. Hopefully, the scanner will be able to identify how that strange new component is constructed and then the software can start to decipher what the circuits do. I suggest that we just label up each board one to six, with one on top, then run each of them through the scanner and see what the computer can find' suggested Billy.

'Sounds as good an approach as any' said Angela, reaching out to separate out the boards and place them in a line on the rubber mat. Once the boards were labelled, she carefully placed the first one into the scanner. 'As the scanner is doing its thing, I suggest we take a more detailed look at the switch to see whether it's a simple on-off or more complex than that. The other thing we need to do is to have a look at the battery to see what voltage it produces and see what current drain it can take. That way we'll be able to use our own battery when we get to the point of trying to produce our own version.'

They returned to the workbench and Dev picked up the battery 'Looks fairly straightforward. The wrapper says that the voltage is 18 volts, which is a bit unusual. It also says that it's good for ten Amps. I'll hook it up and test those values.'

A few minutes later, he said 'Okay, well, those look about right. Not sure why it needs to be able to deliver ten amps. I suspect that we can produce something that will draw a lot less than that. We need to remember that if we use more efficient components and circuits, we may be able to use a smaller battery than this one.'

Back at his workstation, Billy removed the switch from the lid of the box and examined it in more detail. 'Angela was right. This is just a simple two-way switch. Every press of the switch switches the power from one primary circuit to another, resulting in a reality switch by the user and anyone or anything close by. I need to look at the circuit the scanner comes up with but it seems that, apart from when it's being switched over, Pandora's permanently live. Fortunately, it's mostly in standby mode, so the current drain is minimal. Seems an odd way of doing things, though. You only need to power it when you actually reality transfer. The rest of the time it can be turned off. That would reduce the battery drain considerably as it's only turned on a few seconds at a time, as well as, I expect, simplifying the circuitry.'

'I agree. That's about the most inefficient way I can think of for producing this sort of thing. Sounds a bit like the approach they have, if your comments about the computers are anything to go on. Should give us plenty of scope for making something much better' commented Angela, as she placed the final circuit board into the scanner.

Ten minutes later, the three of them were looking at the circuit diagrams that the scanner had produced and were starting to analyse what the various components did.

After a while, Dev said 'there seems to be an awful lot of redundancy and duplication built into this thing' pointing at several parts of the screen. 'The biggest redundancy is that the switch alternates between two almost identical circuits, with just a few components being different. What a waste. All we need is to put the different components outside the common circuits and switch between them. It'll have the same effect, as well as being both cheaper and more efficient. I think that, once we've sorted out how this thing actually works, we then see if there's a way of doing the job with software but we need to have a clearer understanding of the processes involved first.'

By the end of the following day, they had managed to identify more precisely what the circuits were and what they all did. The computer had managed to identify how the strange new component was constructed and had identified how the pins were interconnected or were switched. Having done that they, with the computer, produced a draft circuit design that was considerably smaller, more efficient and which required a smaller and lower-voltage power supply than the original. They left it to the computer to produce a working prototype overnight.

The following morning, Angela removed the prototype from the machine and gave it a visual check. The whole thing, albeit unboxed, was small enough to fit on the palm of her hand with room to spare and only required a single double-sided circuit board. The only additional items to add to the board were the switch and the battery, which was quickly dealt with. They then rebuilt the original device, which they now called Pandora 1. Their version was to be called Pandora 2 for now, to distinguish between the two devices.

'Okay. We have, I think, something we can call a first version. I think we need a name for that new component. How does Transcator sound? Looking at this shows just how inefficient their design was. I'm nervous about testing it here, because if we were to be transported to another reality, we need to be certain that we're going to be somewhere pleasant and not in the middle of a wall, in free space or even in full view of the enemy. Any thoughts?' said Angela.

'Why don't we go to 'Roid 2? If we remain in orbit a hundred metres, say, above the comm base, we can test Pandora 2 in our ship and, if it works, we'll find ourselves above their version of the asteroid. Unless there's someone nearby, we should be safe and, I would expect, remain unnoticed. We can be there and back here by the end of today. Okay on Transcator. It's as good a name as any I could think of' replied Billy.

'Good idea, Billy. Sounds good to me. Boss?' commented Dev.

'Yeah, Okay. Let's get this thing boxed up and get over there. It might be a good idea if we could have a cruiser or something to keep an eye on us from a distance. That way we'll have eyes on us if we run into difficulties but they won't be able to help if we get stuck on the other side' replied Angela.

'Two of us could watch from within the Comm centre' suggested Billy 'At least that way only one of us would be at risk if it goes wrong.'

'Good idea. Although we'll all be on hand to discuss the results and make any further tweaks, it wouldn't be helpful to the programme if we were all trapped with no way back' replied Angela.

'If we set up some cameras in both the comm room and on the ship, we can monitor what happens. Before we do use the comm room, we should check it out with Galacticomm first - they might get a bit upset if we assumed that we could use one of their comm centres without permission. I can call my old boss if that helps. He knows I'm working with the navy, so should be okay with it' suggested Billy.

'Good idea. How will we know we're in the enemy reality?' replied Angela.

'If I set up a couple of simple receivers, I ought to be able to receive some standard broadcasts. If they're speaking Esperanto, we know we're probably in the expected reality. It might be a good idea to take Pandora 1 with us, just in case. That way, we know we'll be able to get back here. We know it works, after all' suggested Dev.

'All sounds good. The ship's receivers can cover pretty much any band and mode, so I reckon we can get out there and sort anything else out en route, such as calling the navy and Galacticomm ' replied Angela.

On board the navy shuttle they had been assigned, they agreed that Dev would be the one to test the device and, hopefully, visit the Esperanto-speaking reality. Having agreed it with Billy's Galacticomm manager, Angela and Billy would go onto 'Roid 2 and enter the communications centre there. Their navy support vessel would arrive around fifteen minutes after they would. As they approached the asteroid, they finalised setting up the cameras and microphones to record the trip and the construction of their switch box and were happy, as far as they could be without actually testing it, that Pandora 2 would work as planned.

When they arrived at 'Roid 2, Angela and Billy disembarked and moved across to the comm centre, while Dev flew the shuttle back to one hundred metres above the asteroid's surface. Billy and Angela arranged their equipment on the bench in the comm room and made sure that the centre's external cameras could monitor their ship. Once they were ready, Angela called Dev 'All set down here, Dev. When you're ready. In your own time.'

'Okay, thanks, Angela. Receivers ON. Cameras ON. Recording equipment ON. I'll count down from three. Three...Two...One...Switchon.'

Angela and Billy watched their monitors apprehensively. Nothing changed.

'What's happening, Dev?' asked Angela on the radio.

'Er, nothing. I pressed the button but nothing happened. I'm going to remove the lid and see if there's anything obviously wrong. I also think I'll add an LED to the circuit so there will be a visible clue that power is getting through.'

'Okay. Let us know when you're ready to give it another go' replied Angela.

Fifteen minutes later, Dev called. 'Found it, the switch was faulty so it didn't do anything when I pressed it. I've replaced it and added the LED so will try again in a few moments.'

'Okay, thanks. In your own time' replied Angela.

'Right. As last time, counting down. Three...Two...One...Pressing.' The ship vanished from Angela and Billy's view.

Thirty minutes later, Angela and Billy were starting to get worried, as Dev hadn't reappeared. After an hour, they were really concerned for Dev, when the shuttle reappeared but it wasn't in the same place it had left from.

On the comm, a smiling Dev called them 'Well, that didn't go quite as planned. Using the receivers, I picked up Esperanto messages being sent so, as far as I can tell, I went to the enemy reality as planned. For information, there is nothing at all on the asteroid. They clearly don't use it as a communications hub as we do.'

'Glad you're back safely. Was there a problem with getting back?' asked Angela.

'No. None at all. It took me a few minutes to tune to a few radio transmissions and record them. I also thought I would have a quick look around to see if there's anything we could use. From out here I couldn't see anything much, although there did seem to be a bit of activity around New Oregon when I zoomed in on it. There was a ship not too far away from me when I arrived, moving towards New O., so I decided to move behind the asteroid, just in case. I left it a while to give it a chance to move further away, so I could look at the planet without, hopefully, being seen.'

'Excellent news. No great surprise on the activity. Can you come down and get us? We'll tidy up in here and will meet you outside. Now we know it works, I think it would be a good idea if we all came along for the ride.'

'No problem, Angela. See you soon.'

Ten minutes later, Angela and Billy were greeted by Dev and helped into the shuttle. Once they were safely away from the asteroid and were ready, they sat around the switch box. Angela pressed the button. Their world briefly swirled, as if they were suffering from a mild case of dizziness, then settled back to normal. 'Okay, are we in the other reality?' asked Angela.

'Well, the asteroid is now devoid of equipment, so I guess we probably are. I'll just listen to the radio' replied Billy.

As he tuned in the radio, the sounds of a couple of men having a discussion were heard, speaking what sounded to Angela, Dev and Billy to be Esperanto.

'That clinches it. I don't want to attract attention, so we'll only stay here a few minutes. The last thing I want is for someone to investigate us. I imagine that we've already tripped a few sensors as it is. What would be helpful is to take a quick look at New Oregon and see if they have a space station like Columbus circling it' said Angela.

'Looking in that direction, I can see a station roughly between the planet and our position and I think I can see one to each side of the planet' replied Billy.

'Okay, better split' suggested Dev.

'Agreed' replied Angela and Billy in unison, as Angela hit the button to return to their reality.

Chapter 3

Reality 3: Billy Hunt

The following morning, Angela, Dev and Billy were sat in the office of Admiral Reeds Scorah, along with Commodore Eleanor Powell, Angela's line manager.

As Angela was finishing off her verbal report to the Admiral, his assistant opened the door and said ' I'm sorry to interrupt, Admiral, but I have an urgent message for you from the head of the team investigating the two ships that Captain VanDelden's crew brought in.'

'Patch it through, please, Jon. Captain Moser, please explain what is so important to interrupt my meeting,' said the Admiral, looking into the screen.

'Certainly, Sir. A short while ago, we discovered the controls that allow the ship's Captain to change realities. Because of the work being done by Angela Loughlin and her team, we thought that both you and she be advised of the discovery, rather than investigate further. The controls are built into the armrest of the Captain's chair. Because we had been looking at the rest of the bridge, we hadn't looked there until today.'

'How do you know that's what the controls do?'

'Sir. This morning, between tests, one of the pilots was awaiting instructions before we moved onto the next test when she discovered the cover and was, to be blunt, fiddling with what she found. In doing so, she accidentally triggered the controls, resulting in the ship changing realities. After a short while she, with others, managed to identify what had happened and got them back to this reality. They were somewhat taken aback.'

'How did they know that they had changed realities?' queried the Commodore.

'Initially, all we noticed was that all the usual radio traffic vanished, as did Columbus. We had a quick look at New Oregon but couldn't see any sign of life down there, though a small settlement could be hidden amongst the trees and we wouldn't be able to see it from out here. Of course, any settlement could have been around the other side of the planet. We weren't there long enough for a complete look at the surface. Fortunately, she had only moved the control one position, so it wasn't too difficult to retrace our steps, so to speak. The dial, by the way, has a total of twelve positions.'

'That's an excellent development. I'm relieved the crew are safe. Thank you, Captain. I'll get Angela to come and see you immediately this meeting finishes. Please let Jon know your location, so that they can find you.' With that, the Admiral terminated the call and looked at the others.

'The work you've done has been of enormous value but I think this new development takes priority. Hopefully, what you've learned and developed will be invaluable in investigating these new controls. It means there are more realities that our friends have been visiting and this might be to our advantage. Angela, I'd like you and your team to join Captain Moser and his team and get to the bottom of this new set of controls. This could be even more critical to our success than the work you've done already.'

'Certainly, Admiral. Before we start, I see two primary tasks. One is to look at the circuitry and controls, with a view to being able to reverse engineer it and, hopefully, improve it. Our work on the hand-held device showed us that we can make big improvements to what they produced. Their approach was amazingly crude, electronically speaking, with an amazing amount of redundancy. The other thing we need to do is more positively examine the realities that the controls can switch us to. For all we know, there's a whole load of these ships and bases such as Billy found on Astraeus 5 ready to attack us. I wonder if these other realities are aware of the danger, assuming they're inhabited' replied Angela

'Anyone else have any thoughts?' asked the Admiral.

'I agree with Angela, Admiral but I think our first priority is to visit the realities that the controls have switches to. If we start to pull the thing apart, we may never be able to get it going again. Although we have two ships, so could work on one ship at a time, I think it would be helpful if both were used to scout the alternate realities we know that General Gott's crews have access to. Once we have a clearer idea of what we're up against, we ought to be able to do something with the controls. While they're going to be a lot more sophisticated than the hand-held device, I doubt they will be difficult to improve upon. After all, if the controls are fitted into the ship, space and weight aren't so critical as for a hand-held device, which needs to be portable. I would also suggest that, even though we're trying to understand what the device does and appreciate that time is fairly short, longer term we should be looking at a device which is software controlled, as this will offer even greater opportunities for shrinking the equipment, as well as, potentially, open up yet more realities. Reverse-engineering what we have should be seen as stage one of our understanding but the software route should be a longer-term aspiration' replied Billy.

'Good points, both. I favour Billy's version of exploring first, then examining the controls in detail. Now we know that there are more realities and that it's possible to move between them, I agree that we should keep an eye on the longer-term options. For now, Commodore, I would like you to go with Angela and her team and lead an expeditionary force to explore these other realities and identify what the risk is and whether we can improve our chances of victory' instructed the Admiral.

'Certainly, Sir' replied the Commodore.

Chapter 4

Reality 3: Billy Hunt

An hour later, the four of them had boarded the captured ship and were met by Captain Moser.

'Good morning, Captain. Let me introduce my team. I think you may have already met Lieutenant Angela Loughlin and Warrant Officer Dev Khan but I don't think you've met WO Billy Hunt as yet. He joined us a few days ago and is on secondment from Galacticomm' said the Commodore.

'Welcome Commodore, Angela, Dev, Billy. Say, are you the Billy Hunt who found these things on Astraeus 5?' said Captain Moser, looking at each of them in turn and shaking hands.

'Erm, yeah, Captain, along with my counterpart from another reality, Will. Unfortunately, he seems to have reality-jumped again. Wish I knew where he was.'

'Wow. Okay, folks. Let's get to the bridge. I imagine you would like to have a look at the controls we found. I think you'll find a few changes since you were last on board, Billy' replied the impressed-looking Captain, who started in the direction of the bridge.

The bridge was a hive of activity, with a number of men and women at consoles, with some lying on the floor peering into gaps in the panelling, some testing cables, some recording what they were finding and yet others moving about purposefully.

'Commodore on the Bridge. Listen up everyone' announced the Captain. 'I'd also like to introduce Angela, Dev and Billy, who will be responsible for investigating the reality transfer device built into the Captain's chair. As they're new to the ship, you should help them out if they need any assistance or guidance. Billy's the guy who found this tub.'

The announcement was greeted by salutes to the Commodore from those that were able and by a variety of calls and waves from the rest of the crew, after which the Captain moved to sit in the Captain's control chair. The Commodore and the others moved to stand to its side, so that they could get a better view of the controls. He slid the covering panel from the armrest, revealing the controls underneath. 'Well, these are the controls. They only seem to work when the ship is powered up but stationary' he said.

The controls turned out to be two adjacent controls. The main control seemed to consist of a rotary dial, with an arrow marked on one side. At the bottom of the dial, in what, on an analogue clock, would be the six o'clock position, was the word HEJMO. Around the dial were the numbers 1 to 11, with the 1 to the left of the word HEJMO and 11 to the right of it. Beneath the dial was a large red button.

'How do they work?' asked Commodore Powell.

'Quite simple, as it turns out, Ma'am. Just dial in the destination reality, and press the red button. To return, all we needed to do was find the position for this reality and again press the red button. It took a little while to figure out which position that was but it seems we're number 3. Fortunately, the person who had been sitting in the chair when it was discovered had only moved the dial to number 4, so it was only a case of moving the dial one way or the other by one notch to return to our reality. We got lucky with the first attempt' replied the Captain.

'I imagine there was a lot of relief when you got back. I think it would be helpful if we have something that allows us to make sure we're back here, just in case something should go wrong in another reality. I suggest we set up a low-powered beacon that we can listen out for when we think we're back' offered Dev.

'When we check out the realities this thing can access, I suggest we park ourselves on Astraeus 5, so that we don't, hopefully, attract attention to ourselves. If we keep our energy signature low, we ought to be able to pay each reality a visit without the locals being aware of our presence unless we want them to be. Is it worth our while taking a look to see if there are any other bases on the Astraeus equivalents and, if so, take a look to see if they're also weaponed up?' asked Billy.

'Hmm. I don't think we're in a position to do that. We only have a few marines on board and we're not crewed sufficiently to make full use of the weapons systems on the ships, so would struggle to defend ourselves if we were attacked. I think a stealth visit would be the best option. Take a look, see what we can learn and come back. Later, we can come back and search for any bases' replied the Captain.

'I agree. Before we go, I think we ought to offer everyone on board the option of not going, as this could prove a one-way trip. I doubt it but, in the circumstances, everyone should have the chance to opt out' said the Commodore.

'I'll arrange that, Ma'am. I suggest we leave the other ship here on this occasion, so that, should the worst happen, the Admiral still has one ship to examine. I'll ensure that all our records are sent to Columbus, so that everything we currently know is available.'

'How long will that take to arrange?' asked the Commodore.

'Most of it has already been recorded and we can shuttle anyone off who doesn't want to go pretty quickly. There are only twenty of us on board anyway, excluding yourselves, and I would be surprised if there was anyone who didn't want to go. I would suggest that we ought to be ready to leave within half an hour or so.'

Angela, Billy and Dev discussed whether one of them should remain on this occasion, just in case there was a problem and to make sure that, should they be unable to return, at least one of their number could continue with their investigations. Dev reluctantly agreed to remain in their reality, so left the ship with the two crew members who decided to remain in their home reality.

Chapter 5

Reality 3: Billy Hunt

'Okay, everyone. We're about to go to reality one. I will count down from Three. Three.. Two.. One.. Off we go' announced Captain Moser from the Captain's chair.

As he hit the red button, there was a brief sensation of falling but that soon settled. 'Okay, What can we see?' asked the Captain.

Ahead of him was a large, magnified view of New Oregon, or at least, what he knew by that name. However, the city he grew up in was nowhere to be seen. Instead, he could just about make out the outline of a small settlement on the banks of what he knew as Lake Elney amongst the trees. Where he would have expected to see Columbus, there was nothing. They were, however, surprised to see a solitary spaceship sitting in a geostationary orbit above the settlement. Otherwise, there was no sign of any other activity in space. Although they heard a small amount of radio activity, it all seemed to come from the stationary ship. They found it encouraging that it was all in English.

'Okay, I think we've seen enough. I'm going to take us to reality two' announced the Captain.

When they arrived in reality two, there was much more activity around the planet. The long-range detectors could identify several ships in the system, including a busy spaceport on the planet. There was also a bustling space station similar to Columbus, but it had fewer levels and wasn't quite as busy as 'their' station. Again, all the radio signals they found were being transmitted in English. There were several cities, towns, and villages dotted around the planet, including a city much like Waterbeach in their reality.

'I could be wrong' announced Billy 'but I've a feeling this could be Will Hunt's reality. The space station looks similar to the one he showed me a holo of. Unless and until we contact them, we may not be sure.'

Turning to Commodore Powell, Jacob said 'We'll skip reality three, as we know that's ours, so I'm heading straight to four. Last time, we weren't there long enough to get a proper look at it.'

'Good idea. May as well save a few minutes'

As they had previously found, reality four seemed deserted, with no sign of human life, despite checking all radio frequencies several times and looking at the planet in detail.

'Looks as if humanity hasn't been to this system in this reality' observed Angela.

'Okay, nothing more to learn here. Off to five' said the Captain.

As they looked towards the reality five version of New Oregon, there was a substantial city on the planet and several towns of varying sizes. There was also a large space station, with a fair amount of activity around it. Again, the radio signals they intercepted were in English.

'Captain. There's a ship only twenty five thousand kilometres away, heading in our general direction' announced a crew member.

'Oh hell. And it was all going so well. We'll see if it knows we're here. Hopefully, they won't see us. I will, however, prime us to go to six if that doesn't work out' replied the Captain.

'I think we should just get out of here, Jacob. We said at the start that we didn't want to attract attention. If we disappear now, they may just think they had a glitch in their detector systems and forget all about us' said the Commodore.

'Okay, Ma'am. Off to six.'

Reality six proved to be quite different. This time, the language in the radio broadcasts sounded vaguely Chinese. As none of the crew could recognise the language with absolute certainty, they would need to return to Columbus and play the recordings to the language experts there. The planet had a large number of cities, towns and villages on it and a comprehensive road and rail network connecting the centres of population. There also appeared to be a high number of aircraft and ocean-going ships dotted around the visible parts of the planet. Even though there was a space station in view, the design was totally different to what they were used to and had seen previously.

'I think we've seen enough for now. Off to seven' advised the Captain.

This time, there was a reasonably large city on the planet but the space station was very much in its early stages of development. All that could be seen was a central hub, with four short spokes sticking out from it but they were of different lengths and were obviously incomplete. Examining the station in more detail showed a number of small vessels moving about the location that seemed to belong to the construction crew. From this distance, they couldn't make out any of the construction crew themselves. The language seemed to be similar to the one heard in reality six.

When they arrived in reality eight they were surprised to find that there were two space stations, with a large number of cities and towns on the planet.

'They've certainly settled this reality!' exclaimed one of the crew.

'It suggests they settled here some time ago, and probably well before we settled New Oregon. Alternatively, they settled here with a much bigger complement of pioneers' suggested the Commodore.

'I'm sure we'll find out in due course' responded the Captain.

Having ascertained that the primary language being used was German, they decided to move on to reality nine.

In reality nine, they were surprised to find a large amount of activity on Astraeus 5, with large mechanical devices seemingly extracting material from the planet surface. Large transport vessels could clearly be seen flying above the planet. Despite all the activity on Astraeus 5, there was no space station near New Oregon, with all the space vessels landing directly at one of two visible spaceports on the planet's surface. There also seemed to be a certain amount of space traffic leaving or approaching the other side of New Oregon. Fortunately, the centre of activity on Astraeus 5 was far enough away that they felt reasonably safe from detection. Having identified that the language spoken was Esperanto, they left the reality at the earliest opportunity, in order to minimise the risk of being seen.

In reality ten, they found themselves alone on Astraeus 5 once more, although they could see evidence around them that mining had taken place. In fact, they found themselves floating above a deep crater that wasn't present in any of the other realities they had visited. The surface of this version of Astraeus 5 was littered with abandoned mining equipment but they were relieved that there was no sign of life after all the activity in the previous reality.

When they started to look at New Oregon, at first it appeared to be deserted. Upon closer examination, however, they could see there was a small town, which was being taken over by advancing vegetation.

'Is there any sign of life in the town?' asked the Commodore.

'Hard to say from this distance, Ma'am. There's certainly no radio activity, which would suggest that, if there is, it's at a fairly rudimentary level by our standards' replied the Captain.

'It seems that there has been a developing civilisation here, especially if we also consider what they've done to this version of Astraeus 5. I wonder what went wrong? Oddly, I can't see anything that suggests a spaceport. I wonder how they got the mined materials onto the planet?' asked Billy.

'In due course we may investigate further but that's not our mission today' replied the Commodore.

'I'm getting us out of here' announced the Captain, 'I think we've seen enough for now.'

Reality eleven proved to be similar to reality five, with a reasonable sized city and several towns dotted around the planet's surface. The space station was much smaller, however, and seemed to be under construction. There was a fair amount of radio traffic, all in Esperanto.

'I think we've seen enough for now. We'll skip zero or twelve, as we know that's Gott's reality and we know that the place is occupied. No point in inviting trouble. I think it's time to get back home and see the Admiral as soon as possible. I don't know about everyone else but I think we've all had a long day so, when we get back to our reality, I'll see if the Admiral can see us tomorrow morning, so that we can discuss where we go from here' announced the Commodore.

Chapter 6

Reality 3: Billy Hunt

The following morning, the Commodore, Captain Moser and Angela informed the Admiral of their findings on the expeditionary visit to the alternate realities.

'Thank you for the report. I think we need a plan to investigate these other realities more fully. I shall be making recommendations to an emergency meeting of the Admiralty Board I have requested for this afternoon. For my part, I think there are a few basic things we need to do. Firstly, we send a military force to the first one or two versions of Astraeus 5 and investigate whether they also have bases like the one we had in our version. Once we're in these realities, we need to clear any bases of anything we find there and bring them back here. We need to be wary of overstretching ourselves, as we don't have enough people capable of piloting the ships safely as yet, so we just need to get enough for now to allow us to train further crews. I suggest that we try and get no more than five or six ships at this stage, assuming we can find that many, or we'll struggle to deal with them all. We can then start to visit further realities and get more ships, assuming there are more in these realities. Either way, I think that we should stay clear of the German, Chinese and Esperanto speaking realities for now, as they might be hostile to us. Once we have enough ships available, we can review that position. I would rather be over cautious than risk our people unnecessarily. Before we continue, I think we need a better name to refer to reality zero than 'Gott's reality'. Any thoughts?' responded the Admiral.

'I suggest we refer to Gott's reality as simply Zero, since that's their position on the RSC dial. Another thing, Admiral, is that Billy Hunt seems to think that two is the one that Will Hunt came from. If that's the case, it may be worthwhile starting there. Angela, can you check with him if there is any way of identifying that it is Will Hunt's reality without the locals being aware of our presence?' responded the Commodore.

'Zero works for me. What would be helpful is if we could have devices fitted to all of our existing ships so that we can present a sizeable force to Gott and his cronies, as well have some ready to let any allies utilise. Is there any chance of that happening?' asked the Admiral.

'So far, we've held off disassembling the Captain's controls, for fear of reducing our inter-reality capabilities, Sir' replied Angela.

'How long might it take to produce more switching devices?' asked the Commodore.

'Ones that only switch between our reality and Zero could be produced now. We've already made a prototype. While we're sure it can be improved upon, it's a massive improvement over the Zero version, which was most inefficient electronically. At present, it's all hardware switching. Once we understand exactly what's happening and how, we want to move over to software switching, as we think this will offer far more versatility longer-term and be much more compact. We're not ready for that just yet. As regards the Captain's controls, it will depend on whether it's more of the same or whether it's a completely different design in terms of electronic complexity. Until we get to analyse one of them, I can't advise further. That said, based upon what we've done already with the hand-held unit, we may be able to put together a first prototype within a week or two. It would need testing, however, as I'm not sure I would want to risk the lives of a whole shipful of people gambling that it works first time. Until I get to see it, though, I'm only guessing, I'm afraid, Admiral' replied Angela.

'Understood, Angela. Once we have another ship, you'll be free to work on the problem. It's also occurred to me that we also need to be able to communicate between realities. Has anything been found on the captured ships that would suggest that such a technology exists?'

'We haven't found anything like that, Sir' replied Captain Moser.

'OK everyone, thank you all for your feedback. There's obviously plenty to do. Although it isn't as important as getting the switching devices problem resolved, I would like inter-reality comms to be the next priority after the Captain's controls. At this stage, we don't need to have instantaneous two-way communications but we DO need to have some means of communicating across the realities, so that we can keep in touch with our fleet and to allow our crews to contact us if there's a problem. Once time permits, I would like someone to start work on considering how we might be able to do this. Unless anyone has any other suggestions, dismissed' said the Admiral.

Chapter 7

Reality 5: Will Hunt

Will was waiting to see the Prime Minister, with Becca sitting on his left. They had arrived, as they had been told to, at nine o'clock but had been waiting for nearly half an hour and Will was beginning to wish he were somewhere else. Unlike some of the other areas he had seen on Cantabrigia, the Prime Minister's offices looked well presented and thoroughly modern. Luckily, Will had managed to get his communicator back from Kat. Although she was reluctant at first, she realised that he would need it for his meeting with the P.M., so had reluctantly agreed to return it to him, on the proviso that, at the end of the meeting, he would return it to her.

'You can go in and see Mr. Allen now' said the Prime Minister's aide, from behind his desk.

'Thanks' replied Will, feeling as if he'd just been called into the office of his old head teacher at school. He'd done that all too often and it wasn't normally a pleasant experience, having been somewhat adventurous as a schoolboy.

A smiling Henry Allen greeted them as they opened the door to his office. 'Come in. Sit down' he said, holding out his right hand to greet them.

Pleasantries over and seated, the P.M. said 'Mr. Hunt, Becca tells me that you have some information that you think we need to know about.'

'Yes, Mr. Allen. It's hard to explain and what I'm about to tell you may sound like the ravings of a madman but please bear with me. I have some videos and images that support what I have to say. First of all, I don't belong here. I was born in a parallel reality, similar to this one, but slightly different. In that reality, I lived with a version of Becca here for about five years. In my reality, I knew her as Becky. My alter ego in this reality is married to Becca and they have a daughter at college. In yet another reality, one I left only the other day, my alter ego there was married to a woman called Kate and they have a seven year-old son. Less than a week ago, I found myself in that reality and we found a base on the fifth planet out from the sun, which I know as Zeon. I gather that you call it Nyx. The base was full of armaments and there were two spaceships. The owners, if you like, were from yet another reality and seemed to be preparing some kind of attack. They seem to have developed a means of transferring between realities in a controlled way and may well be planning to attack this reality as well. The people from that reality speak a language called Esperanto, which I gather is rarely used in either this or my reality, or at least, where it is, it's a long way from here. I'm here to suggest that it would be worthwhile for your military to take a look at the planet to see if there is a base on it. If they don't find anything, it's simply a few hours lost. If they do, however, you will should to empty it of all weapons and spaceships.'

'That's four realities, at least, then. So, why exactly should I believe you and not consider this as some weird story that will waste a lot of time and effort to investigate?'

'Let me show you my images before you make up your mind. Some of them are from the inside of the base. I've been informed that the device I'm using is considerably more advanced than anything you have here.' With that, Will showed him the images and videos, both holographic and two-dimensional that he had take since he switched from his own reality. Some showed Billy, some showed Billy, Kate and Peter and some showed the inside of the base he'd been in with Billy.

The Prime Minister looked at the images in silence. 'Thank you for the show, Will. For now, I'll go along with what you have to say but I have to admit to some misgivings. I'll see if I can arrange with the navy to take you to Nyx to take a look for this mysterious base. If it is as well equipped as you claim, then urgency is of some import. I will ask to see if that can be arranged for this afternoon or tomorrow. I already have a meeting arranged later this morning with the Commodore, so will ask her if it's possible. Now if you'll excuse me, I have another meeting shortly and need to do a small amount of preparation for it.'

Three hours later, Will was on board a navy cruiser heading towards the small planet Nyx. The ship had a crew of fifty but there was an additional team of ten marines on board that would be used to investigate the base, assuming that there was one on the planet. He was sitting in Captain Rajan Samra's office, alongside Marine Major Liz Holmes, facing the Captain's desk. After the meeting between the Prime Minister and the Commodore, the Commodore had instructed that the investigation of Nyx should include Will, in order, she hoped, to save time.

'The Prime Minister asked if we'd take a look and the Commodore promised him that we would, so we'll do what they agreed to' Captain Samra informed them, looking and sounding as if he considered the trip to be a complete waste of time.

'If I could show you some video footage of the planet's surface, might that help locate the base?' asked Liz 'We ran a training exercise here about ten years ago and decided we needed to have a good idea as to what the planet had in store for us, so recorded the surface in some detail. We didn't identify anything artificial, which suggests that the base you're expecting wasn't built at that time.'

'I'll take a look and see if I can recognise the general area we found the base, which would speed up the search. I'm not sure I'll remember the exact location but if I can recognise the terrain we found the beacon in, I'm sure that would help. We had the advantage of being able to follow a directional radio beam onto the planet but that method isn't an option for us here. However, once we got to the planet, we did manage to pick up something in the infra-red, as the radio receiver equipment generated a very small amount of heat, pushing it above the background temperature, so I suggest we don't just use visible light, just in case there's something like that here. We didn't have the kit but you might also try something like LIDAR or any other tool you may have to examine the surface.'

'If there is a base down there, what can you tell us about it?' asked the Captain.

'I would have preferred to have shown you but I'm afraid that my communicator, complete with its images, is currently being investigated with a view to working out how it can produce the holo images that it does. While I was able to use it when I met the Prime Minister, I'd agreed to return it to one of your companies to see what they could do to reverse engineer it. However, assuming it has the same layout as the one I went to, there are two large hangers, one behind the other. The front hangar had two space ships in it. The rear one was full of explosives and weapons. Large doors that allow the rear one to be sealed off and kept airtight divided the two hangars. On one side of the dividing doors is a small office that can also double as an airlock. That's where I literally stumbled upon a switch that allows you to move between realities. In the far corner of the rear hangar is a door to a set of offices and a small number of prison cells. This door was also an airlock, so I didn't need a helmet in that part of the base but that may not be the case in all realities. The rest of the base was airless, though. One of the offices, at the end of the office area corridor, was that of General Willem Gott, who interrogated me and then had me put into one of the cells.'

A short while later, Will was examining the images and maps provided by Major Holmes. Despite knowing roughly what he was looking for, he was struggling to find the approximate location of the base. As he looked through the data, he managed to pin down the location to one of three possible sites. When he discussed these with her, she was able to inform him where they were on the planet, which allowed him to eliminate one of them, as it turned out to be south of the equator, when he knew it was in the northern hemisphere. That left two possible areas to look at in more detail once they arrived within range. Having informed the Major, Will went to the observation area, so that he could watch progress of the search for himself.

An hour later, they were over the first of the two areas Will had identified but, after two hours, the Captain decided that they were wasting their time there, so flew to the other location. After half an hour, they found what they were looking for.

As Will stood there looking at the enhanced image of the base, he heard the ship's loudspeaker system 'Will Hunt to the bridge. Will Hunt to the bridge.' As he entered the bridge, Captain Samra turned to him and said 'You were right, Will. There is a base here. The Major has asked if you would like to join her and her team as they investigate. The decision is yours.'

'Thank you, Captain. I'd love to. I'd be interested to see how this base compares to the one I was in in the other reality. I may be able to speed up the investigation slightly by giving additional information to the Major once we're inside.' Despite giving the impression that he was looking forward to revisiting the base he was, in reality, feeling somewhat nervous, having had a less than positive experience when he was in the one in Billy's reality.

'I agree. You need to join her team in the shuttle bay. I'll get someone to show you the way and help you find a suit that fits.'

Thirty minutes later, Major Holmes and her team, along with Will, were approaching the base. Will pointed to the left of the massive doors to show them the entrance.

In case the base was occupied by enemy troops, the Major and her team entered the base first. A quick check showed that the base was unoccupied, so they called Will on the radio and he went inside to join them.

Once inside, Will looked for the light switch and turned the lever to illuminate the vast space. One of the team gasped in surprise at the illuminated hangar. Will noted, however, that there was only one ship present, rather than the two that had been there in Billy's reality. There also seemed to be nothing else in this hangar. While he needed to take a look at the rear-most hangar, all of the weapons and such that he and Billy had seen in the alternate forward hangar seemed to be absent.

Will turned to the Major 'This hangar is less full than the other one I went to. I suggest that the first priority is to get that ship out of here, as its presence could prove fatal if the enemy arrive whilst we're in here. If the ship is the same as the one I've already explored, there should be breathable air inside, so you shouldn't need helmets. You'll need to translate the controls, which are written in Esperanto. The bridge is at the end of the main corridor that runs from the entrance. Other than that, I suggest we go into the rear hangar and the offices to see what, if anything, is back there.'

Major Holmes agreed, then despatched two of her team to examine the spaceship and another one to find the controls that would open the main hangar door.

As they entered the inter-connecting office at the rear of the first hangar, Will explained that it looked identical to the one in the other reality. He also pointed to a control box like the one that Billy had nudged and had resulted in them being catapulted into the other reality. He had no desire to do that again, so carefully picked it up and placed it onto the desk next to the ancient-looking computer terminal.

'That thing is the switch box that will take us to the enemy reality, which we don't want!' Will informed the team.

'Noted' responded the Major and ordered two of her team to empty the room of anything that could provide further information on the enemy's plans and take it to the ship, taking particular care of the switch box.

With that under way, they entered the rear hangar. Will sought out the light switch for this space and, once it was illuminated, noticed that this hangar was full of armaments in much the same way as the one in Billy's reality.

The Major immediately recognised the threat and arranged for the hangar to be emptied. Due to the quantity involved, she also contacted the ship and requested additional support and another shuttle that could be used to ferry the armaments across to the ship. Although they may have been able to use the enemy ship, she wasn't sure how long it would be before the two marines on board managed to get it airborne and felt it safer to use their own equipment to transfer it to their ship, just in case they flew the enemy ship more erratically than would be prudent. The plan was to move everything from the base and leave it on the planet's surface some distance away, so that it would be difficult for the enemy to find it. A low-powered radio beacon would be placed with it to help the team find it later.

Once this work was under way, Will took the Major and two of the marines to the rear of the hangar and into the equivalent of the administrative area he had been escorted to only a few days before. Once there, the Major checked there was breathable air and, once satisfied that there was, indicated to others that they could remove their helmets.

'At the end of this hallway is the office of the general, Willem Gott. You might like to have a good look at his office, in case there's anything useful in it' said Will.

An hour later, the General's office had been stripped of anything that could be removed, the materials loaded onto the shuttle and the remaining rooms and prison area examined. None had anything that would help them in protecting their reality.

~~~~~~~~

En route back to Cantabrigia, Will and the rest of the team were resting in the mess room, when Will received a call to visit the Captain. Five minutes later, he was standing in the Captain's office, with the two marines who had 'escorted' him on either side of him. 'Thank you for your assistance, Will. Without it we would have been oblivious of the threat that the base on Nyx seems to have presented. However, the Queen has expressed some concerns about your knowledge of the base and doesn't believe your explanation about alternate realities. She's ordered your immediate arrest and incarceration until such time as she can be provided with sufficient information that provides a suitable explanation of your knowledge of it. I'm sorry, Will, but when the Queen demands it, I have no choice but to obey. I hope you understand. As we're a small ship, there's a limit as to how this can be achieved, so I'll simply restrict you to the mess area and have an armed guard with you until we get back to Cantabrigia. The only other restriction will be that you will be unable to send or receive messages to anyone not on board but I don't think that will present you with any difficulties. Once we've docked, you'll be escorted off ship and imprisoned in the brig in our Cantabrigia base and then, potentially, taken down to Mercia. Whilst there, you may be 'invited' to visit her Majesty. Although she doesn't believe your tale, she is intrigued by it.'

'That would explain the armed escort. I did wonder what was going on. I have to say that I'm somewhat disappointed but I realise that the concept will take some people a while to get used to. Hopefully this can all be cleared up within a day or two and I'll be able to help out again. Speaking of that, I suggest that whoever tests the control box we brought back from the central office does so somewhere that is bound to exist in all realities and, if they might need it, wear a spacesuit. Otherwise, I hate to think what would happen to them.'

~~~~~~~~

Three days later, Will was escorted into the Queen's formal guest room on Mercia by four elaborately uniformed soldiers, who were members of her personal guard. As he hadn't been planet-side for a few years, he was finding it difficult getting around in the higher gravity. While the gravity on the station wasn't much below the planet's, the extra amount would take him a few days to get used to. Will had been informed that he must address the Queen either as 'Your Majesty' or 'Ma'am'. He just hoped that he would say the appropriate term when he addressed her as he had only heard of the latter being used when addressing senior female military officers. As a civilian, it wasn't a term he was used to using.

As he entered the room, the Queen was looking away from him, reading something on her computer terminal. A few moments later, she turned round and looked at him. He had no idea what to expect but hadn't been prepared for her to be a young woman, possibly in her mid twenties, wearing jeans and a black T-shirt with the words 'CHIC ROC' in red emblazoned across the front. Never having heard of the title before, he had no idea what to expect but had had in his mind an image of a much older woman wearing something more formal, such as a business suit or dress. At least, all the senior female politicians he'd ever noticed seemed to be much older and be more formally attired.

'Good afternoon, Will. Please sit down. Would you care for a drink?' she asked, gesturing towards a chair in front of her desk.

He sat down 'Thank you, Ma'am. A white coffee with no sugar, please.'

At that, someone who had been standing in the rear corner of the room started to prepare drinks and, once they were ready, placed them carefully on the desk, bowed slightly and retreated backwards to his corner.

'Thank you, Rodney. Now then, Will, I've been informed that you come from an alternative reality. I have never come across the concept before and would be grateful if you could explain it to me.'

Will explained the basic principles of alternate realities as he understood them. He also gave her some of the details of his discovery, with Billy Hunt, of the enemy base in Billy's reality and what had happened there. He went on to say that he would have liked to have shown the Queen some images from his organiser but he had left the device with Kat, so that she could show her manager at BridgeCam Technology.

After a few minutes in thought, the Queen asked 'Thank you for that explanation, Will. Now I understand why you knew about the base on Nyx. This may be a strange question but is there a version of me in your reality and is she also Queen?'

'There may well be a version of you, but if there is, she isn't Queen I'm afraid, your Majesty. The head of state is Chancellor Eleanor Powell. She was elected to the post about four years ago and will seek re-election in another two. We have no such thing as a royal family in my reality.'

'Oh well, that's a shame. Even though your tale is most entertaining, how can I believe any of it?' asked the Queen.

'I may have a solution, your Majesty. As I explained, my organiser is currently on Cantabrigia and is being examined to see if it is possible for a company called BridgeCam to exploit the technology. It ought to be possible to have them demonstrate it to you from there. I gave the device to Kat Brown who was going to show it to her line manager to investigate the commercial potential it provides.'

'That is certainly possible' replied the Queen, pressing a button on her desk. A moment later, there was a gently knock on a side door, followed immediately by a woman entering the room and moving in front of the desk. 'Karen, please arrange an immediate video conference call with Kat Brown and her manager at BridgeCam on Cantabrigia. I would like to discuss Will's communicator with them.'

'Certainly, ma'am' replied Karen, turning and leaving the room. 'Obviously a more senior aide, if she doesn't have to back away from the Queen' thought Will.

Two minutes later, the Queen's computer monitor made a buzzing sound. The Queen pressed a button on her keypad and Karen's voice could clearly be heard announcing that the call had been made.

The Queen turned around and, after pressing another button on her keypad, a large screen behind her appeared as if from nowhere. Facing Will and the Queen were Kat and her manager. On the desk in front of them, Will could clearly see his organiser.

'Good afternoon, your Majesty. I am George Craven, Technical Development Manager and this is Katarina Brown, a Product Designer. I gather you would like to know more about the device we have that belongs to Will Hunt, who I see is with you.'

'Yes, thank you, George. Will has been telling me an interesting story about alternative realities and has suggested that the device you have contains a number of images that may help persuade me that there is some truth in his story.'

'We haven't explored the device fully yet, your Majesty but I'm sure that Will could guide us in showing you the images that he thinks you will find interesting.'

When Will, with help from Kat, had finished showing the Queen the images, including the holo images, he asked 'George, can you confirm to her Majesty that the holo images especially are impossible on any current equipment available in this reality other than on my organiser?'

'I certainly can, Will. The quality of the images is like nothing I've ever seen before and didn't anticipate seeing for quite some time. The best we can currently manage, especially as regards the holographic images, are amazingly crude in comparison and are projected using equipment considerably larger than this device. I find it truly amazing that the images we have shown you were taken by the device itself.'

'Thank you George and Katarina for your assistance. Goodbye' said the Queen, disconnecting the call. Turning to Will, she said 'There seems to be something in your tale, Will. On the basis of your demonstration, I feel comfortable in letting you go free. Now tell me, where will you stay?'

'Thank you, your Majesty. When I first arrived here, I sort of materialised in the bed of Kat Brown, the young woman we have just been in conference with but staying her would have been something of an imposition on her and her girlfriend, as they have a small apartment on Cantabrigia, so I had moved in with Bill Hunt, my alter-ego, and his wife.'

'Is that convenient for you all? asked the Queen.

'Sort of, Ma'am. Their daughter is down here somewhere, and I was using her room until I went on the mission to Nyx. I don't have any money to rent my own place anyway, so appreciate their generosity.'

'I think in the circumstances, I could get something arranged if it would help. Now I better understand the situation, I think we owe you a debt of gratitude for bringing the danger inherent in the base on Nyx to our attention, so some kind of reward would seem to be appropriate. I will discuss that with the Prime Minister and he will arrange for you to be informed. It also sounds like you need a job. I'm sure I could have something found in the navy until you can get yourself sorted out. They're always short of technically savvy people. Unfortunately, I have no sway with the telecoms companies, so I'm afraid I can't help you there. I will see if I can do anything to help but I can't guarantee anything. As regards accommodation, would you prefer to be planetside or on Cantabrigia until such time as these can be resolved? I would expect you to have all the information within the next couple of days.'

'Wow. Thank you, ma'am' exclaimed Will. 'To be honest, I would rather be on Cantabrigia. Although the planet's gravity isn't that much higher than it is up there, I'm finding it a bit wearing at present. I would like to have a look around down here first, if I may. As yet, I haven't had an opportunity to see anything more than my cell and the journey from Cantabrigia to here, so would like a look around the city.'

'Hmm. I understand. The city isn't that big but there are some sights that are well worth seeing and there are undoubtedly some shops here that aren't on the station. I will ask the Chamberlain to provide a small amount of funds so that you can buy some clothes and so on. I'm afraid that I have another meeting to attend now, so I will have to ask you to leave. Good luck.' With that the Queen rose and moved to shake hands.

Will moved to shake her hand, though not before he sensed a slight increase in the alertness of his guards. They made no move to stop him but he didn't think he would survive more than a few seconds if he had made any kind of untoward movement towards the Queen. Having shaken his hand, the Queen turned and left the room. She didn't look back. One of the guards approached him and ushered him from the room and into a small room near the outer door to the palace.

After half an hour, a besuited older man entered the room. 'Good afternoon, Mister Hunt. My name is Josef. Her Majesty has asked that I show you round Milnsbridge and help you in any way I can. I have also been authorised to fund the purchase of any items you may require, such as items of clothing and toiletries. Tonight I have arranged for you to stay at the Plaza Hotel prior to you returning to Cantabrigia tomorrow afternoon. I have been advised that tomorrow, prior to your departure, you will be visiting the Chamberlain, who will advise you as to the value of your reward and provide details of anything we can offer in the navy. I understand that her Majesty will also discuss the possibility of you assisting in the work being undertaken by BridgeCam Technology with the P.M. at her meeting with him tomorrow morning.'

'Good grief' muttered Will, hoping that Josef hadn't heard him. 'Thank you Josef. Her Majesty is being most kind and I would certainly appreciate your assistance. Please call me Will, by the way. I assume Milnsbridge is the name of the city but can you also fill me in a little? I haven't come across a Queen before so I'm not quite sure what her role is, especially as there is a Prime Minister, who I assume runs the government. The only ones I've ever heard of were historical figures that I learned about in school. She's obviously important, as she has a large retinue of staff.'

As he led Will from the room, Josef explained the background to the Queen's role 'When the original settlers arrived here, the majority of them were practical people, such as farmers, metal and wood workers etc.. There were also a number of scientists from a variety of disciplines, so that they could make best use of the planet's resources without, it was hoped, damaging the ecology any more than was absolutely essential. They were all highly skilled in their fields, in readiness for settling a new planet. However, there were relatively few who were skilled in management or administration, especially at a strategic level. Once we had landed, however, the ship's Captain and senior crew were experienced in such matters but, once they had landed, were not really in a position, as a group, to help build a new civilisation. Some of the crew had family backgrounds that helped them to create the early township, factories and farms but most of the rest moved towards overseeing the strategic direction of the planet, settling disputes etc. This wasn't dissimilar to some of the functions they had done on board ship. A small number returned to space to make sure we were safe from external attack, using the ship as their base and using the shuttles and so on as cruisers to keep an eye on things from space. The settlers decided that they wanted to have a government led by elected politicians, elected by all adults. They also decided that the Captain should remain independent of the politicians and have the power to veto unpopular political decisions, as a last resort. As most of the settlers were from those European countries that still had a royal family, they felt that he should become their King, rather than a President, as occurred in some Earth countries. After much argument, his exact roles and the limitations as to what he could and couldn't do were agreed. It was also decided, as his family were also on board ship that, upon his death, his daughter would become Queen. This has been the case ever since, with the Monarch's eldest child being made King or Queen upon the death or abdication of that Monarch. So far there has been only one exception to this. About a hundred years ago, the eldest child of the then Monarch was universally disliked as an adult and his passage to become King was blocked by the majority of the population. His younger brother, Francis, became King but upon Francis's death, the daughter of the unpopular descendent became Queen as she hadn't inherited any of his dislikeable traits.'

'I see. Thanks for the explanation. I think I understand now. So what does the King or Queen actually do?' asked Will.

'Mostly, they provide a steadying influence upon some of our more extreme politicians, so maintaining a degree of stability. Politicians serve a five-year term and then seek re-election. This can give some of them a rather short-term thought horizon, rather than thinking of the effects their decisions can have in the longer term. They are only allowed to act as politicians for twenty years, after which they must stand down. The Monarch also gets involved in meeting dignitaries from other planets, as well as acting as an ambassador for us when we are seeking new or improved trade agreements.'

'In my reality, politicians remain in power for as long as they are elected. Some do it until they decide they've had enough, often in older age when they decide they would rather do something else. Is it a full-time job?'

'I'm not sure that's an advantage or not. Generally, no. The Queen performs her royal duties every weekday afternoon and one morning a week, as well as some evenings, unless something arises which requires her attention at other times. The rest of the time she manages a number of businesses both on the planet and on Cantabrigia. Her Majesty is a shrewd businesswoman. Although some successful business people are successful at the expense of others, her Majesty has retained her human touch and is popular with most of the population.'

'Okay, I think I understand. Thank you, Josef' replied Will, feeling slightly overwhelmed by the explanation.

'If you have any further questions, please feel free to ask.'

By seven o'clock that evening, local time, Will, with Josef's help, had invested in various items of clothing, as well as a selection of toiletries and other personal items. He was particularly pleased to finally have some footwear he could call his own. Josef had also shown him some of the sights of the City and Will was interested to note how different it was to the equivalent in his own reality. While some parts of the layout were much the same, due to the terrain and the main river running through the centre, he was impressed by the gardens that ran alongside the river in this reality, which were a far cry from the somewhat functional industrial units that occupied the same space in his own reality. After a while, he decided to stop trying to compare the two realities and just enjoy the guided tour that Josef was providing him with. As he collapsed onto his bed, before cleaning up for a dinner in the hotel restaurant, he just wished that he had had more time to sightsee.

Chapter 8

Reality 3: Billy Hunt

When the Commodore, Captain Moser and Angela returned from their meeting with the Admiral, the Commodore informed the crew of the plan to revisit reality one and look for a base on what they knew as Astraeus 5. Once she had finished and the crew had started to prepare to move the ship to Astraeus 5, Dev and Billy approached Angela and asked her if she knew when they would be in a position to investigate the Captain's controls.

'The Admiral has said that we can't start pulling anything apart until we have another ship. Let's just hope that there's at least one in reality one' replied Angela.

Two hours later, the ship was resting on the planet's surface in reality one, a short distance away from this version of the base in which the ship had been found. They decided that they needed to be far enough away that, on the one hand, anyone in the base wouldn't know they were there yet, on the other hand, they were close enough to be able to monitor the base for activity.

A short while later a small contingent of the ship's marines entered the base and radioed back that the base was, as far as they could tell, identical to the one on Astraeus 5 and that there was no sign of life. There were two ships in the forward hangar, both identical to the one they had arrived in. With this information, the Captain sent the remaining marines and two suitable pilots to the base to remove the ships. The marines were tasked with removing any ordnance and moving it to a pre-agreed site in a crater a kilometre away from the base. It was hoped that this would be far enough that Zero's forces wouldn't find it, yet would mean that the team wouldn't need to attempt to transport and store it in their own reality. Once the current mission was over, they would make a formal decision as to what to do with it.

After three hours, the base had been cleared of everything that could reasonably be removed and the two ships returned to Columbus.

The process was repeated in realities four and ten without any hitches. The only difference was that, in reality four, there was no ordnance, which meant that their stay was relatively brief, and in reality ten, there was only one ship and a small amount of ordnance in the rear hangar. They managed to clear out that base in just over an hour.

After they had finished in reality ten, the Commodore decided that they needed a break before visiting reality two, so returned to their home reality, as the plan with reality two was to contact the space station and seek support. They needed to feel refreshed before doing that, as they weren't sure what kind of reception they would get. She also wanted to make sure they had enough ships available to be able to demonstrate a show of force, should the reception be hostile. Now that they had seven ships, they needed to ensure they had sufficient crew and marines to support future visits to other realities. She therefore drafted in Captains George VanDelden, Beth Doolan, Mark Besant and Shu Wan. She would captain the sixth ship, with ship seven being left at Columbus, so that Angela and her team would be able to work on the Captain's controls. She then made plans to transfer as many people as possible, including marines and support staff, to crew the six ships. She hoped that most of them wouldn't be needed but wanted to take no chances.

The following day, the Captains and as many crew as possible were transferred to Captain Moser's ship for training. Fortunately, most of the basic flight controls were sufficiently similar to what they were used to that the Commodore hoped that training would prove to be a fairly straightforward process.

the training was taking place, food and other provisions were loaded onto the remaining five ships that would form the visiting party. Other crew members were gathered together at the naval base and readied for embarkation.

Three days later, the Commodore and the five Captains were happy that they and the crews were as prepared as could be hoped for in the limited time available. Captain Moser's ship was then provisioned ready for departure. Later that day, the six ships moved to Astraeus 5 and moved into a 'V' formation above the planet in a position that gave them a clear view of New Oregon, with the Commodore in the lead. Although they were a long way from New Oregon, they hoped that this would mean that they wouldn't materialise in reality two in the same space as was already occupied by another ship.

As soon as they were all in orbit, the Commodore called the other Captains and informed them that she was about to check that the area was clear in reality two. Two minutes later, she returned and confirmed that there were no ships in the vicinity and that they could all make the transfer.

One hundred thousand kilometres from the space station, they received a radio message asking them for identification.

'This is Commodore Ellie Powell plus support ships of the Imperial Navy of the Lincoln system seeking assistance from your Government' replied the Commodore.

After a short delay, they received a reply. 'We have checked our database, Commodore, and have no record of the Lincoln system. From our scans, it is clear that your ships are incapable of inter-stellar travel. Please explain how you got here. Until we receive a satisfactory explanation, please hold your positions.'

'The story is complex, Control. I am happy to explain how we got here face to face but not by radio. If you are able to arrange it, I would be pleased to explain the circumstances of our arrival to your naval Admiral or other senior officer. This can be either on your territory or, preferably, on this ship.'

'You realise this will take time to discuss, Commodore?'

'I am happy to wait for further instructions, control. In the meantime, to demonstrate our peaceful intentions, we will remain in our current position until advised further. If you would like to send an observer, we will be happy to entertain them while we await the decision.'

Fifteen minutes later, there was a call from the station. 'Commodore, I'm afraid that we are unable to accede to your request. The Admiral is currently unavailable and the Commodore does not believe that ships such as yours could have come from a system such as you say. All nearby systems are well known to us and, despite an exhaustive search of all records, there is absolutely no record of a Lincoln system. There is no record of ships such as yours in our database and your ships are not equipped with the transponders that all ships are required to use. Unless you start to leave the system within the hour, we will have no option but to engage a naval response.'

'What, that's it? No attempt to discover what we're here for?' asked an exasperated Ellie.

'I'm sorry, Commodore. I have my orders. There have been reports of pirates between here and two neighbouring systems and we currently have no basis to accept that you are who you say you are' came the terse reply.

'Control, please watch your screens VERY carefully. You will see something I had hoped not to have to demonstrate at this stage but you leave me with no option.' With that, she cut the contact with the station and called her Captains. 'Captains, I'm afraid this isn't going to be quite as straightforward as I'd hoped. I want you all to go to reality one, where we'll travel fifty thousand kilometres closer to the station, after which we'll return back to this reality. Let's see whether that convinces them we're worthy of being treated seriously.'

As soon as they returned to reality two, the Commodore called the station. 'Control, this is Commodore Powell. Do you copy?'

Five minutes later, a red-faced, middle-aged woman looked back at the Commodore. 'You have my attention, Commodore. I am Major Evans of Security, in charge of security services covering all the space in the system. The Admiral has been informed of your demonstration. She is intrigued, to say the least and has asked that a single ship move to within five thousand kilometres of the station on your current heading. There, a shuttle transporter will meet you. You and up to five support personnel will then be brought to the station. You must all be unarmed. The remaining five ships must remain where they are.'

'Thank you for your invitation, Major. I accept. I'm sorry but my support personnel and I will remain armed until I see fit for that to change. Weapons will, I can promise, only be used if there is any kind of attack on any of us and, as part of our standard protocol, will be set to stun only.'

Two hours later, a Commodore Richard Stork and five heavily armed guards greeted the Commodore, Captain VanDelden and three marines. The visitors were escorted to a conference room and invited to help themselves to refreshments before being invited to be seated. The marines were asked to sit at tables at the edge of the room.

As they sat down, a woman entered the room. Commodore Stork and his guards promptly stood to attention and saluted her.

'At ease' said the newcomer. 'Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, I'm Admiral Hannah Craven. I'm in charge of the navy in this system. If you'll excuse me, I've just been to a very long and tedious meeting and am really hungry and thirsty, so will join you in some refreshments. I'll join you in a few moments.' With that, she moved over to the refreshments and helped herself to a variety of sandwiches, two pieces of cake, and a drink of fruit juice.

Once she had put her food and drink on the table, she looked to Commodore Stork and asked him to introduce their guests. After the introductions, she addressed the local marines and asked them to leave the room. Seeing that the Admiral was unarmed, Commodore Powell asked her marines to do likewise and passed her weapon to one of them. Captain VanDelden also passed his weapon to a marine.

'Thank you Commodore. May I call you Ellie? Captain, may I call you George? Feel free to call me Hannah. When we're in informal situations we try to avoid using ranks if we can. I hope you're comfortable with that.'

'Certainly, Hannah' replied Commodore Powell.

'Good. Now that's sorted, I'm intrigued as to how you got here and how you performed your little disappearing trick. You were clearly doing it for effect.'

'Sorry, I was somewhat frustrated by the blocking tactics we received. We come from another reality, which is very similar to this one. We found, with the help of someone who had landed in our reality following an accident, that there was a military base on what we call Astraeus 5,which is the fifth planet of the system. We've been investigating two warships we found there, with the intention of finding out more about the people they belong to. It would seem that they come from yet another reality. The ships we came in are theirs. We have, hmm, liberated seven ships so far. Having examined the ships, we discovered they had controls that allow them to move between eleven realities other than their own, including both our reality and this one. We are seeking assistance and support to thwart them in what may be a programme of attacking systems and taking them over. One ship is currently back in our reality so that a team of experts can analyse the reality jumping controls and, if possible, improve upon them.'

'I apologise about the initial greetings but we've been suffered a number of pirate attacks recently and have lost three commercial ships. Everyone's on high alert. Thank you for your explanation. That makes sense. It may surprise you to know that we've already found a base on Nyx, which is our name for the planet I think you're referring to. It has been cleared of everything we found there. Before I can commit to your cause, I think that her Majesty the Queen would like to be consulted. Not only is she aware of the existence of the base but she has also expressed a keen interest in developments concerning it.'

'Sorry, Hannah, I have no idea what a Queen is, other than what I've read in history books' replied George VanDelden.

'Ah. You don't have such a person in your reality, then. The Queen is the Head of State and is supreme commander of all military forces. The role is a hereditary one. She is descended from the Captain of the ship that brought us to this system. She is also, nominally, our head of government but these days, her role is primarily to act as an ambassador for the system and approve legislation passed by our government. Nevertheless, she commands utmost respect and loyalty.'

'I see. We have an elected Governor, who is elected once every five years. The current Governor is called Tamar Horsley' explained Ellie.

'Unless you have any objections, I would like to bring her Majesty into the discussion if that's possible. She's planetside but can be linked in from there. Despite being comparatively informal whenever she can be, you should always address her as either 'You Majesty' or 'ma'am. She may, however, refer to you by your first name, if she knows it' said the Admiral.

'I'm happy with that' replied Ellie.

Chapter 9

Reality 5: Will Hunt

Josef looked concerned as he approached Will after breakfast. 'Good morning, Will. I'm afraid that the rest of the tour has to be postponed or possibly cancelled. Her Majesty has asked that you join her as a matter of urgency.'

'Something I should know about?'

'I'm sorry, Will. I'm afraid that I have simply been tasked with taking you to the Palace. Her Majesty will explain, I'm sure' replied Josef, ushering Will from the hotel restaurant where he was coming towards the end of an enjoyable breakfast and into the back of a waiting limousine. The doors had barely closed when the car moved swiftly and almost silently to the palace, only stopping once it was in front of the entrance to the main palace building.

Will was ushered into the Queen's office. She was, as before, sat behind her desk, with the Prime Minister sat before her. She gestured for Will to take the seat next to the Prime Minister.

'Thank you for coming, Will. Less than an hour ago, Admiral Craven met a Commodore Powell, who said she would like to meet government representatives to discuss a potential solution regarding the reality that constructed the base on Nyx. Having had an initial discussion, the Admiral has requested that we join them in a teleconference. In the circumstances, I felt it might be advantageous that you also attend the discussions, bearing in mind that you brought this base to our attention.'

'Yes, certainly, Ma'am. I'm not sure what I can bring to the meeting but I'll contribute as much as I can.'

'Good. Thank you' responded the Queen, turning towards the screen behind her and pressing a button on a remote control in her right hand. The screen sprang to life with an image of a room containing four individuals.

Two of the people in the room immediately stood up and saluted the Queen. The other two present looked slightly taken aback.

'Your Majesty. Welcome to the meeting. I see that you have the Prime Minister with you and someone I don't recognise. Please let me introduce you to Commodore Ellie Powell and Captain George VanDelden who are from another reality.' Ellie and George stood and acknowledged the Queen.

'Thank you, Admiral. Good morning Commodore, Captain. This is Will Hunt. He is the young man who let us know about the base on Nyx and assisted the navy in finding it. I'm surprised your paths haven't crossed at some stage. Never mind. Commodore, I would like to hear how you feel we may be able to assist.'

'Excuse me, ma'am but I think I know Will. May I check, please?' interjected Captain VanDelden.

'Certainly, Captain. Please feel free.'

'Hello again, Will' asked the Captain. 'I didn't expect to see you again after you left in the way you did.'

'Sorry about that, Captain. Events conspired against me' responded Will. Turning to the Queen, he said 'Your Majesty, Captain VanDelden is the one who transported me and my counterpart in his reality from the base on their version of Nyx that I told you about when we first met.'

'I see, Will. That is most reassuring.' Turning back to the screen, the Queen said 'Commodore, you were about to explain how we might help you.'

'Thank you, your Majesty. Although I haven't met Will, I have heard of him. In fact, his counterpart in our reality, Billy Hunt, is a member of a small team we have put together to investigate the controls that enable the ships to move between realities. As regards our request for assistance, I have been tasked with seeking support, in particular providing crew members for helping us to adequately operate as many ships as we can remove from the hidden bases, so that we can then confront the people who put them there. At present, we have seven ships from four realities. Using the controls in the ships we have access to twelve realities altogether, including our own and what we currently consider to be that of the enemy. This is the first reality where we have positively made contact with the locals. However, we plan to relieve any bases we find of any ships. This means we could be looking at around ten more ships but we won't know exactly until we visit the bases in the outstanding realities. From our experience, albeit limited as yet, crews take around four days to familiarise themselves with the controls, flying characteristics and weapons systems.'

'Thank you Commodore. I understand that the ship we found was tricky to fly but we only moved it a short distance away from the base. We would certainly appreciate a training programme. In light of your request, I think that the Admiral, the Prime Minister and I need to have a private discussion. Part of that may require us to consider whether Parliamentary approval is required but I hope that won't be needed. I'm afraid that is one of the consequences of having a democracy. Admiral, could you please arrange for our visitors to have a meal and some privacy themselves, so that we may discuss issues? Thank you.'

'Certainly, your Majesty' replied the Admiral and cut the link. The Queen then asked her aide Karen to try and contact the leader of the government's opposition party leader, to bring him into the discussion. Ten minutes later, there was a call from the Admiral. A second call was received a few minutes later with the face of Ben Miller, the leader of the opposition in Parliament looking at them.

Will wasn't excluded from the meeting but he wasn't able to contribute much to the discussion but he did remind the others of what he had seen at the enemy base, prior to his rough treatment by General Gott and his subsequent imprisonment. By the end of the meeting, the Queen and the others had agreed that they would like to provide assistance to Commodore Powell. Having had the situation explained to him, Ben Miller was more than happy to support the initiative and foresaw no problems emanating from his political colleagues. They all saw this as a positive action they could take to get to understand the reason behind the base on Nyx and, they hoped, preclude a more significant military problem later on.

After they had agreed on their support, the Queen turned to Will 'Will, in the circumstances, I think it may be useful if you join Admiral Craven and the others on Cantabrigia. While the Admiral will need to arrange for military personnel and associated help, you may be able to help in some way. Would that be of interest to you?'

'It certainly would, your Majesty. After my treatment by General Gott, I'm keen to do what I can to stop him in his tracks.'

'Excellent. We can discuss details later. Meanwhile, I think you need to re-join Josef and complete your tour of the city, before returning to Cantabrigia tomorrow morning. Even though time is clearly limited, I'm sure that there is plenty for the Admiral to discuss and arrange with Commodore Powell. I suspect that arranging the necessary crewmembers and other logistical matters will take a day or two, so I doubt your presence is urgently required. Until these can be sorted out, I doubt that Commodore Powell will be leaving our reality just yet awhile.'

After the meeting ended, the Admiral recalled Commodore Powell and Captain VanDelden in order to let them know their decision, which necessitated a short delay, as they were still enjoying the meal the Admiral had arranged for them. 'I'm pleased to inform you that the Queen and her advisers, both political and military, are happy to assist your cause in any way we can. Her Majesty would like me to join you and Will has been asked to assist where possible. If you are happy with this arrangement, we need to arrange for crew etc. to be made available. Will is currently enjoying a tour of the city and will join us in a day or two. Is this acceptable?'

'Yes, thank you, Hannah. That's all we could have hoped for.'

The Admiral, Commodore and Captain then discussed what personnel would be required to crew the ships, as well as how they would work together with the crews that were already occupying the captured ships they came in.

Chapter 10

Reality 3: Billy Hunt

Now that they had been given approval to investigate the Captain's controls, Angela, Billy and Dev started to examine the chair to see if they could begin to understand how the controls worked. Fortunately, the chair side, back and front panels were screwed into place and were easily removed.

The more they revealed, the more they realised that the controls were very similar to the ones in the box they had examined earlier, with what appeared to be twelve versions of much the same thing. Although they couldn't get a completely clear view of the control knob because of the cables within the arm, judging from the number of wires feeding it, it looked as if it simply switched between one control circuit and another. What looked like a power cable was running through the floor beneath the chair and connected to a separate circuit box beneath it. As before, they couldn't believe how unsophisticated the controls actually were.

'While we didn't use a touchpad control on the hand-held version, it might be handy to do so with this. Later, we should be able to add that to future hand-held devices. In fact, we might even be able to make the whole thing hand-portable, making one version redundant' commented Dev.

'Well worth a look. While we're about it, we could see if we could use a radio-controlled version, which would allow the actual control to be placed somewhere more convenient. I imagine it would be a complete pain to work on this at the same time the Captain was in it. All it would need is a power supply. We might even get away with powering it by battery, since it only needs to be powered when a selection is pressed, meaning that the battery should last a fair while. This might also help when we start to look into the inter-reality communications question the Admiral asked us to look into' responded Billy.

'Why don't we separate the controls completely from the chair anyway. That way, the Captain could be anywhere on the ship and still be able to operate the controls. We would need an override to stop the ship and crew being hijacked simply by stealing the control' suggested Dev.

'Hmm. True. If we use a touchpad, we could easily program in an access control code, known only to senior officers. Alternatively, we could build in a fingerprint or retinal scanner, with only approved staff entered into the controlling database. The whole thing could be pretty small. At the same time, the two devices could be linked using a code that is sent, say, once a minute. If the code isn't responded to, the main control will be disabled unless the Captain resets the handset with a control code. In that way, if the keypad is lost or stolen, it wouldn't be of any use to anyone else.'

'Why not just use spoken commands? We use it for all sorts of applications?' wondered Dev.

'If they were in vacuum, that wouldn't work, which is why we have manual systems as well. Either way, we're getting ahead of ourselves but I think that, when we're in a position to start building a replacement for this thing, we should keep our options wide open, so that we can, if we decide it's possible, solve both problems either at once or with very little change for the second one. Meanwhile, we need to extricate this lot from the chair' observed Angela.

Two hours later, they had finally managed to remove all the circuit boards from the chair and had rebuilt it on a workbench they had erected nearby. The switching mechanism had proved harder to remove than they had anticipated and they had had to remove most of that side of the chair before they could free it from it's mount. After an hour of deliberation, they decided that the best way to deal with the controls was to take them to their lab on the station and analyse them there, with the help of the computer. This would also give the advantage that the computer, having already analysed the hand-held unit, could use the information it already had in its database to help interpret what was happening on the new boards.

Two days later, they had managed to identify all the circuits, how they interrelated and how they were switched. As their earlier visual inspection had suggested, each board was almost identical to each of the others, with only a handful of slightly different components in one section of the board. In fact, in most cases, the components were the same, albeit with different values.

'I'm amazed. The level of redundancy in this device is astonishing. With so much common circuitry, I can't see why they didn't just have one main board and a separate daughter board, or even a single integrated circuit for each of those bits that are different. Looking at the computer analysis and the circuits, we should be able to build something that is highly portable, complete with a separate, radio-linked switch. As Dev suggested with the hand-held switch, I think we should be looking at a software solution longer-term but we're a way off that at present. Any suggestions before we get the computer to design an initial circuit board?' said Angela, looking at Dev and Billy.

'I think we've learnt all we can at this stage. I agree, I think we should build a first version of our own and see what happens' replied Billy.

'Absolutely! I also suggest that, as the computer is doing its stuff, we use what we know already to see if we can come up with a solution to the Admiral's request concerning an inter-reality communications device' suggested Dev.

'Good idea. I'll get the computer started on drafting up the circuit board designs and then we can get onto that' replied Angela, moving across to the nearest computer terminal to start the program. 'OK, now that's going, I'm open to suggestions.'

After a long debate, they decided that they should be able to use an adaptation of their updated version of the chair controls to do the job. There would need to be two distinct elements. Firstly, there would need to be an inter-reality gateway. This would need to be low powered and sited well away from anywhere that could result in anyone being switched with the message by mistake. For safety, they decided that it should be located on 'Roid 2, well away from the existing communications facility there and have the capability of being turned off remotely so that technicians could approach it safely.

There would be a receiver, which would create a message burst and transfer it to a holding memory buffer. The memory buffer would then copy the message burst to a transmitter module, which would switch realities as signals passed through. There would be a matching, complementary pair of transmitters in each reality, located in slightly different locations, to allow them to switch realities as required. Each reality would be equipped with a single receiver, as the receivers didn't need to switch realities.

To switch the gateway, each ship or other navy transmitter would need to encode any message with a special tone that identified the destination reality and to open the reality gateway to that destination. The gateway would be linked into the Navy's existing communications networks in the existing base on 'Roid 2. New receiver and transmitter pairs would need to be placed in each known reality, along with the switching hardware.

They decided that this initial approach was almost certain to change materially as their understanding of reality switching increased, as they recognised that it was an amazingly crude approach to the problem. After all, it was possible that the people in the Zero reality already had a solution to the problem that the team hadn't discovered thus far.

Once the computer had produced the initial circuit boards for the ship-based switch, they decided, as with the hand-held unit, that they needed to test the unit out, so placed it in a suitable box along with a separate box for the control switch and fitted it into a shuttle. Although they had hoped that they could use the remote from the safety of the captured ship, they decided that they needed to be on board in case there were any difficulties that needed to be addressed. The captured ship would come along to monitor them, as well as provide a backup in case something went wrong. Because of the time periods the crew worked, this took place on the following day. As before, the test would be conducted in the vicinity of 'Roid 2, with Billy the shuttle pilot this time. The captured ship was to be crewed by a small contingent of those trained by Captain VanDelden, with Angela and Dev on board as observers. Billy would be in a spacesuit and had one of the new hand-held units fastened to his spacesuit as a failsafe back-up. He hoped it wouldn't be needed.

'Are you ready, Billy?' asked Captain Moser from the captured ship, now renamed NS Ajax, as they arrived at the asteroid. 'We're ready whenever you are to go to One.'

'Unless Angela or Dev can think of a reason why not, I'm as ready as I'll ever be, Captain. After you' replied Billy.

'See you on the other side' responded Captain Moser, as Ajax disappeared.

'OK. Here goes nothing' muttered Billy, as he pressed the electronic switch to, he hoped, relocate the shuttle to reality one.

As soon as he entered reality one, the radio burst into life 'Looks like you made it OK, Billy. That's a relief. Should we go straight to two, or would you like to wait a moment before we switch?' asked Angela.

'I think I'd rather just check that I can get back home OK, now that we've switched away from there. I'll see you back there, if that's OK with you.'

'No problem. I'd hate for you to get stuck in the wrong reality. See you there.'

A few seconds later, Billy re-emerged in reality Three, with Ajax pretty much as he'd left her in One.

'That seems to have gone OK, Billy. Are you ready to try Two now?' asked Captain Moser.

'I'm ready. I can't see any advantage in hanging around here, now we know I can get back if there's a problem. See you there' replied Billy.

He switched to reality two. Despite being able to see NS Ajax, he couldn't attract their attention, no matter what he tried. His view of the planet looked much as he would have expected but when he started to scan for radio transmissions, he realised that there were none. In desperation, he decided to move the shuttle closer to NS Ajax to try to attract their attention by sight. As he pulled alongside the ship, it appeared to be unoccupied. He was starting to get nervous but decided that it made sense to move across to the ship and take a look. He checked his space suit, went outside and tethered the shuttle to the ship, then set off towards the nearest airlock. When he got on board, the deck lights were flickering but also seemed to be at a lower lighting level than he would have expected.

He checked for air and found it to be present but there was slightly more nitrogen in the atmosphere than was normal. He didn't think it was enough to cause him any long-term problems. As he didn't expect to be on board for very long, he decided to preserve the air in his suit and removed his helmet. The air seemed stale, as if the air filters hadn't properly scrubbed it. As he made his way to the bridge he saw no one, which he thought was odd. In fact the ship was eerily quiet, without any of the normal sounds he would have expected, even down to the low-level background sounds present on all the ships he had ever been on.

When he entered the bridge, it was also deserted. The monitors were all turned on but there was a slight flicker to them that he couldn't understand. What was even more odd was that the displays on the monitors changed from time to time, as if some unseen hand were changing them. He decided to sit in the Captain's chair to get a better view of the bridge and was somewhat taken aback when the access door to the bridge opened and closed, although there was no one there.

On a whim, he wrote 'HELP. BILLY' on a notepad screen and then held it in front of one of the main monitors. A few seconds afterwards, an unseen hand seemed to write the message 'GO BACK TO THREE' beneath his words. He was somewhat taken aback by this, but wrote 'OK. GIVE ME TEN MINUTES TO GET BACK TO MY SHIP' underneath, then put the notepad down and ran towards the airlock, so that he could get back to the shuttle and back to his home reality.

Back in his own reality, he was relieved to hear the voice of Captain Moser on the radio. 'Billy. Do you copy?'

'Whew, that's a relief, Captain. That was weird. We've obviously got something a bit off with our settings for reality two. My note ploy worked better than I could have hoped but it was very odd when someone responded.'

'It was even more weird for us, Billy. We called for a while but couldn't raise you, then your ship moved closer and we tracked you moving through the ship as doors opened and closed, until you got into the bridge. I have to say, when we saw your note, we found it somewhat eerie, as we couldn't see you. While this was going on, we were trying to work out what must have happened and came to the conclusion that, somehow, you were slightly to the side, so to speak, of the reality we were in. Though there was an overlap, it wasn't enough for us to see each other. It's as well that you checked you could get back home before we started. While there were arguments put forward to resolve the error before we do any more tests, we decided it made more sense to carry on checking the ability to visit the remaining nine realities, in case there's something more substantially at fault. Are you okay with that?'

'Knowing I can get back home at any time was reassuring, I have to say. In future, if we can't contact each other, I suggest we hold for ten minutes, in case there's a communication fault, then return here.'

'I agree. We'll see you in Four.'

'See you there' replied Billy, switching the setting to reality four. This time, he was relieved when he could hear the Captain without difficulties and, just as importantly, the Captain could hear him.

To everyone's relief, the same occurred in realities five, six and seven.

When they arrived at reality eight, however, Billy was somewhat taken aback when there was no sign of NS Ajax. He searched the immediate area in case there had been some physical movement as well but still found nothing other than several ships near to the planet and one heading out into space. He could tell from the shape that it wasn't Ajax, so decided to return home.

There was no sign of NS Ajax here, either. Five minutes later, however, Billy was relieved to see it reappear alongside the shuttle.

'Welcome back, Captain' he said into the radio. 'What happened?'

'We went to reality eight, but there was no sign of you, so we returned here after the agreed ten minutes.'

'We obviously need to review our circuit settings for reality eight as well. You OK to go to nine?'

'See you there.'

Everyone was relieved when the trips to the remaining realities went according to plan and they could safely return to Columbus.

Once they had returned to their home reality, Angela and Dev returned to the shuttle and NS Ajax returned to its patrol area.

As they travelled back to Columbus, they pulled up the circuits for the switch on the computer and compared the originals with those in their own device. After a while, they concluded that there was nothing obviously wrong with their circuitry, so it had to be down to faulty components in their switchbox. Billy, supported by Dev, checked every component and discovered that, for the reality-specific parts of the circuits, a couple of components were operating well outside their tolerance setting, so these were changed.

The following day, they were able, again with the crew of NS Ajax, to test the switchbox for realities two and eight. This time, their trips were successful. As these were the only circuits that had been changed, they didn't see the need to revisit the other realities.

Now that they had successfully tested their circuits, the next job was to get the computer to refine what they had, with a view to miniaturising the switch box even further. They also wanted to produce a wrist-worn version of the hand-held device that could be worn by anyone travelling between realities, to allow them to be always able to return back to the 'home' reality. That way, if anything went wrong and they found themselves lost in an unfamiliar reality, they could always get back home. This device could be very simple, however, as it only needed to be able to transport the wearer one way. As this was a simple-seeming task, now that they had the circuits designed, they programmed the computer to design the device.

The following afternoon, the computer had produced a fully wearable, if slightly larger than desired, wrist-worn switch. To make sure it didn't get triggered accidentally, it was necessary to twist the rim anti-clockwise to open the cover to reveal a button. Pressing it would return the wearer back to the team's reality. The computer had also managed to further refine the multi-reality switch box and produce a version that was about the size of a camera.

Again, the devices were tested, with Angela being the 'guinea pig' on this occasion. Satisfied that the devices did what they were meant to, they decided that they needed to make an initial batch of twenty multi-reality and a hundred of the wrist-worn devices, so sent the details to the navy production team to have them made.

Chapter 11

Reality – Unknown: Will Hunt

Will stumbled and fell several feet. 'What the hell?' he thought, as he landed on his knees on a gravelly surface. He looked around. A moment ago, he had been crossing the hotel's lobby, having just eaten breakfast, and was heading back to his room to collect his belongings. Josef was due to arrive to take him to the spaceport, where a shuttle was to take him back to Cantabrigia to meet up with Captain Van Delden and the others. Now, all he could see around him was trees, lots of trees. The gravel was digging into his knees, so he stood up, rubbing them to get rid of the discomfort.

As he looked around more carefully, he realised that, physically, he was in the same place. Ahead of him was a track heading towards what he knew as the Stanley Mountains, named after the Captain of the ship that first landed on the planet in his reality, Idris Stanley. He heard rustling in the undergrowth. He looked around but could only see a flock of birds rising from the trees to his right.

Wondering what had made them rise en masse like that made him realise that he ought to have some kind of weapon, however crude, in case there was something wild that he needed to defend himself from. Although there were no animals that could kill an adult human in his reality, there were a couple that could deliver a nasty bite, which he could do without. He had no idea what could exist in this reality. Looking around, he saw a fallen branch that seemed suitable and went over to pick it up. He also saw a piece of wood that he thought would be suitable as a crude dagger. He didn't think either was all that impressive but they would be better than nothing. Feeling slightly more confident, he walked towards what he knew as Lake Vera, named after Captain Stanley's wife enjoying, for now, the sunshine. Fortunately, it was a fairly short walk, the hotel having been in a prime town centre position.

As he got close to the lake, he spotted a group of small buildings dotted amongst the trees to his left, so decided to investigate. When he got closer, he realised that the buildings looked derelict, with the roofs in tatters and trees growing through some of them. Most of the doors and windows were open. In other places, the window glass was broken, though there was nothing around to indicate why. He could only assume that chunks of trees had been thrown at them in a storm.

He entered the first house he reached. Every surface had a thin layer of dried mud and dust on it, through which various types of vegetation were growing in patches, suggesting that the house had been abandoned a long time ago. He went through a doorway into a bedroom. He was shocked to see that the bed was occupied but the empty eye sockets and gaping mouth told him that the occupants weren't going to get up any time soon. At least, he thought, they looked human, which was, he decided, probably a good sign but he hoped that whatever had killed them was long gone and wouldn't affect him. He decided there was nothing for him here, so moved further into the town. All the buildings looked just as deserted. As he continued to walk down the street, it was clear that the settlement had been abandoned for some time. Having just reality-jumped from a bustling town, he found the whole experience deeply unsettling.

When he finally got to the lake, he found a large rock and sat down, in order to get his head around what he'd just seen and to decide how best to tackle his new predicament and to try to work out what his best course of action was. One of the things that concerned him was that the community he had just passed through was abandoned and he couldn't imagine what could have caused the township to die like that. He tried, and failed, to think of anything in his own reality's past where the early settlers had nearly died out. Trying to remain positive, he tried to forget the town, at least for now, and concentrate on what he should do next.

Fortunately, it was summer, so he wasn't going to feel cold. He felt in his pockets but, apart from a few coins Josef had given him, a telephone handset and the electronic key to his hotel room, there was nothing there that would help him to survive in the wilderness he now found himself in. If he could find some way of sharpening it, the room key might be another useful weapon but he would need to find a way to hold it. He thought about using it as a tip to his spear but until he could find some means of attaching it, he thought he would be safer to keep it as it was, in case something better came to mind. He would need to find a way of sharpening it to a point anyway. He couldn't see any use for the phone but decided to keep it for now. Something might turn up but he couldn't think what it could be. For now, however, his priorities were to find food and shelter. He was, in the circumstances, hesitant about revisiting the township. Although there was some logic in searching through it for weapons, the thought of it didn't appeal at present. He decided that, if the weather turned nasty, the settlement would provide somewhere to shelter from the worst of it, at least in the short term. Knowing it was there was reassuring, inasmuch as he knew that he knew he could worry about finding shelter once he had a better feel for his surroundings.

Fortunately, having recently breakfasted, he wasn't in urgent need of food but that would change. Luckily, he was dressed in navy fatigues, in readiness for his trip to Cantabrigia, which were fairly robust, so he was, at least, dressed for the environment. He decided to return to the forest, to see if there were any fruit trees or bushes. Even though there were small animals on his version of the planet, he didn't know, as yet, whether they were also on this version of it. Even if there were, he doubted that his hunting skills were up to much and he would, at least initially, expend more energy trying to kill an animal than he would get from eating it, especially as he didn't fancy eating raw meat and, as yet, he had no way of starting a fire. In common with most of the adults on board Shackleton, he had been given basic weapons training in case of an attack but he'd never really enjoyed it, nor was he all that good at it. It wouldn't have helped him anyway, as the weapons he had trained with weren't available.

As he re-entered the forest, he looked again at the trees and bushes, this time looking primarily for food but also looking to see if there was anything he could readily turn into a shelter. After about an hour, he had found a small holkonut bush. The nuts weren't all that tasty but they were nutritious and widely used as a cooking ingredient in his reality. He ate a couple, then stuffed what he could in his pockets and walked on. After a short while, the trees began to thin out and he found himself at the edge of a small clearing. At the other side, a small animal was eating something on the ground, oblivious of his presence. Automatically, he threw his spear at it, making it bolt into the trees on other side of the clearing. As he'd thought, his hunting skills were somewhat inadequate. He crossed the clearing and, as he bent down to pick up his spear, he heard a voice behind him shout 'Stay EXACTLY where you are. Put your hands behind your head and turn around, nice and slow.'

He raised his arms and slowly turned around. A group of four men and two women were pointing weapons at him. Like him, all the men were bearded and their hair looked longer than it should but it looked more that they just hadn't shaved for several months. All of them looked unkempt and some of their uniforms were looking frayed around the edges, with stains and rips in various locations. One of the group stepped forwards. 'OK, sunshine, just who the hell are you and how did you get here?'

Will was relieved that they spoke English. 'My name's Will Hunt and I'm not entirely sure how I got here. I was just going back to my hotel room after breakfast and suddenly found myself here.'

'A joker, eh? How come we haven't bumped into you before?'

'I'm not sure if there's an easy explanation. I seem to be jumping from one reality to another. Where I come from and, indeed, where I was this morning, this area is part of a thriving town. Each version is different but I haven't seen anything THIS different.'

'No idea what you're talking about. Apart from the piece of wood in your hand, can I assume you have no weapons? What's the uniform? I don't recognise the insignia.'

Will had forgotten about his makeshift dagger and dropped it. 'No, that's all. The uniform belongs to the Britannian navy, Britannia being the name of this planet in the reality I've just left.'

'OK, boys and girls. He seems harmless, if not a little eccentric. Mascall, check he's telling the truth.' A middle-aged man approached. 'Empty the pockets' he said, gruffly.

Satisfied that Will wasn't carrying anything untoward, Mascall went back towards the leader and showed him the phone, coins and hotel door card. Will put the nuts back into his pockets. The group's leader looked at them 'Don't recognise the character on the coin, or the name of the hotel. Never seen a phone like this one. Any explanations?' he said to Will.

'The character, as you call her, is Her Majesty Queen Anne. She's the Queen of this planet in the reality I was in until this morning. The hotel is near the lake in that reality. Lovely views of the lake and mountains. Can't say much about the phone. A phone's a phone! I only bought it yesterday.'

'Uh, OK, I guess. Hard to get your head round. By the way, I'm Major Sunil Modaly, in charge of this sorry bunch of reprobates. You can call me Sunil.' He held out his hand in greeting.

'So why are you here? The area seems a bit wild and you all look as though you've been here a while' said Will, as he held his hand out in return.

'You could say that. We're from an exploratory mission to try and find out what happened to a bunch of colonists who'd headed here to Wyton a couple of hundred years ago. They were never heard of again. Unfortunately, when we were on the way down from the Cornishman, our shuttle suffered engine failure. Luckily, we only fell less than about thirty metres. The shuttle's a wreck. Fortunately, we were all strapped in, so there were no major injuries but a couple of people suffered broken bones. There was another shuttle on the ship but there were problems with the engines in it. Fortunately, they were discovered before it left the ship. I'm guessing the engineers weren't able to fix it, or we'd have seen them down here by now. We haven't been able to contact the ship, as we lost all our comms in the crash, so can't let them know what's happened. We've been here for about a year, I reckon.'

'Sounds like you're lucky to be alive. By the way, I'm a communications engineer, so I might be able to jury-rig something up to communicate with the ship, if that would help. Mind you, even if they hear us, I'm not sure what they'll be able to do. As you said, if they could have fixed the other shuttle, they'd have been down here by now. At least they'll know you're alive. Did you manage to find any evidence about what happened to the original settlers?'

'You've probably seen the town. We've found some computer records that suggest a calamitous outbreak of an infection about ten years after they landed that they seem to have been unable to deal with. None of their drugs or treatments seem to have had much impact. We've collected samples from some of the human remains but we don't have the kit we need down here to analyse it. The idea was to collect samples and analyse everything on the ship, so we have no idea what the infection was. Since none of us has suffered any kind of illness, we can only assume that whatever it was is no longer active. Thanks for the offer. Any help would be useful. To be honest, we're struggling. There's only ten of us altogether, with four back at camp, so even covering the basics has been a slog. We did have a couple of bots but their battery packs died a few months back and we've been unable to recharge them. We only expected to be down here a month or so and brought supplies to cover twice that. Even though we've only been here about a year, it feels like it's been forever.'

'Weird. In my reality, there's a thriving economy here, as there was in the last reality I was in. Both had space stations and strong links with the rest of the occupied galaxy. There's nothing that I know of on the planet that would kill them off. I can't imagine what would cause such a lethal infection. I can see if I can do anything with the bots but it's not my field, so can't promise anything with those, I'm afraid.'

They set off down a path in the woods heading towards the group's camp. The remaining members of the team were intrigued by the new arrival and crowded round the returning party. When they got to the centre of the camp, Sunil put down his gear and called the group around him. 'Let me introduce our new arrival, Will Hunt. We found him in the woods down near the lake. Says he's from another reality, whatever that is. Either way, he's human and looks like he could be more of an asset than a liability. Anything to add, Will?'

'Hi, everyone. As the Major says, my name's Will Hunt. This morning, I was in another version of this planet and had just had breakfast when I suddenly found myself here. Becoming a habit recently. It's hard to get your head around at first but there seem to be a number of versions of the universe. The easiest way to think of it is that if you took a left turn instead of a right turn, your life could be different from that point on. If you then think that both options actually happened, even if you only know of the one YOU remember actually taking, then you can see that infinite possibilities exist. In at least two realities I know of, a thriving city exists where we're standing, with trading links across the galaxy. Because we're in this version of reality, we're completely unaware of their existence – well, I'm aware, because I've been there! I'm afraid I can't prove any of it, other than the fact that I'm here and had some things with me that Sunil had no explanation for.'

'Thanks, Will. I think Will makes sense but I'll leave you to form your own opinion. For myself, I'm happy to take him at his word, even if I'm not sure I understand it. Anyway, let me introduce Will to you lot. For information, Will, there are four marines, a pilot and five scientific staff. Sergeant Greg Mascall you've met. The pilot is Nik Martensz. Then there's Privates Andy Adams and Jill Blake. Jill is also capable of being the co-pilot but she hasn't passed any of the flight tests. The scientists are Han Zhu, Marcy Shirliqui, Rube Saavendra, Ana Salas, and Suman Sharma. I'll let them explain their particular specialism when they get the chance but they cover botany, zoology, archaeology, both biology and microbiology, virology and forensic sciences.' Each had nodded at Will as their name was given.

'We all take it in turns to sort out the cooking and what not, while the patrol looks for fresh food and any more evidence of the settlers. The bots used to help out with those mundane chores but since they croaked, we've had to do all of it. In case the ship sends down a rescue team, we decided to stay close to the shuttle, even though this isn't the best place to pitch camp. It does mean that the shuttle can be used as storage and part of our accommodation if we need it, such as when the weather gets a bit wet and wild. Anyway, speaking of cooking, I reckon it's chow time. Our mess area is over there' continued Sunil, leading the group towards the eating area. The eating area consisted of an open-sided tent, with collapsible chairs and tables but some of the chairs seem to have been patched up with whatever could be found. One was propped up on one corner by a sawn off tree trunk.

'Unfortunately, we weren't that well equipped for this kind of mission. We had the basics covered but we've had to improvise somewhat. For now, until we've decided what happened to the settlers, we've decided to leave their stuff where it is. Besides that, the site is currently of archaeological interest, so we're trying to disturb it as little as possible until we know more about what happened here. While we marines were trained to live off the land, our training only covered the essentials, and without the tools, I'm afraid it's all pretty basic round here' explained Sunil.

Will began to get to know his new colleagues, over a simple meal of stew. Although it tasted different to anything he'd ever had before, it seemed nutritious and was quite enjoyable.

After they had eaten, Sunil took Will over to the shuttle to show him around.

The shuttle was in a decidedly sorry state, with much of the lower front panels badly bent by the impact of its crash landing. The sides were intact but they were badly bent towards the front of the shuttle. The rear panels were only lightly damaged by the fall. One of the engines was completely smashed, the other was streaked with black smoke residue and one of the doors was badly bent on the leading edge.

'You weren't kidding about the damage!' said Will, as he looked at the shuttle in more detail.

'Fortunately, the interior looks a lot better but there is clearly a lot of damage behind some of the panels, especially at the front. It's not going anywhere. Here, let me show you the comms gear, or at least what's visible. All I know is what we actually use, so you'll find the workings hidden behind the interior panels somewhere' replied Sunil, entering the craft.

The rear of the craft interior had been tidied up, with equipment stashed at the edges of the floor, with the central area available for use by the team. In one corner, two humanoid robots sat limply on the floor, looking as if they were just resting. Sunil took Will towards a door into the crew area, or at least what was left of it.

'I'm amazed the pilot wasn't killed in the crash, looking at this mess. By the way, those bots look a lot more human-like than any I've seen before. Robots such as those were banned in my reality about a hundred and fifty years ago after a couple of them went on a killing spree at a shopping centre. Over a hundred shoppers were either killed or badly injured, including twenty-five children. Once they'd been disabled, it was discovered that someone had tampered with their software. It was decided that we couldn't take the risk again, so they've been banned ever since.'

'Luckily, the cabin is pretty strong internally. Nik did suffer a few cuts and bruises but the co-pilot on the day, Jill, got a broken leg when part of the control panel smashed into her leg but that's now fully healed. The comms panel is over here' replied Sunil, pointing at the part of the dash panel concerned. 'We use bots quite a bit in the military and in a number of situations where using a human would be too dangerous. They also help crew some of our space ships, where space for food and supplies become issues on long-haul flights. It means the human crews don't need to be as big. I can think of a couple of instances in the early days where the bots went rogue and killed the human crews but the subsequent analysis decided that it was down to electromagnetic interference causing critical software damage. Hasn't stopped us using them, though. We just retrofitted them all with a radio-controlled kill switch that just turns off the battery pack remotely. Works every time.'

'OK, thanks. I guess we hadn't thought of that option at the time. Do you have any screwdrivers and other tools that I can use to check out the dash panel? Any idea what sort of antenna the shuttle uses? As a matter of interest, do you know if the dash is getting any power?'

'There's a box of various tools that you might find useful in the rear compartment. I'll go get it for you. As far as the antenna and power are concerned, I haven't a clue, I'm afraid. I assume the aerial's on top of the shuttle but I can't say I've ever taken much notice, to be honest. Not my area of interest. We ought to be able to rig something up for you take a look up there to check it out. We haven't checked for power but the master control switch is directly in front of the pilot's seat' said Sunil.

'OK, thanks. The sooner I can make a start, the sooner I can see what can be done, if anything' replied Will, turning to the panel to see if he could make out how it all went together. He then moved to the master control switch and turned it but wasn't surprised when nothing happened. What he needed to ascertain was whether the power was there but not being switched on or whether there was no power at all, which would add an additional complication.

'I'll leave this here, if that's OK' announced Sunil, putting down an open toolbox on the pilot's seat.

'Great, thanks' replied Will, looking into it, to see what it contained.

He pulled out a suitable screwdriver and used it to open the cover of the comms panel and peered in. What he saw at first didn't fill him with any confidence that he could get the radio working again but he persevered and removed the panel cover as far as he could, in order to get a better view. Now that he could see what he was working with, he needed a multimeter to find out if there was any power getting to the transmitter, so turned back to the box left by Sunil. A few moments of rummaging resulted him finding one near the bottom of the box. Applying it to the circuit showed him that the circuits were dead. He then checked that there was power at the master control and was relieved to find that there was. Now all he needed to do was to find out why the radio wasn't getting any electricity, so decided that he needed to dismantle as much of the control panel as he could so that he could find the power cable and trace it through from the switch.

Two hours later, he had traced most of the cable from the master control switch to the radio but had had no luck in finding out why power wasn't getting to the radio circuitry. Unfortunately, parts of the cable were buried deep inside the panel area and, try as he might, he couldn't get at it. He assumed that the break was within the inaccessible part of the dash but he wasn't surprised, due to the amount of damage the front of the shuttle had sustained in the crash. He decided that the easiest way to deal with it was to simply cut out that part of the cable and put in a patch cable piece, assuming he could find a soldering iron and solder or some other means of connecting the cables.

He had another look through the toolbox but, although he couldn't find a soldering iron, he could find some solder. Unfortunately, there was nothing else he could use to create a solid connection, so decided that he needed to discuss the problem with Sunil.

When he returned to the main part of the encampment, Sunil was nowhere to be found but he did find Marcy Shirliqui, Suman Sharma and Privates Andy Adams and Jill Blake starting to prepare the evening meal. None of them recalled ever seeing a soldering iron. Realising there was nothing further he could do with the radio itself for now, Will returned to the shuttle to see if there was any way he could check out the antenna. Whilst Will had been checking out the pilot's area, Sunil had managed to get some large crates moved alongside the shuttle, complete with some smaller ones to act as steps between them, so Will was able to clamber up to the roof to look for the antenna. Fortunately, it was only about four metres from the ground, so it only took him moments to climb up to get a look of the roof panel. Standing on the top-most crate, he could see what he considered to be an aerial mount inside a recess but there was no sign of the actual aerial from his vantage point. Cursing inwardly, he decided to get a closer look and clambered carefully onto the roof panel, then wormed his way across to the antenna mount. Fortunately, the mount itself looked undamaged, so that at least meant that he had a chance of fitting something to it to act as an antenna. While it almost certainly wouldn't work as well as the original, it would be better than nothing. Unless he could get the transmitter to work, though, it would all be academic. He carefully crawled back to his impromptu ladder and clambered back to the ground. As he did so, Sunil and two of the scientists appeared.

'I gather you've been looking for a soldering iron, Will.'

'Hi Sunil. Yes, I'm going to struggle to fix the radio without one. Do you have one anywhere in the camp?'

'Can't say I've ever seen one. When we get back to the main part of the camp, I'll see if anyone else has.'

Once back at camp, Sunil asked the group if anyone had seen a soldering iron. None had. Will explained the problem regarding the radio.

'I know we don't like to but we could always look in the town. There are a few likely places we could look' suggested Ana Salas.

'We've agreed not to go into the town unless we really have but this is the first chance we've had of letting the Cornishman know what's going on down here. I, for one, don't want to die here. As Ana suggests, there are a couple of likely possibilities we can try first, such as the workshop we found in the centre of town and the police station' said Sunil.

'There's a police station?' asked Will.

'Yes. It's not very big. We haven't examined it in much detail as yet.'

'If they have a transmitter, there might be something I can cannibalise to get the radio in the shuttle going again. Alternatively, there might be some other tools I can use. I don't even know what frequency the shuttle radio works on yet. This could substantially speed up my repairs' responded Will.

'OK, Will. We need to limit what we look at but we'll get you to the station tomorrow morning and you can see what you can find.'

After breakfast the following morning Will, Private Andy Adams and Nik Martensz walked to the town and headed for the police station. As they entered the building, Will could see that the place could well provide him with everything he would need.

'Could you look for a soldering iron, while I look to see whether any of this equipment can be of use?' Will asked Nik and Andy.

'Sure. Anything in particular, or will any old soldering iron do?' asked Nik.

'If possible, a self-powered one, so I can use it in the shuttle without external power but at this stage, just see what you can find.'

'OK, no problem. Good look with this lot' replied Private Adams, looking around the room.

Will decided to look around the whole building first, so he could get his head around what the station consisted of in more detail. It was a modest station, which didn't surprise him too much, so he didn't think it would take long. He soon found what he was looking for – the transmitter part of the station. At the back of the building, he found a ladder attached to the wall and a small hatch to the roof. He decided it would help him to look at the antenna or antennas up there, so made his way up to take a look. The hatch door was a little stiff but soon succumbed to his efforts to open it. As he opened the hatch, he was so surprised to be attacked by a bird that he nearly slipped off the ladder. Fortunately, the bird flew off when the hatch clanged against the roof decking, so he was able to climb the rest of the way unmolested.

As he looked around, he saw a VHF antenna, a simple vertical antenna attached to the top of a short mast. He also saw a UHF vertical antenna and wondered what it was used for. He hadn't seen anything that looked as though it would operate on that band in the station. Having seen the antennas, he climbed back down the ladder, to be greeted by Nik.

'Say, Will. I've found something that may be of interest. Not sure if it's of help to you but you'll be a better judge of that, I reckon.'

'OK, lead on Macduff.'

'Pardon?' replied a confused-looking Nik.

'Just a saying where I'm from. Can't recall who Macduff was but I think he was a Shakespearian character from a play called 'Macbeth'.'

'Ah. Right' replied Nik, clearly none the wiser.

As they entered a small room at the end of a corridor at the side of the building, Will saw a row of twelve hand-held radios, sitting in what looked like battery chargers. He could tell from the antennas that they operated on the VHF band.

'How do you communicate now?' asked Will.

'We have a couple of walkie-talkies but the range isn't up to much. As often as not, the signal breaks up when we're trying to use them.'

'Can I have a quick look at yours?' asked Will.

'If I had one, you'd be welcome to have a look but the Major and the Sergeant are the only ones who have them to keep in touch with the camp. Until now, we've always had one or other of the two of them with us but they needed them today on another mission.'

'Oh well. OK. Can we take these and the chargers and we'll see whether I can get them to work back at the camp. That would allow most of you to have one. It's not as if anyone else has a use for them.'

'As the resident archaeologist, I need to record them in situ first but that will only take a few moments' replied Nik, taking out a scanner-camera to record images of the radios in their holders and their location in the building and take a 3D sweep of the room.

'OK, it's not what we came for but these could prove really useful. Any sign of a soldering iron?'

'I haven't seen anything but Andy may have.'

'I'm sure he'll shout if he does. Best keep looking.'

'OK, will do. Anything look useful from your point of view?'

'I've found some antennas but I suspect there must be a base station to go with those hand-held radios you found. That would provide us with a more powerful station at the camp, which would come in handy, as it would extend the range we can explore before getting out of range of the camp. I'll discuss it with the Major when we get back. Looking at the antennas on the roof, they would have been using VHF frequencies. Hopefully, the frequencies they used will be near enough what I need to get the shuttle transmitter going but, if not, I'm used to improvising. I also spotted a UHF one up there but so far, I haven't come across anything that may use those frequencies.'

A further search of the building resulted in Will finding the VHF base transmitter part of the station. He hadn't noticed the entrance door to it the first time he had passed it by, as it was tucked away behind a pile of cases. Someone had clearly been searching for something in the corridor outside it. When he entered the room, he was surprised as to how untidy it was. It seemed to be a bit of a dumping ground for anything and everything that might come in handy one day but no one seemed to know what to do with. Fortunately, the transmitter itself had been kept clear, so was easily spotted. The police service clearly had very little to do in the settlement.

Luckily, the transmitter looked as though they ought to be able to carry it back to the camp on the trolley they had brought along. The only thing he needed to do was to check on the voltage of the power supply it needed, to make sure it was compatible with that produced by the shuttle. Luckily it was near enough, so he knew he would be able to make a voltage converter to compensate for the difference, providing he could find suitable components. Luckily, the room also seemed to be the storeroom for such things, so he had a look for the components he thought he would need and put them on the desk he found near the transmitter. As he searched, he also some pieces of metal rod that he could turn into a suitable antenna for the shuttle, a gas-powered soldering iron and some spare gas canisters to power it and a variety of items of test equipment that would help him tell whether the radios he was taking, as well as the radio in the shuttle, were working and, if so, what frequencies they worked on. He also hoped that, in time, he would be able to see if he could do anything with the two bots. At last, he thought, his luck was in.

When he left the storeroom, Will called Nik and Private Adams and informed them of what he had found. They were pleased the trip had been successful and, after Nik had finished recording the site, he and Andy Adams helped Will load what they could onto the trolley and returned to the camp.

When they arrived back at the camp, they discovered that the Major and a small party had gone in search of more food supplies, so took the trolley of equipment to the shuttle. Until Will knew Sunil's views on his walkie-talkie acquisitions, Will decided that he could do no more with them, so went back to the main camp to help with the preparations for the evening meal.

Over dinner, Will made a point of approaching Sunil. After explaining what he had found, Sunil agreed that anything that helped their safety would be helpful. So long as the archaeological records were maintained for future generations, Sunil was happy to use the equipment.

'I realise I'm a newcomer and it may not be my place to say this but we may need to recognise that we're not leaving this planet. Perhaps we need to make greater use of the settlers' resources. Unless we do something, there's a limit to how long we can survive. Your ammo won't last forever and you seem to be barely subsisting. I think we need to think longer term. If the crew of the Cornishman could have rescued you, I would have expected them to have been here by now. For what it's worth, I think we should search the town for anything we can use and even think about relocating over there.'

'I hear what you say, Will. We've been arguing over doing just that for some time but so far haven't come to any decision. You may be right. If you manage to get the radio working, we may be able to get a response from the ship and then make a decision after that. We may be on the verge of a rescue but I would also have expected them by now.'

'No pressure then! OK, I'll see what can be done tomorrow. It's too late to make a start on it today. Unless you object, I'll first off concentrate on getting you some new radios organised, so you and the others can keep in touch more successfully.'

The following morning, Will set about getting the radios he'd brought back from the police station working. The supply voltage produced by the shuttle was too high for the radios, so he needed to build a transformer to drop the voltage to the correct level. Although this wasn't overly difficult, it wasn't as straightforward as he would have preferred, as he needed to design the circuits himself, then either salvage or otherwise obtain the components he would need before he could build the transformer.

Two days later, Will had managed to construct a working transformer. Unfortunately, his first two attempts hadn't worked for more than a few minutes, as some of the old components he had obtained from the town failed shortly after power was applied.

Now he had a suitable power supply, he connected the radios to it, so that they could be charged. The LED's at the front of ten of the radios turned on but the other two remained off. Upon investigation, he discovered that the radios weren't sitting quite correctly in their holders, so the power wasn't being applied to the batteries in the radios properly. Re-seating them seemed to solve the problem. Although the radios seemed to be charging, he wouldn't know for several hours whether the ancient batteries would hold the charge.

He turned his attention to the base station, pressing what looked like the power switch and was relieved that the radio seemed to spring to life. Knowing he had something he could work with at last, he turned to the collection of test equipment to check what frequency he was actually using, the amount of power he would be transmitting and whether the antenna he had removed from the roof of the police station was the correct one.

He turned the transmit power down to its lowest setting, then pressed the transmit button. He decided to risk taking the transmitted power up to full but wished he hadn't. As soon as he pressed the transmit button, there was a loud bang, a smell of burnt electrical components and the radio went dead. The smell took him back to his accident on Astraeus 5, which had sent him off to Billy's reality.

'Damn!' he said, to no one in particular. He had known it was a risk, with the radio having been unused for going on two hundred years but he had to check it. He removed the bottom and rear panels and peered inside. 'Could have been worse' he thought, as he saw that the actual damage was relatively minor. He just hoped that he had suitable replacement components. He removed the damaged circuit board and examined the burnt out components to see if he had replacements. Fortunately, they were common items so he had a plentiful supply amongst the items he had taken from the station, so was quickly able to repair the damage.

When he tried to test the radio again, he was pleased that it seemed to be working properly. To test it out, he decided to turn on one of the charging hand-held radios and was thankful that it burst into life. A few minutes later he was relieved to note that the transmitter seemed to be working and a signal was being received by the hand-held radio and that the hand-held seemed to be able to transmit meaningfully to the base station. Until the hand-held radios were fully charged, he decided to reserve judgement, especially as he had only transmitted a few feet. He would need the assistance of one or more of the rest of the team to be able to confirm that they would work over a greater distance.

The following morning, he tested the remaining radios, now that the batteries had been recharged and found that all but one worked as expected. He would have to dismantle it later, to see what was wrong with it but he was happy that they now had eleven working radios. Sunil agreed to take one of the hand-held radios with him, and left one of the navy radios with Will, so they could test the respective ranges of the two radio systems. Overall, they found that the acquired radios had a much greater range than the original navy ones, so decided that, henceforth, they would use the acquired ones whenever anyone left the camp, as well as have a radio to link the camp to the shuttle. Just in case the acquired ones failed, however, they decided that they would, whenever possible, take a navy radio as well but the limited numbers precluded this on every trip.

Now that the local communication difficulties had been improved, Will started to concentrate on the shuttle radio, to see if there was any way he could communicate with the orbiting Cornishman. Using the soldering iron he had taken from the radio station, he made a patch lead to by-pass the power cable damaged during the crash-landing. With that done, he turned on the radio and was relieved that it worked, or at least he could hear background noise. He then connected the transmitter to the frequency meter and pressed the transmit button, to discover what frequency the transmitter used. Once he had discovered the frequency, he realised that the antenna he had attached to the roof mount was completely the wrong length, so climbed up to the roof to replace it with one that he calculated would suit the transmit frequency. Some minor adjustments were required but, less than an hour later, he had a working transmitter. He then dug out the signal generator they had found at the police station and tuned it to the correct frequency, and used it to transmit a signal to the radio. It worked! He decided that, before he called the Cornishman, Sunil would probably like to be the one to make the call, so called him on the hand-held radio. Fortunately, Sunil had recently returned to the camp, so was able to join him a few minutes later. The rest of the group were with him. After all, this was a momentous moment, as they had had no contact with the ship since they had landed.

'Calling Cornishman. Calling Cornishman. Do you copy? This is Major Sunil Modaley for the Cornishman.'

There was no response. Sunil repeated his message but the response was the same. The initial excitement subsided.

'It may be just that they're round the other side of the planet at present' suggested Will, trying to be positive about the lack of response.

'That's possible, I suppose but they were meant to be in geostationary orbit so that we could always remain in touch. I would have expected them to have been listening out for us, so it's odd they haven't responded' replied Sunil. 'OK, I suggest we call them every four hours just in case something has taken them out of range. I'll draw up a rota to cover the night hours.'

Despite regular calls to the ship, there was no response. Will checked that the power from the transmitter was sufficient and that the radio worked properly but couldn't find anything wrong.

'I suggest I make something up to transmit a pre-recorded message every hour and rig up something that will notify us if there is a response from the Cornishman. It'll save anyone having to stay at the shuttle to operate the transmitter and listen out for a communication from them, as well as give more calls' Will said to Sunil over the evening meal two days later.

'Good idea. It's been a bit of a drain having to monitor the radio. On top of that, the poor SOB who has to be there has nothing much to do while they're there.'

Two days later, Will had produced a simple device that would transmit a pre-recorded message every hour and would sound a loud buzzer in the camp if a radio message was received.

After hearing nothing for a week, Sunil agreed that they needed to branch out and find ways of settling the planet themselves, as they seemed to have been abandoned by the Cornishman. It worried him, as he couldn't understand why they would have left the planet with the team on it.

Chapter 12

Reality – Unknown: Will Hunt

'Captain, I'm receiving a weak signal from the planet. I thought this reality was uninhabited' announced the Communications Officer, George Lewczenko.

'Put it up, please Mr. Lewczenko' replied Captain VanDelden.

'Calling Cornishman. Calling Cornishman. Do you copy? This is Major Sunil Modaley for the Cornishman. Calling Cornishman. Calling Cornishman. Do you copy? This is Major Sunil Modaley for the Cornishman.' There was a short break and then the message was repeated. After five minutes of the message being repeated, it suddenly ended.

'Can we pinpoint where that's coming from?' asked the Captain.

'From this far out, all I can tell is that it's from the planet, Sir.'

'Oh well, thank you, George. Once we've dealt with the base from this version of Astraeus 5, we'll head over there and investigate further. Although they're not calling SOS, Major Modaley sounds a little desperate. Whatever type of ship the Cornishman is, I'm surprised they're not responding. While we're dealing with the base here, focus on the planet and see if you can get a more precise location for Major Modaley. At the same time, can we see if there's a ship in orbit around the planet? As they're not responding, they may be having problems themselves.'

'Yes Sir' replied the Communications Officer, turning back to his console. An hour later, the Cornishman was sighted coming around the planet.

'We've found what may be the Cornishman, Sir, but it seems dead' announced Lieutenant Strowgger.

'Thank you, Lieutenant. Looks like we need to investigate. How are they getting on with the base?'

'There is no base, Sir.'

'That's slightly disappointing but never mind. In that case, we might as well get over to this version of New Oregon. Please set a course for what we take to be the Cornishman. We need to investigate that first. We also need to reply to Major Modaley and inform him we're on the way. George, please put me on the radio on the frequency he's using.'

'Yes, Sir.'

'Major Modaley, do you copy? This is NS Dark Horse responding to your call to the Cornishman. Please reply.'

There was no response, there being no-one at the shuttle to receive it. However, the message resulted in the buzzer sounding on the speakers that Will had set up in the camp. It caused a minor panic with the Marine and the scientists there. They'd almost forgotten that the radio system was working, it having been, in their minds at least, so long since Will had set it up.

'Major, we've had a response to your calls to the Cornishman. It's from an NS Dark Horse. Should I reply, or would you prefer to deal with it, Sir? Out.' asked Private Blake on the camp's radio.

Major Modaley was just as surprised by the news as they had been at the camp. The initial enthusiasm they had all felt when, at last, they could communicate with the Cornishman, had given way to a degree of unease when they hadn't received any response from their only way off the planet. Now, to add to the Major's confusion, the response had come from a ship calling itself the NS Dark Horse. He'd never heard of the NS prefix, or a ship called the Dark Horse, so couldn't imagine where it had come from.

'We'll be back as soon as we can, but that's going to take us an hour or more. Can you respond to the call, please, Private? I'll give them another call when I get back. Please let them know that. Modaley out.'

'Yes, Sir. Will do. Out.'

Jill Blake ran as fast as she could to the shuttle, turned off the recorded message and picked up the microphone.

'This is Private Jill Blake calling NS Dark Horse. Do you copy? Out.'

'This is the Dark Horse. Is Major Modaley with you?'

'Not at present, Sir. He's currently away from the base but will be returning in about an hour. Are you here to rescue us?'

'If you need our assistance, we will provide whatever is possible. What's your situation?' asked George Lewczenko.

'We're an exploration party. We came to discover what had happened to a group of settlers who came here about two hundred years ago but we haven't been able to contact our mother ship since we crash landed on our way down about a year ago. We managed to get our radio working about a fortnight ago but haven't had any replies to our calls until you responded. Do you know what's happened to our mother ship?'

'Thank you, Jill. By the way, my name is George. Couldn't the settlers help you? We are en route to the ship at the moment from one of the small planets within the system. We will be in orbit in a few hours and hope to be able to find out more. I must warn you, however, that your ship is running dark and there is currently no sign of life on board. We'll know more when we get there.'

'Hello George. I'm afraid the settlers died some time ago, possibly soon after they landed. We haven't been able to discover why but there seems to have been some kind of fatal illness that wiped them out. None of us has become ill, though, so we're optimistic that whatever it was has long gone.'

'I'll call you again when we know more about the Cornishman but for now, just be assured that help is on it's way. Please ask the Major to call us when he can. I'll be monitoring this frequency.'

'Thank you, George. Blake out.'

'Dark Horse out.'

Chapter 13

Reality – Unknown: Will Hunt

All those who had remained at the camp excitedly greeted Major Modaley's party when they re-entered the camp.

'Whoa. You all look as if you've just opened your hoped-for toy on your birthday, so you'd better fill us in.'

'First, you know the good news about a response, at last, to the radio message. The potentially bad news is that the Cornishman seems dead. The crew of the Dark Horse will be investigating the ship when they get to it, they said. That means they should be getting to the Cornishman any time now' replied Han Zhu.

'Oh, that's not good' replied the Major, who had a lot of friends on the ship. He tried to be the professional Marine but was clearly struggling with this news when Jill Blake said 'We don't yet know what happened, Major. We're trying to be positive about the last piece of news.'

'OK. Good. Right, I'm going to call the Dark Horse and see what's happening. Anyone who wants to is welcome to come with me. This is too important to exclude anyone' replied the Major, as he headed towards the shuttle.

At the shuttle, he picked up the microphone to transmit 'Dark Horse, Dark Horse. This is Major Sunil Modaley calling. Do you copy?'

'Good Afternoon, Major. This is Lieutenant Taro Strowgger on NS Dark Horse. The Captain is currently asleep and has given orders not to be disturbed until he comes back on shift. Do you need help?'

'Yes, Sir. We're marooned on the planet and without your assistance have no means of getting off. The party consists of eleven individuals, a combination of Marines and scientists, along with a communications expert. Are you able to advise on the Cornishman?'

'Thank you, Major. We will be arriving in orbit in about two hours and will then send a party of Marines across to the Cornishman to find out what happened. We'll also send down a shuttle to collect you and your party. I'm afraid that, initially, you will need to be put into isolation. Since Private Blake advised that it seems that some kind of fatal illness affected the settlers, we need to check you over before you're allowed to mix with the rest of our crew. With that in mind, the shuttle party will be fully suited at all times until you're on board and in an isolated part of the ship. Unfortunately, we don't have the medical facilities on board that we would need to fully check you out, so you'll need to wait until you return to our base before you can be properly checked over.'

'I understand, Lieutenant. I appreciate your concern but none of us has been sick since we got here, so whatever killed the settlers seems to be long gone. I hope your base isn't too far away, or it could prove a long flight. As a matter of interest, how did you get here? We thought we were alone out here.'

'It's a complicated story, Major but we're from another version of this system. I'll explain more fully when you're on board. Physically, our base is very close to our current location, so your stay on the ship should be very short.'

'Not another one! The radio guy I mentioned also said he was from another reality. He turned up out of the blue about a month ago. I must admit, I didn't really understand what he was on about. Seems like he might have been telling us the truth!'

'How do you mean, another one?'

'The radio guy who sorted out this thing says he's from another reality. Can't say I totally fell for the explanation but I guess he may have been telling the truth after all.'

'I look forward to meeting him when you all get on board. The shuttle will be with you in around three hours. If you can be prepared that would be helpful but I appreciate that this may not be long enough. We can return later to pick anything up you leave behind.'

'Yes, Sir. We'll pack what we can. To be honest, if I don't see this place again, I'll be happy!'

'I'm afraid I can't guarantee that, Major but you may not recognise that part of the planet when we make the jump back to our reality. The accommodation and food are likely to be a whole lot better!'

'Sounds good, Sir. We'd better pack. Modaley out.'

'Before you disappear, Major, where exactly are you on the planet?'

'Ah, sorry about that, Sir. Too excited about getting out of here. We're close to a range of mountains and a large lake. We're relatively close to the equator. We're close to the town the settlers created when they landed but it's obscured by trees now. If we send up a flare, would you see it?'

'Are you in daylight at present?'

'Yes, Sir. It's now late afternoon, our time.'

'OK, Major, we know roughly where to look. We were here a month or so ago and spotted the township. We were doing some exploration of our own but were only here for an hour or so. A flare would just make sure. We'll monitor where we think you are.'

The Major turned to Private Adams and asked him to send up a flare.

'Got you, Major. I can confirm that you're where we thought you would be. The nearest decent landing site near you seems to be on the lakeshore. When you get there, can you travel East, by that I mean right when you get to the lake, in case you use a different way of describing East. The landing site is about a mile from where the river you're near enters the lake. Please leave any weapons behind. They won't be allowed on board.'

'No problem, Sir. We'll start packing and will set off to meet the shuttle shortly. Just in case, I'd like to keep a couple of weapons with us until we're picked up, just in case we need to protect ourselves while we wait. We haven't come across anything we'll need them against but old habits die hard. We'll hand them over immediately to your crew when they land. Modaley, out.'

Turning to the rest of the team, the Major said 'You heard the Lieutenant. Time to bug out. Only take what you can carry. Anything we can't carry we dump in the shuttle. Adams and I will each keep a weapon. The rest go in the shuttle. You've got two hours, then we're out of here. I don't want to keep the shuttle crew waiting.'

They managed to pack most of their things but there were a number of vials and fragile items that they would have to return for, as well as the larger camp items, including their sleeping gear. The pile in the shuttle wasn't as tidy as the Major would have liked but at least it was safe and could be easily removed later.

Three hours later, they were sitting around the landing site when the shuttle descended and landed on the beach. The shuttle door opened and revealed two armed and fully-suited marines. One stepped forwards and said, via the speaker on their chests 'Let's get you out of here. We'll save the introductions and explanations for when we get back to the ship.'

Major Modaley and Private Adams approached the two marines and offered the hand weapons they had carried to the pickup point. That done, Sunil gestured to the rest of the party to enter the shuttle. Needing no further bidding, everyone got on board, dumped their stuff in racks along the back wall of the shuttle, sat down in one of the seats and strapped himself or herself in. Within ten minutes, they were airborne.

As they disembarked, they were greeted by a further group of armed and fully suited marines. One approached them 'Good day, folks. Welcome to NS Dark Horse. My name is Sergeant Jane Willmore. Please call me Jane. On board the Dark Horse, I'm afraid that you'll be restricted to the mess hall but you'll be pleased to know that food and non-alcoholic drinks will be provided, so we hope that your stay on board won't be too uncomfortable. Toilet and washing facilities are just off the mess, so I'll show you there first, so you can clean up. We're expecting to get back into our own reality within the next few hours or so, so these restrictions should all be short term. When we get back to our home, you'll be debriefed. Oh, before I forget. You may notice that most of the corridor signs are in a foreign language. This ship was captured from a base in another reality and the people there speak a language called Esperanto. The important signs have an English version nearby, so you shouldn't have any problems. Any questions?'

'Hello, Sergeant. I'm Major Sunil Modaley. First of all, I think I speak for us all when I say that we're all grateful to the Captain for rescuing us from the planet. Will we get the opportunity to meet him, so we can thank him personally? I don't know about the others but I've never heard of this Esperanto language.'

'In due course, I would expect him to try get to meet you. At present, however, he's currently overseeing a mission to the Cornishman, to discover what happened to stop them communicating. Don't worry about the language, I'm sure you'll get to know more about it in due course.'

'Understood, Sergeant. I for one like the sound of some decent food. We've been struggling along on limited rations for several months. Lead on. I look forward to hearing what happened to our ship.'

'OK. If you're all ready, please follow me. Please leave your bags here. I'm afraid we need to search them and isolate them due to the risk of pathogens you may have brought up from the planet. You'll get them back after we dock. I hope you understand' announced Sergeant Willmore, turning towards the mess hall.

'We understand, Sergeant. To be honest, I'm just looking forward to washing in hot water and some decent food. We've been roughing it for the last year or so, so these alone will seem like luxuries' replied the Major. Everyone else nodded in agreement, being relieved they were no longer on the planet. Having been on either this ship, or one just like it, Will was interested to see it in action.

Chapter 14

Reality – Unknown: Will Hunt

As Major Auryn Truran and his team of ten marines approached the Cornishman in their shuttle, they realised that it was unlikely there would be anyone alive on board.

There was a large hole on the starboard side visible from some distance away, with jagged pieces of bent metalwork reaching out into space around much of its perimeter. At this distance, they could see debris floating around the hole but couldn't tell what it was. However, it was beholden upon them to investigate the ship thoroughly in case they were wrong. It was always possible that someone on board had managed to find somewhere to hide out but Auryn didn't hold out much hope for this to be the case. When the Captain had first visited this reality only a month or so ago, there was no sign of life. Had the ship been active, they would almost certainly have expected to see some evidence of its presence, either in the way of lights or radio traffic, at the very least.

One kilometre away from the ship, they turned on their spotlights to see whether there was any debris around the ship they needed to avoid. Although there was a certain amount, it would be easy to avoid. Once inside the ship, they split into pairs to explore. Despite seeing a lot of corpses, they were unable to find anyone left alive. When Sarah Hirst and her partner arrived at the area damaged the most by the blast, they discovered that one of the main engines had exploded. What had caused the explosion would take far more time than they had available, however, so they merely noted the damage. A more thorough investigation would require a level of expertise the marines didn't possess. She radioed Auryn and informed him of what they had found. Even though their head-cams were sending images back to the Dark Horse, they weren't shared amongst the exploration team.

'Thanks, Sarah. Once we've finished our sweep of the ship, I'll join you there. I need to take a look myself. Any signs of life so far?'

'Afraid not, Major. Lots of bodies but no signs of anyone alive.'

'OK. I'll see you there as soon as we've finished our sweep.'

Having seen the engines, he agreed with Sarah's assessment of the situation.

Auryn radioed the Dark Horse. 'Captain, bad news I'm afraid.'

'What's your assessment, Major?' asked Captain VanDelden.

'As you'll have seen from our head-cam views, we've searched the ship and haven't found anyone alive, Captain. Those on board look to have died pretty much instantly. None were in 'suits.'

'Can you tell what happened?'

'It looks like one of the engines blew, flooding the ship with radiation and breaching the ship's hull. The air would have gone in minutes near to the explosion. Although most of the security doors were closed, they wouldn't have been enough to stop the radiation killing everyone on board. Hard to say exactly how or when it happened without a more thorough look but there's no sign of the radiation now.'

'OK. Make sure there's no-one floating around nearby, so we can collect the bodies later and deal with them properly. They're not going anywhere. We'll need to try to contact their government anyway if some of the people we rescued from the planet want to get back to their own system rather than staying here.'

'Yes, Sir. Will do. We didn't see anyone in the neighbourhood on our approach but we'll check again, just to make sure. If we don't find anyone, we'll be back within the hour.'

'Good luck, Auryn. VanDelden out.'

Chapter 15

Reality – Unknown: Will Hunt

An hour later, the planetary expedition members had just finished enjoying a meal in the mess hall, when the Captain entered with Auryn Truran at his side. Both were wearing masks covering their noses and mouths. The Captain had concluded that the absence of any obvious illness amongst his guests meant that full suits weren't needed.

'Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, I'm Captain George VanDelden. I hope you enjoyed your meal. I'm afraid I have some bad news for you. Major Truran here has just returned from the Cornishman, which appears to have suffered a catastrophic engine explosion, killing everyone on board. At this stage, we don't know why but, rest assured, we intend to have a comprehensive investigation in due course. I appreciate that you will all have had friends aboard who you will want to mourn. For now, I'm afraid that anything formal in that regard will have to wait for a short period. The Cornishman is secure and we have work to do elsewhere. To be blunt, you don't fit with our current plans, so it is our intention to return to our own reality and drop you off there. In the meantime, please enjoy our hospitality. We'll be returning to our reality shortly. This ship and its crew will be leaving again tomorrow morning to visit further realities. I will now leave you with Major Truran. Good evening.'

Will couldn't believe it. Here he was, in Captain vanDelden's presence again. Sat near the back of the mess hall, the Captain clearly hadn't spotted him. 'Captain. We meet again!' called Will.

'Hello again, Will. I had a feeling you might be the party member from another reality that the Major referred to. I'll see you later, assuming you hang around long enough this time.' With that, the Captain left the mess hall.

'Good evening everyone. Please call me Auryn. As the Captain said, we have pressing business elsewhere. When we arrive in our system, we will dock at our space station, Columbus. The planet in our reality is called New Oregon and we're in the Lincoln system. The main city on New Oregon is called Waterbeach. Don't worry if you don't remember all this, you will in time. I'm afraid you'll be restricted in which areas of our military base on the station you can access until you've been certified medically fit and debriefed, especially as you've been roaming around a town full of dead settlers. We doubt that there will be a problem but we don't know what you may have picked up down there. This will take place as quickly as possible and you'll be able to discuss your future options with our staff and other government representatives along the way. The sooner we can find you some meaningful role that you feel comfortable with, the better it will be all round. For example, you may wish to settle in our reality and that ought to be possible, either as part of our military or as a member of our scientific community, depending on your background. This may or may not be at your current rank or position of seniority, as you will need to be reassessed. Either way, you will need to gain an understanding of our history, so a period of cultural acclimatisation will be necessary. Unfortunately, getting back to your own system will take some time, as we need to contact your own authorities in this system, which we're not currently set up to do. We don't even know what system or systems you're from yet, never mind contacting your governments! We're hoping, at the very least, to let them know what's happened here. As much as anything else, they need to know about the Cornishman and those who died on board. At some stage, we'll make arrangements for some of you to return to your camp to collect the items you left behind and, at some stage, we'll send a more comprehensively equipped team to investigate what happened to the original settlers below. Some of you may well be included in that expedition, to guide any new people we can send and to pick up your research. We also need to send a team back to the Cornishman to investigate the accident more fully and remove your late colleagues, so they can be given proper funerals. Your input will be appreciated at that stage to identify them and guide us as to the protocols we need to follow to meet any religious or cultural requirements. I realise you may find it distressing to see your friends. Any questions?'

'Hello, Auryn. I'm Major Sunil Modaley. I'm in charge, sorry, was in charge of the on-planet mission. This sounds a bit like you're basically imprisoning us. Is this correct?'

'I would say it's more house arrest. Hopefully, it will only last a few days but it would probably be best if you stayed together for now anyway. You're likely to be faced with a lot of unfamiliar things over the next few weeks, so you will need each other for support and to provide familiar faces to talk to. Before you decide what you want to do next, we'll need to give you a flavour of our society and give you some ideas as to what you might be able to do if you decide to join us. Our society is likely to be very different to the one you've come from, so you need to have a basic introduction, at the very least. Short term, there is little chance of you returning to your home worlds, I'm afraid. Rest assured, it is not our intention to keep you imprisoned, as you put it, any longer than absolutely necessary. However, your presence is a complication we hadn't expected and your repatriation is made far more complicated by the fact we come from a different reality to you. Consider yourselves to be refugees from another reality.'

'OK, thanks for being honest with us. For myself, I'm just happy not to be living as we did anymore and will tag along for now. It would be reassuring to know that we're all fit and well, though none of us has shown any signs of any illness since we explored the town. A decent shower, a shave and a haircut would be nice, never mind clothes that haven't been lived in for what seems like forever. We'll help with identification but none of us are trained to work in zero G' replied Sunil.

'What about the lab equipment? I'd love to process the stuff we've found on the planet. There might be some clues as to what happened to the settlers that we haven't have the equipment to deal with' asked Nik Martensz.

Before Auryn could reply, Jill Blake asked 'what about our personal stuff? I don't have much on the ship but I do have some personal things I'd be unhappy about losing.'

'There are probably lots of things that need to be dealt with. I think you'll need to sort these issues out once we're back at Columbus and you've been processed. I don't know how we will deal with your former colleagues but I would expect us to take them back to Columbus. You wouldn't be expected to be involved in exploring the ship. It might even be possible, in time, to bring the whole ship back to this reality. I don't know. I'm sorry but I can't answer all your questions at the moment. Just because we will be leaving this reality doesn't mean we can't return. It's just that we are currently on a mission and, to be blunt, you're a side issue. Please don't take that the wrong way. Please be assured that we will do our best to deal with your concerns' replied Auryn.

Just as Auryn stopped talking, a voice came across the speaker system 'Jump in one minute.'

'What does that mean?' asked Ana Salas.

'It just means that we'll be returning to our own reality in one minute. Just to warn you all that the sensation you will feel is a little odd but it quickly passes, so don't worry. If you'd like to watch the monitor, I'll give us an external view of the planet and you'll be able to see our destination' replied Auryn, reaching for the remote control for the monitor and switching to an external feed that showed the planet below. About thirty seconds later, the ship switched realities and the image changed to give a close-up view of Columbus, with New Oregon very much in the background, only partially visible behind the station. Will was also interested in the view, as he hadn't had the opportunity to see the station from the outside on his previous visit. There were gasps from the party at seeing the station, especially as it was filling most of the screen.

'Docking in ten' came the voice from the speakers.

'Looks like you'll be sleeping on Columbus tonight, folks' said Auryn. 'I'll leave you to watch the docking and catch up with you when we're ready to disembark. Will, I've just received a personal message from the Captain, asking me to escort you to his office.'

'Yeah, OK, sure. Sunil, I'll try and catch up with you later but, in the meantime, enjoy the show.'

'I look forward to it. Before you leave, and whilst we're all together, I would like to thank you for your work on our radio systems. Without your efforts, we'd still be stuck on the planet and would probably have died down there. We all feel that you saved our lives' replied Sunil, extending his hand towards Will. There was a rousing cheer from behind Sunil as the rest of his team clamoured to shake Will's hand, all thoughts of seeing the docking forgotten for the moment.

'The feeling's mutual, Sunil. If you guys hadn't found me when you did, it could have been me dying down there. I'm ill equipped to survive in such a habitat.'

As Auryn and Will left the others watch the ever-expanding view of Columbus on the monitor, Auryn turned to Will and asked 'So, what the hell happened to you?'

'Sorry, Auryn. I'd hoped to hook up with you after we landed on Columbus, so that I could thank you for busting me out of Gott's cell but I switched to another reality before I could. Then I switched to this reality only a week or so later, leaving even more people behind rather suddenly. Unfortunately, I don't have any control over it, which is starting to become a bit of a pain. Had you not turned up and rescued me again, I would have been stuck on that version of the planet, unless I jumped out again.'

'Well, I'm glad we found you all. Anyway, here's the Captain's office. Just press the button. Catch you later.' With that, Auryn turned around and walked away.

'Bye, Auryn. Thanks. I'll look out for you when I get out from the Captain.'

Auryn waved and carried on walking. Will turned towards the Captain's door and pressed the button.

'Come' came a voice from within.

'Hello, Will. Good to see you again' said the Captain, standing from a casual chair in the corner of his office. 'Sit down. I think you've already met Sarah.' He had removed his facemask.

Intent on looking at the Captain as he entered the office, Will had failed to notice Sarah Hirst, who he'd met on Astraeus 5. As with Auryn, her nose and mouth were obscured by a facemask. Even ignoring the mask, she looked different but he couldn't quite place what it was at first. Then it dawned on him.

'Hello again, Sarah. Lovely to see you. You're wearing a different uniform' said Will, smiling at Sarah and sitting down on a casual chair opposite the Captain and Sarah. Will noticed that Sarah's upper face showed that she was smiling.

'Hello again, Will. I'm pleased to see you too. It's a long story. Briefly, because of the confidential nature of what happened on Astraeus 5, my team and I were immediately seconded, I think that's the right word, into the navy. I'm now a Lieutenant. Not sure I have the experience to get to this rank normally but I was a Lieutenant in the Police service, so was allowed to keep the rank. The money's slightly better than it was, which makes it even better!'

'Sounds good, Sarah. Can we can catch up after we've finished here? Captain, you wanted to see me.'

'Firstly, Will, I'd like to say we're all relieved to know you're OK. In case you're wondering. I've taken my mask off because, to be honest, I'm too old to care whether you have any pathogens or not! Not sure I feel the same about the others we brought back. They were exposed somewhat longer than you were. Sarah's not yet convinced. I'll let the docs check me over when we get back to Columbus, just in case. Before we get started, I have something here which might help you should you reality switch again. While you've been away, Billy and some other techs have managed to construct a much smaller version of the two-way switch you found in the Astraeus 5 base but it only works one way, back to this reality. It was produced so that, if any of our personnel get stuck in the wrong reality, they can get back home. You probably need it more than any of them!' With that, the Captain handed Will what looked like a large wristwatch.

'If you ever get stuck in another reality, twist the rim anti-clockwise slightly. The cover will then pop open and reveal a button. Press it and it will return you to this reality. You need to be a bit careful, of course, to make sure, as far as you can, that you're well clear of any buildings or anything else that could cause a problem by shifting with you. We're also not sure, yet, whether the device will just cover the user, or whether anyone nearby could be affected. You're the first guinea pig outside of the development team. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not!'

'The way things are going, it could come in handy. I just hope I'm on land, as I'm not sure what would happen if I was in space and switched into a reality where there's nothing there.'

'Fingers crossed it doesn't happen. Anyway, first things first. Would you like a drink? I'd like you to fill me in with what you've been up to since we last saw each other, and then I'll run through with you what we've been up to. I suggest we only do a quick overview, or we'll be here for days.'

'I agree. You know some of it already as regards what I've been up to but I would be interested in finding out what you've been doing. A coffee would be nice, though, before we start.'

The Captain led them over to a small table in the corner, which had a coffee-making machine, mugs and a selection of cakes and biscuits on it. So that she could drink it, Sarah moved to the farthest part of the office, where she hoped she would be far enough away to remain unaffected by anything Will might have picked up on the planet.

Will took a sip of coffee then said 'To be honest, there's not a lot to tell. After we talked when I was with the Queen, I was shown around the city by one of her staff. The following morning, I was just on my way back to my room after breakfast in the hotel restaurant when I switched realities again. I got a hell of a shock, I must say, as I fell several feet onto the ground. Not long afterwards, Major Modaley and some of his team found me. I joined their party and sorted out their comms, which had been damaged when they crash-landed. Once I had it working again, we initially monitored it all the time, in case we had a response from the Cornishman but after a while it was obvious that wasn't going to happen, so I rigged up an auto-transmitter at their crashed shuttle site, with a link back to the camp. That's why it took a while for you to get a proper response to your reply. Had we not found some hand-portable radios at what had been the police station, it would have taken even longer to have had a reply from the Major, as they had been using some navy radios that were somewhat inadequate for what they were expecting of them when I joined them. You know the rest.'

'That reminds me, we should let her Majesty know that you're safe. Is there anyone else we should make sure knows what happened to you?' asked Sarah.

'Probably the main people, other than the Queen, are Josef, her aide, and my counterpart, Bill Hunt. You should also let Kat Brown, who has my communicator, know. She and her employer hadn't seen anything like it and were hoping to make a lot of money from it. If nothing else, they may owe me some money! At the very least, I'd quite like my communicator back, as there is quite a lot of personal stuff on it that I don't want to lose.'

'Hmm. That raises a major moral dilemma that will need to be resolved, although, fortunately, not by us. How much technology can or should the realities share? How public can we be about the existence of the various realities? My suspicion is that the knowledge will have to be restricted, as far as possible. Now people know about both you and our mission, I'm not sure that will be easy. It could provide a wonderful opportunity for the unscrupulous' replied the Captain.

'I have to admit that I hadn't thought of those things and was just enjoying meeting my alternates. I was also pretty desperate, as I only had what I had on me when I switched. I didn't even have any footwear!' replied Will, beginning to realise that there was a whole new side to the alternate realities issue that he hadn't previously considered.

'There's probably a million other things we'll need to get sorted out. It's going to take time. In the circumstances, I don't think you can return to your original reality or job. Galactic Comms are going to get mighty peed off if you keep reality switching, never mind the fact that I don't think we want to go too public with them just yet. That probably means we need to find you something in the navy and, probably planetside, at least for now. We can deal with it once we disembark.'

'I agree with you but I'm not sure what I could do in the navy.'

'We'll maybe come to that but before we do, I need to give you a very quick overview of what's happened since we got back here with the captured ships. Initially, the effort concentrated on understanding the switch box you found so that we could produce our own version of it. Billy was seconded into the team that did that. They then managed to produce the device you're wearing. We discovered, inadvertently, that there was a device on the ships that switched between any one of eleven realities other than Gott's. The team produced something that does the same job but are looking at ways in which they can improve it. They've also started to work on producing a means of communicating between realities. In the meantime, we've made quick visits to each of the realities that the ships could take us to and discovered that there are three Esperanto-speaking realities, two Chinese and one German, with four English-speaking realities and two that seemed lifeless but that includes the one you were on, which was reality ten when using the control system.'

'A fair old mixture, as you can see, Will' interjected Sarah, from the other side of the office.

The Captain continued. 'Quite. We decided to revisit only those that spoke English and the empty realities at this stage but we recognise we need to visit the others in due course. Sarah and I are from reality three on the ship's dial. Yes, it really is a dial! We first visited each reality in turn, starting with dial position one. Reality twelve or zero is Gott's reality, so we now call it Zero, rather than Gott's reality, as it's quicker. Our initial visits were limited to less than an hour, so we could only get a feel for each reality. We didn't want to risk being spotted, so didn't stay any longer than we had to. We found English speakers in realities one, two, three and five.

We then concentrated on those realities where English was spoken, as we thought we had a chance of getting support. On our second visit to reality one, we realised that, even though the people there spoke English, they seem to have given up on space travel, so were probably in a limited position to assist, so we haven't contacted them as yet. However, we went to the base on their version of Astraeus 5 and removed two ships.

Reality two is your own reality and we found another pair of ships inside the base and a further three parked just outside, which was something of a bonus.

Your Chancellor Powell was supportive of what we're trying to do but couldn't help in the timescale. Fortunately, we had enough pilots and crew trained up to remove all five ships safely and get them back here.

Reality five turned out to be the one you were in when we first found you, with Queen Anne as the head of state. The navy there was very helpful and provided us with additional crewmembers, marines and provisions.

You've just come from Reality ten. Unfortunately, there wasn't even a base on the Astraeus 5 equivalent but there was extensive mineworking of the surface. In light of Sunil Modaley's comments, it seems likely that people from Zero, rather than the locals undertook the mining. Once we've dropped you off, we'll be dropping in on six, seven and eight, where the locals speak either Chinese or German. We're only going to the bases in those realities, so I'm hoping we won't take long in any. After that, we'll come back here, make sure we're fully prepared, then we'll pay Zero a visit. Hopefully, that will be within the next week or so. It really depends on whether we're battle ready. The Admiral doesn't want to go in until we know we're ready to take on whatever they can throw at us.

Along the way, we've installed Reality Selection Controls, or RSC's, as we've started to call them, into several of our own and reality five's ships, provisioned all the ships in the expanded fleet and trained up several sets of ships crews, to both familiarise themselves with the controls and weapons systems and to get them comfortable working with the crew members from another reality. We now have more than enough crew members for the number of ships we have and a few more, in readiness for if we get any more when we visit the remaining realities.'

'Sounds like you've been busy!' interjected Will.

'Docking in five' announced the speaker in the corner of the Captain's office.

'With Gott's intentions unclear, we feel we need to prepare ourselves and, at the same time, reduce his offensive capabilities. While we're not planning to make contact, we're planning to go to the remaining realities and see what we can find at the bases. I'm sorry, Will but I like to be in the chair when we dock. Although my XO is perfectly capable of docking, I just like to keep an eye on things. We'll carry on this conversation once we're docked and the engines disengaged. You're welcome to join me.'

'Thanks for the offer, Captain, but I'd like to catch up with Sarah, if she doesn't mind and if that's OK with you.'

'Feel free, Will. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go to the bridge. I'll catch up with you later. We need to discuss what you're going to do next, assuming you don't disappear again! You're welcome to use my office, if you wish, so no need to get up. Help yourselves to drinks or whatever' replied the Captain, getting up and making for the door to the corridor.

'Thanks, Captain' replied Will, who then turned to look at Sarah 'Sorry I vanished like that. It's getting to be a bit of habit of mine! So, what have you been up to since I last saw you, apart from joining the navy?'

'To be honest, not much. It's been all go since you last saw me. The Admiral was adamant that anyone who had been on Astraeus 5 when you were there had to be in the navy, where they could be kept away from anyone who wasn't involved in the subsequent programme to prepare for a possible war with Zero. There was such a need to know mentality that, officially, our old work colleagues and friends were told that we'd been quarantined because of a possible bug that had been discovered on a ship we'd ostensibly searched. Even now, we've been instructed not to tell anyone who isn't involved in what's going on. Hopefully, we'll be able to let people know once it's all over but I have my doubts. The Admiral and Commodore are both firmly of the opinion that the alternate reality issue shouldn't be revealed to the public but I doubt that the secret can be maintained for too long.'

'I agree. There must be quite a number of people wondering what's going on, even if it's only a case of bumping into some of the people from another reality on the station. I probably let the cat out of the bag when I spoke to people in reality five. At that stage I didn't realise that it was going to get much bigger, not to mention the fact that I had no ID, job, money or even footwear, so needed to try to get some sort of identity established. I even left my communicator with a company so that they could copy it for commercial gain.'

'Not sure how the lid can be put on that one. At least, it's only one reality, although we've taken people from there and, at some stage, they'll want to return to their friends and families. They'll get mighty pissed off if they're not allowed back home. Anyway, you seem to have done the knight in shining armour thing again.'

'What do you mean?'

'Despite getting stuck in yet another reality, you saved Sunil Modaley and his team's lives. Had we not rescued them, they would probably have died there. Serendipity, again!'

'I see what you mean. Again, I just did what needed doing. I'd no idea how long I'd be there and didn't know when I started that the Cornishman would be a hulk.'

'You're way too modest.'

'Not really. I just did what anyone else would have done with my knowledge and the situation they found themselves in. In any case, I owe MY life to Sunil because, had they not found me, it might have been me dying down there. It would probably have been even sooner, too, as I've lived on a space station for over twenty years and that's hardly the best training ground for surviving on a planet the hard way!'

'What would we do without you? A knight in shining armour.' Suddenly, she leant over and hugged him.

'What did I do to deserve that?' asked a slightly embarrassed Will.

'I don't know. I just felt I needed to give you a hug! Had I not been wearing this bloody mask, you'd have had a kiss! I missed you' replied Sarah, unsure now whether it had been a good idea.

'Oh, well thanks. You can do it again, anytime. I quite enjoyed it. I confess that I've been thinking of you quite a bit since I switched realities from this one but didn't want to say anything in case you didn't feel the same way' replied Will, as he held her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze.

Sarah's cheeks turned red. 'Really? I wish I'd known that earlier. I've been worried sick about you since you disappeared. Even though I thought I'd fallen for you, I hadn't realised that you'd fallen for me. Fancy meeting up later and getting to know me better?'

'I'd love to. Have you anywhere in mind?'

'No. I don't really care where. I'm very handy with a processed meal packet, if that appeals' replied Sarah, the blush subsiding.

'Sounds lovely!'

'You won't be allowed anywhere until you've been cleared medically. That shouldn't take too long, as the medical team knows you're coming.'

'I can wait but the sooner I get back down to the planet again, the happier I'll feel. I don't fancy reality hopping again whilst I'm in space. What concerns me is that I'm likely to jump out again and leave you in the lurch again.'

'With that bracelet, at least you can get back and, now we know it's an option, I know you'll try to get back if you can. I'm not sure I can get down there just yet, though. I can't do that and be in the navy. I couldn't even do it as a cop. My job keeps me up here. You would have about fifteen seconds before you lost consciousness to hit the return button. Would that be long enough?'

'If I'm awake, then probably but I was asleep when I jumped out of this reality and wasn't aware of it at all until I woke up and realised I wasn't alone. I was in someone's bed. It must have been in exactly the same location as the settee in the reality I'd been in.'

'Could have been awkward!' she said, resting her other hand on his. He didn't remove it.

'Oh, it was. More for Kat Brown than for me, as she only wears panties in bed!'

'Ahh, embarrassing! Could have been worse, I suppose, she could sleep in the buff!' replied Sarah, feigning shock.

'Mmm, true! Confusingly for me, she was a doppelganger of an old girlfriend of mine. Luckily for me her girlfriend was at work at the time or I don't know what would have happened. It could have killed both of us. Luckily, Kat and I sorted out the initial shock and she's been really helpful. I never did get to meet her girlfriend as I jumped out again before I got the chance. Hopefully, I'll get the opportunity one day.'

'Anyway, getting back to the matter in hand, I think you need to get down to the planet as soon as possible, in case you reality-jump again. Before you do, you need to discuss with the Captain what you might do there.'

'After the last few weeks, I could do with a short holiday if that's possible, especially if there's a certain amount of pampering available. Even though the past few weeks haven't been overly difficult, I think I want to get myself straightened out both physically and mentally before I do anything else of any note, especially as regards any decisions about my career.'

'Makes sense. I'm due some leave, so I could show you around Waterbeach, if I can be spared.'

'I'd love that. Before that, I'd like to see Billy and his family again. I left in something of a hurry!'

'Hopefully, something can be arranged. I assume the Captain will be back shortly now we're docked, so we can sort it out then.'

As if on cue, the Captain entered his office. Sarah promptly removed her hand from Will's but not before the Captain noticed the movement. 'Looks like you two were more pleased to see each other than you let on!' he said, smiling at the two of them.

'Hmm, yes, Captain' replied Will, feeling slightly embarrassed. Sarah just sat there, feeling slightly taken aback. She'd hoped he hadn't noticed.

'OK, that's your business. Anyway, Will, have you had any thoughts as to what you'd like to do?'

'After the last month or so since first switching, I haven't really had much time to properly rest. Before I make any major decisions, I'd like to get my breath back, so to speak. Sarah has suggested, and I agree with her, that I'm only likely to be safe if I were to be down on the planet, or I could jump to another reality and find myself in space. I've been lucky so far but I don't want to push it.'

'I understand. Longer term, I don't believe that there are only twelve realities, so I'll be recommending to the Admiral that we need to try and see how many more there are. That may be more complex than it may seem. I would expect there to be an almost smooth transition between realities, so how will we know when what can be considered one reality becomes another? How much change between one and the next is enough? To be honest, I've no idea. On top of that, the devices we have from Zero are clearly switching to realities that are not in any kind of sequence. For example, going from reality nine to ten takes you from an Esperanto-speaking system to an uninhabited reality but carrying on to eleven takes you back to an Esperanto-speaking system. We need to understand what really happens when we go through the realities in a meaningful sequence. The safest place to do that would be planetside. Would that appeal to you as something you could do to contribute to our understanding of the alternate universes?'

'What about helping Billy?' asked Will.

'I think they're far enough advanced on their current investigations that you might be more of a handicap. Either way, we can move them to the planet or you could just use a vidlink to the station. We would have to discuss the options on that one with Commodore Powell and Angela Loughlin, who're managing that particular project. I do know the Admiral wants us to look at how we can communicate between realities and there could be a role for you there but I'm not sure if Angela and her team have started on that line of investigation as yet. For now, I think that going planetside might be the safest option. Do I take it that you'd like to join him, Sarah?'

'If that were possible, Captain. I do have some leave coming.'

'Consider it approved. I'll let Auryn know. We ought to be able to accommodate you on the Lakenheath base on New Oregon. I'm afraid you'll need to be checked over medically first, which might delay things for a day or two.'

'I appreciate that, Captain.

'No need for Will to remain on the base once he's cleared, Captain. I still have my apartment in town. I still use it whenever I get the chance, especially when I visit my mother, who still lives in Waterbeach.'

'If you're happy with that, I don't see why not. It's probably handier than being on the base, anyway. I think you need to tell anyone who asks that you were taken to a special medical unit at the navy base after the suspected infection. While you were in quarantine there, we offered you the opportunity of a secondment to help on a new initiative we're working on. As it's currently top secret, you can't say any more. Will is one of your new colleagues, so is also not at liberty to say what you're working on. You two can embroider the story beyond that but the less you say, the easier it will be all round. Will, I need to consider how we can best use you but I agree with Sarah that the safest place for you is on New Oregon.'

Chapter 16

Reality 3: Will & Billy Hunt

As soon as he'd been given the all-clear by the medics on board Columbus, Will called Billy and arranged to meet him in one of the navy restaurants. Both he and Sarah had changed out of their navy uniforms into civilian clothes, Will's provided by the navy, so weren't quite to his taste. They were both pleased, now that the refugees had been given the all clear, that the masks were no longer required.

When they arrived, holding hands, Billy was already there and had ordered drinks.

After Will and Sarah had sat down, Billy said 'I'll be honest, Will. I didn't think we'd ever meet up again after your disappearance. Peter was very upset and Kate was thoroughly pissed off with you, vanishing without so much as a by your leave. She couldn't understand how you could just vanish, leaving your boots behind like that. I certainly couldn't explain it to either of them in the circumstances.'

'Having got back into this reality, I'd hoped to be able to see them both again and apologise but it sounds like that might be a bad idea.'

'For now, they seem to have forgotten about it but that won't last forever. At least I know you're OK and can try and reassure them if you come up again in conversation.'

'Thanks. I'd appreciate that. One day, I'd like to see them again, should you think it's appropriate. I assume they know nothing of the work you're doing?'

'Definitely classified as top secret at the moment but I doubt we can keep it that way forever. I see you're wearing one of our new bracelets, by the way.'

'Captain VanD suggested it would be a good idea in the circumstances.'

'If there's anyone who can make good use of them it's you but I hope you won't need one anytime soon.'

'Me too. So far, I've managed to survive but I reckon I've been lucky I didn't finish up in space or the middle of a wall or something. Sarah's suggested, and I agree with her, that the safest place for me at the moment is planetside. Even that could prove fatal if I make a switch into something solid. At least I have a way back to this reality which, I have to say, is very reassuring. My own reality's out of the question at the moment, unfortunately, as it would mean leaving Sarah behind, never mind causing a bit of a stir, with all sorts of convoluted explanations required as to where I've been.'

'You may be able to pay a visit someday and take Sarah with you. Anyway, how are you, Sarah? I haven't seen you since you left the Sea Lion.'

'Well, I've been kept pretty busy. The Admiral wanted to make sure that the multiple realities issue was kept under wraps, so everyone who knew of the base on Astraeus 5 was promptly 'seconded' into the navy. Some of my ex-colleagues were less than impressed, I can tell you, as some of them had been trying to get into the navy for years without success. I'm currently a Lieutenant on the Sea Lion, working alongside Auryn Truran. We've been searching through the bases on the Astraeus 5 equivalents. The Captain has just gone to the foreign-language realities to see what can be retrieved from them before we confront the people in General Gott's reality. Will and I are going to have a couple of weeks in Waterbeach for a little R and R.'

'So tell me, when did you two get together?'

'It's odd but we'd both been thinking about the other one ever since we first met on Astraeus 5, so when Will was rescued from Reality ten, it just sort of happened. We're both looking forward to get to know each other better' replied Sarah.

'I hope you have an enjoyable time down there. I wish I could join you but Angela, my boss, wouldn't approve. We're making too much progress on the work we've been doing to take time out at the moment. After the current crisis, we may be able to take a breather, which I'm sure Kate would approve of.'

'I've asked the Captain if there's any way I can get involved in your development programme. Alternatively, as I'll probably be stuck on the planet for a while, better mapping of the various realities would be useful.'

'It would be up to the Commodore and Angela to decide if you could get involved but, as I said, we're making good progress. Not sure we could slot you in at the moment but it's not up to me. Our current project is to develop a means of communicating with our ships in other realities. We're hoping to be able to test something out within a few days. It's a development of our ship-based RSC. It's a bit rough around the edges but think it will give us something to work with. Anyway, I'm sorry but I need to get back, as things are starting to get a bit intense.'

'Not a problem. By the way, before you go, you might be interested to know that when I left you, I landed in the bed of an alternate version of Kate's. Then I met Bill Hunt, an alternate of ours, and his wife Becca. I was just getting used to that reality, when I switched to reality ten, where the Captain found me and a search party that had crash landed there trying to find out what had happened to the people who'd gone there to settle the planet.'

'Sounds like you've been getting around a bit. Was Kate's equivalent the same as my Kate?'

'Pretty much identical in most respects, though she lives with her girlfriend, a Janet Walters. Unfortunately, I haven't met Janet yet but I hope I can sometime.'

'Er, OK! I'm slightly taken aback by that little twist.'

'It took me by surprise as well, having just left you and Kate, especially as I'd also dated my version of her for a few months. I guess these are some of the little differences that we'll soon get used to. Even odder was that there's a Bill Gott who lives down the corridor from Bill, who seems to be the alternate of General Gott. Apparently, he'd been in the navy but had been invalided out after an accident. Bill says he's a lovely bloke, unlike General Gott. He showed me a block party picture of him and he does seem to be a genuinely nice guy. From what Bill and Becca said, he's a real party animal. There's probably an unpleasant version of you and me out there but fortunately, I haven't met him yet!'

Billy got up and moved from the table. 'Enjoy your holiday, you two. Good to see you both again, you especially, Will. Keep in touch.'

'I'll do my best. Hope the comm system works.'

Billy left the restaurant followed, a few minutes later, by Will and Sarah. They had two hours to kill before the next shuttle down to New Oregon, so Sarah suggested she show him around. Although Will had been given a very brief tour by Billy, there was a lot he hadn't had to time to see, so was happy for Sarah to give him a tour of the station.

In the next hour and a half, Sarah showed him several parts of the naval part of the station, as well as the public areas, including the shops, a small park and the viewing platforms, where they watched several ships as they came and went. As they were the only ones on the viewing platform, they took the opportunity to snuggle up to each other.

As they walked, Will told Sarah of some of the things they had in his version of the station. Progress wasn't always that quick as walking, hand in hand, laughing and joking along the walkways and corridors, they occasionally needed to move out of the way of others. Sarah felt they were probably making spectacles of themselves as they wandered through Columbus but, frankly, she didn't care. She hadn't felt this happy since she'd split up with her former boyfriend, Simon, two years ago.

Chapter 17

Reality 3: Will Hunt

Over the next fortnight, just as she had on Columbus, Sarah showed Will the sights of Waterbeach. Where he could, Will tried to explain the differences with his reality's version of the town, Jacksonport but he wasn't entirely sure how well he succeeded. He never felt that his descriptions did the place justice, especially the more attractive parts of the town. They also spent time touring the lake, walking in the woods and browsing around the shopping centre, finding out what they both enjoyed and appreciating the fact that, on the whole, they had more in common than they might have expected. Sarah found it interesting to look at Waterbeach as if she was a tourist. Having been born there, she found it a novel experience, never having had to view the city in such a manner before. When they went out of the town into the surrounding countryside, the differences between realities was less pronounced, so Will was able to show Sarah where he had been living in reality ten. They also found plenty of time to enjoy each other physically in the privacy of Sarah's apartment, not to mention a couple of notable instances when they were out in the woods. The warm weather and absence of others had provided an opportunity to skinny-dip in the warm lake waters, which had ended in a long and passionate lovemaking session on the beach.

At the end of their holiday, they reluctantly returned to the base to await orders from the Captain. Captain VanDelden was already there, having just briefed the Admiral and other senior staff regarding both the trips to the outstanding alternate realities and the update them with the latest information from Angela and her team.

'Good morning both' announced the Captain, upon entering the briefing room 'I trust you've enjoyed your holiday.'

'Yes, thank you, Captain. We've had a lovely time' replied Sarah.

'Good, good. I'm pleased to say we've managed to retrieve a few more ships. We now have fifteen from the eleven realities, plus another twenty we've either adapted from our fleet or are on loan from Queen Anne. However, our last trip wasn't entirely uneventful. As we arrived in reality eleven, we found activity around the base, with a ship in the process of landing, so had to leave there immediately. Hopefully, we weren't there long enough to trigger any alarms but it does mean we need to pay Gott and co a visit as soon as possible. In fact, the Admiralty Board has just approved us to go today. Sarah, I need you back on board to assist Auryn.'

'Yes, Sir' replied Sarah.

'Will, although you'd be safer here on the planet, you're welcome to join us on the Dark Horse and witness the encounter in reality zero. Until the present crisis is resolved, I'm unable to provide you with a meaningful role but our medical director would like to examine you in detail to find out if there is anything unusual about you that causes you to spontaneously switch realities. If they can identify it, they may be able to find a cure, if there is such a thing.'

'Even though I want to find out what's causing my reality hopping problem, I'd love to join you, Captain. It will be interesting to see Gott again, assuming we do. Given the option, I wouldn't want to miss out on seeing his ugly mug again, especially when we have the whip hand, so to speak!'

'Unfortunately, as I suggested, Angela and her team have almost solved their immediate priorities and Angela has said that it would be too disruptive for you to join them at this stage. That said, she would like to meet you in a week or so, to discuss possible future options as regards you getting involved in improving the RSC's and the Inter-reality Communications Devices or ICD's. The current push has been to have working devices we can rely upon but Angela recognises that what they currently have are remarkably crude compared to what they believe is possible. A fresh pair of eyes might prove useful. However, the development of anything considerably better will take time and that's a commodity we don't have too much of just now. The other area for development, as I suggested last time, is to map the realities in a more linear manner, as against the current leapfrogging devices we currently have. Until we move over to a software-based control, Angela doesn't feel we'll be able to do anything with that area of investigation.'

'From what you've said about the ship-based controls, I think I agree with her, Captain.'

'Okay, people, we set off for Zero as soon as we can get back on board the Sea Lion, which has been designated the command vessel. The Dark Horse will be Captained by Beth Doolan for this trip. All the ships we have joining us have been crewed and provisioned and are ready to go upon my return, now that we have authority to do so from the Admiral. For this critical stage of the mission, Admiral Scorah and Commodore Powell will be joining us. The Commodore will take operational control, with the Admiral undertaking an overview and representing the views of the Admiralty Board and the government. Initially, we'll leave all our non-captured ships in our reality, ready to be called upon using the prototype communications pods should they be needed. The pods have been positioned in all realities but Zero in readiness. The Zero versions will be in place before we leave for there.'

Two hours later, they were on board the shuttle heading towards Astraeus 5, where the other thirty-four ships they had either retrieved from other realities or had equipped with the RSC's were waiting in battle formation. As soon as the shuttle had docked, the Admiral gave the order for Captain Doolan to check the area around the planet in reality Zero in case there were any ships in the vicinity. The last thing the Admiral wanted was for anyone to materialise inside another craft, as he hoped that the mission would not result in any loss of life. Two minutes later, the Dark Horse reappeared and Captain Doolan informed them that the area was clear.

The Admiral gave the order for the captured ships to switch realities and, five minutes later, all of those ships had switched to reality zero and were heading towards that reality's version of New Oregon. As they moved towards the planet, Will was interested to note that the planet appeared to be well populated, with a number of cities and towns on the large screen at the front of the bridge. There were three space stations around the planet, roughly equidistant from each other. One was between them and the planet.

As they moved towards the planet, they received a radio message, which the on-board translators converted to a digitised form of English, lacking the inflections associated with the spoken word.

'Approaching spaceships, identify yourselves.'

'Ignore them, Captain. If they actually attack, our worst-case response is to switch to another reality, though I don't think we'll be needing that' said Admiral Scorah.

'Yes, Sir. How close to the planet would you like us to go?'

'A hundred thousand kilometres will be close enough to make our point and should keep us far enough away from any ground-based missiles to allow us time to respond accordingly, should it be necessary.'

'Captain, there are six fighters approaching at high speed. How would you like to respond?' asked Lieutenant Strowgger.

'Thank you, Lieutenant. Hail them and advise them we do not intend to initiate hostilities. Let them fire first. That would give us a good reason to attack.'

'Approaching fighters. Stand down. We are here on a peace mission. We intend to remain one hundred thousand kilometres from your planet. Any aggressive act on your part will, however, be summarily dealt with' was heard on the bridge's loudspeakers, albeit spoken in Esperanto.

'Why should we believe you?' came the computer-translated reply.

'We will explain ourselves once we are in position. If we approach closer than ninety kilometres from the planet, you will be entitled to reconsider your options. You are welcome to provide us with an escort. You have my word that you will not be fired upon unless you attempt to endanger any of my ships' replied the Commodore.

Another voice was heard 'This is Brigadier Rautanen of the President's Security Squadron. Please identify yourselves.'

'Hello Brigadier Rautanen. This is Admiral Scorah of the New Oregon Navy. We would like to speak with your President and any other senior government representatives you may have. Please arrange this.'

'Her Eminence Madame President is, as I am sure you appreciate, extremely busy. Why should she speak with you, a mere Admiral?'

'I feel sure she would be grateful for the opportunity. It would certainly be to her disadvantage not to spare me an audience. Meanwhile, I would like to establish a video link with you, rather than the audio only communication we currently have. If you look carefully at our ships, they will undoubtedly look familiar to you. We also have further ships available within our communications range should we need them.'

After a short pause, the speaker burst into life again 'Where did you get those ships?'

'Now that would be telling, Brigadier. Now, as I was saying, I would like to speak with your President. I will explain it to her. Please arrange it. You know how to contact me. Scorah, out.'

'Captain, please take us to the agreed coordinates' instructed Commodore Powell.

'Certainly, Commodore.'

Three hours later, they were wondering if the President would allow them to speak with her when the comscreen flashed that there was an incoming message and the image of a middle-aged woman filled the screen. 'Admiral Scorah, are you there?'

'Yes, Brigadier.'

'I have been informed that Her Eminence Madame President has graciously agreed for you to speak with her. I apologise for the delay but she was otherwise engaged when you arrived. She is on Zamenhof, rather than Azio, unlike myself.'

'Do I take it that Zamenhof is the name of the planet and Azio the name of the space station I can see orbiting it, directly between the planet and my fleet?'

'That is correct, Admiral. I will call you when she can permit you to converse with her. I'm afraid this may be several hours. Rautanen out.' The screen went dead.

'Seem to be overly full of themselves with their long-winded titles!' said the Commodore.

'Hmm. Looks that way, Eleanor. Anyway, if we're going to have to wait, I suggest we change the shifts and have a rest. I get the feeling from what the Brigadier said that the President is going to be hard work and I, for one, think that I'd rather be fresh when we have the pleasure of speaking with her. Captain, that includes you and the rest of the bridge crew. The relief crew should take over. Please inform the remaining ships and let Columbus and the support ships back in our reality know what's happening here' replied the Admiral.

Five hours later, Brigadier Rautanen called 'Admiral, Her Eminence will permit you to speak with her in fifteen minutes' time. She will have her military adviser, Lieutenant General Copson and her political advisor, Supreme Advisor Hinde with her. I will call you again when I have been informed that Her Eminence is prepared.'

'Thank you, Brigadier. I look forward to it.'

As promised, the Brigadier called at the time he had said 'Admiral. Her Eminence is now available. Please be prepared to speak with her magnificence. I will connect you now.'

The image changed to one of a large chamber, emblazoned with crests, drapes and statues, all in various shades of gold and maroon. At the centre of the screen was a large chair, which reminded Admiral Scorah of the sort of chair that medieval kings were often portrayed as sitting on. Sat in the chair, looking almost lost in its grandeur, was a woman, in the Admiral's opinion, over-elaborately attired. Two men, one in an ornate military uniform, the other in a business suit, were standing slightly behind the chair, demonstrating their inferior status.

'Admiral, I understand you seek an audience. What is so important that you consider worthy of my limited time?' asked the President, giving the distinct impression that she considered the Admiral her inferior.

'Madame President. Thank you for graciously permitting me to address you. I represent the governments of a number of versions of your planet. We have identified a number of bases on several versions of one of the planets within this system that appear to be preparing to attack our versions of the planet Zamenhof. Our intelligence shows that they were built and equipped by your government. I would request that you ask the military advisor present to confirm that we are standing on the bridge of one of your own ships, and that the remaining ships in our fleet are actually part of your own fleet. We seek to understand why you have been preparing to attack our systems. You should realise that now we know of your intentions, any chance of victory you may have had has been lost. To continue now would result in massive loss of life, for no benefit.'

The President looked confused. 'Admiral. I do not understand your accusations. We are at war with no one. I also don't understand what you mean by other versions of our planet. Where ARE these other versions?'

'Madam President, to address your second question first, we come from alternate versions of THIS planet. In our realities, for example, English is our predominant language. In other realities, the German or Chinese languages are used. Someone in your reality discovered a means of moving between realities and, using this capability, built bases on eleven versions of one of the outer planets. Most of these bases contained a significant amount of military hardware and armaments, including the ships in the fleet I have with me. What I would like to know is what these bases were for, if not to launch attacks on our versions of the planet. If you were not intending to attack our planets, then why did your government feel the need to prepare for war?'

The President looked non-plussed. She clearly didn't know anything about alternate realities, nor had she been prepared for anyone to address her in such a challenging way.

'Admiral. I can assure you that we are not at war with anyone. General Copson, please assure the Admiral' she replied, turning to the General.

'Madame President. I would wish to speak with you privately' replied an embarrassed-looking General.

The screen went blank. A few minutes later, the screen came to life.

'Admiral, I have been advised by the General that we discovered the alternate realities by accident approximately ten years ago, during the term of my predecessor. The bases you have found were intended to provide our exploring teams with support in the event they were attacked by the local populations.'

'Madame President, although I am unable to comment upon the discovery, I must take some exception to your second assertion. Not only were the bases frequently equipped with a significant amount of weaponry but the only spaceships we found were military ships. If what you say is true, I would also have expected to find exploratory ships and equipment. Despite visiting eleven bases, we found nothing but military equipment. In addition, in one reality, one of the people present with me was captured, then interrogated and imprisoned by the Exalted General Gott, to give him, I understand, his full title, within the base. My personnel were able to return him to my reality, following an exchange of fire and our destroying the base in question that existed in my reality. Unfortunately, a number of your personnel were likely killed or injured in the process. He is on the bridge with me now, should you wish to talk with him.'

The President almost managed to remain calm but it was clear to the Admiral and the bridge crew that she was only just managing to suppress her anger.

'Excuse me, Admiral. I need to take a short recess' she said, immediately before the screen went blank again.

Chapter 18

Reality 0

'What the hell just happened, General? That bloody Admiral accused us of plotting war. Get Gott. NOW!' demanded the furious President, turning to General Copson.

Ten minutes later, a red-faced General Gott entered the room. The President was clearly in no mood for platitudes.

'General. I have just had a conversation with an Admiral Scorah from an alternate reality. He claims to have captured a number of ships from bases on a number of versions of one of the outer planets. Certainly, from the images taken by our fighters who attempted to intercept them, they look like ours and carry our markings. He claims that we and by that, I mean you specifically, have been building bases and equipping them in preparation for attacking the system in these alternate realities. Explain.' demanded the President.

'Madam President, this Admiral is clearly lying. I have no knowledge of such matters.'

'What? Do you seriously expect me to believe that? Those ships were OURS. I didn't even know we had that many. I think someone would have noticed the theft had they been taken from any of our bases, don't you? Try again, General!'

The General looked decidedly uncomfortable. 'Hum, your Excellence, we built them in case we were ever at risk from the peoples in these alternate versions. We were planning ahead.'

'Why didn't you tell me that the first time? I don't recall ever sanctioning such a significant amount of expenditure. I don't know how much a base would cost but I would assume that they are expensive. This is without even considering the cost of the hardware he claims they have found in them. On whose authority was this approved?'

'Mine' muttered the General, bowing his head slightly.

'So, you committed us to a significant amount of expenditure such as this, without so much as mentioning it to me. You DO recall that I am the President and have the ultimate approval over significant budget commitments?'

'Yes, your Eminence.'

'Exactly what risks did these other realities pose? Did they have the ability to even get to their version of that planet, never mind get to this reality? Are these alternate realities even populated? I think your explanation is, at best, seriously flawed, General' replied the President, turning towards her desk.

As soon as she couldn't see him, the General pulled a gun from its holster, pointing it at the President's head 'Madam President. Most of the realities posed no risk whatsoever, and some are even unpopulated. However, they did allow me the opportunity to prepare my forces in readiness for ruling THIS system.'

The President spun around. 'The truth at last, General. I must confess that you have been even more devious and adventurous than I imagined you capable of.'

'Despite that Admiral taking my ships, I have enough troops behind me to depose you and your corrupt government and impose my will upon the people' replied the General, getting closer to the President and staring down into her face. The President didn't move away.

'No appeal to their hearts and minds then, General? How do you think that will go down, exactly?'

'I intend to be a benevolent dictator, allowing a degree of free will and free speech.'

'Very few have managed to get the balance right over the millennia, General. Most have come to an unpleasant and rather bloody end. I wish you well. And what do you want of me?'

'You will announce my takeover to the people. After that, I may let you live.'

'I very much doubt it, General. More importantly for you is how long do you think you will live after you become the supreme overlord or whatever fancy title you will be giving yourself?'

'I will simply be known as the....'

The General fell to the floor, stunned. Throughout the heated exchange, guards had quietly entered the room behind him. In his angry argument with the President, he hadn't noticed their entry. General Copson, appearing to watch the spectacle, waiting for a moment when he could do something without jeopardising either the President or himself, had simply nodded in their direction.

'Thank you, everyone. Take this person away. I want to know who his supporters are, General Copson. ALL of them. I want you to utilise every technique we have available to us. After that, I think we shall be saying goodbye to our former military leader, permanently. We need to set an example to anyone else who thinks they can attempt to remove a President and ignore the will of the people.' General Gott simply stared up at the President, drooling slightly, unable to move, although the hatred and anger were still clearly visible in his face.

Chapter 19

Reality 0

'She clearly didn't like what I said' announced the Admiral.

Thirty minutes later, the screen came to life again. Supreme Adviser Hinde was in front of the camera. The President was no longer present.

'I apologise for Her Eminence's abrupt departure, Admiral, but she wishes to consider what you have said. In the circumstances, it seems there is merit in your statements. We will contact you again tomorrow at this time'

'Thank you, Adviser. We will be here. Before you go, as part of our previous visit to your reality, we were obliged to take a prisoner, a Technician I believe, called James Meredith, who would like to return to this reality. At some point, it would be helpful if this could be arranged.'

'Thank you for letting me know, Admiral. I'm sure we will be able to discuss this later.' The screen went blank.

'Commodore, we have two options. We stay here in case anything should happen, or we return to our reality. Any thoughts?' asked the Admiral.

'I suggest we stay here. It's unlikely they will call us early but I'd rather we were here if they do. There may be some sort of power struggle down there. The President seemed not to know about the fact that they had been exploring other realities, never mind why they were doing so. If we stay here, we can't be ambushed.'

'I agree. It's no great hardship being here a little longer.' The Admiral turned to the Captain 'Captain, could you inform the crew that we may be staying here for a while longer and inform HQ of our intentions? Although we need to keep an eye out for attack, I think we should be safe to remain here. Please ensure a transcript of my discussions with the President are passed to the Governor so that she is aware of what's happening here.'

~~~~~~~~~~

The following day, there was a feeling of anticipation as to what the President would say. Almost on cue, the viewscreen came to life. As before, the President was sitting in her throne-like chair, with her aides at her side.

'Good morning, Admiral. It would appear that General Gott and some of his supporters were planning a coup against me, and the bases were his means of hiding the weapons from us. We are in the process of identifying those involved and they will be summarily dealt with. General Gott will be the first of many to pay the ultimate price for their treachery. Thank you for bringing the matter to my attention. Whatever Gott's intentions, I agree with your earlier assertion that an inter-reality war would be catastrophic to us, both financially and in terms of our population. We lack the resources to conduct such a war in any case. Unfortunately, until we have rooted out all of the traitors, I cannot guarantee your safety, either on Azio or on Zamenhof. However, my chief Advisor, Gregory Hinde here will be happy to come to your ship, along with a small selection of his team, with a view to exploring ways in which we can cooperate with your government. Is this acceptable to you?'

'Yes, Madame President. How soon can he be with us? Rather than undertake such a meeting on board this ship, I suggest that we relocate to our reality and onto our space station there. Your delegation can be our guests there and will be benefit from seeing this planet as it is in our reality. Would this be acceptable?'

'I can't think of any reason why not. I'm sure your space station would be far more comfortable than your ship. My only concern would be that, should Gregory need to consult me, this wouldn't be possible.'

'We have adapted your technology for moving between realities to also allow us to communicate between realities. As yet, the technique we use is relatively crude and doesn't permit full two-way dialogue but it is at least a viable means of communication. As far as we can tell, you don't have the technology.'

'That is correct, Admiral, we have no such capability. In that case, Gregory and his team will be able to join you in approximately four hours. We will contact you when he leaves, so that you can be ready to accept them on board.'

'Thank you, Madame President. We look forward to meeting him in person. Scorah out.'

'Commodore. When our guests arrive, please ensure they're unarmed. I don't want any attempts at taking over the ship.'

'Certainly, Admiral.'

Chapter 20

Reality 0

'Good Day, Supreme Advisor' said the Admiral, as the Advisor and his team were ushered into the room that had been cleared, with tables set up and food and drinks laid out. Despite their best efforts, space was limited and the room was still somewhat drab, despite the bright red tablecloths. The most comfortable chairs they had on board were dotted around the edges of the room.

'Greetings, Admiral. Please call me Greg' replied the Supreme Advisor, in perfect English.

'That's a relief, Greg. I had expected that we would need to use translators to communicate. Please feel free to call me Reeds. Let me introduce my Commodore, Ellie Powell, the ship's Captain, George VanDelden and the man who was captured briefly by your General Gott, Will Hunt. Unfortunately, George will need to leave us imminently to supervise the departure to our reality.'

The Advisor shook hands with everyone as they were introduced and then replied 'I think you mean the Former General Gott, Reeds. He is currently awaiting his fate, helping us to identify his traitorous colleagues, not entirely of his own free will. Unfortunately, the effects of some of our interrogation techniques leave permanent scars, both physical and mental. Not that it matters, as he will die within the next few weeks, once we have all the information we need and his co-conspirators imprisoned with him and their fates decided. Anyway, let me introduce my aides, Tomasz Whitehorn and Win Probert. I hope you will find our English satisfactory, Reeds. We have dealings with an English-speaking planet on a periodic basis and all the delegates from both systems need to be bi-lingual so that trade agreements can be produced that both our teams of legal advisers can accept.'

'Excuse me, I must go to the bridge. For the benefit of our guests, I need to inform you that the transfer process will make you feel as if you're falling and slightly dizzy. Please be assured, however, that the feeling only lasts a few seconds. I will make an announcement shortly before we make the switch, so that you can sit, should you so wish. You may watch the switch on the monitor, if you like, so that you will know when we arrive in our home system. For information, we will be moving to a restricted part of our space that has been set up to allow us to move between systems without endangering anyone who could otherwise be in the way when we arrive. This is just above one of the planets in the system. We know it as Astraeus 5' interjected Captain VanDelden before leaving the room. As he left, he acknowledged the two guards in the corridor outside, who had moved quietly into position as soon as the door had closed after their guests had entered.

Chapter 21

Reality 3: Will & Billy Hunt

'Please be seated everyone' said Admiral Scorah.

Will, Billy, Dev Khan, Sarah Hirst, Sunil Modaley and Jill Blake stopped chatting amongst themselves and sat down.

'At ease. Welcome everyone. Thanks for coming. As you know, the various governments we've contacted are now here to discuss whether and how we share knowledge. I just hope that it works out. However, for the rest of us, there's now a hell of a lot of work to do. The delegates need to decide whether to set up an inter-reality security service but logic says that they will need to, or chaos could ensue as more and more people become aware of the alternate realities. With that in mind, as I've said to each of you separately, I think we need to, in effect, map the realities. Angela and her team have now produced a modified device that allows us to move more smoothly between realities and is a completely different design to the one that we adopted from Zero. For this particular exercise, Dev is in charge and will be able to provide more details on it in a few minutes. We've built a small base out near the mountains. It's been stocked with enough food to last a year and two patrol ships have been modified for the job, which will permit surveys both over the planet's surface and in the local neighbourhood in space. Even though the ships are capable of it, I'm not looking to explore the realities themselves in any great detail or even, unless we have to, communicate with the locals but to just sequence map them at this stage. More detail can be gleaned later. By that, I mean we need to look through the realities in a logical order, so we know as much as possible about them and where our known realities fit within the order. Anyway, enough from me for a moment. Dev, you have the floor.'

'Thank you, Admiral. Welcome everyone. Just a quick reminder first. Will and Sarah are our exploring guinea pigs. Their ship has been kitted out with everything we can think of that might come in handy. Much of it is still a prototype and has only been tested in the lab. We'll be starting training for Will and Sarah later today. Despite it's importance, this exercise could be highly dangerous, as we have no idea what we will meet in some of the realities we pass through. As a last resort, the wrist-worn devices can be used by Will and Sarah to switch back here but that would mean we'd lose the ship and the data they've acquired, so we're hoping that won't be necessary. Any questions so far?'

'What exactly are you expecting of Sunil and I?' asked Jill.

'Whilst Billy and I are involved with monitoring the equipment and making sure we can maintain contact with Will and Sarah, the Admiral and I felt that it would be helpful if there was someone who could cover our backs. We don't envisage any situation where the base would be under any form of attack or anything. We're just being cautious. However, an extra pair of hands might come in handy if we have an emergency with the mission. With that in mind, you may need to use the second ship to rescue Will and Sarah. We'll only use it if there's absolutely no other option. Don't worry, you'll all be shown how to use it. Anyway, as the Admiral said, I think a quick explanation is called for on the new version of the RSC.

When we went through the realities in the dial sequence of the twelve positions on the rotary dial fitted into the Captain's chair, we found ourselves moving between realities that spoke English , Chinese and Esperanto, as well as uninhabited versions of the planet but not in any seemingly logical order. We've concluded that the order isn't in the order that the realities themselves exist. We would expect that the versions sharing a language would be sort of huddled together. Whether these abut realities speaking a different language, or whether there is an uninhabited reality between them, we don't yet know. That is what we want to find out. Also, the Zero ships only had controls for movement to twelve realities. This might be only a small selection of what there is, but again, we want to know. What we also want to discover, even though the mission will only provide some initial data on it, is how far must we travel between one reality to get to another. We envisage that the differences between realities are relatively minute but the further you get away from any particular reality, those changes start to add up. What we don't know is how far from the median of a particular reality we're actually conscious of. For example, when we were testing our version of the Zero RSC, Billy was disconnected from us in a very curious way. Although he could send us written messages and we could send them back, neither party could see the other one. We now think we were at the extremes of what we could sense. Because we were in space, the effect was possibly different to what we might have experienced on land, because there were no other realities present that would have had the ship in that precise location at the time. We don't know for sure. It's just a theory at the moment.'

'I have to say that the whole experience was somewhat scary. As Dev said, I could write messages and receive them back but I couldn't see any of the crew and they couldn't see me, even though we could interact, albeit in a very limited way.'

Dev continued 'Hopefully, we'll be able to find out more over time but I doubt this mission will deliver that sort of knowledge. Anyway, even though we've put the base well out of the way, the safest way to explore will be to be airborne, albeit only about a hundred metres up. That way, we should be above the tree line but below any local aircraft, should there be any. Will and Sarah will need to launch micro satellites, equipped with cameras, every so often to allow us to get a view of the whole planet. These should be less obvious than them scooting off skywards in their ship. That reminds me. We've managed to improve on the inter-reality communications devices somewhat. Our first efforts were rather crude but we've managed to link them into the new RSC, so that we don't need to launch separate communications satellites. The advantage of the new design is that we can communicate with the ship wherever it is in the reality continuum and, just as importantly, the ship can maintain contact with the base station. Unfortunately, at the moment, we can't see any way around the need to have only one person transmitting at a time, as we still need to send data bursts through the gateway. That apart, it does mean that we're almost in real-time two-way communications. The primary technology has also been built into the satellites but they only send data back here, simplifying the circuitry quite a bit.'

'How long do you expect the mission to last?' asked Sarah.

'At this stage, I'm afraid I've no idea. We need to go to the edges of the available realities until life is untenable. This is probably where the biggest risk is, as it might even be totally untenable for just a fleeting visit. Hopefully, there'll be enough warning that such a state is being approached, so Will and Sarah can get out of there. Since we don't know enough about where we sit on the scale, or even how big the scale is, we can't predict timescales. All I can say is that I'd like to spend no more than a week going one way and one week the other initially. We'll review progress after each return. Fortunately, the trip back can be done almost instantaneously using the reset function, which will speed things up' answered Dev.

'Couldn't we just send a probe?' asked Will.

'We did consider it but decided that there were too many things that we want to cover for a probe. The other consideration is that, if there's a problem, or we have unexpected contact with any locals, a human presence may be necessary, or we could lose everything.'

'OK, everyone, we'll have a short break, then make a start on the training. Each of the three teams has been assigned different training areas, so that you can concentrate on what you'll need to know. Will and Sarah will be concentrating on what they need to know as regards piloting the ship and how to deploy the micro satellites. The rest of you will be trained to use the support ship, how to 77 ealized77 some of the trigger events that Will and Sarah will be transmitting back and how to handle any emergencies that might arise during the mission.'

Chapter 22

Reality 3: Will Hunt

'Has anyone seen Will?' asked Dev, as they sat down for lunch after a particularly tiring morning of training.

'He said he was going to get something from his locker. I'd have expected him here by now, though, as he was looking forward to lunch. Wonder what's keeping him' replied Sarah.

'OK, thanks, Sarah. I'll go see what's keeping him' said Dev.

Five minutes later, Dev returned 'No sign of him anywhere. I've even looked outside.'

'Don't say he's switched realities again' said Billy.

~~~~~~~~~~

Will reached out to open his locker. The view spun. 'Not again' he thought, as he almost stumbled forwards. The view changed. Instead of his locker, his hand was inches away from a tree.

Gathering his composure, he turned and looked around. He clearly hadn't moved physically but had obviously switched realities, as the base had vanished.

He went to use his wrist-worn RSC but then realised that, having moved slightly when he turned around, he could easily transfer back into the middle of his bed or even his locker, which didn't appeal much. Despite being tired and hungry after the morning's training session, he realised he would have to move to somewhere he knew he could safely transfer back to the base. He tried to think where he might do so. Even though the base was hidden in the forest, it wasn't too far from its edge. All he had to do was walk to the edge, use the RSC and walk back to the base.

What he hadn't reckoned on was that the forest in this reality was much denser than the one in his adopted reality, making progress slow and lacked the access road in the base's reality. Fortunately, the training regime required them to be armed at all times, with both a handgun and a knife attached to his belt. At least he could defend himself, he reckoned. The knife also proved handy when he had to extricate himself from some bramble-like foliage but he did manage to cut his hands as he did so on the shrubbery's sharp barbs.

As he left the trees he saw that he wasn't alone. In his adopted reality, the area around the forest was scrubland. In this reality, the area was part farmland and a field of a cereal crop was in front of him. A few hundred metres away across the field, a group of farmers were in deep discussion when one spotted him and called out to him. Will couldn't tell what he had said but realised that the language wasn't English. He waved back and started to walk along the edge of the field, hoping that he would just look like someone out for a walk.

His hopes were dashed, however, when the farmer called out again. This time he realised that the language was German. Unfortunately, despite recognising the language, he couldn't understand it, not having a use for it in his own reality. Clearly, the farmer was expecting a reply.

He did, briefly, consider pretending to be a tourist but his uniform and weapons would probably give the lie to that option. He also wasn't sure whether, in this reality, they would have non-German speaking tourists anyway. He considered switching realities but wasn't sure that he was clear of the trees back home.

He looked at the field but wasn't sure about walking across it. There didn't seem to be a path through the crop that he could take without damaging it. His mind was made up when one of the other farmers waved him towards the group.

Waving back at them, he headed across the field. As he walked, he decided that he couldn't get close enough that he would need to say something. His lack of German would be bound to provoke some kind of reaction, possibly hostile. About half way across the field, he reckoned he was outside 'his' forest. He cautiously moved the catch on his RCS. Once he was certain the lid was open, he pretended to stumble into the growing crop. As soon as he hit the ground, he pressed the button. The world spun. He looked around him at scrubland. A grazer was two feet away, looking curiously at him. As he moved to stand up, it ran away.

'That was close' he thought, turning back towards the forest and looking for the base's access road. In his travels in the other reality, he had no idea where he was relative to it and knew that using it would be much quicker and easier than fighting his way through the trees. He couldn't see it in either direction, so decided that he would bear to the left of the forest in the first instance. After ten minutes, he realised that he was going the wrong way, so turned around and went back the way he had come. After fifteen minutes, he came across it and turned left into the forest. A discrete sign on each side of the road said "NO ENTRY" but, working there, he ignored them. Two minutes later, a land vehicle screeched to a halt behind him.

'Halt. This is government property and you are trespassing. Put your hands in the air and turn around' boomed a voice from a loudspeaker on the vehicle.

As requested, Will turned around and saw two armed guards looking at him, weapons pointing at him.

'Oh, sorry Mr. Hunt. We didn't recognise you from behind. We've been looking for you for the last hour or so. You vanished from the base and no one knew where you'd gone' said an apologetic Sergeant.

'That's OK, Sergeant Jones. Any chance of a lift back to the base?'

'No problem. We'll have you back in no time. Hop aboard.'

Will didn't hesitate and jumped into the back of the armoured car. Within a few minutes, they were back at the base. The others were there to greet them.

'What happened Will?' asked Sarah, running towards him and putting her arms around him and giving him a big hug.

'Just the usual. Reality hopping again! I take it you missed me' replied Will, feeling slightly embarrassed with everyone looking on.

'We just wondered where you'd gone and hoped you were OK' said Sarah.

Talking so that the whole group could hear him, Will said 'Sorry I've been gone so long but, having made a switch, I needed to get out of the forest before I could get back, just to make sure I didn't reappear inside a piece of furniture or something. Snag was, when I did get out of the alternate forest, I found myself in the presence of some German-speaking farmers and had to make a quick departure from them. Not unreasonably, they wanted to have a chat and there's no way I could have done so. I can't understand or speak German, which could have been awkward. Not sure what they would have done. As at least two of them seemed armed and they had some large farm dogs with them, I think the friendliness would have worn off all too quickly.'

'I wonder what their reaction to your vanishing will be? Anyway, it looks like the personal RSC did what it was meant to do" said Dev.

'Sure did. The process isn't perfect. You do need to make sure you're well clear of anything in both realities to ensure you're safe, although I guess that in a desperate emergency, you'd just have to hope you were OK' responded Will.

'Anyway everyone, I think we need to get back to the training. We've lost enough time today waiting for Will to return' said Dev.

'That's OK for you to say. I haven't had any lunch! I reckon I'm going to work a lot more effectively this afternoon if I have some food inside me! I could also appreciate dealing with these cuts and scratches on my wrists and hands' replied Will, holding up his arms to show them his bloody wrists.

'Okay, you and Sarah can have an hour delay for Will to clean up and have something to eat but we'll have to add it the end of the day. Can't have you slacking. The rest of you can get back to your training schedule' replied Dev, smiling.

'By the way, Dev. This episode brought home to me the fact that, as soon as we can, we should investigate building a base that exists in ALL realities. I'm not sure how easy that would be but, if we're to develop an inter-reality security force of some kind, it will be essential that we can move safely between realities.'

'Good point, Will. I'll raise it with the Admiral as soon as I next see him.'

Chapter 23

Reality 3: Will Hunt

'Countdown sequence. Ten..Nine..Eight..Seven..Six..Five..Four..Three..Two..One..Zero' announced Dev.

Sarah moved the RSC dial. As she looked down at the base from fifty metres up, she could see it become less distinct and quickly fade from view. As soon as the final vestiges disappeared, trees started to appear. They were clearly now far enough from their starting reality for the base not to exist. Both she and Will were surprised at how quickly the transition had been.

She stopped the ship from moving through further realities and they launched three micro-satellites to their pre-programmed locations around the planet, then set off again. The process was repeated every ten minutes over the next few hours. As they travelled through the realities, the forest changed before them. Some trees came and went, with some appearing where there had been a gap before. Branches flowed into different positions, as the natural events that had created them changed as they traversed the realities. It was as if the forest ebbed and flowed, not just as a result of the wind but by an unseen hand stirring the forest like the sea moves on a rocky coastline. Sarah was reminded of the description given by the time traveller of the changing view from his time machine in H.G.Wells's book 'The Time Machine'. Even though they weren't travelling through time, the effect seemed oddly similar.

As evening approached, Sarah felt the safest thing to do was to land the ship. They had been airborne since shortly after breakfast and they were both feeling weary. As they had travelled through the realities, several clearings had come and gone but the current reality had none nearby, so she moved the ship a few miles towards a nearby tarn, where she settled onto what passed as a beach, manoeuvring the ship to be as close as she dared to the tree line. As they were well out of the way, up in the mountains, she was hoping that they wouldn't be spotted, so they could rest up for the night before moving on in the morning.

Sarah called Dev on the radio 'Dev, just to let you know, I've decided to call it a day for today. I didn't want to find a suitable landing site in the dark. I've relocated to the east bank of what you know as Tarn Hows and tucked the ship into the lee of the trees. Hopefully, we're safe from prying eyes here. I plan to restart about 08:00 hours tomorrow morning and see what happens from there. Sarah out.'

'Okay, Sarah. Have an enjoyable evening. Call me when you're ready to start up again.'

'Okay, will do. Good night, Dev. Sarah out.'

'OK, Will. I don't know about you but I'm famished. Lets have something to eat.'

'Ahead of you there. While you were busy, I've rustled something up. Your table awaits.'

'I didn't notice you slip out. After you' replied Sarah, following Will to the canteen. As there was only the two of them on board, they felt a little lost in the space but Will had set up a table close to a viewing port, so they could feel less hemmed in.

'Nothing fancy, I'm afraid. Nevertheless, I think it'll hit the spot. Nothing alcoholic on board, of course but there is a nice wine substitute I found that'll wash it down nicely.'

'Looks wonderful to me, Will. Afterwards, we could go for a wander outside. See what it's like. The tarn might be a bit cold for a swim, though!'

'Might be worth a try. I seem to recall the last time we did that, we found a very enjoyable way to warm up afterwards' he said, smiling as the memory came flooding back.

An hour later, they were standing in the door to the airlock, overlooking the lake. There was a movement in the bushes on the opposite side of the tarn. A group of creatures emerged from the trees, heading towards the water. As they moved away from the trees towards the tarn, Will noted that they had a pig-like snout and totally circular eyes. They had long, pointed ears on the sides of their heads, which seemed to move about in all planes. They had what looked like pale green 'fur', with blue 'spots', similar to those on a leopard. Although they seemed as tall as a human adult, their arms and legs were much longer than those in a human. They also had six limbs. Some were walking on two 'legs' and using the four upper limbs as arms, whereas others were walking on four limbs and using just the top-most limbs as arms. Each was clutching a spear and some were also holding additional weapons, similar to clubs. They were communicating in high-pitched voices and seemed to be joshing with one another, with several of them screeching in what appeared to be their equivalent of laughter.

Will and Sarah stopped. Sarah hit the door close button 'We need to avoid contact with aliens at this stage. Who knows what any of our bugs might do to them. Even something as simple as a cold virus could kill them all. That doesn't mean we can't observe them using our camera systems.'

They re-entered the ship and returned to the bridge. Sarah pointed the cameras towards the aliens and started to record what they were doing. Slightly worryingly, they were moving cautiously towards them. As they got nearer, one threw a spear at the ship but it bounced harmlessly onto the ground nearby. Two approached the ship, touching one of the ship's legs inquisitively.

'If we need to, could we take off with them so close to the ship?' asked Will.

'No, we'd fry them but I reckon that if we used the loudspeakers, they would probably run away. We're clearly just as alien to them as they are to us but we at least have the technological advantage. Their existence does, however, mean that our scans could easily miss such primitive groups. They seem to be at the hunter-gatherer stage of evolution. The most they might have is fire, so our satellites could easily miss them. Damn! This makes it even more of a job than we thought. We've never come across any native life forms before other than plants and trees, so didn't think of the possibility before we set off. I'll let Dev know.'

'Dev. You need to see this' Sarah said into the radio microphone, and sent an image file to him.

'Thanks, Sarah. Oh hell! We've been looking for human habitation but it didn't occur to us that there might be any form of native life, as there hasn't been any in any of the realities we'd already visited. When you return, we'll need to consider how we might spot anything like this. If I remember correctly, the team that Sunil Modaley was with had at least one Astrobiologist with them. They may be able to advise us as to what we might do. Fortunately, we thought we might turn up something unexpected. It looks like you have. OK, thanks, guys! Dev out.'

As Dev finished, there was a loud clanking sound reverberating around the bridge. Will and Sarah looked at the monitors and saw that the two aliens that had approached the ship were now hitting one of the legs. One was using one of their spears, the other, a large rock.

'I think we need to discourage them. I'm pretty sure the leg can stand them hitting it but I'd rather they didn't do it any longer than necessary. I'll play a bit of music. Might perplex them a bit.'

She turned back to the controls and played some loud music over the external airlock speaker. Although the speaker was adequate for speech, it was somewhat distorted for music. However, it did cause the two aliens to stop hitting the ship and look around for the source of the sound with their ears. The remaining aliens instantly stopped what they were doing and called to their two colleagues. Will couldn't tell if they were shouting words of warning or encouragement. Either way, three of the aliens ran away, the remainder appearing to be more intrigued than ever.

'Well, that wasn't entirely successful!' said Sarah. 'I'll prime the engines. That should put them off.'

She switched on the engines and ran through the start-up routine. As a result, the turbines on the planetary engines began to spin, making a significant amount of noise, as well as making the ship vibrate slightly and lift an inch or so from the ground.

This had the desired effect, with the two attacking the leg running away at high speed. The remainder also ran off but less quickly than the attackers.

As they arrived at the other bank of the tarn, they all stopped and looked at the ship. One stood on its hind legs and waved its club and spear at them, accompanied by a loud shrieking sound, as if in defiance.

'Phew, that's a relief' said Will.

Just as Will and Sarah were settling down on the bridge again, they heard a loud crashing sound from outside.

'What the hell is that?' asked Will, looking confused.

'No idea. Let's have a look on the monitor' replied Sarah.

At first, they could see nothing but then Will spotted trees moving on the side facing the trees.

'What the.... I think we need to get out of here. Now!' yelled Sarah. Moments later, they were above the treeline and looking down at an enormous creature rushing headlong into the space occupied by the ship moments earlier. A few seconds later and it would have rammed them. Unfortunately for the creature, its momentum was such that it couldn't stop itself from continuing on into the tarn. Fortunately for it, the water resistance was enough to stop it before it was in deep enough to drown.

'Did that alien call that thing to attack us?' asked Sarah, relaxing from the panic.

'Could be. Might have been coincidence but I guess we'll never know.'

'OK, I think we'll be better off in space. If these are the locals, I don't think we need to worry about being spotted up there' announced Sarah.

'I think we should check out the satellite images first, just in case humanity has occupied a different part of the planet in this reality. Just because they're not to be found near here doesn't mean they're not on the other island.'

'Good point. OK, let's have a look.'

'Dev. We've been attacked by something much bigger than an elephant and twice as heavy. Not sure that the legs of the ship could've handled the attack but we managed to get out in time. I'm about to send you some camera footage and image files. I've had to move us to treetop height to keep us safe. Do you have a problem with us moving to geostationary orbit?' asked Sarah on the radio.

'Oh, great. That's all you need. Just make sure you won't be spotted first but you may be safer up there than where you are. I'll trust you to make the correct decision. Look forward to seeing the footage. Dev out.'

At first, they saw no signs of life on the satellite images but after about fifteen minutes, they noticed there was a small town on the banks of the major river on the other main continent, where the river ran into the sea. They could see a number of boats in the ocean nearby and a road network advancing into the countryside around it but the roads themselves looked more like cart tracks.

'I think we need to zoom in on that town to see if the inhabitants are human or whether they're similar to our recent acquaintances.' suggested Will.

As they looked at the image stream, they could tell that the town's inhabitants weren't human. They closely resembled the aliens they had recently encountered but they were ochre-coloured and wore a variety of items of apparel, ranging from simple belts to cloaks and trousers. None were fully clothed. However, neither Sarah nor Will could see anything that hinted at advanced technology, with everything looking similar to what would have been commonplace before the industrial revolution on Earth.

'OK, I don't think we need worry about them spotting us but we'll continue looking for a while longer. Any radio activity?' asked Sarah.

'None so far.'

As they looked further, they saw a number of towns and villages on the other continent but the continent they were on had no visible population centres larger than small villages. They didn't see anything they would consider large enough to be classified as a city anywhere on the planet. The only vehicles they saw were carts that were being pulled by large six-legged beasts, which resembled the one that had charged them.

'I think we should be safer in space than down here, so I'm going up to put us into a geostationary orbit unless you have any objections' announced Sarah after they had spent an hour looking at the planet from a variety of notional heights.

'I don't think there's anyone here who would notice us and you can't hover here all night. Go for it!' replied Will.

As they settled into orbit, Sarah said 'Well, that wasn't quite the romantic walk we were expecting!'

'Best laid plans and all that' replied Will 'Fancy a drink?'

'Found anything with alcohol in it?'

'Sorry, the best on offer is some non-alcoholic equivalents.'

'Oh well. It was a good idea while it lasted. OK, in that case, I'll have whatever there is that tastes like cider.'

'Fizzy apple juice it is, then!' replied Will, smiling as he went to the 'fridge.

Ten minutes later, drinks in hand, they were looking out of the viewing window at the planet below. 'I wonder how many more realities there are before we get to what we'll consider the end point?

'To be honest, at the moment I don't really care. I'm just enjoying the view. And the company, of course' replied Sarah, snuggling up and putting her arm round Will's waist.

Will put his arm around her shoulder and gave her a squeeze.

'Will we have enough micro satellites?' asked Sarah.

'Something to check before we drop down tomorrow morning. If we haven't enough, we'll have to go back and restock. We still had plenty left when I last checked.'

'Fancy turning the agrav off?' said Sarah, with a cheeky grin.

'Now why would that be, exactly?'

'Oh, I don't know' she replied, smiling 'I just thought there might be some fun things we could do before we go to sleep. Drink up!'

'Well, if you insist....' he said, turning towards her.

THE END
