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Sapphire and Steel, any element, a rogue Transuranic element
Fandom: Sapphire & Steel
Characters: Original
Gen, c. 9000 words
Adrift
A vast, ruined hulk, it hung in space, its systems destroyed beyond any hope of repair. Once home to a thousand beings, with a cargo from seventeen worlds, it was now just another piece of space junk, twisted by fires that had themselves choked to death in the emptiness. No lights burned, no voices spoke. The riotous hubbub of a round-the-clock community had been silenced in the briefest of moments. Less than a millisecond to burn out a thousand lives.
And yet, for all that it was dead and broken, for all that it drifted alone and unseen, the ship was not yet quite done with the universe. Its engines, warp-powered, and once capable of forcing that massive bulk through the very fabric of space-time, were still alive. Silent, weak, but alive. Their energy ran from them in long, dark tendrils of power, tearing open space, twisting it upon itself, creating warps for a ship no longer able to sail. Warps that were themselves warped. Warps conjured by shattered engines running fragmented protocols, with safeguards long boiled away. And through all of time those warps stretched out, writhing and churning, spiralling and splintering, driving broken shards of themselves into the very heart of the universe. Wounded, the universe bled. It would be only a matter of time before the predators began to close in.
***********
Ellen Cohen awoke with the feeling that she had slept for far too long. She slapped at the alarm clock on the bedstand beside her, and failed to make contact. It had to be there. It always was, about five inches from her right ear; a big, round, neon pink monstrosity that one of her sisters had clearly thought a good idea as a wedding present. Three years into the marriage, and they still hadn't got around to changing it. Paul had taken to calling it Charlie, and wishing it a goodnight. To Ellen, that didn't seem like a good omen for her chances of replacing it.
"Did I drink too much last night?" slurred Paul, from alongside. Ellen smiled without opening her eyes. Paul never drank anything stronger than tea. She often teased him about it, and he would smile at her, giving as good as he got with jokes about her reckless coffee habit. The very idea of either one of them ever drinking too much made her laugh quietly, and abandoning her attempts to reach for her errant alarm clock, she flopped back upon her pillow – and hit her head on something unexpectedly hard.
"Ow." Her eyes flew open, blinking up at a murky, black ceiling. Murky? Maybe she hadn't overslept after all, and it was still the middle of the night. Except... where was her bed? Where was the bedstand? Why was there no pale yellow glow from the street lamp, which their curtains did not quite hide? A hand found hers and squeezed, and she squeezed back. This was not their bedroom. For that matter, she didn't even remember going to bed. Hadn't she been in the living room? She had a vague recollection of Mastermind, and an argument over which channel to watch next. Then... what had happened then? Having found his way to his feet, Paul helped her up, and they stood together in the murk. Wherever they were, it looked like a corridor. A dark, empty corridor, at least as far as she could see – which, she was painfully aware, was not very far. The only thing that she could hear was her breathing; and, when she held it for a moment, Paul's breathing coming from just to her left.
"It could be Stephen," said Paul after a moment. "He's always said he's going to get me back for that practical joke with the car."
"Stephen's practical joke limit is a bucket of water on top of a door. This doesn't make sense. We were... we were in the living room, weren't we? I remember Mastermind. I'm sure I remember Mastermind."
"Well what else explains it? You don't just blink and appear somewhere else!" She could just see him beside her, a little more clearly now as her eyes adjusted somewhat. He was loosening his tie with his free hand, his fingers just shades of grey against a darker tableau of black.
"I don't know." She tried to think, but the sense of dislocation had her head in a whirl. She was a scientist. She dealt in reality, in certainty, in ideas that could be tested, and then proved or set aside. She wanted to focus on the problem and come up with some ideas, but all that she could summon was a jumble of useless thoughts. She couldn't even begin to focus. She closed her eyes for a moment, but when she opened them again, nothing was clearer. The weird, dark corridor had not changed back into her living room. Whatever was going on, she did not appear to be hallucinating.
"Maybe there's somebody about?" suggested Paul, although the all-pervading silence suggested otherwise. Ellen held her breath again, in an effort to hear something beyond the regular movement of gases in her lungs. Her heartbeat, perhaps. Paul's heartbeat maybe. Beyond that, just a cavernous, engulfing silence that felt ready to suffocate her. Unconsciously she moved closer to her husband. The presence of another human being was the only source of comfort in what felt increasingly like a nightmare.
"Maybe," she said, just because the sound of her voice was better than more silence. She turned towards Paul, smiling in what she hoped was a cheerful fashion into a darkness that mostly hid his face. He squeezed her hand, possibly in answer. A moment later he began to move forward, the soft scuffing sound of his shoes one more noise to focus upon. She went with him. Doing something was better than doing nothing; and besides, neither one of them was ready to let go of the other's hand. It made little difference. The corridor stretched out ahead of them, with no sign of ending. Blackness preceding blackness preceding blackness, in a long, straight line forevermore. Ellen had no idea how long they walked. She only knew that they could walk for twice as long with no change. She knew it deep inside, where a horrible, unfamiliar feeling of panic was beginning to stir.
And then, quite suddenly, there was light. Up ahead it glimmered, very briefly, a hint of pale blue and silver that showed her, just for a moment, the walls and the ceiling and the floor; featureless, grey metal, all of them, stretching onward just as far as she had supposed. The light flickered and fluttered, like something alive almost, rather than a torch or a lamp. Then, abruptly it had gone. She blinked, readjusting her eyes, aware that something had changed. Something new had come with the light. As her eyes once again acclimatised themselves to the unwelcome darkness, she realised what it was. She and her husband were no longer alone. There were three people standing in front of them now; three people where a second ago there had been nothing at all.
"Hello?" she asked, turning what should have been a greeting into a querulous question. "I... that is, we... Can you tell us where we are?"
"Humans?" came the reply, blasting away the silence in a booming rush of sound, the word echoing along the endless, wretched corridor. "What are humans doing here?"
As an answer, it was in no way what Ellen been hoping for.
***********
"Um," said Paul. It was the same way that he reacted when confronted with Jehovah's Witnesses or door-to-door salesmen; or anybody else that he had no idea how to handle. Ellen might almost have smiled. As a response to the most inexplicable situation she ever hoped to find herself in, it was gloriously reserved. "Is there some reason why we shouldn't be human?"
"Humans cannot be present." There was a sound suspiciously like that of a handclap – and suddenly there was light. Bright, warm, ordinary light, very like that of the day – but coming from a ball of fire that was suspended in mid air above the head of the centremost figure. Ellen swallowed hard, and tried not to stare. If nothing else, it was sure to hurt her eyes; but she still couldn't help sneaking a look at it, trying to work out what it was, and how it had been produced. It was several moments before she could take advantage of it, and get her first, proper look at the new arrivals.
They stood together in a line, the centre figure slightly in front of the other two, as though assuming a definite air of command. She was a woman, perhaps sixty of so years of age, her skin with a dark, Mediterranean complexion, her hair curling and silver. Her eyes were silver as well; a strange shade almost the exact colour of her hair, bright against the warm, tanned colour of her skin. A short woman, she nonetheless had a clear aura of authority, and it was quite clear that she had commanded the ball of fire to appear. Ellen got the impression that ordering fires about was all in a day's work for the woman; something that was not at all diminished by the pale yellow shawl that she wore wrapped about her shoulders.
The second figure was taller, almost statuesque, with jet black hair set against almost ghostly pale skin. Try as she might, Ellen could not decide if the figure was male or female; there was nothing about the powerful, rangy figure to help her choose either way. Once again she was struck by a pair of bright, silver eyes, unearthly although not necessarily unfriendly. A red flannel workshirt was a shot of normalcy, supported by faded blue jeans and what looked like a pair of steel toe-capped boots – but any hint of the familiar was unravelled by the third figure, standing on the silver-haired woman's other side, and completing the peculiar trio.
He was a man, young and black, though with eyes the same bright silver as those of his cohorts. He too wore blue jeans, this time with a shirt that matched his eyes; but it was his feet that drew Ellen's attention. The running shoes that encased them were ordinary enough, but around them the metal floor of the corridor was bubbling and melting away. As she watched, he shifted position slightly, rescuing his feet before they sank into the floor. Noticing this, the tall, second member of the party nudged him sharply, and he sighed, taking a moment to focus his concentration, to apparently prevent further melting. This task accomplished, he offered Ellen a bright smile, so warm and alive that it hit her almost like a palpable wave.
"Humans." His excitement was evident, and he stepped forward, holding out a hand. "This is fantastic. They never let us near humans. I've never met one before."
"I... I'm..." The hand was pointing in her direction, so – never one to turn down a friendly overture – Ellen stepped towards it, holding out a hand of her own. "Ellen Cohen. I'm, um... I'm a chemist from Greenwich. This is my husband, Paul. We—"
"Get back!" Moving with a speed that seemed almost impossible, the small, silver-haired woman darted forward, catching her young associate by the elbow, and hauling him out of the way. "It's forbidden, you know that."
"I'm not going to hurt her!" There was contrition in his eyes, but also something very like rebellion. "I've never met a human before. They always keep us out of the way. I've never met any organic life-form."
"With good reason. Touch her and she'll be lucky if all you do is boil her from the inside out. And don't tell me that you'd be careful." She nodded towards his feet, which were once again sinking slightly into bubbling, softening metal. "You're not capable of being careful." The woman turned back to Ellen and Paul, the latter now trying to position himself between his wife and the peculiar trio. Ellen was almost amused by the effort. The best that Paul could generally hope to defend her against was the occasional belligerent housefly. All the same – boil her from the inside out? That settled it. This had to be some ridiculous dream.
"We're sorry to have inconvenienced you," the silver-haired woman was saying. "You shouldn't be here. You weren't expected. It's all most irregular."
"Perhaps if you'd tell us where ‘here' is?" asked Paul. She frowned at him for a moment, then nodded sharply.
"We are aboard the container vessel X3306, designated Rosamund. Rendered inoperative by terrorist action seventy-six standard units ago, and abandoned as space junk. Unfortunately the warp engines are still partially functioning, and we're here to shut them down." She gestured to her companions. "These are Neptunium and Plutonium. My name is Curium. I would suggest that you leave as soon as possible. Very soon this area will no longer be suitable for organic life."
"Leave? How can we leave? We have no idea how we got here." Ellen eyed the threesome with suspicion. "And those aren't names, they're transuranic elements. Who are you all, and what exactly is going on here?"
"Wherever here actually is," pressed Paul. "Spaceship indeed. This is 1984 for goodness sakes."
"Look out of the window if you don't believe us," said the tall, androgynous stranger, offering him the politest of smiles. He looked about. The light hanging in the air above Curium was sufficient to show the blankness of the walls. There were no windows. The tall stranger's smile turned knowing, teasing almost, and reaching out, he, she, or whatever the correct designation of a being named Neptunium could ever hope to be, pressed a hand to the dark metal alongside them. There was a faint glow, radiating first from the hand, and then from the metal itself – and then, suddenly, the metal was metal no longer. In its place was an uneven, roughly hand-shaped transparency. Paul wandered over to it, reaching out to run his fingers slowly over the transmuted patch.
"It feels warm," he said to Ellen, in wonder. She was tempted to tell him to keep away from it, but curiosity – and not a little irritation – were for the time being helping to keep her fears at bay. Doing her best to keep an eye on the three strangers, she also tried to get a look through the window. Whatever or wherever was on the other side, it was utterly dark. She couldn't see a thing.
"We could be anywhere," she said. Paul was leaning close to the window, his breath failing to steam up whatever material it had been fashioned from. There was a dark shape just visible, which might have been the long, misshapen form of a giant spaceship, sprawled like a vast shadow across the blackness of space. Certainly it didn't take much imagination to make it so. All the same, it was hardly proof. He frowned, and shrugged his narrow shoulders.
"It's not home, that's for certain," he said, as though any other explanations might be equally possible. Neptunium was frowning, looking from one human to the other before raising a point.
"It is possible that they were caught up by the warp, isn't it? Space-time is being churned up. It's possible that objects have been picked up and redistributed. If they should happen to get too close to a region of temporal instability..."
"Yes, it's possible." Curium frowned, silver eyes seeming almost to glow. "Well, that certainly complicates matters."
"Temporal instability?" echoed Ellen. "You're really serious about all of this, aren't you. Space warps, and... you're honestly trying to suggest that we're been... we've been somehow zapped through space and time? It's ridiculous. Any moment now I'm going to wake up and find out that I dozed off in my chair."
"It's not a dream, Ellen." Paul turned away from the unhelpful, black nothingness beyond the window, to offer her what was clearly intended to be a supportive smile. "Or at least, if it is, it's mine, not yours. We can't both be having the same one."
"Then we've been... somebody has... Is this Candid Camera?" She turned her gaze towards the youngest of the three, Plutonium, who had so far displayed the greatest inclination to be friendly. "What's really going on here?"
"Space and time are being torn apart by a malfunctioning warp generator. It probably brought you here." He was moving closer to her again, and she could not help but notice that both Curium and Neptunium were edging nearer themselves, as though to cut him off. His smile was bright and warm, and it was clear that he was delighted to have been addressed by her, but he did seem to take the hint, and hung back. "You'd have been somewhere else one minute, and then here the next. It's basic Physics, really. Although it's unlikely that you'd remember it as being that sudden. Without a vessel to limit the effects, it would have been quite traumatic. Effectively you'd have existed at both points at once. Sort of infinitesmally long, and existing in every point in time all at once, and then snap!" He clicked his fingers, and white hot sparks flew from the contact, making the air around them crackle and fizz. "Suddenly you'd have been here."
"It would certainly explain why I woke up feeling like I'd been through a meat grinder." Paul looked out of the window once again, then back to Ellen. "You're the scientist, Ellie. It sounds like something out of Doctor Who. Could it happen?"
"Warp generators? It's 1984, Paul. We're still trying to figure out how to drive across town without polluting the planet. You think we can manage to build engines like that, and still have a world to go back to?"
"Yes, but is it 1984? Any more, I mean?" He looked towards the threesome – the one who had conjured fire out of thin air, the one who had created a window where there had been none, and the one whose feet continued to melt the metal floor – and hesitated. "What is the date?"
"In Earth years it's 3251." Neptunium pulled a large silver watch from a pocket, and consulted it with a frown. "August. Not that they call it that anymore."
"And this conversation has gone on for long enough." Curium glared at her two colleagues, holding it just long enough to suggest that there was more than irritated vibes passing between the three of them, then looked back to the two humans. "As I said, you should leave. We have to close down those engines before irreparable damage is done to space and time. You can't be here when we do that."
"But if you close down the engines, how will we get back?" asked Ellen. Plutonium smiled his warm, bright smile.
"3251 isn't so bad." If it was supposed to be reassuring, then it was not; at least to a woman who had no idea whether she could even believe in the reality of her situation, let alone accept that her life had been irrevocably changed. She glared at him; at all of them, with their bright silver eyes and peculiar habits. This wasn't some elaborate joke, she could see that now. It certainly wasn't Candid Camera. That left the increasingly thin hope that it was a dream, and she had never seriously considered that. A space warp? Malfunctioning engines? The horrible thing was that it did make a certain sense, when she allowed herself to consider it. If an engine were capable of creating a warp in space – a seriously considered conjecture in her own time, although not one in any way possible to test – then it was quite possible, even probable, that one damaged in the right way could continue to tear open space-time, uncontrolled now and random. Her scientist's brain rolled over the idea, dragging up old Physics lessons, old arguments with scientists of other disciplines, old articles read, and conferences attended. It wasn't her field, but chemistry was not her only interest. Slowly her shoulders sagged.
"Ellie?" Paul was beside her immediately, dark eyes flashing strangely behind his glasses as they caught the light from Curium's impossible lamp. For a moment she could see three sets of silver eyes reflected in the lenses, staring back at her alongside her husband – then suddenly they were gone. She blinked, and looked back towards the middle of the corridor. It was empty. The light still hung in the air, the window still sprawled in its untidy streak across the wall, but the three people who had created them had gone. For a moment she was glad of it; glad of the moment alone with her husband. Then, almost immediately, she was afraid.
"The engines," she said, holding the hand that had gently gripped her shoulder. "Look out of the windows. Can you see where the engines might be? We have to get there."
"The engines? Didn't sound like a very safe place to be." He turned towards the windows alongside her, and they both peered out into depthless night. "They didn't seem to think it was very safe either."
"And about to get even less so. They're here to fix the engines, remember? And they said that we couldn't be here then. We have to stop them, Paul. At least until we can find some way to get off this ship."
"You believe them then?" He was looking at her very directly; looking for confirmation of his own suspicions as much as anything, she thought. She nodded.
"I don't see what else to believe. It's crazy, but... but what other explanation isn't? We have to get away from here, and right now, they're the only help we've got. I don't know about you, but even if this ship does have lifeboats, I don't know how to go about finding them, or getting them to work."
"We really are believing in all of this, aren't we." He turned back to the window, impossibly wrenched from the fabric of the wall, and stared out of it – or possibly just at the window itself; it was impossible for Ellen to be sure. "3251."
"There's still a chance we'll wake up." She leant against him, and he put an arm around her. "But we have to assume that we're not going to."
"I know. But I can't help with the engines. They'd be at the back though, right? So that gives us a fifty-fifty chance. Or we could split up."
"We are not splitting up." She leaned forward, so that her head was almost touching the impossible window. The night beyond was not inclined to give her any clues. "Maybe there'll be signs somewhere. Come on. One direction is as good as any, so we might as well carry on the way we were going. We'd better hurry though."
"Right with you." His arm slid from her shoulders, and he held out a hand instead. She took it, holding it so tightly that she was quite sure it must hurt. He didn't complain. Instead he held her in return, almost as hard. They didn't speak again. Instead, as one, they began to run forward. The darkness of the endless corridor met them, and Curium's strange, floating light was soon little more than a memory, left hanging where it had appeared, so far behind.
***********
"That was rude," said Plutonium, when the threesome rematerialised. Curium gave him a sharp look.
"What would you have had me done? Stand around having a proper conversation, while the universe unravels outside the window? They're not here."
"They are," objected Plutonium. This time the look that she gave him went rather beyond plain sharp.
"They are not here. They can't be. They're not supposed to be, there's no logical reason for their presence. Besides, what are we expected to do about it? We're not allowed within four square miles of an organic being; and that's just Neptunium and me. You're a whole different story."
"I wouldn't hurt them." He spoke quietly, his silver eyes downcast. Neptunium heaved a sigh.
"None of us would do it on purpose, Pluto. It's just the way things are. The way that they've always been. We have our talents, and we do our jobs, but those job don't involve organics. Look at you, you're boiling your way through the deck again."
"Cheap metal," he grumbled, and extricated his boots from the bubbling, molten mixture around them. "I wouldn't do that to a person."
"No, you'd just cause massive cellular damage with a handshake, or inadvertently initiate nuclear fission and cause them to explode." Curium frowned. "Or would that be implode? Either way it would be in direct contravention of the rules. You're a loose cannon, Plutonium. Accept it."
"We still shouldn't have disappeared on them like that. They're lost. You heard them. They're not even from this time."
"Which makes them dangerous," said Neptunium. "Just the sort of thing that Time likes to make use of. Two beings lost like that, more than a thousand years from home. It can cause huge instability. Goodness knows we've got more than enough of that to deal with right now."
"So we're just going to leave them?" asked Plutonium. Curium sighed.
"What else can we do? Practically speaking? We're not allowed to be here while they are, but if we don't get this job done quickly, none of us are likely to be here for much longer. I don't know about you, but I'd rather reality didn't get torn to shreds."
"Don't over-exaggerate," chided Neptunium. Curium glared.
"Ever dealt with a misfiring warp engine that's systematically mincing space and time before, have you?" There was no answer, and she nodded. "No, precisely. Me either. I'd rather assume the worst, and be sure that we all live to be glad of it. That's a big universe out there, with a lot of life in it. This is one old spaceship that should have been retired decades ago. We sacrifice one to save the other, and everybody's happy."
"Except—" began Plutonium, only to be silenced by a steely glare.
"They're not here," reaffirmed Curium. Her expression softened. "We are who we are, Pluto. We do what we do."
"And the reason we're kept away from organics is so that we don't kill them," he snapped. She held his gaze, as cold and steady as he was hot and wild.
"No. The reason we're kept away from organics is because things tend to happen when we're not. Atoms do strange things. Tissues mutate. Bodies corrupt. It's not just that we kill them, it's what we do to them in the process. The last time an organic being met one of our kind, he tried to be polite and considerate too. He brushed against her in passing, and her cells turned autonomous and tore her apart – and then tried to do the same to every other organic being they could get hold of. They're still trying to track parts of her down, and so far she's reached seventeen worlds in thirteen solar systems." She sighed. "Organics are complicated. Weak and easily disrupted, but also..." One hand waved in the air, seeking words that likely as not didn't exist. Theirs was a world outside the language of most cultures. "But also awkward, difficult, and plain bloody-minded. Organics are trouble. Look at us here! Two of them in the way, and we're delaying a job that's set to save everything."
"She does have a point," said Neptunium. Plutonium nodded slowly.
"Maybe. Maybe if we asked them, though, or at least told them how to get off the ship?"
"And how do they get off the ship?" asked Curium. His face fell. "Precisely. It's not like we can transport them, is it. And even if there are any lifepods on this thing that still work, which I doubt, given that it's nearly old enough to warrant a visit from Sapphire and Steel, I certainly couldn't tell them how to operate one. And I very much doubt that two civilians from 1984 could manage it alone, even if one of them is a scientist."
"Don't they have spaceships in 1984?" asked Plutonium, his voice gone small. Neptunium smiled.
"After a fashion. Sorry, Pluto. Let's just get this job done, yes? Plug the hole, stop the engine, save the universe. You'll feel better then."
"I doubt it." He broke away from the group, heading towards the waiting engines, standing towering above them just a few feet away. They were silent and dark, just like everything else on the ship, but all three transuranics could feel the power that still ebbed from them. It was a power that would have incinerated any ordinary life-form; a sheer energy, somewhere between ethereal radiation and a pounding jackhammer formed out of the fabric of space, created to blast open roads for the dead ship. Plutonium put out a hand, and the air around it glowed. Sparks fizzed and spat from the ends of his fingers, and he tilted his head on one side, then nodded sharply, and walked straight up to the great powercell that fed the entire ship. In life it would have resembled a giant, purple jewel; now it was blackened and cracked. He pressed his hand into it, and with a flash of bright, white light fit to blind any troublesome organic, the cell turned a cold, pale blue. A faint glow illuminated the immediate vicinity, a shadow of the fire that would have burned within the cell before.
"I can give us half an hour," he said, watching the cell carefully as he spoke. "Beyond that, there's nothing that I can do. The atomic matrix is too corrupted."
"Half an hour will be more than enough." Rolling up the sleeves of her sunshine yellow blouse, Curium headed towards the engines. She ran a hand across the nearest surface, nodding her head slowly as she detected the miniature traces of residual energy inside. "Neptunium, take the left. I'll take the right. Power up, Plutonium."
"I don't like this," he told her, and she nodded.
"Objection noted. I don't need your approval, though. We can do this without you if we have to."
"No you can't. Not within half an hour." He hissed out a sigh of irritation, silver eyes showing his uncertainty. "All right, powering up. But I... I don't like this. We're killing them anyway, aren't we? Closing down these engines will destroy the ship, which will destroy the organics. One way or the other, what's the difference?"
"This way's quick," Neptunium told him. "They won't even know that it's happening. Mutate their DNA, or rupture their cells, or irradiate them, or any one of a hundred other possible effects of long term exposure to us, won't be anywhere near so quick. Get to work, Pluto. Do you really think that any of us like this situation?"
"No, I guess not." He stared towards the engines, watching the trails of energy bleeding out in every direction. To most eyes they were invisible, but not to his. He could see them spilling out, working their vicious magic on the fabric of space. He could even detect the disruption; hear the wailing cries of a universe under torture, and see the insidious presence of Time as it tried to twist the damage to its own ends. It made his head spin – but so did the plight of two confused humans, lost in a labyrinthine corridor so impossibly far from home. He shook his head to clear it, and planted his feet firmly on the ground. This time when the metal plating bubbled and fizzed, he made no effort to stop it.
"Ready?" asked Curium. He drew in a deep breath, and clenched both of his hands into fists, pressing them against each other. Bright white lights began to glow, deep within his fingers, pulsing out with the regular rhythm of a heart, charging the molecules of the stale air, and sending excited, illuminated ions skittering away across the room. He nodded. So did Curium and Neptunium. Each of them reached one hand out towards their partner, and their own fingers began to glow as well. Slowly at first, but with building frequency, Plutonium began to vibrate.
"Perfect!" As her hand began to glow, Curium spread out both of her arms, pressing the other hand against the engines. The glow passed through her in pulse waves, and she spread out her fingers on the engines, a frown of concentration painting deep lines on her face. The pulsing glow highlighted them, and lent her silver eyes a curious illumination, making them seem to flash in strobes of blue and white. Several feet away, Neptunium was doing likewise, with an equally intense focus. One pale white hand pushed itself through the metal casing of the engine, altering the molecular structure of the machine in order to gain entrance.
"Nearly there," muttered a voice hoarse with effort and focus. "I think we'll need your help, Pluto. There are too many materials involved."
"It's a patchwork monstrosity," grumbled Curium, her own voice showing a similar strain. "Fixed up by too many engineers for too long. There's steel and iron and silver and platinum... If we have to unravel every molecular sequence we'll still be here in a century."
"Don't exaggerate," Plutonium told her. "Besides, we've only got half an hour before the power cell loses its charge again. The engines are going to need that power to fulfil our purpose."
"You don't say," she shot back, with an impressive ladling of sarcasm. Neptunium smiled.
"If you two put as much energy into saving the universe as you do into needling each other, most of our operations would be over and done with in a matter of seconds. Pluto, give me a hand, for goodness sakes."
"I'm powering the pair of you, aren't I?" He came closer, despite his grumbling, pressing his still outstretched hands against the engines. The glow emanating from his fingers spread across the engines themselves, and the metal began to vibrate with the same low frequency as his body. Molten metal spat itself about the room, white hot, red hot, and other colours less easily explained. Zinc became copper, became cobalt, became iron, became manganese – a cascade of disintegrating elements burning themselves into one another as Plutonium's glowing hands burned ever brighter. Neptunium frowned all the harder, struggling to maintain control and perform the more specialised, neater transmutations whilst the other two bulldozed their way forward. Finally, with a fountaining of purple sparks, Curium stepped back, slapping molten metal and stray atoms from her hands like dust.
"Finished," she said; and as though in answer, a great groan ran through the ship. Very slowly, but with gathering speed, the decking beneath their feet began to inch towards the engines.
"Yes, I'm finished too." Neptunium also stepped back, fingertips still bright with energy. "Good work everybody."
"So that's that then." Plutonium stepped back rather more slowly, the fierce glow and vibrations beginning to fade away. "The ship will just concertina up on itself, and it'll all be over."
"You make it sound like nothing," said Curium, clearly stung. "It's a brilliant plan. This massive ship, all folding itself up into the engines, which will also fold up on themselves. All that metal, compacting into a tiny size. It's the best and safest way to shut down the engines, and it'll form a super-heavy plug that'll seal the tear in space, more than long enough for the universe to heal itself." She smiled brightly, hands clasped behind her back. "Genius. Pure genius."
"Yes, all right. Let's just get out of here, shall we, before you implode under the weight of your own brilliance." Neptunium looked over to Plutonium. "Come on. I'm sure there's another mission waiting for us."
"Yes, of course." He smiled, and with a clap of the hands, vanished. Curium and Neptunium exchanged a look.
"He'll be alright," said Neptunium. Curium nodded.
"I hope so. He's such a wild card. So little control. I hadn't anticipated that extending to his emotions as well as to his work. It's just never arisen before."
"It'll pass. It's just the novelty of it, as much as anything. Organics are such a rarity in our work. Come on. Let's get out of here as well, before we get compacted up with the engines. That would just be plain embarrassing."
"Very true." Curium smiled, and with a last, brisk nod of satisfaction, she disappeared. A moment later, Neptunium followed. Soon the only sound left was the deepening groan of a spaceship beginning to die.
***********
Ellen was sure that the darkness was deepening. She wasn't sure quite how that was possible, since it already seemed as though the rest of the universe had ceased to exist. She could see nothing, even Paul, hurrying along so close at her side. His hand was holding hers, and his arm occasionally brushed against her as they moved, but still the darkness was so total that she found herself doubting his presence. And, yet, somehow it seemed to be growing darker. She reached out with her free hand, grasping the tangle of fingers that was her first, wrapped up together with Paul's. He slowed to a halt immediately, his other hand joining the mixed-up finger-ball, and gripping in a way that was oddly reassuring.
"Are you okay?" he asked her. She smiled at that. They had no real idea of where they were – or even if they were anywhere at all. The darkness left them unable to be sure of anything. Her world had narrowed down to a touch of hands, and a confused memory of the closing theme of Mastermind, in a sitting room in Greenwich. Had that sitting room ever even been real? Had she ever really been a chemist, bustling around a science lab, or had this darkness been the only reality that had ever existed? Whatever the truth, she felt a long way from okay.
"I'm fine," she lied, and the hands alongside hers squeezed briefly. He understood. Knowing that made her feel at least a little less disconnected. If he was real, if he was here, going through this with her, and understanding how she felt, then she at least knew that something existed, somewhere.
"Why did we stop?" he asked, but the voice that answered him was not hers. Instead, with a brilliant rush of blue-white light that made them both stumble backwards, Plutonium appeared in the corridor, and beamed cheerfully at the pair of them.
"I don't know," he said, as though he had been a part of their conversation all along, "but I'm glad that you did. If we'd collided, you'd probably have exploded." He frowned then, and shrugged. "Or something unpleasant anyway. They tell me that I mustn't ever touch an organic, and I don't really like to experiment, just in case."
"I... I think I'm quite glad of that." Blinking furiously, Ellen peered at him awkwardly, through eyes that were complaining bitterly about the sudden burst of light. "Where did you come from?"
"The engine room. I'm supposed to be leaving, but I couldn't. It didn't feel right. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do instead, but..." He shrugged again, and this time flashed a smile that she was almost tempted to return. If her head hadn't been in quite such a whirl, she might well have done. He might be weird, and he might only be adding to her headache and her disorientation, but she couldn't help being strangely drawn to him. There was a childlike innocence to him, even with the inexplicable weirdness that was his calling card. Extracting his feet from the molten mess that he seemed to forever be making of the deck, he nodded politely to each of them.
"It's Ellen, isn't it. And Paul? I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with the names. Or... or with anything really. I understand mechanics and Physics and metals and things like that. Elements and fundamental forces. Names and people... well, anyway." His head cocked on one side. "Is it true that you move through time from day to day, and spend all of your life moving forwards? Never backwards or side to side? Do you really have to travel from place to place, instead of just..." One hand waved in the air, then suddenly he was gone, reappearing several feet behind them. "Instead of just... being there? How do you do it? Your lives must be so slow. So frustrating."
"We are how we are," said Paul. Plutonium blinked at that, as though the comment had struck a chord, and at his reaction, sparks fizzled from the ends of his fingertips. Both Ellen and Paul took a step back, but he waved a hand.
"Sorry. I'm ionising the air. It happens."
"Not to most of us," said Ellen. He smiled again then, and with a clap of his hands, sent tiny streaks of lightning leaping from finger to finger, and from hand to floor.
"I am how I am," he said, in an offbeat echo of Paul. "I wish I could come with you. Talk to you, and understand. I'd love to know how it is to live that sort of life. In a linear progression. But I shouldn't even be here now."
"Why are you here?" prompted Ellen. There were a hundred and one other questions that she would rather have asked, but he did not seem to have a mind well suited to answering questions. It bounced from one subject to another, as though it burst out in as many directions as the sparks around his fingertips, or the bubbles of molten metal around his shoes. There was a wildness to him, an uncontrolled energy that made her remember what he had said about them exploding if they touched him. Perhaps it was because she had already been through so much, or perhaps it was something to do with the dazzling brilliance of his smile, but she found that she was not afraid. Not of him. Of the rest of the universe, perhaps.
"I came to save your lives," he said then. "Listen. Can you hear? I think that our ears work in the same way, although mine are probably better than yours. A groaning sound. Creaking and wrenching, like the spaceship tearing itself apart."
"I can hear something," said Paul, with a frown. Ellen wasn't sure, although there was something, possibly. Something very faint and far away. "What is it?"
"It's the spaceship tearing itself apart." Plutonium did not seem especially concerned by this fact. "It's folding up on itself, to be more precise, although obviously that means that some of it has to come apart. Come apart and fold up, and compress itself. It's quite wonderful really, but it does mean that if you stay here you'll be compressed to a millionth of your natural size, probably within the next five to ten minutes." He frowned, tilting his head to one side once again, this time clearly in order to listen. "Seven minutes and thirteen seconds. Sorry, that's not as precise as it sounds. I'd need Neptunium to get a truly exact reckoning."
"Compressed?" echoed Paul, from a throat that sounded painfully dry. Ellen felt suddenly cold. In a long, dark corridor that was already as cold as the metal it was fashioned from, that was cold indeed. Her fingers clung all the tighter to Paul's, and he pulled her against him, into a confused hug that did nothing to make either of them feel better. Strange, she thought, that this time neither of them even considered doubting the news. They had gone far past wondering if any of this was a trick. "Why?"
"Because it's necessary." The frown again. "Or presumably it is. We couldn't think of anything else. It's to stop it all, you see. To make it very small and very heavy and very intense, and to plug the hole that it's made. It wouldn't be so bad, I suppose, to be caught up in the middle of that. You'd be saving the universe."
"I think the ship can save the universe without us," said Ellen, with feeling. "How do we get out of here?"
"That's the bit that I'm not sure about." Plutonium moved a little closer – close enough for Ellen to be able to smell the molten metal splashed across his shoes. She stepped back, wary of all the earlier talk about what might happen. She wouldn't be at all surprised at such destructive side-effects, from a man whose very presence seemed to crackle with energy. He had a fitting name. She wondered if he had been born with it, or if it meant something else.
"Are there life boats?" asked Paul. Plutonium nodded.
"Sure to be. The crew didn't abandon ship. They didn't have a chance. So the escape pods will still all be here. The question is whether you can reach them in time. Or operate them. I might be able to, I suppose, but I hate to think what would happen to you shut up in a cramped space with me. I'm not sure that the escape pod would survive it either." As though to illustrate his point, he extricated his shoes, once again, from a molten hole of their own making, stamping his feet slightly in irritation, to rid them of beads of metal. "And there's hardly time for a lesson."
"What then?" asked Paul. Plutonium edged closer, head once again cocked on one side. He was obviously thinking, and they could see the moment when the answer came to him, for the sparks that it brought, quite literally, to his eyes.
"Fission!" he said, pronouncing the word with just enough of an ebullient flare to lend it a most appropriate fizz. "With me being me, and the universe being as it is, I can build you an escape pod." He spoke with a confidence that was quite encouraging, until he ruined it all with an impressively deep frown. "I think. I'd rather I had more than six minutes, I admit."
"Fission?" echoed Ellen. He smiled then, eyes glowing a bright, hot silver that was almost painful to behold.
"It's easy really," he said, with perhaps a little too much volume, as though to cover up for his uncertainties. "The air that you breathe is made up of building blocks. Easy enough to turn argon into iron. We only need to raise the atomic number eight places. Shame there's not so much of it. Still, I can co-opt the nitrogen as well with a bit of thought." The frown, once again, drew deep lines between his eyes. "Well, I probably can. It easy enough to turn iron into steel, anyway, with a little added carbon." He began to clench and unclench his fists as he spoke, and white hot flashes, tiny pinpricks of a ferocious brilliance, sparked around them in mid air. "Borrow the carbon from the carbon dioxide, releasing oxygen to add to the combustion, and—" There was a bright, blue flash and a small sliver of metal sprang into existence between his fists, clattering onto the decking with a surprisingly loud noise. Ellen picked it up.
"This isn't steel," she said. "It's not even iron. I think... copper?"
"Yes. I may have overshot slightly." He offered her a smile that was strangely charming. "It's hardly an exact science. Well, no. It's exactly an exact science, isn't it. It's just that it's not one I'm very good at. I'm more... big explosions. They don't use me for the precise work."
"Just keep trying," encouraged Paul, and Plutonium did just that. Each flash in mid air caused his entire body to light up, highlighting it enough to show the bones inside, a bright and solid blue glowing within him. He was absorbing the energy from each cracked atom, reasoned Ellen; the force of dozens upon dozens of nuclear explosions flowing through him as though they were nothing more than blood. Slowly, surely, there was steel in his hands; flowing through his hands; forming a wall that sealed off one end of the corridor. Time was running out, though. She did not need to look at her watch to know that.
"It's incredible," she said quietly, earning a breathless smile from the dark, glowing face. Energy crackled in a halo around him as he worked, but for all his enthusiasm, and his astonishing power, mistakes still occurred. Every so often a flash of some other metal charged through his steel wall – copper, nickel or chromium; and once or twice the wild, white hot flare of a magnesium burst. It was a spectacular vision to witness, but Ellen could feel the decking beginning to rumble beneath her feet, and knew that it was not caused by Plutonium. Somewhere behind her, she thought that she felt a stirring in the air, like the awakening of a distant wind.
"It's not going to be quick enough, is it." Paul, standing so near, spoke so quietly that she barely heard him. She felt her hand reaching out for his once again, without truly being aware of the movement.
"No." The word vanished into the background noise – the rumbling; the growing volume of creaking, rendering metal; the rushing of a building wind as the air was torn away into space. Paul's hand squeezed hers nonetheless, showing that he had heard. They moved even closer together, watching Plutonium work, neither one of them wanting to turn away and see what was happening behind them. How long could they have left before they suffocated? Would suffocation happen before they were crushed by the embrace of the ship? Ellen forced her mind to focus on Plutonium's spectacle, rather than think of other things. There were worse ways to die, surely, than this? It would be quick, and she would go marvelling at a true wonder of science. All the same, she felt herself tremble, and not from the vibration of the floor and the walls.
"Plutonium, you're a bigger fool than I imagined." The voice barked out of the emptiness behind them, and all three beings jumped. Ellen and Paul whirled, startled out of their determination not to turn around. Behind them a whole new kind of darkness beckoned, through cracks torn as the ship collapsed upon itself. Standing between them and descending mass of metal, was Neptunium, black hair ruffled by the growing wind.
"Neptunium!" Plutonium was caught by surprise, and his lack of concentration showed as a bright ripple across his wall of steel. Titanium to vanadium to chromium, before he found himself again, and steadied his work. "You found me."
"Of course I found you. It was hardly difficult to guess where you'd gone." His colleague neared, eyeing his handiwork with obvious exasperation. "You do realise you have less than two minutes left? To build an entire spaceship? And how exactly are you planning to power it? To produce air for them to breathe?"
"I thought I'd move them myself, and work on the fiddly bits when we'd got out of the way." He shifted awkwardly, and fumbled with his fingers a little, making the wall ripple and wave. Neptunium raised a set of very expressive eyebrows.
"We all know what happens when you try ‘the fiddly bits'. Things tend to explode, and colourfully."
"But you're here now." Plutonium raised his own eyebrows, smiling all the while. It was a charming smile, and had the wind not begun to tug, insistently, at her back, Ellen might have smiled with him. Neptunium gave a heavy sigh, that spoke of frustration, and perhaps a little fondness.
"Power me up," was the answer, but although the tone was heavy, there was no sign of unwillingness in the voice. Plutonium's smile grew, and with a powerful, resounding smack, his hands clapped together, and all at once what remained of the corridor was lit by an astounding glow.
"Stand back," Neptunium warned the humans, then stretched out both arms, and began to work. Metal weaved itself out of emptiness; shapes formed, blended and twisted; colours awoke, and rippled their way through each other; molten plastics enfolded delicate wires. And then, suddenly, the vibrations around them were gone. In a perfectly cubic box, all wall and window and oddly pulsing light, the four of them stood, suspended in the wildness of space. Outside, falling in upon itself at ever increasing speed, the spaceship crashed at last into the warp of its own making, and with a sharp burst of purple light, vanished altogether. Plutonium heaved a contented sigh.
"All done," he said happily. Ellen breathed a sigh as well, if more from relief than contentment.
"Thank you," she said. It might have been less than altruistic, but she knew that she did not mean for the salvation of the universe; merely for her own life, and that of her husband. Plutonium's smile was dazzling.
"It was our pleasure," he said, before stealing a quick look towards Neptunium. "Well, my pleasure, anyway. And now we have to leave. I've risked your lives for long enough."
"You haven't hurt us," said Paul. Somehow it seemed important to say it. There was a nervousness to their saviour; an obvious fear that his very presence might be the cause of something dreadful. Plutonium nodded.
"So far." This time he sounded sad, but he gave a little shrug that seemed carefree enough. "But if I stay... Well, it's best not to find out." Once again he looked over at his colleague.
"Is Curium very angry?"
"Incandescent," answered Neptunium. "Literally. Don't worry. Letting them die could have had repercussions anyway. You never know what Time will use as a trigger, and she doesn't want Steel grumbling at her. Now come on, before we really do get into trouble."
"You're leaving now?" asked Paul, startled from a preliminary, overwhelmed gaze out of one of the windows. "But—"
"The craft will fly itself," interrupted Neptunium, clearly anticipating the question. "It will avoid obstacles, barring freak events, and deliver you to the nearest suitable planet. I have no idea which one that will be. Astronomy really isn't my line."
"Mine either," added Plutonium, when two sets of human eyes turned automatically to look at him. "But it'll be habitable. Neptunium is extremely efficient."
"Thank you," said Neptunium, in the sort of voice that suggested agreement. "And now we're leaving. Aren't we."
"Yes, I suppose we are." He gave a sigh, and smiled somewhat ruefully at the two humans. "It's been fascinating. I wish I could spend more time with you. I wish I could hear all about you, but it's too dangerous for me to stay here. I'm too unstable."
"We owe you our lives," said Ellen. "That doesn't sound unstable to me."
"Yes, but you've seen what I can do. It's unpredictable. I generate radiation, and other forces that you can't hope to understand. I have to leave."
"Thank you," said Paul quietly. Plutonium smiled, and Neptunium gave a small, acknowledging nod. A moment later they had both disappeared. Alone in a small black box, tumbling through a gigantic universe more than a thousand years from home, the two humans stared with little comprehension at the space where they had been, and held each other tightly. Unimaginable beginnings lay ahead of them, and for now it was too much to contemplate. All that they could truly understand was that their lives had been saved by a man who broke every law of nature. A man whose hands could sculpt atoms; whose fingertips blazed with elemental power. Alone in their small black box, Paul and Ellen Cohen had a very great deal to think about. In a different realm, beyond time and space, so too did their impossible friend; a man who was not a man, but would always wonder quite how it might feel if he were.
Sapphire and Steel, any element, a rogue Transuranic element
Fandom: Sapphire & Steel
Characters: Original
Gen, c. 9000 words
A vast, ruined hulk, it hung in space, its systems destroyed beyond any hope of repair. Once home to a thousand beings, with a cargo from seventeen worlds, it was now just another piece of space junk, twisted by fires that had themselves choked to death in the emptiness. No lights burned, no voices spoke. The riotous hubbub of a round-the-clock community had been silenced in the briefest of moments. Less than a millisecond to burn out a thousand lives.
And yet, for all that it was dead and broken, for all that it drifted alone and unseen, the ship was not yet quite done with the universe. Its engines, warp-powered, and once capable of forcing that massive bulk through the very fabric of space-time, were still alive. Silent, weak, but alive. Their energy ran from them in long, dark tendrils of power, tearing open space, twisting it upon itself, creating warps for a ship no longer able to sail. Warps that were themselves warped. Warps conjured by shattered engines running fragmented protocols, with safeguards long boiled away. And through all of time those warps stretched out, writhing and churning, spiralling and splintering, driving broken shards of themselves into the very heart of the universe. Wounded, the universe bled. It would be only a matter of time before the predators began to close in.
Ellen Cohen awoke with the feeling that she had slept for far too long. She slapped at the alarm clock on the bedstand beside her, and failed to make contact. It had to be there. It always was, about five inches from her right ear; a big, round, neon pink monstrosity that one of her sisters had clearly thought a good idea as a wedding present. Three years into the marriage, and they still hadn't got around to changing it. Paul had taken to calling it Charlie, and wishing it a goodnight. To Ellen, that didn't seem like a good omen for her chances of replacing it.
"Did I drink too much last night?" slurred Paul, from alongside. Ellen smiled without opening her eyes. Paul never drank anything stronger than tea. She often teased him about it, and he would smile at her, giving as good as he got with jokes about her reckless coffee habit. The very idea of either one of them ever drinking too much made her laugh quietly, and abandoning her attempts to reach for her errant alarm clock, she flopped back upon her pillow – and hit her head on something unexpectedly hard.
"Ow." Her eyes flew open, blinking up at a murky, black ceiling. Murky? Maybe she hadn't overslept after all, and it was still the middle of the night. Except... where was her bed? Where was the bedstand? Why was there no pale yellow glow from the street lamp, which their curtains did not quite hide? A hand found hers and squeezed, and she squeezed back. This was not their bedroom. For that matter, she didn't even remember going to bed. Hadn't she been in the living room? She had a vague recollection of Mastermind, and an argument over which channel to watch next. Then... what had happened then? Having found his way to his feet, Paul helped her up, and they stood together in the murk. Wherever they were, it looked like a corridor. A dark, empty corridor, at least as far as she could see – which, she was painfully aware, was not very far. The only thing that she could hear was her breathing; and, when she held it for a moment, Paul's breathing coming from just to her left.
"It could be Stephen," said Paul after a moment. "He's always said he's going to get me back for that practical joke with the car."
"Stephen's practical joke limit is a bucket of water on top of a door. This doesn't make sense. We were... we were in the living room, weren't we? I remember Mastermind. I'm sure I remember Mastermind."
"Well what else explains it? You don't just blink and appear somewhere else!" She could just see him beside her, a little more clearly now as her eyes adjusted somewhat. He was loosening his tie with his free hand, his fingers just shades of grey against a darker tableau of black.
"I don't know." She tried to think, but the sense of dislocation had her head in a whirl. She was a scientist. She dealt in reality, in certainty, in ideas that could be tested, and then proved or set aside. She wanted to focus on the problem and come up with some ideas, but all that she could summon was a jumble of useless thoughts. She couldn't even begin to focus. She closed her eyes for a moment, but when she opened them again, nothing was clearer. The weird, dark corridor had not changed back into her living room. Whatever was going on, she did not appear to be hallucinating.
"Maybe there's somebody about?" suggested Paul, although the all-pervading silence suggested otherwise. Ellen held her breath again, in an effort to hear something beyond the regular movement of gases in her lungs. Her heartbeat, perhaps. Paul's heartbeat maybe. Beyond that, just a cavernous, engulfing silence that felt ready to suffocate her. Unconsciously she moved closer to her husband. The presence of another human being was the only source of comfort in what felt increasingly like a nightmare.
"Maybe," she said, just because the sound of her voice was better than more silence. She turned towards Paul, smiling in what she hoped was a cheerful fashion into a darkness that mostly hid his face. He squeezed her hand, possibly in answer. A moment later he began to move forward, the soft scuffing sound of his shoes one more noise to focus upon. She went with him. Doing something was better than doing nothing; and besides, neither one of them was ready to let go of the other's hand. It made little difference. The corridor stretched out ahead of them, with no sign of ending. Blackness preceding blackness preceding blackness, in a long, straight line forevermore. Ellen had no idea how long they walked. She only knew that they could walk for twice as long with no change. She knew it deep inside, where a horrible, unfamiliar feeling of panic was beginning to stir.
And then, quite suddenly, there was light. Up ahead it glimmered, very briefly, a hint of pale blue and silver that showed her, just for a moment, the walls and the ceiling and the floor; featureless, grey metal, all of them, stretching onward just as far as she had supposed. The light flickered and fluttered, like something alive almost, rather than a torch or a lamp. Then, abruptly it had gone. She blinked, readjusting her eyes, aware that something had changed. Something new had come with the light. As her eyes once again acclimatised themselves to the unwelcome darkness, she realised what it was. She and her husband were no longer alone. There were three people standing in front of them now; three people where a second ago there had been nothing at all.
"Hello?" she asked, turning what should have been a greeting into a querulous question. "I... that is, we... Can you tell us where we are?"
"Humans?" came the reply, blasting away the silence in a booming rush of sound, the word echoing along the endless, wretched corridor. "What are humans doing here?"
As an answer, it was in no way what Ellen been hoping for.
"Um," said Paul. It was the same way that he reacted when confronted with Jehovah's Witnesses or door-to-door salesmen; or anybody else that he had no idea how to handle. Ellen might almost have smiled. As a response to the most inexplicable situation she ever hoped to find herself in, it was gloriously reserved. "Is there some reason why we shouldn't be human?"
"Humans cannot be present." There was a sound suspiciously like that of a handclap – and suddenly there was light. Bright, warm, ordinary light, very like that of the day – but coming from a ball of fire that was suspended in mid air above the head of the centremost figure. Ellen swallowed hard, and tried not to stare. If nothing else, it was sure to hurt her eyes; but she still couldn't help sneaking a look at it, trying to work out what it was, and how it had been produced. It was several moments before she could take advantage of it, and get her first, proper look at the new arrivals.
They stood together in a line, the centre figure slightly in front of the other two, as though assuming a definite air of command. She was a woman, perhaps sixty of so years of age, her skin with a dark, Mediterranean complexion, her hair curling and silver. Her eyes were silver as well; a strange shade almost the exact colour of her hair, bright against the warm, tanned colour of her skin. A short woman, she nonetheless had a clear aura of authority, and it was quite clear that she had commanded the ball of fire to appear. Ellen got the impression that ordering fires about was all in a day's work for the woman; something that was not at all diminished by the pale yellow shawl that she wore wrapped about her shoulders.
The second figure was taller, almost statuesque, with jet black hair set against almost ghostly pale skin. Try as she might, Ellen could not decide if the figure was male or female; there was nothing about the powerful, rangy figure to help her choose either way. Once again she was struck by a pair of bright, silver eyes, unearthly although not necessarily unfriendly. A red flannel workshirt was a shot of normalcy, supported by faded blue jeans and what looked like a pair of steel toe-capped boots – but any hint of the familiar was unravelled by the third figure, standing on the silver-haired woman's other side, and completing the peculiar trio.
He was a man, young and black, though with eyes the same bright silver as those of his cohorts. He too wore blue jeans, this time with a shirt that matched his eyes; but it was his feet that drew Ellen's attention. The running shoes that encased them were ordinary enough, but around them the metal floor of the corridor was bubbling and melting away. As she watched, he shifted position slightly, rescuing his feet before they sank into the floor. Noticing this, the tall, second member of the party nudged him sharply, and he sighed, taking a moment to focus his concentration, to apparently prevent further melting. This task accomplished, he offered Ellen a bright smile, so warm and alive that it hit her almost like a palpable wave.
"Humans." His excitement was evident, and he stepped forward, holding out a hand. "This is fantastic. They never let us near humans. I've never met one before."
"I... I'm..." The hand was pointing in her direction, so – never one to turn down a friendly overture – Ellen stepped towards it, holding out a hand of her own. "Ellen Cohen. I'm, um... I'm a chemist from Greenwich. This is my husband, Paul. We—"
"Get back!" Moving with a speed that seemed almost impossible, the small, silver-haired woman darted forward, catching her young associate by the elbow, and hauling him out of the way. "It's forbidden, you know that."
"I'm not going to hurt her!" There was contrition in his eyes, but also something very like rebellion. "I've never met a human before. They always keep us out of the way. I've never met any organic life-form."
"With good reason. Touch her and she'll be lucky if all you do is boil her from the inside out. And don't tell me that you'd be careful." She nodded towards his feet, which were once again sinking slightly into bubbling, softening metal. "You're not capable of being careful." The woman turned back to Ellen and Paul, the latter now trying to position himself between his wife and the peculiar trio. Ellen was almost amused by the effort. The best that Paul could generally hope to defend her against was the occasional belligerent housefly. All the same – boil her from the inside out? That settled it. This had to be some ridiculous dream.
"We're sorry to have inconvenienced you," the silver-haired woman was saying. "You shouldn't be here. You weren't expected. It's all most irregular."
"Perhaps if you'd tell us where ‘here' is?" asked Paul. She frowned at him for a moment, then nodded sharply.
"We are aboard the container vessel X3306, designated Rosamund. Rendered inoperative by terrorist action seventy-six standard units ago, and abandoned as space junk. Unfortunately the warp engines are still partially functioning, and we're here to shut them down." She gestured to her companions. "These are Neptunium and Plutonium. My name is Curium. I would suggest that you leave as soon as possible. Very soon this area will no longer be suitable for organic life."
"Leave? How can we leave? We have no idea how we got here." Ellen eyed the threesome with suspicion. "And those aren't names, they're transuranic elements. Who are you all, and what exactly is going on here?"
"Wherever here actually is," pressed Paul. "Spaceship indeed. This is 1984 for goodness sakes."
"Look out of the window if you don't believe us," said the tall, androgynous stranger, offering him the politest of smiles. He looked about. The light hanging in the air above Curium was sufficient to show the blankness of the walls. There were no windows. The tall stranger's smile turned knowing, teasing almost, and reaching out, he, she, or whatever the correct designation of a being named Neptunium could ever hope to be, pressed a hand to the dark metal alongside them. There was a faint glow, radiating first from the hand, and then from the metal itself – and then, suddenly, the metal was metal no longer. In its place was an uneven, roughly hand-shaped transparency. Paul wandered over to it, reaching out to run his fingers slowly over the transmuted patch.
"It feels warm," he said to Ellen, in wonder. She was tempted to tell him to keep away from it, but curiosity – and not a little irritation – were for the time being helping to keep her fears at bay. Doing her best to keep an eye on the three strangers, she also tried to get a look through the window. Whatever or wherever was on the other side, it was utterly dark. She couldn't see a thing.
"We could be anywhere," she said. Paul was leaning close to the window, his breath failing to steam up whatever material it had been fashioned from. There was a dark shape just visible, which might have been the long, misshapen form of a giant spaceship, sprawled like a vast shadow across the blackness of space. Certainly it didn't take much imagination to make it so. All the same, it was hardly proof. He frowned, and shrugged his narrow shoulders.
"It's not home, that's for certain," he said, as though any other explanations might be equally possible. Neptunium was frowning, looking from one human to the other before raising a point.
"It is possible that they were caught up by the warp, isn't it? Space-time is being churned up. It's possible that objects have been picked up and redistributed. If they should happen to get too close to a region of temporal instability..."
"Yes, it's possible." Curium frowned, silver eyes seeming almost to glow. "Well, that certainly complicates matters."
"Temporal instability?" echoed Ellen. "You're really serious about all of this, aren't you. Space warps, and... you're honestly trying to suggest that we're been... we've been somehow zapped through space and time? It's ridiculous. Any moment now I'm going to wake up and find out that I dozed off in my chair."
"It's not a dream, Ellen." Paul turned away from the unhelpful, black nothingness beyond the window, to offer her what was clearly intended to be a supportive smile. "Or at least, if it is, it's mine, not yours. We can't both be having the same one."
"Then we've been... somebody has... Is this Candid Camera?" She turned her gaze towards the youngest of the three, Plutonium, who had so far displayed the greatest inclination to be friendly. "What's really going on here?"
"Space and time are being torn apart by a malfunctioning warp generator. It probably brought you here." He was moving closer to her again, and she could not help but notice that both Curium and Neptunium were edging nearer themselves, as though to cut him off. His smile was bright and warm, and it was clear that he was delighted to have been addressed by her, but he did seem to take the hint, and hung back. "You'd have been somewhere else one minute, and then here the next. It's basic Physics, really. Although it's unlikely that you'd remember it as being that sudden. Without a vessel to limit the effects, it would have been quite traumatic. Effectively you'd have existed at both points at once. Sort of infinitesmally long, and existing in every point in time all at once, and then snap!" He clicked his fingers, and white hot sparks flew from the contact, making the air around them crackle and fizz. "Suddenly you'd have been here."
"It would certainly explain why I woke up feeling like I'd been through a meat grinder." Paul looked out of the window once again, then back to Ellen. "You're the scientist, Ellie. It sounds like something out of Doctor Who. Could it happen?"
"Warp generators? It's 1984, Paul. We're still trying to figure out how to drive across town without polluting the planet. You think we can manage to build engines like that, and still have a world to go back to?"
"Yes, but is it 1984? Any more, I mean?" He looked towards the threesome – the one who had conjured fire out of thin air, the one who had created a window where there had been none, and the one whose feet continued to melt the metal floor – and hesitated. "What is the date?"
"In Earth years it's 3251." Neptunium pulled a large silver watch from a pocket, and consulted it with a frown. "August. Not that they call it that anymore."
"And this conversation has gone on for long enough." Curium glared at her two colleagues, holding it just long enough to suggest that there was more than irritated vibes passing between the three of them, then looked back to the two humans. "As I said, you should leave. We have to close down those engines before irreparable damage is done to space and time. You can't be here when we do that."
"But if you close down the engines, how will we get back?" asked Ellen. Plutonium smiled his warm, bright smile.
"3251 isn't so bad." If it was supposed to be reassuring, then it was not; at least to a woman who had no idea whether she could even believe in the reality of her situation, let alone accept that her life had been irrevocably changed. She glared at him; at all of them, with their bright silver eyes and peculiar habits. This wasn't some elaborate joke, she could see that now. It certainly wasn't Candid Camera. That left the increasingly thin hope that it was a dream, and she had never seriously considered that. A space warp? Malfunctioning engines? The horrible thing was that it did make a certain sense, when she allowed herself to consider it. If an engine were capable of creating a warp in space – a seriously considered conjecture in her own time, although not one in any way possible to test – then it was quite possible, even probable, that one damaged in the right way could continue to tear open space-time, uncontrolled now and random. Her scientist's brain rolled over the idea, dragging up old Physics lessons, old arguments with scientists of other disciplines, old articles read, and conferences attended. It wasn't her field, but chemistry was not her only interest. Slowly her shoulders sagged.
"Ellie?" Paul was beside her immediately, dark eyes flashing strangely behind his glasses as they caught the light from Curium's impossible lamp. For a moment she could see three sets of silver eyes reflected in the lenses, staring back at her alongside her husband – then suddenly they were gone. She blinked, and looked back towards the middle of the corridor. It was empty. The light still hung in the air, the window still sprawled in its untidy streak across the wall, but the three people who had created them had gone. For a moment she was glad of it; glad of the moment alone with her husband. Then, almost immediately, she was afraid.
"The engines," she said, holding the hand that had gently gripped her shoulder. "Look out of the windows. Can you see where the engines might be? We have to get there."
"The engines? Didn't sound like a very safe place to be." He turned towards the windows alongside her, and they both peered out into depthless night. "They didn't seem to think it was very safe either."
"And about to get even less so. They're here to fix the engines, remember? And they said that we couldn't be here then. We have to stop them, Paul. At least until we can find some way to get off this ship."
"You believe them then?" He was looking at her very directly; looking for confirmation of his own suspicions as much as anything, she thought. She nodded.
"I don't see what else to believe. It's crazy, but... but what other explanation isn't? We have to get away from here, and right now, they're the only help we've got. I don't know about you, but even if this ship does have lifeboats, I don't know how to go about finding them, or getting them to work."
"We really are believing in all of this, aren't we." He turned back to the window, impossibly wrenched from the fabric of the wall, and stared out of it – or possibly just at the window itself; it was impossible for Ellen to be sure. "3251."
"There's still a chance we'll wake up." She leant against him, and he put an arm around her. "But we have to assume that we're not going to."
"I know. But I can't help with the engines. They'd be at the back though, right? So that gives us a fifty-fifty chance. Or we could split up."
"We are not splitting up." She leaned forward, so that her head was almost touching the impossible window. The night beyond was not inclined to give her any clues. "Maybe there'll be signs somewhere. Come on. One direction is as good as any, so we might as well carry on the way we were going. We'd better hurry though."
"Right with you." His arm slid from her shoulders, and he held out a hand instead. She took it, holding it so tightly that she was quite sure it must hurt. He didn't complain. Instead he held her in return, almost as hard. They didn't speak again. Instead, as one, they began to run forward. The darkness of the endless corridor met them, and Curium's strange, floating light was soon little more than a memory, left hanging where it had appeared, so far behind.
"That was rude," said Plutonium, when the threesome rematerialised. Curium gave him a sharp look.
"What would you have had me done? Stand around having a proper conversation, while the universe unravels outside the window? They're not here."
"They are," objected Plutonium. This time the look that she gave him went rather beyond plain sharp.
"They are not here. They can't be. They're not supposed to be, there's no logical reason for their presence. Besides, what are we expected to do about it? We're not allowed within four square miles of an organic being; and that's just Neptunium and me. You're a whole different story."
"I wouldn't hurt them." He spoke quietly, his silver eyes downcast. Neptunium heaved a sigh.
"None of us would do it on purpose, Pluto. It's just the way things are. The way that they've always been. We have our talents, and we do our jobs, but those job don't involve organics. Look at you, you're boiling your way through the deck again."
"Cheap metal," he grumbled, and extricated his boots from the bubbling, molten mixture around them. "I wouldn't do that to a person."
"No, you'd just cause massive cellular damage with a handshake, or inadvertently initiate nuclear fission and cause them to explode." Curium frowned. "Or would that be implode? Either way it would be in direct contravention of the rules. You're a loose cannon, Plutonium. Accept it."
"We still shouldn't have disappeared on them like that. They're lost. You heard them. They're not even from this time."
"Which makes them dangerous," said Neptunium. "Just the sort of thing that Time likes to make use of. Two beings lost like that, more than a thousand years from home. It can cause huge instability. Goodness knows we've got more than enough of that to deal with right now."
"So we're just going to leave them?" asked Plutonium. Curium sighed.
"What else can we do? Practically speaking? We're not allowed to be here while they are, but if we don't get this job done quickly, none of us are likely to be here for much longer. I don't know about you, but I'd rather reality didn't get torn to shreds."
"Don't over-exaggerate," chided Neptunium. Curium glared.
"Ever dealt with a misfiring warp engine that's systematically mincing space and time before, have you?" There was no answer, and she nodded. "No, precisely. Me either. I'd rather assume the worst, and be sure that we all live to be glad of it. That's a big universe out there, with a lot of life in it. This is one old spaceship that should have been retired decades ago. We sacrifice one to save the other, and everybody's happy."
"Except—" began Plutonium, only to be silenced by a steely glare.
"They're not here," reaffirmed Curium. Her expression softened. "We are who we are, Pluto. We do what we do."
"And the reason we're kept away from organics is so that we don't kill them," he snapped. She held his gaze, as cold and steady as he was hot and wild.
"No. The reason we're kept away from organics is because things tend to happen when we're not. Atoms do strange things. Tissues mutate. Bodies corrupt. It's not just that we kill them, it's what we do to them in the process. The last time an organic being met one of our kind, he tried to be polite and considerate too. He brushed against her in passing, and her cells turned autonomous and tore her apart – and then tried to do the same to every other organic being they could get hold of. They're still trying to track parts of her down, and so far she's reached seventeen worlds in thirteen solar systems." She sighed. "Organics are complicated. Weak and easily disrupted, but also..." One hand waved in the air, seeking words that likely as not didn't exist. Theirs was a world outside the language of most cultures. "But also awkward, difficult, and plain bloody-minded. Organics are trouble. Look at us here! Two of them in the way, and we're delaying a job that's set to save everything."
"She does have a point," said Neptunium. Plutonium nodded slowly.
"Maybe. Maybe if we asked them, though, or at least told them how to get off the ship?"
"And how do they get off the ship?" asked Curium. His face fell. "Precisely. It's not like we can transport them, is it. And even if there are any lifepods on this thing that still work, which I doubt, given that it's nearly old enough to warrant a visit from Sapphire and Steel, I certainly couldn't tell them how to operate one. And I very much doubt that two civilians from 1984 could manage it alone, even if one of them is a scientist."
"Don't they have spaceships in 1984?" asked Plutonium, his voice gone small. Neptunium smiled.
"After a fashion. Sorry, Pluto. Let's just get this job done, yes? Plug the hole, stop the engine, save the universe. You'll feel better then."
"I doubt it." He broke away from the group, heading towards the waiting engines, standing towering above them just a few feet away. They were silent and dark, just like everything else on the ship, but all three transuranics could feel the power that still ebbed from them. It was a power that would have incinerated any ordinary life-form; a sheer energy, somewhere between ethereal radiation and a pounding jackhammer formed out of the fabric of space, created to blast open roads for the dead ship. Plutonium put out a hand, and the air around it glowed. Sparks fizzed and spat from the ends of his fingers, and he tilted his head on one side, then nodded sharply, and walked straight up to the great powercell that fed the entire ship. In life it would have resembled a giant, purple jewel; now it was blackened and cracked. He pressed his hand into it, and with a flash of bright, white light fit to blind any troublesome organic, the cell turned a cold, pale blue. A faint glow illuminated the immediate vicinity, a shadow of the fire that would have burned within the cell before.
"I can give us half an hour," he said, watching the cell carefully as he spoke. "Beyond that, there's nothing that I can do. The atomic matrix is too corrupted."
"Half an hour will be more than enough." Rolling up the sleeves of her sunshine yellow blouse, Curium headed towards the engines. She ran a hand across the nearest surface, nodding her head slowly as she detected the miniature traces of residual energy inside. "Neptunium, take the left. I'll take the right. Power up, Plutonium."
"I don't like this," he told her, and she nodded.
"Objection noted. I don't need your approval, though. We can do this without you if we have to."
"No you can't. Not within half an hour." He hissed out a sigh of irritation, silver eyes showing his uncertainty. "All right, powering up. But I... I don't like this. We're killing them anyway, aren't we? Closing down these engines will destroy the ship, which will destroy the organics. One way or the other, what's the difference?"
"This way's quick," Neptunium told him. "They won't even know that it's happening. Mutate their DNA, or rupture their cells, or irradiate them, or any one of a hundred other possible effects of long term exposure to us, won't be anywhere near so quick. Get to work, Pluto. Do you really think that any of us like this situation?"
"No, I guess not." He stared towards the engines, watching the trails of energy bleeding out in every direction. To most eyes they were invisible, but not to his. He could see them spilling out, working their vicious magic on the fabric of space. He could even detect the disruption; hear the wailing cries of a universe under torture, and see the insidious presence of Time as it tried to twist the damage to its own ends. It made his head spin – but so did the plight of two confused humans, lost in a labyrinthine corridor so impossibly far from home. He shook his head to clear it, and planted his feet firmly on the ground. This time when the metal plating bubbled and fizzed, he made no effort to stop it.
"Ready?" asked Curium. He drew in a deep breath, and clenched both of his hands into fists, pressing them against each other. Bright white lights began to glow, deep within his fingers, pulsing out with the regular rhythm of a heart, charging the molecules of the stale air, and sending excited, illuminated ions skittering away across the room. He nodded. So did Curium and Neptunium. Each of them reached one hand out towards their partner, and their own fingers began to glow as well. Slowly at first, but with building frequency, Plutonium began to vibrate.
"Perfect!" As her hand began to glow, Curium spread out both of her arms, pressing the other hand against the engines. The glow passed through her in pulse waves, and she spread out her fingers on the engines, a frown of concentration painting deep lines on her face. The pulsing glow highlighted them, and lent her silver eyes a curious illumination, making them seem to flash in strobes of blue and white. Several feet away, Neptunium was doing likewise, with an equally intense focus. One pale white hand pushed itself through the metal casing of the engine, altering the molecular structure of the machine in order to gain entrance.
"Nearly there," muttered a voice hoarse with effort and focus. "I think we'll need your help, Pluto. There are too many materials involved."
"It's a patchwork monstrosity," grumbled Curium, her own voice showing a similar strain. "Fixed up by too many engineers for too long. There's steel and iron and silver and platinum... If we have to unravel every molecular sequence we'll still be here in a century."
"Don't exaggerate," Plutonium told her. "Besides, we've only got half an hour before the power cell loses its charge again. The engines are going to need that power to fulfil our purpose."
"You don't say," she shot back, with an impressive ladling of sarcasm. Neptunium smiled.
"If you two put as much energy into saving the universe as you do into needling each other, most of our operations would be over and done with in a matter of seconds. Pluto, give me a hand, for goodness sakes."
"I'm powering the pair of you, aren't I?" He came closer, despite his grumbling, pressing his still outstretched hands against the engines. The glow emanating from his fingers spread across the engines themselves, and the metal began to vibrate with the same low frequency as his body. Molten metal spat itself about the room, white hot, red hot, and other colours less easily explained. Zinc became copper, became cobalt, became iron, became manganese – a cascade of disintegrating elements burning themselves into one another as Plutonium's glowing hands burned ever brighter. Neptunium frowned all the harder, struggling to maintain control and perform the more specialised, neater transmutations whilst the other two bulldozed their way forward. Finally, with a fountaining of purple sparks, Curium stepped back, slapping molten metal and stray atoms from her hands like dust.
"Finished," she said; and as though in answer, a great groan ran through the ship. Very slowly, but with gathering speed, the decking beneath their feet began to inch towards the engines.
"Yes, I'm finished too." Neptunium also stepped back, fingertips still bright with energy. "Good work everybody."
"So that's that then." Plutonium stepped back rather more slowly, the fierce glow and vibrations beginning to fade away. "The ship will just concertina up on itself, and it'll all be over."
"You make it sound like nothing," said Curium, clearly stung. "It's a brilliant plan. This massive ship, all folding itself up into the engines, which will also fold up on themselves. All that metal, compacting into a tiny size. It's the best and safest way to shut down the engines, and it'll form a super-heavy plug that'll seal the tear in space, more than long enough for the universe to heal itself." She smiled brightly, hands clasped behind her back. "Genius. Pure genius."
"Yes, all right. Let's just get out of here, shall we, before you implode under the weight of your own brilliance." Neptunium looked over to Plutonium. "Come on. I'm sure there's another mission waiting for us."
"Yes, of course." He smiled, and with a clap of the hands, vanished. Curium and Neptunium exchanged a look.
"He'll be alright," said Neptunium. Curium nodded.
"I hope so. He's such a wild card. So little control. I hadn't anticipated that extending to his emotions as well as to his work. It's just never arisen before."
"It'll pass. It's just the novelty of it, as much as anything. Organics are such a rarity in our work. Come on. Let's get out of here as well, before we get compacted up with the engines. That would just be plain embarrassing."
"Very true." Curium smiled, and with a last, brisk nod of satisfaction, she disappeared. A moment later, Neptunium followed. Soon the only sound left was the deepening groan of a spaceship beginning to die.
Ellen was sure that the darkness was deepening. She wasn't sure quite how that was possible, since it already seemed as though the rest of the universe had ceased to exist. She could see nothing, even Paul, hurrying along so close at her side. His hand was holding hers, and his arm occasionally brushed against her as they moved, but still the darkness was so total that she found herself doubting his presence. And, yet, somehow it seemed to be growing darker. She reached out with her free hand, grasping the tangle of fingers that was her first, wrapped up together with Paul's. He slowed to a halt immediately, his other hand joining the mixed-up finger-ball, and gripping in a way that was oddly reassuring.
"Are you okay?" he asked her. She smiled at that. They had no real idea of where they were – or even if they were anywhere at all. The darkness left them unable to be sure of anything. Her world had narrowed down to a touch of hands, and a confused memory of the closing theme of Mastermind, in a sitting room in Greenwich. Had that sitting room ever even been real? Had she ever really been a chemist, bustling around a science lab, or had this darkness been the only reality that had ever existed? Whatever the truth, she felt a long way from okay.
"I'm fine," she lied, and the hands alongside hers squeezed briefly. He understood. Knowing that made her feel at least a little less disconnected. If he was real, if he was here, going through this with her, and understanding how she felt, then she at least knew that something existed, somewhere.
"Why did we stop?" he asked, but the voice that answered him was not hers. Instead, with a brilliant rush of blue-white light that made them both stumble backwards, Plutonium appeared in the corridor, and beamed cheerfully at the pair of them.
"I don't know," he said, as though he had been a part of their conversation all along, "but I'm glad that you did. If we'd collided, you'd probably have exploded." He frowned then, and shrugged. "Or something unpleasant anyway. They tell me that I mustn't ever touch an organic, and I don't really like to experiment, just in case."
"I... I think I'm quite glad of that." Blinking furiously, Ellen peered at him awkwardly, through eyes that were complaining bitterly about the sudden burst of light. "Where did you come from?"
"The engine room. I'm supposed to be leaving, but I couldn't. It didn't feel right. I'm not really sure what I'm going to do instead, but..." He shrugged again, and this time flashed a smile that she was almost tempted to return. If her head hadn't been in quite such a whirl, she might well have done. He might be weird, and he might only be adding to her headache and her disorientation, but she couldn't help being strangely drawn to him. There was a childlike innocence to him, even with the inexplicable weirdness that was his calling card. Extracting his feet from the molten mess that he seemed to forever be making of the deck, he nodded politely to each of them.
"It's Ellen, isn't it. And Paul? I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with the names. Or... or with anything really. I understand mechanics and Physics and metals and things like that. Elements and fundamental forces. Names and people... well, anyway." His head cocked on one side. "Is it true that you move through time from day to day, and spend all of your life moving forwards? Never backwards or side to side? Do you really have to travel from place to place, instead of just..." One hand waved in the air, then suddenly he was gone, reappearing several feet behind them. "Instead of just... being there? How do you do it? Your lives must be so slow. So frustrating."
"We are how we are," said Paul. Plutonium blinked at that, as though the comment had struck a chord, and at his reaction, sparks fizzled from the ends of his fingertips. Both Ellen and Paul took a step back, but he waved a hand.
"Sorry. I'm ionising the air. It happens."
"Not to most of us," said Ellen. He smiled again then, and with a clap of his hands, sent tiny streaks of lightning leaping from finger to finger, and from hand to floor.
"I am how I am," he said, in an offbeat echo of Paul. "I wish I could come with you. Talk to you, and understand. I'd love to know how it is to live that sort of life. In a linear progression. But I shouldn't even be here now."
"Why are you here?" prompted Ellen. There were a hundred and one other questions that she would rather have asked, but he did not seem to have a mind well suited to answering questions. It bounced from one subject to another, as though it burst out in as many directions as the sparks around his fingertips, or the bubbles of molten metal around his shoes. There was a wildness to him, an uncontrolled energy that made her remember what he had said about them exploding if they touched him. Perhaps it was because she had already been through so much, or perhaps it was something to do with the dazzling brilliance of his smile, but she found that she was not afraid. Not of him. Of the rest of the universe, perhaps.
"I came to save your lives," he said then. "Listen. Can you hear? I think that our ears work in the same way, although mine are probably better than yours. A groaning sound. Creaking and wrenching, like the spaceship tearing itself apart."
"I can hear something," said Paul, with a frown. Ellen wasn't sure, although there was something, possibly. Something very faint and far away. "What is it?"
"It's the spaceship tearing itself apart." Plutonium did not seem especially concerned by this fact. "It's folding up on itself, to be more precise, although obviously that means that some of it has to come apart. Come apart and fold up, and compress itself. It's quite wonderful really, but it does mean that if you stay here you'll be compressed to a millionth of your natural size, probably within the next five to ten minutes." He frowned, tilting his head to one side once again, this time clearly in order to listen. "Seven minutes and thirteen seconds. Sorry, that's not as precise as it sounds. I'd need Neptunium to get a truly exact reckoning."
"Compressed?" echoed Paul, from a throat that sounded painfully dry. Ellen felt suddenly cold. In a long, dark corridor that was already as cold as the metal it was fashioned from, that was cold indeed. Her fingers clung all the tighter to Paul's, and he pulled her against him, into a confused hug that did nothing to make either of them feel better. Strange, she thought, that this time neither of them even considered doubting the news. They had gone far past wondering if any of this was a trick. "Why?"
"Because it's necessary." The frown again. "Or presumably it is. We couldn't think of anything else. It's to stop it all, you see. To make it very small and very heavy and very intense, and to plug the hole that it's made. It wouldn't be so bad, I suppose, to be caught up in the middle of that. You'd be saving the universe."
"I think the ship can save the universe without us," said Ellen, with feeling. "How do we get out of here?"
"That's the bit that I'm not sure about." Plutonium moved a little closer – close enough for Ellen to be able to smell the molten metal splashed across his shoes. She stepped back, wary of all the earlier talk about what might happen. She wouldn't be at all surprised at such destructive side-effects, from a man whose very presence seemed to crackle with energy. He had a fitting name. She wondered if he had been born with it, or if it meant something else.
"Are there life boats?" asked Paul. Plutonium nodded.
"Sure to be. The crew didn't abandon ship. They didn't have a chance. So the escape pods will still all be here. The question is whether you can reach them in time. Or operate them. I might be able to, I suppose, but I hate to think what would happen to you shut up in a cramped space with me. I'm not sure that the escape pod would survive it either." As though to illustrate his point, he extricated his shoes, once again, from a molten hole of their own making, stamping his feet slightly in irritation, to rid them of beads of metal. "And there's hardly time for a lesson."
"What then?" asked Paul. Plutonium edged closer, head once again cocked on one side. He was obviously thinking, and they could see the moment when the answer came to him, for the sparks that it brought, quite literally, to his eyes.
"Fission!" he said, pronouncing the word with just enough of an ebullient flare to lend it a most appropriate fizz. "With me being me, and the universe being as it is, I can build you an escape pod." He spoke with a confidence that was quite encouraging, until he ruined it all with an impressively deep frown. "I think. I'd rather I had more than six minutes, I admit."
"Fission?" echoed Ellen. He smiled then, eyes glowing a bright, hot silver that was almost painful to behold.
"It's easy really," he said, with perhaps a little too much volume, as though to cover up for his uncertainties. "The air that you breathe is made up of building blocks. Easy enough to turn argon into iron. We only need to raise the atomic number eight places. Shame there's not so much of it. Still, I can co-opt the nitrogen as well with a bit of thought." The frown, once again, drew deep lines between his eyes. "Well, I probably can. It easy enough to turn iron into steel, anyway, with a little added carbon." He began to clench and unclench his fists as he spoke, and white hot flashes, tiny pinpricks of a ferocious brilliance, sparked around them in mid air. "Borrow the carbon from the carbon dioxide, releasing oxygen to add to the combustion, and—" There was a bright, blue flash and a small sliver of metal sprang into existence between his fists, clattering onto the decking with a surprisingly loud noise. Ellen picked it up.
"This isn't steel," she said. "It's not even iron. I think... copper?"
"Yes. I may have overshot slightly." He offered her a smile that was strangely charming. "It's hardly an exact science. Well, no. It's exactly an exact science, isn't it. It's just that it's not one I'm very good at. I'm more... big explosions. They don't use me for the precise work."
"Just keep trying," encouraged Paul, and Plutonium did just that. Each flash in mid air caused his entire body to light up, highlighting it enough to show the bones inside, a bright and solid blue glowing within him. He was absorbing the energy from each cracked atom, reasoned Ellen; the force of dozens upon dozens of nuclear explosions flowing through him as though they were nothing more than blood. Slowly, surely, there was steel in his hands; flowing through his hands; forming a wall that sealed off one end of the corridor. Time was running out, though. She did not need to look at her watch to know that.
"It's incredible," she said quietly, earning a breathless smile from the dark, glowing face. Energy crackled in a halo around him as he worked, but for all his enthusiasm, and his astonishing power, mistakes still occurred. Every so often a flash of some other metal charged through his steel wall – copper, nickel or chromium; and once or twice the wild, white hot flare of a magnesium burst. It was a spectacular vision to witness, but Ellen could feel the decking beginning to rumble beneath her feet, and knew that it was not caused by Plutonium. Somewhere behind her, she thought that she felt a stirring in the air, like the awakening of a distant wind.
"It's not going to be quick enough, is it." Paul, standing so near, spoke so quietly that she barely heard him. She felt her hand reaching out for his once again, without truly being aware of the movement.
"No." The word vanished into the background noise – the rumbling; the growing volume of creaking, rendering metal; the rushing of a building wind as the air was torn away into space. Paul's hand squeezed hers nonetheless, showing that he had heard. They moved even closer together, watching Plutonium work, neither one of them wanting to turn away and see what was happening behind them. How long could they have left before they suffocated? Would suffocation happen before they were crushed by the embrace of the ship? Ellen forced her mind to focus on Plutonium's spectacle, rather than think of other things. There were worse ways to die, surely, than this? It would be quick, and she would go marvelling at a true wonder of science. All the same, she felt herself tremble, and not from the vibration of the floor and the walls.
"Plutonium, you're a bigger fool than I imagined." The voice barked out of the emptiness behind them, and all three beings jumped. Ellen and Paul whirled, startled out of their determination not to turn around. Behind them a whole new kind of darkness beckoned, through cracks torn as the ship collapsed upon itself. Standing between them and descending mass of metal, was Neptunium, black hair ruffled by the growing wind.
"Neptunium!" Plutonium was caught by surprise, and his lack of concentration showed as a bright ripple across his wall of steel. Titanium to vanadium to chromium, before he found himself again, and steadied his work. "You found me."
"Of course I found you. It was hardly difficult to guess where you'd gone." His colleague neared, eyeing his handiwork with obvious exasperation. "You do realise you have less than two minutes left? To build an entire spaceship? And how exactly are you planning to power it? To produce air for them to breathe?"
"I thought I'd move them myself, and work on the fiddly bits when we'd got out of the way." He shifted awkwardly, and fumbled with his fingers a little, making the wall ripple and wave. Neptunium raised a set of very expressive eyebrows.
"We all know what happens when you try ‘the fiddly bits'. Things tend to explode, and colourfully."
"But you're here now." Plutonium raised his own eyebrows, smiling all the while. It was a charming smile, and had the wind not begun to tug, insistently, at her back, Ellen might have smiled with him. Neptunium gave a heavy sigh, that spoke of frustration, and perhaps a little fondness.
"Power me up," was the answer, but although the tone was heavy, there was no sign of unwillingness in the voice. Plutonium's smile grew, and with a powerful, resounding smack, his hands clapped together, and all at once what remained of the corridor was lit by an astounding glow.
"Stand back," Neptunium warned the humans, then stretched out both arms, and began to work. Metal weaved itself out of emptiness; shapes formed, blended and twisted; colours awoke, and rippled their way through each other; molten plastics enfolded delicate wires. And then, suddenly, the vibrations around them were gone. In a perfectly cubic box, all wall and window and oddly pulsing light, the four of them stood, suspended in the wildness of space. Outside, falling in upon itself at ever increasing speed, the spaceship crashed at last into the warp of its own making, and with a sharp burst of purple light, vanished altogether. Plutonium heaved a contented sigh.
"All done," he said happily. Ellen breathed a sigh as well, if more from relief than contentment.
"Thank you," she said. It might have been less than altruistic, but she knew that she did not mean for the salvation of the universe; merely for her own life, and that of her husband. Plutonium's smile was dazzling.
"It was our pleasure," he said, before stealing a quick look towards Neptunium. "Well, my pleasure, anyway. And now we have to leave. I've risked your lives for long enough."
"You haven't hurt us," said Paul. Somehow it seemed important to say it. There was a nervousness to their saviour; an obvious fear that his very presence might be the cause of something dreadful. Plutonium nodded.
"So far." This time he sounded sad, but he gave a little shrug that seemed carefree enough. "But if I stay... Well, it's best not to find out." Once again he looked over at his colleague.
"Is Curium very angry?"
"Incandescent," answered Neptunium. "Literally. Don't worry. Letting them die could have had repercussions anyway. You never know what Time will use as a trigger, and she doesn't want Steel grumbling at her. Now come on, before we really do get into trouble."
"You're leaving now?" asked Paul, startled from a preliminary, overwhelmed gaze out of one of the windows. "But—"
"The craft will fly itself," interrupted Neptunium, clearly anticipating the question. "It will avoid obstacles, barring freak events, and deliver you to the nearest suitable planet. I have no idea which one that will be. Astronomy really isn't my line."
"Mine either," added Plutonium, when two sets of human eyes turned automatically to look at him. "But it'll be habitable. Neptunium is extremely efficient."
"Thank you," said Neptunium, in the sort of voice that suggested agreement. "And now we're leaving. Aren't we."
"Yes, I suppose we are." He gave a sigh, and smiled somewhat ruefully at the two humans. "It's been fascinating. I wish I could spend more time with you. I wish I could hear all about you, but it's too dangerous for me to stay here. I'm too unstable."
"We owe you our lives," said Ellen. "That doesn't sound unstable to me."
"Yes, but you've seen what I can do. It's unpredictable. I generate radiation, and other forces that you can't hope to understand. I have to leave."
"Thank you," said Paul quietly. Plutonium smiled, and Neptunium gave a small, acknowledging nod. A moment later they had both disappeared. Alone in a small black box, tumbling through a gigantic universe more than a thousand years from home, the two humans stared with little comprehension at the space where they had been, and held each other tightly. Unimaginable beginnings lay ahead of them, and for now it was too much to contemplate. All that they could truly understand was that their lives had been saved by a man who broke every law of nature. A man whose hands could sculpt atoms; whose fingertips blazed with elemental power. Alone in their small black box, Paul and Ellen Cohen had a very great deal to think about. In a different realm, beyond time and space, so too did their impossible friend; a man who was not a man, but would always wonder quite how it might feel if he were.
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Aw, poor Pluto wanting to be friends with humans, but not able to because he'll blow them up (very you, though:)). And you left me waiting for the twist until the end - how could you?;)
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