The Traveller looked to each of the women in turn. Pratisha gave a familiar half-shrug, which was her way of saying "Do you really need to ask?", and Irinati tore her gaze away from the Tanusov Complex long enough to nod vigorously, but Ravani, a seasoned adventurer in her own right, surprised everyone by voicing some reservations.

"Officially, Irinati is under my supervision", said the Mystalornan, "and she has only just regained her freedom from the artefact..."

"You make it sound as though I was some kind of prisoner", interrupted the girl. "It just wasn't like that. I may have seemed to be... slow before, but that was the shard trying to protect us from him. The weaker we seemed, the less he expected from us. I may still have gaps in my memory, Ravani, but I'm not helpless."

"Maybe not", admitted Ravani, "but you still represent a significant asset..."

The next intervention came from Pratisha. "Here we go again..."

"...a significant asset", reiterated Ravani, "in that she in connected to Jaceel, the source of the shards, and a potentially powerful ally in the fight against the enemies of Dominion and Mystalorn."

"Jaceel needs my help", said Irinati, "and I'm more than willing to give her that help - and now I see why she recommended that I should ask for The Traveller's assistance."

The girl's eyes crept back to the brilliant interweaving streamers of the Tanusov Complex. "This is why", she declared. "I don't yet see where the shards are, but in time, I will. I want to go - I must go, to see whether I have read the Complex correctly. If I have found The Traveller's friend, I can find what I am searching for."

"I never said you couldn't go", muttered Ravani. "I just hoped to impress upon certain people the importance of keeping you safe."

"Consider me impressed, in more ways than one", responded The Traveller. "My safety record is essentially unblemished."

"Meaning...?", queried the Mystalornan.

Pratisha intervened. "Meaning that those who travel with him start off safe, and end the day safe - but the time in between is another matter completely."

A vaguely amused snort escaped from Ravani's nostrils. "Very well", she said. "I shall leave Irinati in your most capable hands..."

"You're not coming?", asked The Traveller. "You're welcome to join us - it's not as though we'll be short of space."

"Thank you", replied the Mystalornan, turning away, "but I must decline. After all, there has to be someone back at home to come to your rescue, don't you think?"

Ravani walked out onto the landing, but she paused at the start of the walkway leading up to the exit, and looked back. "And when you return, sister", she said to Pratisha, "feel free to seek me out, should you wish to talk."

"Shukriiyaa", replied Miss Westerly, bowing, uttering her native tongue's word for "thank you".

The Traveller smiled inside. He was glad his companion felt able to discuss her feelings with a fellow spell-caster - another woman - and the adventurer thought it best to let the matter remain private, until Pratisha chose to share her problems with him, at a time and place that were comfortable for her. Instead, he turned his attention to preparing The Endless Sunrise for departure, a task that seemed to come more easily than before - it was as though the vessel knew it was going in search of a former passenger...

"Are you ready?", he asked Irinati, as he made ready to close the ship's portal to Dominion Five. "If you're not absolutely sure... I won't be offended if you change your mind."

"If I spend too much time thinking about it, I'll never be ready", she replied. "Go - go now!"

The Traveller tapped the door control, and the doorway in the outer hull of the ship melted away. Slowly, that outer shell began to turn - and when the explorer looked round to confirm by sight that all was well, he didn't miss that Pratisha's eyes seemed to linger at the top of the walkway, where the door has previously been. It spoke more than words ever could...

The explorer turned back to his controls, monitoring the ship's functions as she began to move away, sliding back into the Interdimensional. Another adventure was underway, and The Traveller let that be his sole concern - there would be time for talk later; the right time.

Several years previously...

The Traveller lost all track of time, as he watched the situation involving the interdimensional "tunnel" unfolding. He kept both his main data screens and a miniature projection of the Tanusov Complex under constant scrutiny, never setting foot outside the Central Core for fear of missing the slightest fluctuation in the barrier now imprisoning dozens of worlds, or any sign that something in the "Empire of Madness", down in the deepest vectors, had been disturbed.

So far, all the adventurer had learned was that the energy barrier that was "burrowing" through universe after universe was, without doubt, Horde technology - a "fortress field", designed to shield a single planet while the invaders established a "beachhead" in a new universe, but which in this instance had malfunctioned, forming the "tunnel" that had pierced so many universes. Now that he knew exactly what he was facing, The Traveller believed he could penetrate the barrier, perhaps even disable it...

...but the possible consequences were too dire to consider. Any creature that rose from the "depths" in response to the intrusion into its native realm by the tunnel could not be allowed to roam free, contaminating vast areas of space by merely passing through them, inflicting its reality-poisoning existence on beings and worlds beyond number - and that same tunnel also represented the best chance of containing such an entity. Sacrifice tens, maybe hundreds of billions to save a billion billion others?, thought The Traveller. No - there has to be another way.

The barrier was effective against all forms of penetration not intended to disrupt it or penetrate sufficiently to allow a vessel to pass through, but The Traveller knew there were ways to get around all kind of barriers, some far more simple than others. Events inside the fortress field caused subtle "echoes" in its surface, ripples that could be detected, analysed, interpreted...

The Traveller deactivated the duplicate of the Tanusov Complex, and replaced it with a simulation of the "fortress tunnel", and the reality-planes with which it intersected. He was sufficiently familiar with Horde technology to see discrepancies in the energy patterns of the fortress field - the ripples he'd been seeking - and gradually, the subtleties of those patterns began to make sense; shapes, movements...

Teleport traces, residue from interdimensional leaps..., observed the adventurer. Some Horde, some not - technological, magical - all indicating a lot of activity. It looks like whoever generated the fortress field is busy trying to secure the area within, and the local population are putting up a fight.

"Good for them", he murmured to himself. "Now, let's see what I can do to help..."

A fortress field, he recalled, was generated by the disconnected drive core of a Horde battle-ship, one of their moon-sized "world-ships", and that meant there had to be the remains of one of those vessels somewhere, drifting powerless in space, but still carrying a wealth of computer data, locked away inside, that any resistance movement might find particularly useful. "Sunrise, carry out a close proximity scan around the enclosed zone, tuned to scan for Horde technology", he instructed his vessel's main computer. "In the meantime, I'll be trying to work out just why this field hasn't formed properly - there has to be something that's causing the tunnel effect, and I don't think it's the Lost Gods. It has to be something closer."

A Horde Planetary Isolation Shield wasn't something you just threw energy at, hoping to pierce it. The field was designed to absorb most kinds of energy, using incoming energy to fortify itself, but there were some types of energy it could not "feed" upon, which either scattered harmlessly across the barrier's surface, or at high enough intensities could actual start to affect it. "Magic, perhaps", pondered The Traveller, "or maybe psionics..."

Horde vessel detected, the ship's computers suddenly reported. Feeding co-ordinates to main console. Low-level auxiliary power operations only; significant external and internal damage detected. Multiple system failures. Vessel dangerously unstable...

The Horde ship was little more than a wreck, and The Traveller didn't immediately see any way to use it to help those trapped inside the fortress field, but he wasn't prepared to just walk away. Something drastic, and possibly dangerous, was called for. "Give me projections of the local temporal vectors", he instructed The Endless Sunrise, followed by an under-the-breath "I hate time travel..."

High vector stress detected announced the computer. Temporal insertion is not advised.

That came as something of a relief to the explorer. Time travel often presented more problems than it solved, and intricate puzzle-web just waiting to unravel, just as it was certain to do were he to attempt to go back and interfere with events as, or even before, they began. "There has to be something I can do, rather than pick up the pieces", he muttered. "Something - anything...!"

The Traveller called up the data files he had compiled on The Horde and their technology, scanning through them for the smallest glimmer of hope. Weapons, ships, combat tactics - the armed forces of The Horde were a mix of recruits from conquered races, slaves, robots, bio-engineered troops...

Each world-ship had a bio-engineering facility onboard, and in an absolute emergency, a bio-trooper would be activated to serve as a "caretaker" for a ship, or other facility, all the necessary operations information downloaded into the trooper's specially-prepared brain. "All the secrets of The Horde", murmured The Traveller, almost afraid to speak in case his breath somehow blew out this precious spark of potential. "But what if the keeper of those secrets went rogue...?"

Resistance was already underway, he reasoned, and there was no way to tell exactly who was involved - who was to say it wasn't a minion of The Horde turned against his masters...?

"Sunrise: is there a possible window for a trans-temporal transmission?", enquired The Traveller, his hands already flying over the data input panel in front of him.

Affirmative.

"Maximum data capacity?"

"Four point four iso-blocks."

It wasn't much, but The Traveller was used to working under strict limits. With a modest degree of data compression, he could compile a self-actuating "invader" program that would trigger the "caretaker" procedure, and override the ethical suppression bred into the bio-trooper recipient of the caretaker protocols - it wouldn't necessary change the course of history, or even stop whoever had set up the fortress field, but he hoped it would make a difference. Instinct came into play as the adventurer scanned the time-lines, looking for the right time to send his "poison dart" off to its target - too soon, and it would be detected by whoever took the drive core for the fortress field; too late, and the "caretaker" would never be "born", cold, lifeless flesh in a powerless bio-chamber...

Transmission complete reported The Endless Sunrise, several heartbeats later. Delivery to time vector point seven eight of one standard period negative...

"Point seven eight", sighed The Traveller. Good, he told himself. If the readings are right, that's just before the fortress field was activated, and it looks like I haven't done any damage -

Temporal phase misalignment detec...

...ted. Diverting power to temporal shielding...

The Traveller froze longer than the half of a second for which he had found himself unable to sense the passage of time. The vast majority of living beings viewed such incidents, encountered now and then during interdimensional travel, as momentary lapses of memory, or the brief failure of concentration known to some as a "day-dream", but the adventurer recognised them for what they were, and he did not underestimate their significance. Something had changed - history had... trembled.

"Cancel that power divert", he instructed the ship, grimly. "It's already too late."

Consulting the multi-dimensional map of the region, The Traveller called up the recordings of the energy fluctuations he had detected earlier, the ripples in the surface of the barrier caused by events within. Everything stored in the data matrix of The Endless Sunrise matched the explorer's memories, which were contained in a brain that insulated against the "flinches" and "shivers" of time; he hadn't managed to erase the efforts of the local resistance, or anything else quite as drastic, and the temporal off-shoot he had inadvertently created was already losing momentum, falling back into the dominant time-stream, the fate of the vast majority of those divergent time-lines brought into being by trivial events...

All seemed to be returning to normal, but still, The Traveller felt uncomfortable. Once again, he called up a projection of the Tanusov Complex, and immediately, he regretted that decision, for the Equation was displaying an alarming discrepancy that, when fed through the navigation system, drew his attention to the far end of the "tunnel"... the domain of The Lost Gods.

"Oh no", whispered The Traveller, horrified. He had, he hoped, provided the peoples imprisoned within the fortress field with at least something in the way of reinforcements, but at the price of attracting the attention of one of the most terrible entities in all the Multiverse. Somewhere in the depths of stagnant space, one of The Lost Gods was stirring...

The present...

The Traveller shuddered, and tried to shake off the awful memories of the day space and time cruelly reminded him of the limitations of his powers, the painfully narrow scope of his foresight. He had succeeded in his intention, he learned some time after the event - not only had he "given birth" to a hero, a warrior who led the imprisoned races to freedom, but that warrior had brought the champions of several worlds together, organising them into a cohesive force for good - but the consequences had been dire, indeed. One of The Lost Gods had been woken by the temporal turbulence, and as the monstrous godling stampeded blindly along the fortress field tunnel, several worlds in its path had suffered, fertile land becoming desert, oceans convulsing into mountain ranges, desolate regions transformed into unspeakable writhing forests...

Realising what he had done, The Traveller had waited for the fortress field to be deactivated, his intention to do all he could to ease the suffering of those who had fallen under the shadow of the Lost God's reality-spanning wings, but when he steered his vessel into the disaster area, he discovered something quite unexpected - something else to change his life forever.

And now, the legacy of those events was catching up with him again...

"There you are", he murmured to himself as the navigation system finally deciphered the last of the data produced by the Tanusov Complex's interaction with Irinati, and provided him with the co-ordinates for he had been waiting. "Radical Space, eh? Now, that's rather adventurous of you - and hardly a surprise, my dear."

The explorer activated the ship's internal communications array, switching it to open broadcast, so that his voice would reach every corner of the inside of The Endless Sunrise. "Ladies? You better hold on to something - it's going to get rough...!"

...to be continued...