He snatched at their fingers, trying to hold on …

And then the blue rushed towards him and met the red coming the other way and he was toppling forward onto the road.

He heard Kirsty say, ‘I’m covered in ice!’

Johnny pushed himself to his feet and stared at his own arms. Ice crackled and fell off his sleeves as he moved.

Yo-less looked white. Frost steamed off his face.

‘What did we do? What did we do?’ said Kirsty.

‘Listen, will you?’ said Yo-less. ‘Listen!’

There was a whirring somewhere in the darkness, and a clock began to strike.

Johnny listened. They were on the edge of town. There was no traffic in the dark streets. But there were no fires, either. There was the muffled sound of laughter from a nearby pub, and the chink of glasses.

The clock went on striking. The last note died away. A cat yowled.

‘Eleven o’clock?’ said Kirsty. ‘But we heard eleven o’clock when we … were … on the downs …’

She turned and stared at Johnny.

‘You took us back in time?’

‘Not … back, I think,’ said Johnny. ‘I think … behind. Outside. Around. Across. I don’t know!’

Tom had managed to get to his knees. What they could see of his face in the dusk said that here was a man to whom too much had happened, and whose brain was floating loose.

‘We’ve got seven minutes,’ said Johnny.

‘Huh?’ said Tom.

‘To get them to sound the siren!’ shouted Kirsty. ‘Huh? The bombs … I saw the fires … it wasn’t my fault, the phone—’

‘They didn’t! But they will! Unless you do something! Right now! On your feet right now!’ shouted Kirsty.

No one could resist a voice like that. It went right through the brain and gave its commands directly to the muscles. Tom rose like a lift.

‘Good! Now come on!’

The police station was at the end of the street. They reached the door in a group and fought one another to get through it.

There was an office inside, with a counter running across it to separate the public from the forces of Law and Order. A policeman was standing behind it. He had been writing in a large book, but now he was looking up with his mouth open.

‘Hello, Tom,’ he said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘You’ve got to sound the siren!’ said Johnny.

‘Right now!’ said Kirsty.

The sergeant looked from one to the other and then at Yo-less, where his gaze lingered for a while. Then he turned and glanced at a man in military uniform who was sitting writing at a desk in the office. The sergeant was the sort of man who liked an audience if he thought he was going to be funny.

‘Oh, yes?’ he said. ‘And why should I do that, then?’

‘They’re right, sergeant,’ said Tom. ‘You’ve got to do it! We … ran all the way!’

‘What, off the down?’ said the sergeant. ‘That’s two miles, that is. Sounds a bit fishy to me, young man. Been round the back of the pub again, have you? Hah … remember that Dornier 111 bomber you heard last week?’ He turned and smirked at the officer again. ‘A lorry on the Slate road, that was!’