Instinct drew Pratisha out onto the balcony around the uppermost deck of The Endless Sunrise, the accommodation level, the moment she heard The Traveller's voice, even though his warning suggested she'd be safer in her room...

...and she very nearly knocked Irinati flying as the alien girl did the exact same.

"Oh!", exclaimed the Earth-woman, reaching out to catch the girl. "I'm sorry - I... I'm not used to not being the only other person on board..."

"That's all right", Irinati replied, regained her balance all by herself. "It's not my intention to get in the way. I hadn't thought I might not be The Traveller's sole travelling companion..."

"Don't worry", said Pratisha. "You may yet get your wish."

"Please, there's no need to do anything differently to accommodate me", insisted Irinati. "I'm not trying to push anyone out..."

The girl's words tailed off, and she looked up into Pratisha's eyes. "This isn't about me", she murmured. "There's something else. Something that began long before I arrived..."

Pratisha backed away, eyes narrowing. "Don't", she growled. "My thoughts and feelings aren't for anyone to pry into!"

"I don't need to", assured Irinati. "I've become... sensitive to aura, of all kinds, and yours - it's..."

"Growing dim?", Pratisha finished for her, sighing. "I'd been trying to convince myself that I was imagining it, that I was just home-sick, but you've just proved I was only fooling myself."

A confused mumble crept from Irinati's lips, but before Pratisha could try and seek clarification, the voice of The Traveller boomed a warning, the sound filling every corner of the vessel's interior. "Brace yourselves!", he shouted. "We're crossing the boundary into Radical Space... now!"

The world around the two women fell silent, became motionless - even gravity appeared to be momentarily absent, their feet parting company with the balcony, the reality caught up with them again in an explosion of sound and activity, a thunderstorm erupting just outside the ship's hull as the women, suddenly possessing weight again, dropped back onto the deck. "Hate it when it does that", muttered Pratisha. "Let's get back to the Central Core. Safest place on the whole ship...!"

The Endless Sunrise seemed to be rolling down a spiralling slope, much like one of her own walkways, and descending to the Central Core was something of a challenge for Pratisha and Irinati, their earlier conversation forgotten as they struggled to avoid injury on their descent. The wild tilting and rolling of the ship came close to throwing them off the edge of the walkway several times, but by edging down as though descending a mountain-side, they managed to reach the Central Core unharmed, sliding through the entry arch down a steeply sloping deck.

"Glad you could make it", The Traveller called out, over his shoulder, "and just in time, too. Now grab hold of something - it's going to get rough...!"

"And this isn't?", exclaimed Pratisha, hooking her arm through a hole in one of the arching roof supports.

"Welcome to Radical Space", responded The Traveller, sounding so calm that anyone who did not know him would have doubted his sanity.

"So, what is 'Radical Space', might I ask?", enquired Irinati, wedging herself between two control consoles.

"A region of the Interdimensional that's been stretched out of shape, and is in the process of 'snapping back' into its previous shape", he answered. "Very dangerous to navigate - sometimes too dangerous, but there are regions of relative calm deep within. Normally, they don't last very long, but I'll wager my friend will find a way to make one at least semi-permanent. "A smart girl, that one..."

The adventurer quickly tapped several regions of the flight control console, then scurried under it, bracing himself against the supporting framework. "Hold on!", he shouted. "Here it comes..."

The shaking, the thunderous noise ceased, abruptly and completely. "Now, that was unexpected", The Traveller began, relaxing a little...

The Endless Sunrise suddenly lurched to one side, as though she had struck something, sending The Traveller flying from his hiding place, sprawling across the floor of the Central Core. "Ow", he muttered, then lay in silence, staring up at the ceiling, waiting for something more to happen...

There was nothing; the vessel had come to a complete stop, her outer shell motionless. "We appear to have landed", murmured the explorer, picking himself up, and returning to the controls. "However, that shouldn't be possible."

Pratisha joined him at the console, even though she knew there was nothing she could do there to help, not one single piece of information on display there that she could hope to understand. "Never a good sign when you speak like that", she remarked. "You may as well tell us - what 'shouldn't be possible'?"

"We seem to have run aground on some kind of solid mass", replied the adventurer. "Null pockets shouldn't last long enough for any significant volume of matter to aggregate - and that means that that is -"

***Attention, invaders! You have trespassed upon the sovereign territory of The Space Goddess! Submit for judgement, or be destroyed where you stand!***

"- just the kind of artificial phenomenon I've been looking for", The Traveller continued. "At least we're in the right place."

"And this 'Space Goddess' is your friend?", asked Pratisha. "She doesn't exactly sound like she is."

"Technically, we are friends - but it isn't that simple", answered the explorer. "When we first met, we were both very different people; her more than me..."

Several years previously...

The Traveller was glad he didn't really need sleep, for as the hours dragged on, there seemed to be no end in sight. There were still signs of resistance with the fortress field, teleport pulses, dimensional portals, even indications of small-scale combat, but nothing decisive - nothing that said that one battle, the battle for freedom, had been won, and preparations were underway for the real struggle. The struggle to survive the inexorable advance of the unspeakable entity that had emerged from the reality-defying realm of The Lost Gods...

Once he had fought back the horror of what he had accidentally unleashed, The Traveller had set about doing all he could to limit the damage The Lost God could do. By bringing The Endless Sunrise as close to the fortress field tunnel as he could, the adventurer could subtly influence the path it followed, and therefore steer The Lost God away from inhabited worlds wherever he could, but that was sometimes more than his vessel could safely achieve, and more than once, The Traveller felt the bile rise in his throat as the creature cast its shadow over verdant, living planets, leaving behind terrible scars, great swathes of their surfaces left twisted, or desolate.

It gnawed away at The Traveller's soul to admit he simply didn't have the power to do anything more, but that didn't make him feel any better. The only chance there seemed to be for him to achieve anything would be as the Lost God approached the source of the fortress field - its presence, that close to the field generator, had a definite chance of disrupting the barrier just enough for him to attempt to manipulate it directly without blowing it wide open and unleashing the hideous entity upon the rest of the Multiverse. Now, if I could turn the field inside-out, he told himself, I might just be able to "herd" the damn thing back to its universe of origin...

The adventurer was so wrapped up in waiting for his moment that it nearly caught him by surprise when it came along. All signs of resistance began to converged on the fortress field's point of origin, and there were signs of high-intensity energy discharges - power cosmic force "jacketed" with a highly-focussed, highly organised psionic energy pattern; someone inside the barrier was exhibiting considerable control over the very "life-blood" of the cosmos, the spark that ignited stars.

"Hold fire", muttered The Traveller. "Hold fire, and see what's heading your way! That power could be vital to stopping your worlds being consumed...!"

A ripple passed along the fortress field; the tiniest fluctuation in the barrier's control mechanism - exactly what The Traveller had been waiting for. The explorer leapt at the chance, fingers flying over the computer interface console as he set his plan in motion, trying to link the computers of The Endless Sunrise with the control matrix of the fortress field generator...

Unable to interface, reported the ship's electronic "brain". Control buffer occupied. Attempting to re-route... re-routing failed. System-wide take-over in progress...

"No...", gasped The Traveller. He had had his chance, and missed it; not through carelessness, or a lack of knowledge - he had simply been far too slow, another machine stepping in before he, still just a living being despite his longevity and parental heritage, could even react. Even so, there was still a glimmer of hope, in that it appeared that the computer hijacker was attempting to do exactly what he had intended - use the fortress field against The Lost God, which was now moments away from breaking through in the universe from which the barrier had originated.

The adventurer steered his vessel closer to the barrier one last time, flaring the dimensional drives as he had done before to influence the fortress field. If he could "trip up" the reality-defying monster, delay its advance only by a few seconds, he would be buying the resistance vital time to complete the modifications to the fortress field generators, and send the unspeakable horror howling back to its realm of madness...

The lights inside the ship flickered. The rotating outer shell of the craft "stuttered", with an unsettling mechanical grinding sound that set The Traveller's teeth on edge. He knew all the little noises his creation might make, all its little quirks, and that sound was a warning that the ship could withstand no more punishment. Cursing under his breath, The Traveller navigated away from the surface of the barrier, his part in the immediate drama now, apparently, played to its finish, but he kept himself ready to intervene - centuries of experience had taught him that this was the time when the unexpected could do the most damage.

All sensor returns from the universe now straining under the presence of The Lost God ceased, the vibrations in the fortress field itself swamped by the reality distortions caused by the monster's presence. All The Traveller could do was watch for the barrier itself to change, to show some sign that the resistance had succeeded in turning the fortress field into a last-ditch defence against the celestial cancer now imposing itself on their universe...

Fortress field fluctuations increasing, announced The Endless Sunrise. Barrier integrity has been compromised. Field inversion in progress.

"They did it", sighed The Traveller, his head bowing forward to touch the control panel. "Mother be praised, they did it..."

The barrier fell away, its decaying energies forming a net that dragged the rampant Lost God back along its path of devastation as its native universe hungrily absorbed what was left of the fortress field, now that the tunnel between realities was no longer anchored at its point of origin. I may have missed the battle, The Traveller told himself, but the very least I can do is make sure this is absolutely the end of it.

The adventurer steered his interdimensional vessel into the region previously imprisoned by the fortress field, then altered course to follow the collapsing energy field, using his craft's engines to ensure that the remains of the force-field retained enough strength to ensure the monster-deity could not escape. He was going to follow the beast all the way back to the hell from which it had escaped...

It was then that he detected something quite unexpected. There appeared to be a second entity trapped within the imploding tunnel; a life-form caught in the reality-warping wake of the struggling Lost God. The Traveller did not know whether this unfortunate soul was hero or villain, combatant or innocent bystander - they might even be the perpetrator of the whole attempt at conquest - but the adventurer felt compelled to do something. I either save a life, or help bring an invader to justice, he thought. Not exactly what I'd call "payback" for the trouble I caused, but it's a start.

Again, The Endless Sunrise stuttered and groaned, but The Traveller paid all that little attention as he brought his vessel ever closer to the rapidly receding end of the collapsing tunnel, fighting the multi-spatial turbulence, cast out in a great, wild wake behind it. The task before him was all that mattered, and he knew his creation could weather the storm, his great intellect would prevail - a life hung in the balance, and The Traveller refused to fail.

The present...

"Here we go..."

The external hatch of The Endless Sunrise opened, and The Traveller, Pratisha and Irinati stepped out into a roughly-hewn tunnel, ceiling, walls and floor composed of some kind of curious, porous red-black rock. The passage was completely dark, illuminated by the light from the ship, or The Traveller's pocket-watch-like Omnisensor, and dusty fragments of rock crunched underfoot like something between gravel and packed snow...

"Low density compressed matter", remarked The Traveller, picking up a piece of the rock, and watching it crumble to powder between his fingers. "Loose like this, it's incredibly fragile, but when the particles cross-bond as a solid mass, it's surprisingly strong - that's why we haven't fallen through the floor yet."

"This place may look dead", murmured Pratisha, a flick of her wand of elegantly carved wood conjuring up a small cluster of glowing bubbles, floating in mid-air, that gave the women their own independent source of light, "but it doesn't feel dead..."

"I sense it too", added Irinati, and when The Traveller looked round at her, he noticed that the delicate oval of silver on the girl's forehead was glowing. "An old power... the first power...?"

Pratisha nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, that's it", she replied, smiling. "The Fire of Life. The Breath of The Sun..."

"Cosmic energy", added The Traveller. "Not exactly a surprise..."

The adventurer moved ahead of the two women, the Omnisensor held out in front of him, the holographic display changing from moment to moment as he swept the device back and forth, slowly. After a few seconds, he stopped, snapped the lid of the scanning tool shut with a much-practised flick of the wrist, and called out to his companions: "We're not alone", he declared. "There are coherent cosmic energy foci in the walls, approaching rapidly..."

The dusty rock behind and to the sides of The Traveller and his party suddenly bulged inwards. Pratisha and Irinati immediately feared they were about to be crushed, but rather than pinching the passage shut, the bulges separated from the walls, condensing into spheres of something resembling dark glass, cold yet still eerily liquid... almost alive.

The spheres stretched upwards, nearly touching the ceiling, then the columns of glassy liquid started to take on more recognisable shapes, each becoming a crude figure, with arms and legs, but no fingers, toes, or features...

The Traveller retreated to his friends, a walking glassy statue stepping out of the darkness ahead to herd him into the grasp of its unspeaking fellows. As the glass-creature leaned closer to him, the adventurer held up his hands, and quite calmly spoke to the bizarre entity, uttering the words "Take me to your... Goddess."

...to be continued...