“There are ways to trap them,” McCann whispered. “Though their more robust cousins the Nutcrackers provide better meat. You hunt with special spears, twelve feet long. Then you goad the Nutcracker-man, until he charges onto your spear point…”

The first Elf man stood up straight on his bough. He opened his mouth wide, revealing pink gums and impressive canines, and let out a series of short, piercing barks. He slapped the tree trunk and rattled a branch.

The others joined in, whooping with rage. Their hair was suddenly erect, which made them look twice the size, and they stamped and shook branches in a frenzy. It was quite a display, Malenfant thought, a mass of noise and movement.

Then the man in the tree turned, bent over and let out an explosion of faeces that showered over Malenfant and McCann.

Malenfant brushed gloopy shit off his head. “Jesus. What a situation.”

McCann was laughing.

Now McCann’s Hams stood up. They yelled and banged their spears together, or against-logs and tree trunks.

The Elves turned and ran, melting into the green shadows as fast as they had appeared.

Malenfant was relieved when they broke out of the forest, just as McCann had promised, and he found himself walking through a more open country, a kind of parkland of grass and scattered clumps of trees.

Nemoto trudged sourly beside him, her small face hidden by a broad straw hat.

There were herbs in the grass, and when they were crushed by bare Neandertal feet they sent up a rich aroma. The sun was strong on Malenfant’s face, and the blue Earth rode high in the sky. Malenfant felt lifted, exhilarated — even giddy, he thought, anoxic perhaps, and he made sure he kept his breathing deep and even, making the most of the thin air.

McCann noticed Malenfant’s mood. With a touch of the stubby whip he called a sjambok, he directed his Ham bearers to carry him closer to Malenfant. “Quite a day, isn’t it, Malenfant? You know, I believe that with a knight’s move of that mopani tree over here one might take that kopje, with the thicket of wild banana, over there.”

Malenfant forced a laugh. “Remember, I’m a checkers man.”

McCann was clutching a battered Gladstone bag on his lap, from which he extracted water and ointments to dab on his face, neck and wrists. He looked sideways at Malenfant, as if apologetically. “I fear I may have come across as something less than a man to you, on our first meetings.”

“Not at all.”

“It’s just that one is so desperate for company. But you mustn’t think that I am protesting my lot. I draw strength from the teachings of my father — I grew up in a kirk on the Scottish borders — which took a grip on my mind from early days. My father made me a fatalist in creed: man is but a playing-piece in the hands of the Maker. Chess again, eh? And so it was foreordained that I should be brought to this distant shore. But I admit to a great deal of pleasure in my new home on a day like today. Much of it is familiar. In my time here I’ve spotted wildebeest, kudu, impala. There are few birds in flight, but you’ll find flightless, clucking versions of quail, partridge, pheasant…”

“But it isn’t your true home,” Malenfant said gently. “Nor mine. It’s not even from the right universe. Just as it isn’t home for these Hams, is it?”

McCann eyed him sharply. “You’ve been talking to the fragrant Julia — their legend of the Grey Earth, the place in the sky from which they stumbled. Yes?” He laughed. “Well, it might even be true. Perhaps a party of bar-bars did fall through a shining portal, just as you say your wife did. But it was a blooming long time ago, Malenfant.

“Listen. Once upon a time old Crawford got it into his head that there might be something of value in the ground here — gold, diamonds, even hidden treasure of obscure origin, perhaps laid down by some race of supermen. And he went digging — especially in the hearths and caves of the bar-bars. He had to turf out a few of them to do that, for they will cling to their domiciles. He found no treasure. But what he did find was more bar-bars, or anyhow traces of them, their buried bones mixed in with those peculiar knobkerries and assegais they favour in the wild. There was layer upon layer of bone, said old Crawford, in every place he dug.

“Well, the meaning is obvious. These bar-bars have endured a long stretch on this exotic little world: they must surely have been here for hundreds of generations, thousands of years, or more. And in all that time they have clung to their dreams of home.” He considered Malenfant. “You may think I am harsh with the bar-bars, Malenfant, or uncaring. I am not. Inferior they may be. But what memory lies buried in those deep skulls of theirs! — don’t you think?”

The country began to rise. The little party grew strung out. The grass grew thinner, the underlying crimson soil more densely packed.

They reached the crest of a ridge and took a break. The ground was hard-packed here, covered thinly by bracken and little bushes like hazels. The party, drinking water from a pannikin handed around by a Ham, was surrounded by a thin, subsiding cloud of red dust.

Malenfant stepped forward. The ground fell away before him, and he saw that this ridge curved around, making a neat circle. It was a bowl of greenery. A few improbably tall trees sprouted, but much of the basin was covered by grass that was littered with colour, the yellow and white of marigolds and lilies. Pools glistened on the uneven floor, ringed by lush primeval-looking ferns.

It was a crater, a classic impact formation a couple of miles across. Standing here, Malenfant heard distant calls and hoots. They were the cries of hominids, cousins to mankind, patrolling this forested crater. It was a startling, uplifting, utterly alien prospect.

McCann was standing beside him. “Here we stand, men born on different worlds, confronting a third. Do you know your Plutarch, Malenfant? Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds… ‘Do you not think it lamentable that with such a vast multitude of worlds, we have not yet conquered one?’” He pointed with imperious confidence into the bowl of the crater. “There lies our Redoubtable — or at least her corpse. Come, you men.”

Brushing a walking stick before him, he strode off down the flank of the crater. Malenfant and Nemoto, and the Hams with their litter, hurried to follow.

Malenfant came first on a rib of metal, heavily corroded, that arched into the air above him. Its smooth circular shape was a startling contrast to the fractal profusion of the greenery all around. He stepped under the rib, onto twisted and rusted metallic remnants that groaned under his weight. He found he was in a long cylindrical chamber, its walls extensively broken and corroded, open to the sky. When it was intact this tank must have been six or seven yards in diameter.

Thorn bushes pushed through the base of the cylinder, and creepers.curled over its sides; above, a thick canopy turned the light dim, moist and green. The ship had been a long time dead, and the vegetation had grown over and through it, concealing its remains.

McCann walked in alongside him, followed by Nemoto. The Hams lingered on the fringe of the deeper forest, leaning on the litter and sipping water. Thomas kept an eye on McCann, but his gaze slid over the lines of the ship, as if it were a thing of mists and shadows, not really there.

“This was the propellant tank,” McCann said. He pointed with his stick. “You can see the bulkheads to either end, or what’s left of “em.” McCann pushed on through mazes of piping and cables. Malenfant and Nemoto followed more cautiously, taking care of the sharp edges of twisted metal under their feet.

McCann’s figure was stocky and competent, and swathed in his treated animal skins he looked somehow right against the background of the fallen, smashed-open ship; Malenfant wondered how often he visited this relic of home.