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Think, Louise, think! Acid, fire, what?

Termites, beetles, dry rot. But how could she use them? If she turned herself into a termite she'd bring Jack inside her again.

The navy blue tide swept towards her. She dropped to the floor, taking on human shape again but thinking granite, thinking solid, eyeless, fissureless granite. She'd wait him out; wait him out until she came up with a plan.

Laughter—muffled but growing. They were climbing all over her. Even through the rock she could sense their tiny feet.

An idea. Could she project her will? There was so much wood in the museum—the floorboards, joists, panelling, even the exhibits. She focussed upon them, imagined them crawling with beetles and dry rot, tendrils of fungus running through the entire structure, termites nibbling up through the floor joists, pushing into the door.

She formed two eyes of transparent quartz in her granite head, used rock hands to clear them of swarming Jacks and started to run, her feet thundering over the vibrating floorboards. She saw the door, imagined it crawling with termites and ran towards it. She'd wedge herself against it and trap as many Jacks as she could between her and the termite-infested door.

She pressed against the door and hoped. Time passed. Was it working? Wedged against the door, she could barely see a thing. She turned her entire body into crystal and shrank inside it. A tiny Louise standing in the stomach of a glass giant, spinning around to see what was happening around her.

The tiny Jacks were being eaten but others were growing—six, seven, eight feet tall and one of them was advancing on her with a sledgehammer.

She grew back into the solid quartz Louise and turned. She'd fight them to a standstill and beyond. Whatever Jack could do, she'd match. With interest.

She blocked the swing of the sledgehammer with her left arm and threw herself at the giant Jack, pushing him back against and through a 'test your strength' machine.

High score.

"Come on!" she shouted. Something be in the wood. Something come out and take a bite out of Jack.

A door materialised in the wall to her left. It juddered opened, pushing one of the slot machines to the side. Nick appeared.

"This way!" he shouted. "Come on you've done it."

Had she?

She let go of Sledgehammer Jack and fought her way towards the door; clubbing and shoving and kicking. Could it really be over? Plan B. Jack can't be hypnotised but he can be distracted. That's your job: keep Jack busy while I take care of the others.

And extricate John.

Her John. Was he now free?

A rotten floorboard gave way under her left foot. She sank with it, her left foot dropping eighteen inches. Several Jacks piled on top of her. So close. The door was only yards away. She couldn't fail now. She thought water, she though fountain, she thought through that door.

Then she was flying, a jet of water rising from the shattered floorboard and arcing up and over Nick's head.

She'd made it.

Somewhere behind her a door slammed shut, and around her a white-walled cell materialised. She was out.

Louise moved swiftly away from Pendennis's bed. A small cloud joined her in the middle of the cell. Only the one small cloud?

Panic. "Where's John? Didn't you get him out?"

"Not here, Lou. We'll talk in the corridor. Follow me."

She followed, through the wall and out into the main corridor. There was something twenty, thirty yards away. A smudge, a mirage—was it John?

She rushed past Nick. It had to be John. A small cloud of fuzzy lights.

"John," she said. "It's Louise. Is that you?"

He didn't answer. She turned to Nick. "What's . . ."

"He can't hear anyone but me," said Nick. "I thought it safer. Which is why I brought him well away from Peter and Jack."

Relief. And surprise—when had Nick learned how to play it safe?

"Okay, John," said Nick. "Can you hear me?"

"Yes," came the sleepy reply.

"Louise is going to ask you a few questions. You can hear her voice now. Go ahead, Lou."

She questioned him thoroughly, listening to both the answers he gave and the way he gave them. It had to be John.

"Ask him about his teachers at school," said Nick interrupting.

Louise was surprised. She'd already asked seven questions. How many more did he want?

She questioned John about their school. Asked him to list as many teachers as he could and the subjects they taught. His memory was better than hers. Several she'd forgotten until John's description brought them back into memory.

"Now ask him about the house he lived in. And his family."

She complied, straining to remember enough details then resorting to asking questions about John's teenage music collection.

"Anything more?" she asked Nick, wondering if there was something he wasn't telling her.

"No," he replied. "I've heard enough."

"Okay, final question from me then John. Do you ever want to be President?"

John laughed. "Me? President? I'm a flyer, Lou. That's all I've ever wanted to be."

She turned to Nick, jubilant. "That's John."

It was Nick's turn. Out-of-Body Flight Training 101.

"Okay, John," said Nick. "Follow me just like you did before. Remember, we're in a simulator. We're not really passing through the ceiling. It's just the tech guys' idea of fun."

Nick rose slowly, watching John all the time. The small cloud started to follow.

"Up we go," said Nick, "through the roof and . . . out into the sky. Notice the 360 degree all-round vision. It takes some getting used to but imagine the advantage it'll give our pilots in aerial combat."

So far so good. John was hovering a few metres above the Upper Heywood roofline.

"Now, let's take the new fly-by-wire system through its paces. Remember, the system's set up to react to your thoughts. You think where you want to be, and the software does the rest. You got that?"

"Roger that."

Roger indeed, Nick wondered if he should adopt a call sign. Tango Charlie something, or Wing Co. or Mad Dog . . .

"How about Rasputin?" suggested Louise.

So much for shielding his thoughts. "Okay, John, we're going to start now. See that hazy cloud moving in front of you?"

"Yes."

"That's my plane. Apologies for the crap visuals but the tech guys haven't gotten around to that yet. But imagine it's an enhanced F-84 and you're my wing man. Everywhere I go, you go. And remember you don't have to worry about G forces, how fast you go or how tight a turn you throw. The system's set up with inertial dampeners. All you've got to do is fix your sights on me and follow. Got that, John?"

"Copy that, wing leader."

"Okay, I'm going to start off slow, throw in a few practice turns and see how we go."

Nick pulled away at a fast walking pace. John tucked in behind and to the left. Louise took the right. Three hazy clouds sliding along the Upper Heywood roof and then accelerating, gaining altitude, swinging left then right, up then over.

It was working.

"Okay, John, I'm going to start taking this baby through its paces. See if you can hang on."

He accelerated away, blurring Upper Heywood into the distance but flying higher than he usually did, away from the distractions of houses and trees, giving John as uncomplicated a maiden flight as he could.

Ahead, the Michael and Mary lines gilded the horizon in gold and flame. He swung towards them, maintaining his altitude, carving a long, sweeping turn until they were all pointing south-west. He slowed to check on John, wondering how long he'd stay under. Would the excitement of the flight cause the hypnotic bond to weaken? Or would it be therapeutic—John thinking he was back behind the controls of a plane after eighteen months of hell?

"Still keeping up, John?" he asked.

"Still waiting for you to show me some speed, sir."

Nick accelerated.

"This is not a race," hissed Louise. "If we lose John . . ."

"Don't worry about me, Lou," said John. "I've been doing this all my life."

Below them, the leys snaked off to the horizon like a braided molten river. Intersections came and went—Glastonbury, Avebury—and then others they hadn't seen before. New territory. Beyond their usual turn off to the Rectory apartment, the Michael and Mary lines stretched all the way to Land's End, passing through the Cheesewring and St. Michael's Mount. He wondered what they'd be like. As spectacular as Avebury? Something new?

And what would the lines do at Land's End? Stop? Plunge into the sea? Shoot off across the Atlantic at wave height?

He hoped for the latter. A ley line highway all the way to America. The lines would pass just south of the Florida Keys if they maintained the same trajectory.

Time for another check on John. He slowed. "How's it going back there?"

"Like a Sunday afternoon stroll in the park."

Nick picked up the pace, skimming over moors and patchwork farms, straining to see the first line of blue on the southern horizon.

And there it was, sweeping in from the left. Mount's Bay and the Channel. And there was St. Michael's Mount, rising out of the bay like a fairy tale castle carved out of rock. A fairy tale castle only accessible at low tide.

Unless you could fly.

The leys separated. One disappeared to the right, the other headed straight for the island. They followed the latter; tumbling down the headland, over the painted cottages in their pastel blues and pinks, over the long, wide shelving beach, and across the narrow stretch of water to the mount. The ley rose on the other side. They rose with it, climbing the almost sheer cliffs and the stone slab walls of the priory that sat astride the summit.

Up and over they went. A second ley burst out of the cliff wall on the other side. The companion line—it must have travelled the last few miles underground. The two lines plunged seaward in a sinuous embrace and then turned, setting a parallel course along the bay's shallow sea bed towards the next headland, looking like two shimmering torpedo trails. Magical.

Nick raced across the bay, dropping to a few feet above the waves. Below him the two leys shimmered and rippled along the sea bed, their brilliance tempered by five maybe ten fathoms of murky water.

The leys dipped and dived, split and converged. Then rose—leaping out of the sea in tandem like spawning salmon—up, up and over the headland, pushing the sea behind them, embracing the greens and browns of field and woodland.

Nick followed, tying himself to the line on the left. Its sister line veered off to the right. But not far. Nick could see it flashing through the tree-line like a necklace of setting suns, paralleling their course for a mile or two before sweeping back to join its companion. The two lines entwined then suddenly . . . disappeared.

Nick stopped. They were on the edge of a cliff. But not any cliff. They were standing on the edge of the world. Or so it appeared.

"Is that cloud?" asked Louise.

He wasn't sure. It could be spray but that was impossible. If this was Land's End the sea had to be more than two hundred feet below and if it was fog why only here? Why not back in Mount's Bay or over the headland?

He stared at the sight. It was like standing at the top of Niagara Falls except this wasn't a river cascading over the cliffs but two leys. Could they have caused this? Was this higher dimensional spray sent roiling into the atmosphere as the leys plunged into the Atlantic?

He looked along the cliff line. It was difficult to pick out through the mist but they were on a promontory between two bays. Two bays lapped by cloud, no ocean anywhere in sight. He looked down. The leys followed the cliff face in a vertical plunge for ten, twenty feet and then disappeared into a shifting, billowing cloud so dense that even their light was consumed.

"We need to talk," said Louise. "Off air."

"This'll be local, Lou. I can't see it stretching right across the Atlantic."

"It's not that, Nick. It's something else."

She sounded worried.

"Okay, John, we're going to pause the simulation for five minutes to check some readings. You'll use this time to rest and won't hear anything until I say 'westward ho.' Now what is it, Lou?"

"Have you felt anything?" she asked. "Like we're not alone?"

"We aren't alone. We've got John with us."

"No, it's more than that. Can't you feel it? It's like someone's watching us. It's the same feeling I had when we first met the colonists."

Panic. He found himself scanning through the fog, back along the leys, above, below. Had the colonists returned to look for their friend?

Or was their friend already here? Was he waiting in the mist?

He backed away from the cliff edge.

"How long have you had this feeling?" he asked.

"From the moment we stopped."

"Not before?"

"No. Can't you feel it?"

He couldn't. Could he? He cleared his mind . . . waited . . . and waited. Nothing. Not even the slightest sense of foreboding.

"It'll be this place, Lou. This'll be the first time you've stood at an intersection of two leys."

It had to be that. The feeling of not being alone. The feeling of presence, of spirit. The same feeling that brought ancient man to these places, that drove him to locate his temples here . . .

"But don't you feel anything?" asked Louise.

"It affects people differently. You feel a sense of presence; I'm bowled over by the view. Look at it, Lou. Isn't it just like standing on the edge of the world staring into the abyss? Can't you picture some ancient druid pausing here and looking over the edge just like we're doing now and wondering whether to follow the leys down into the bowels of the underworld?"

"You're not suggesting we go down there?" said Louise.

"Why not? It might cross the Atlantic. It might stop off at Lyoness or Atlantis or . . ."

"You are unbelievable! An hour ago you were telling me how time critical everything was. How we had to get John to Florida before the Colonists came back. Now you want to swan off to look for Atlantis!"