The word NO was appearing all over the walls and ceiling, repeated in a multitude of sizes and drawn at various angles, formed from lines of gleaming ice. NO NO NO NO NO.

He blundered out of the chamber, cannoning into Sabreur and Matchell. Their host lurched, throwing them into a wall that was abruptly bristling with sharp lances of frost. Cam shuddered around them, faltering in the air, and Lucas imagined ice building on its carapace, freezing the colossal creature in the iron-hard grip of winter.

They were falling, and he knew the sea they dropped towards would become a frozen tomb the moment they struck the waves. He, Rove, Khan, the cavemen, none of them would ever get the chance to put anyone’s plan into action. The best intentions of the greatest minds were all moot.

I

When the time came to say their goodbyes, Lee actually felt a little tearful. Given that she and Mal had contributed precisely nothing to the high-level science, and had instead spent the time renewing their relationship, she suspected that they’d been the only ones having even a halfway good time. As a result, they might be the only ones who’d miss this weird interlude.

“There won’t be any magic, you know? Afterwards. It’ll just be us,” she said. But her fellow humans, apart from Mal, of course, didn’t seem to care.

“We could go with the Nissa,” Mal suggested. “Last chance.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I want what you want.”

“No, but seriously. You’ve…seen some crazy things, we both have. Are you going to be happy with just one Earth?” It was a serious question. Lee knew Mal, after all. She wasn’t someone who took limitations well.

Mal looked thoughtful at that. “I’m going to have to be, aren’t I? Whichever Earth we pick. I don’t want to live with the Birdmen forever, that’s for sure. And the Nissa…I like them, I like Stig. I reckon we’d be okay there, but…it would be a bit dull, maybe, all that community service and no small talk?”

Lee nodded, and felt a huge wash of banal and domestic relief, to which she would never admit.

“If there’s anything you wanted closure on, though, now’s your chance,” Mal said, half joking. “Any secrets of the universe you were wondering about. Because in a short while there won’t be anything but us, as you said. And we humans are pig-ignorant, apparently.”

Lee frowned. “Actually, there was something…”

She went to Cam’s avatar, because the Nissa had already jumped ship. The weird, humanoid shape hung there like a manikin, jumping into crawling animation when she ducked into its chamber.

“Lee,” it said, its face emerging from the writhing surface of its head.