"Listen!"

They stopped. There was the grumbling of the thunder and the hiss of the rain.

And, behind the noises of the weather, a faint and distant droning.

Gravel flew up as the young man started to run again. He'd been moving fast before but now he flew down the road.

A large house loomed up against the night. He leapt over the fence, pounded across the lawns, and started to hammer on the front door.

"Open up! Open up! It's an emergency!"

Johnny and the others reached the gate. The droning was louder now.

We could have done something, Johnny thought. I could have done something. I could've ... well, there must have been something. We thought it would be so easy. Just because we're from the future. What do we know about anything? And now the bombers are nearly here and there's nothing we can do.

"Come on! Open up!"

Yoless found a gate and hurried through it. There was a splash in the darkness.

"I think I've stepped into some sort of pond," said a damp voice.

Tom stepped away from the house and groped on the ground for something.

"Maybe I can smash a window," he mumbled.

"Er ... It's quite deep," said Yoless, damply. "And I'm caught up on some kind of fountain thing... "

Glass tinkled. Tom reached through the window beside the door. There was a click, and the door opened.

They heard him trip over something inside, and then a weak light went on. Another click and

"This phone's dead too! The lightning must've got the exchange!"

"Where's the next house?" said Kirsty, as Tom hurtled down the path.

"Not till Roberts Road!"

They ran after him, Yoless squelching slightly.

The drone was much louder now. Johnny could hear it above the sound of his own breath.

Someone must notice it in the town, he thought. It fills the whole sky!

Without saying anything, they all began to run faster

And, at last, the siren began to wail.

But the clouds were parting and the moon shone through and there were shadows nosing through the rags of cloud and Johnny could feel the unseen shapes turning over and over as they drifted towards the ground.

First there was the allotment, and then the pickle factory, and then Paradise Street exploded gently, like a row of roses opening. The petals were orange tinged with black and unfolded one after another, as the bombs fell along the street.

Then the sounds arrived. They weren't bangs but crunches, punches, great wads of noise hammered into the head.

Finally they died away, leaving only a distant crackling and the rising sound of a fire bell.

"Oh, no!" said Kirsty.

Tom had stopped. He stood and stared at the distant flames.

"The phone wasn't working," he whispered. "I tried to get here but the phone wasn't working."

"We're time travellers!" said Yoless. "This isn't supposed to happen!"

Johnny swayed slightly. The feeling was like flu, but much worse. He felt as if he were outside his own body, watching himself.

It was the hereness of here, the nowness of now ... People survived by not paying any attention to feelings like this. If you stopped, and opened your head to them, the world would roll over you like a tank ...

Paradise Street was always going to be bombed. It was being bombed. It would have been bombed. Tonight was a fossil in time. It was a thing. Somewhere, it would always have happened. You couldn't steer a train!

That's what you think ...

Somewhere ...

Flames flickered over the housetops. More bells were ringing.

"The bike wouldn't start!" mumbled Tom. "The phone wouldn't work! There was a storm! I tried to get down here in time! How could it have been my fault?"

Somewhere ...

Johnny felt it again ... the sense that he could reach out and go in directions not found on any map or compass but only on a clock. It poured up from inside him until he felt that it was leaking out of his fingers. He hadn't got the trolley or the bags but ... maybe he could remember how it felt ...

"We've got time," he said.

"Are you mad?" said Kirsty.

"Are you going to come or not?" said Johnny.

"Where?"

Johnny took her hand, and reached out for Yoless with his other hand.

Then he nodded towards Tom, who was still staring at the flames.

"Grab him, too," he said. "We'll need him when we get there."

"Where?"

Johnny tried to grin.

"Trust me," he said. "Someone has to."

He started to walk. Tom was dragged along with them like a sleepwalker.

"Faster," said Johnny. "Or we'll never get there."

"Look, the bombs have fallen," said Kirsty, wearily. "It's happened."

"Right. It had to," said Johnny. "Otherwise we couldn't get there before it did. Faster. Run."

He pushed forward, dragging them after him.

"I suppose we might be able to ... help," panted Yoless. "I know ... first aid."

"First aid?" said Kirsty. "You saw the explosions!"

Beside her, the young man suddenly seemed to wake up. He stared at the fire in the town and lurched forward. And then they were all running, all trying to keep up, all causing the others to go faster.

And there was the road, in that direction.

Johnny took it.

The dark landscape lit up in shades of grey, like a very old film. The sky went from black to an inky purple. And everything around them looked cold, like crystal; all the leaves and bushes glittering as if they were covered in frost.

He couldn't feel cold. He couldn't feel anything.

Johnny ran. The road under his feet was sticky, as though he was trying to sprint in treacle.

And the air filled with the noise he'd last heard from the bags, a great whispering rush of sound, like a million radio stations slightly out of tune.

Beside him Yoless tried to say something, but no words came out. He pointed with his free hand, instead.

Blackbury lay ahead of them. It wasn't the town he knew in 1996, and it wasn't the one from 1941 either. It glowed.

Johnny had never seen the Northern Lights. He'd read about them, though. The book said that on very cold nights sometimes the lights would come marching down from the North Pole, hanging in the sky like curtains of frozen blue fire.

That was how the town looked. It gleamed, as cold as starlight on a winter night.

He risked a glance behind.

There, the sky was red, a deep crimson that brightened to a ruby glow at its centre.

And he knew that if he stopped running it would all end. The road would be a road again, the sky would be the sky ... but if he just kept going in this direction ...

He forced his legs to move onward, pedalling in slow motion through the thick, cold, silent air. The town got closer, brighter.

Now the others were pulling on his arms. Kirsty was trying to shout too, but there was no sound here except the roar of all the tiny noises.

He snatched, at their fingers, trying to hold on ...

And then the blue rushed towards him and met the red coming the other way and he was toppling forward onto the road.

He heard Kirsty say, "I'm covered in ice!"

Johnny pushed himself to his feet and stared at his own arms. Ice crackled and fell off his sleeves as he moved.

Yoless looked white. Frost steamed off his face.

"What did we do? What did we do?" said Kirsty.

"Listen, will you?" said Yoless. "Listen!"

There was a whirring somewhere in the darkness, and a clock began to strike.

Johnny listened. They were on the edge of town. There was no traffic in the dark streets. But there were no fires, either. There was the muffled sound of laughter from a nearby pub, and the chink of glasses.

The clock went on striking. The last note died away. A cat yowled.

"Eleven o'clock?" said Kirsty. "But we heard eleven o'clock when we ... were ... on the downs ... "

She turned and stared at Johnny.

"You took us back in time?"

"Not ... back, I think," said Johnny. "I think ... behind. Outside. Around. Across. I don't know!"

Tom had managed to get to his knees. What they could see of his face in the dusk said that here was a man to whom too much had happened, and whose brain was floating loose.

"We've got seven minutes," said Johnny.

"Huh?" said Tom.

"To get them to sound the siren!" shouted Kirsty.

"Huh? The bombs ... I saw the fires ... it wasn't my fault, the phone-"

"They didn't! But they will! Unless you do something! Right now! On your feet right now!" shouted Kirsty.

No-one could resist a voice like that. It went right through the brain and gave its commands directly to the muscles. Tom rose like a lift.

"Good! Now come on!"

The police station was at the end of the street. They reached the door in a group and fought one another to get through it.

There was an office inside, with a counter running across it to separate the public from the forces of Law and Order. A policeman was standing behind it. He had been writing in a large book, but now he was looking up with his mouth open.

"Hello, Tom," he said. "What's going on?"

"You've got to sound the siren!" said Johnny.

"Right now!" said Kirsty.

The sergeant looked from one to the other and then at Yoless, where his gaze lingered for a while. Then he turned and glanced at a man in military uniform who was sitting writing at a desk in the office. The sergeant was the sort of man who liked an audience if he thought he was going to be funny.

"Oh, yes?" he said. "And why should I do that, then?"

"They're right, sergeant," said Tom. "You've got to do it! We ... ran all the way!"

"What, off the down?" said the sergeant. "That's two miles, that is. Sounds a bit fishy to me, young man. Been round the back of the pub again, have you? Hah ... remember that Dormer 111 bomber you heard last week?" He turned and smirked at the officer again. "A lorry on the Slate road, that was!"

Kristy's patience, which in any case was only visible with special scientific equipment, came to an end.

"Don't you patronize us, you ridiculous buffoon!" she screamed.

The sergeant went red and took a deep breath. Then it was let out suddenly.