"You do not come to witness the End of the World, then?" Jherek wished that his power-rings were working and that he could make himself a warmer coat. He felt a chill enter his bones.

"Oh, no, Mr. Carnelian! I've seen that more than once!" The time-traveller was amused. "This is merely a convenient 'time-mark', if you take my meaning."

"But you could rescue Inspector Springer and his men, and my husband — take them back, surely?" Mrs. Underwood said. "You did, after all, bring them here."

"Well, I suppose that morally I have contributed to their predicament. However, the Home Secretary requisitioned my machine. I was unwilling to use it. Indeed, Mrs. Underwood, I was intimidated. I never thought to hear such threats from the lips of British Civil Servants! And it was Lord Jagged who gave me away. I was working in secret. Of course, recognizing him, I confided something of my research to him."

"You recognized Lord Jagged?"

"As a fellow time-traveller, yes."

"So he is still in the nineteenth century!"

"He was. He vanished shortly after I was contacted by the Home Secretary. I think initially he had hoped to requisition my machine for his own use, and took advantage of his acquaintance with various members of the government. His own machine had failed him, you see."

"Yet he was no longer in 1896 when you left?" Jherek became eager for news of his friend's safety. "Do you know where he went?"

"He had some theory he wanted to test. Time-travel without machinery. I thought it dangerous and told him as much. I don't know what he was plotting. I must say I didn't care for the fellow. An unhealthy sort of chap. Too full of himself. And he did me no good, involving me in his complicated schemes, as he did."

Jherek would not listen to this criticism. "You do not know him well. He has been a great help to me on more than one occasion."

"Oh, I'm sure he has his virtues, but they are of the proud sort, the egocentric sort. He plays at God, and that's what I can't abide. You meet the odd time-traveller like that. Generally speaking, they come to a sticky end."

"You think Lord Jagged is dead, then?" Mrs. Underwood asked him.

"More than likely."

Jherek was grateful for the hand she slipped into his. "I believe this sensation must be very close to the 'fear' you were talking about, Amelia. Or is it 'grief', I wonder?"

She became remorseful. "Ah, it is my fault. I teach you of nothing but pain. I have robbed you of your simple joyfulness!"

He was surprised. "If joy flees, Amelia, it is in the face of experience. I love you. And it seems there is a price to pay for that ecstasy I feel."

"Price! You never mentioned such things before. You accepted the good and had no understanding of the evil." She spoke in an undertone, conscious of the time-traveller's proximity.

Jherek raised her hand to his lips, kissing the clenched fingers. "Amelia, I mourn for Jagged, and perhaps my mother, too. There is no question…"

"I became emotional," she said. "It is hard to know whether such a state of mind is suitable to the occasion…" And she laughed, though her eyes blinked at tears. She cleared her throat. "Yes, this is mere hysteria. However, not knowing if death is a heartbeat hence or if we are to be saved…"

He drew her to him. He kissed her eyes. Very quickly, then, she recovered herself, contemplating the city with a worried, unhappy gaze.

The city had every appearance of decline, and Jherek himself no longer believed the assurances he had given her, that the changes in it were merely superficial. Where once it had been possible to see for distances of almost a mile, down vistas of statuary and buildings, now there was only sufficient light (and that luridly unpleasant) to see a hundred yards or so. He began to entertain thoughts of begging the time-traveller to rescue them, to take them back to 1896, to risk the dangers of the Morphail Effect (which, anyway, did not seem to operate so savagely upon them as it did upon others).

"All that sunshine," she said. "It was false, as I told you. There was no real sun ever in your sky — only that which the cities made for you. They kept a shell burning and this barren cinder of a planet turning about it. Your whole world, Jherek, it was a lie!"

"You are too critical, Amelia. Man has an instinct to sustain his own environment. The cities were created in response to that instinct. They served it well."

Her mood changed. She started away from him. "It is so cruel that they should fail us now."

"Amelia…" he moved to follow.

It was then that the sphere appeared, without warning, a short distance from the time-traveller's "Chronomnibus". It was black, and distorted images of the surrounding city could be seen in its gleaming hull.

Jherek joined her and together they watched as a hatch whirled and two black-clad figures emerged, pushing back their breathing-apparatus and goggles to become recognizable as Mrs. Una Persson and Captain Oswald Bastable.

Captain Bastable smiled as he saw them. "So you did arrive safely. Excellent."

The time-traveller approached, shaking hands with the young captain. "Glad you were able to keep the rendezvous, old man. How do you do, Mrs. Persson? How pleasant to see you again."

Captain Bastable was in high spirits. "This should be worth witnessing, eh?"

"You have not been present at the end before?"

"No, indeed!"

"I was hoping that you could give me some advice."

"Of course, if we can help. But the man you really need is Lord Jagged. It was he who —"

"He is not here." The time-traveller placed both hands in the pockets of his Norfolk. "There is some doubt that he survives."

Una Persson shook out her short hair. She glanced idly around as a building seemed to dance a few feet towards her and then collapsed in on itself, rather like a concertina. "I've never much cared for these places. Is this Tanelorn?"

"Shanalorm, I think." Jherek held back, though he was desperate for news of his friend.

"Even the names are confusing. Will it take long?"

Believing that he interpreted her question, Jherek told her: "Mongrove estimates a matter of moments. He says the very planet crumbles."

Mrs. Persson sighed and rubbed at a weary eye. "We have Shifter co-ordinates which require working out, Captain Bastable. The conditions are so good. Such a pity to waste —"

"The information we stand to gain…" Evidently Captain Bastable had wanted to keep this appointment more than had she. He shrugged apologetically. "It isn't every day we have the chance to see something as interesting…"

She gestured with a gauntleted hand. "True. Pay no attention to me. I'm not quite recovered."

"I am trying to get back to my own universe," began the time-traveller. "It was suggested to me that you could help, that you have experience of such problems."

"It's a matter of intersections," she told him. "That was why I wanted to concentrate on the Shifter. Conditions are excellent."

"You can still help?"

"Hopefully." She did not seem ready to discuss the matter. Politely, yet reluctantly, the time-traveller checked his eagerness and became silent.

"You are all taking this situation very casually." Amelia Underwood cast a critical eye over the little group. "Even selfishly. There is a possibility that at least some of those here could be evacuated, taken back through time. Have you no sense of the import — of the tragedy taking place. All the aspirations of our race vanishing as if they had never existed!"

Una Persson seemed to express a certain weary kindness when she replied. "That is, Mrs. Underwood, a somewhat melodramatic interpretation…"

"Mrs. Persson, the situation seems to be rather more than 'melodramatic'. This is extinction!"