The Long War

found in the morning, coming awake as a crewman very, very gingerly unwound his Captain from the snoring trolls.
    Breakfast was somewhat embarrassing. Every last crew member knew how she’d spent the night. But she never had been one for standing on her dignity.
    She spent a day letting the crew experiment with the troll-call, under supervision. And she had Gerry Hemingway from Science study its workings, or anyhow its inputs and outputs.
    That night she had to order the crew to put the call away, to leave the exhausted trolls to their slumbers on the observation deck.
    Then, at breakfast the next day, she called the crew together. She looked carefully around them, and picked out Jennifer Wang, one of the marine detachment, whose grandparents, she knew, had come from China. ‘Jennifer, you spent a long time with Jake yesterday. What did he say to you?’
    Wang looked around, somewhat embarrassed. But she cleared her throat and said, ‘A lot I couldn’t understand. But it was along the lines of, “far from home”. It creased me up! I mean, I’m a Chinese American and proud to be a citizen, but it’s in the blood. How did the big guy know?’
    ‘Because he’s smart,’ Maggie said. ‘He’s intuitive. He’s sapient .
    ‘You know, people, we were sent out here to find sapience in the Long Earth, among other goals. Right? And now here it is, on this ship, living among us: sapience. And that, by the way, will be my defence at the court-martial.
    ‘I’m proud of you all for how you’re dealing with your new shipmates. But if this room isn’t cleared and you’re not at your posts in two minutes, you’re all on a charge. Dismissed.’

33
    T HE LAST STEP across was a sudden transition from a dune field, just inland from a grey ocean, the local copy of the Irish Sea, into what looked like a rudimentary industrial park, a place of gleaming tanks, rusty gantries, smoke stacks, blocky concrete buildings. There was nothing very space-age about it as far as Jansson could see at first glance.
    ‘Come on.’ Sally shifted her pack and led the way.
    Jansson followed, walking steadily across grass-covered ground that gradually gave way to lumpy dunes. The morning was dry and bright in this world, one step away from the Gap. She could smell salt and rotting seaweed in the wind off the sea. She tried to visualize where she was: tried to imagine that there was vacuum, space, a void, just one tap of the Stepper at her waist away from this mundanity. Tried and failed.
    They hadn’t covered a hundred yards when the landscape was illuminated by a blinding light, coming from the rim of the development ahead, like a droplet of sunlight brought down to the Earth.
    Without hesitating Jansson pushed Sally to the ground, lay on top of her, and pulled her jacket hood over her own head. Jansson had been in the world next door when the Madison nuke went off; she hadn’t forgotten. The noise of the explosion hit them, then a hot wind, and the ground itself shuddered. But it passed over quickly.
    Cautiously Jansson rolled off Sally, wincing as her enfeebled body protested with a chorus of aches. They both sat up and looked west. A cloud of white smoke and vapour was rising up from the explosion site.
    ‘Not a nuke,’ Sally said.
    ‘Not this time. Some kind of chemical factory blowing up? Sorry to jump you.’
    ‘Don’t be.’ Sally got up and brushed away sandy soil. ‘This place is going to be a playground for tech-boy nutjobs, who may or may not know what the hell they are doing. Let’s watch our backs.’
    ‘Agreed.’
    They walked on, eyes wide open, alert for more problems. A fire guttered at the destroyed plant; as they approached they could see steam rising from amateurish-looking attempts to douse it.
    There was no security here that Jansson could see, not even a fence. But as they entered the sprawling facility they were noticed. Jansson saw workers staring at them.
    At length a man walked out to greet them. In his fifties perhaps, he was not tall but very upright, wiry, tanned, with greying crew-cut hair. He wore a blue jumpsuit with a faded NASA logo and a name tag: WOOD, F . He grinned at them, welcoming enough. ‘Ladies.’
    ‘Gentleman,’ Sally snapped back.
    ‘The name’s Frank Wood. Formerly of NASA, and now of – well, whatever you want to call us here. GapSpace will do; we’re incorporated under that name. Can I ask why you’re here? We don’t get too many casual visitors this far out. Are you