Lee was disappointed. She’d wondered aloud whether they were going to where the Nissa lived, which might be somewhere worth seeing. Instead, they ended up in a vacant lot on the outskirts of London. The space was edged with barriers and barbed wire, but the vivid incursions of graffiti showed how little of an impediment these were. And the lot’s current occupants had just stepped in out of thin air, Lee included, which was over the pay grade of most security contractors. A handful of Stig’s relatives had already been waiting for them.

“Our home is no good for you,” Stig explained shortly. He was tugging open the neck of his filthy shirt, dressed in shabby human clothes again. Similar garb for Lee and Mal. Striding out of thin air was one thing, but striding out dressed for the Palaeolithic was plainly beyond the pale. The London summer was shocking after the Birdmen’s winter world, and Lee was sweating already, but they kept handing her more layers, even suggesting she bundle up over her dinosaur hides.

“No good?” She had thoughts of disease, poison, the Nissa hailing from a radioactive wasteland, but then Stig said, “Those who have Kay’mal Khan know we want her. They have used a machine, where she is, that works against the frequency of us and our place.” He sagged, as though the effort involved in translating was exhausting. “We are steeped in our world. You are not.” He nodded at Mal. “So, we open a door for you, you meet Kay’mal Khan, and we open another door to bring you all back.”

Lee nodded, nodded some more, and then said, “You know we’re not superheroes, right? I mean, Mal, maybe a little, but I’m just someone who writes blogs on animals that don’t really exist for a living.”

“It will work or it won’t,” Stig said, shrugging and looking away. If it was a Nissa figure of speech, it was an uninspiring one. “There is someone there you will meet. He will help you. He too works to save the universe.” At that, he looked her in the eye for once. “And it’s your universe, too. You have the right to help.”

The right to help. Perhaps that was a Nissa thing, too. It suggested a fundamentally different approach to civic responsibility than Lee was used to.

“I mean, yes,” she heard herself say. “I really want to rescue Dr. Khan from the rats, but…you say the universe is ending. All our branches are breaking into each other, because something’s gone fundamentally wrong, right?”

Stig gave a little upward nod.

“Well, how can even the smartest person in our world help, when you’re obviously so much more advanced than us? How can we possibly add anything?”

Stig touched her arm gently, although his latent strength could have crushed her bicep to jelly.