We made our attack that Sunday.

It was obvious from the start how we should go about it.  The house was defended on three sides by a high wall and the only entrance was the gate, which, for all we knew, was guarded day and night.  That left the fourth side, facing onto the canal.

Mr Shire spent the next few days talking to his gyptian friends.  Just like last time, the gyptians had been losing children to the Gobblers and it wasn't hard for him to get help and support for an assault on Cropredy.  He hadn't wanted to take me at first, but the Professor talked him round.

'How old were you when you went to Bolvangar, Arthur?'

'Fourteen, fifteen, something like that.  We've never been sure of our age.'

'I was two years younger than you.  Peter's the same age you were.'

'And I've seen the place.  I know where everything is.'

'All right, all right.  We won't argue.'  Very few people ever succeeding in arguing with Professor Belacqua, I noticed.

We left the Jimmy at the Hythe Bridge Street basin when we set out on that Saturday morning.  I was on a weekend's leave, supposedly to visit my family, and I'd had to turn down offers to see me off at the autobus station. 

The Maggie's cabin was tiny, so while Mr Shire, the Professor and me could fit in the cockpit, Harold and the twenty gyptian men that he'd recruited for the raid sat in the hold, hidden from view by the covers which usually protected the cargo from the weather.  They sat there, on the floor, holding their weapons – mostly knives and sticks, although I saw some pistols, a rifle or two, and what could have been a sawn-off shotgun.  They said little, but stared ahead, grim-faced.

If it hadn't been for the danger we were going into, I'd have enjoyed the trip.  Like I said, I grew up by the canal, so when we got to the first lock, at Wolvercote, I knew what to do.  Mr Shire looked on approvingly as we worked through the lock and afterwards he treated me more as a crew member than a passenger, giving me his spare lock key and sending me ahead on his creaky old bike to set the locks ready for us.  I was grateful for this – it gave me something to do.  I didn't envy the gyptians, sitting all day in the stuffy hold with nothing to do but wait.

We reached Kings Sutton that afternoon and moored up.  We could easily have got as far as Banbury, but the Professor and Mr Shire had agreed that it would have been dangerous to stop there, where Mr Shire was well known and a boatful of gyptians, rather than cargo, might have drawn attention to us.  It was likely, too, that some of the people who worked at the Boreal offices would live around there and might recognise me, unlikely though that seemed.

That night, Mr Shire and I bedded down with the gyptians in the hold, leaving the cabin to Professor Belacqua.

The next day, Sunday, we slipped through Banbury and moored up again by Cropredy lock.  The Boreal Foundation offices were only a mile or so further north.

Now that there was nothing for us to do but talk, re-check our weapons and wait, the tension really started to get to me.  I sat on the bank between the Maggie and the towpath, looking up at the sky.  An occasional monoplane buzzed overhead, the trees rustled in the light wind.  I munched on a sandwich or sipped a cup of tea and watched while the sun slowly slid across the sky.  The murmur of Mr Shire's and Professor Belacqua's voices rose and fell behind me.  What an odd couple they were!  Him, dark and intense, wearing working clothes, rat-faced with heavy brows covering his intensely blue eyes.  She, fair and pale-skinned, dressed in a light floral skirt and a pale green blouse with her hair tied up behind with a blue ribbon.  I'm sure she caught me gazing at her, but each time she only smiled reassuringly, showing no sign that she had noticed.

We began the attack on the house at nine o'clock, as it was getting properly dark.  We had thought that there would be few people there and weren't expecting much resistance.  But from the start, it was clear that we had taken on a formidable enemy.  Mr Shire had moored the Maggie at the stage in front of the house, and the gyptians had rolled up the tarpaulins which covered the hold and crept quietly onto the lawns that led up to the house.  We'd expected that we would be able to walk up to it and jemmy the doors to get inside; and all pretty much unobserved.

There must have been trip-alarms set, for as soon as we reached the grass a row of intensely brilliant lamps mounted on the roof of the house flooded the grounds with white light.  We all stood out against the darkness behind us like actor on a stage.

'Drop!' called out Harry, and we all fell to the ground.  Just in time, for a fusillade of shots rang out from the house.  A ground-floor window broke and the muzzle of what I later found out was a machine-gun poked itself though.  Seconds later, the air itself seemed to split open as a torrent of heavy bullets cracked and whined over our heads.  The gyptians started to fire back, those of them that had guns, and the crash of shattered glass added to the racket that was shattering the quiet of the evening.

Professor Belacqua – now wearing dark trousers and jacket – Mr Shire and I were at the right-hand side of our line.  Arthur turned to me.  'Get back to the boat!' he hissed.

'No.  Wait for the gun to stop.  We've got to get round to the back of the house.  That's where it is.'

'Let him stay, Arthur.  He knows where to go.'

'All right.'

The machine gun could only fire in brief bursts.  In the gaps between the groups of shots we crept along by the garden wall.  I heard a terrible scream behind me and turned to see one of our men writhing in dreadful pain on the lawn. He had taken a bullet in the shoulder and it had nearly torn his arm off.

We reached the house frightened, but unscathed.  The sounds of gunfire and shouting were screened to some extent by the body of the house.  'This way!' I said, leading the others around to the back yard where the outbuildings were.  A mighty crash to our left signalled that one of our shots had hit the conservatory.  I got to the far corner of the house first.

'Wait!'  I held up my hand.  A small group of Boreal guards were running from the gate around to the other side.  It was hard to tell in the darkness, but they looked well-armed and moved purposefully.  It was looking very bad for our friends out at the front.

The guards passed the opposite corner of the house, and I signalled to the Professor and Mr Shire to follow me across the yard.  The sounds of fighting still continued behind us.

The double doors of the outbuilding were open, much to my surprise.  Someone must have taken the big car out and only just returned, as it was parked there, with its nose facing the doors.  Light was streaming out from inside the building.  Carefully, knowing that there might be someone still inside, we slipped across the opening and into the garage, between the car and the wall.  We'd be safe there until whoever had brought the car back went to the house to see what was going on.  Or perhaps they'd already gone.

We stayed there for several minutes.  The sounds from the house were growing less and less.  Perhaps our men had retreated back to the canal.  Or maybe they had got into the house and the fighting was now hand-to-hand, deadly and silent.  We stood up.  I didn't have to point out the intercison apparatus to the Professor – she'd seen it before, in Bolvangar.  The blade was not raised up, as I'd seen it before, but resting all the way down.  It's been used recently, I thought, and my stomach lurched.

The sound of footsteps in the yard made us duck behind the car again.  I was at the back of the car by the boot, so I was able to see what was happening, although we could all hear well enough.  The woman, Miss Morley, was striding across the yard (I noticed that she wasn't bothering with her fake cat-daemon any more) pulling behind her a small boy who was screaming and writhing in her grip.  In her other hand she held a small pistol of an odd, liquid, shape.

She yanked the poor kid behind her and pulled him onto one of the slabs, smacking him hard on the side of the head with the butt of the pistol and knocking him out.  With a sickening dread in my heart I knew what she was intending to do.  She strapped the boy into place, scooped up his daemon, which was frantically, uselessly, changing form, from him with a metal net, and clamped the cage shut over his head.  Then she put the boy's daemon into the other cage and locked it.

There was no doubt at all that she was going to intercise the boy and his daemon, separating the bond that linked them with the guillotine's silver blade.

What could we do?  The woman was armed and I was feeling dizzy with fear and horror at what was happening.  I was still trying to gather my thoughts together when the Professor stood up.

'Stop!' she cried out at the top of her voice.  Miss Morley looked round from the switch panel.  'I said, stop!'

Miss Morley never lost control of herself for a moment.  'Professor Belacqua.  What an unpleasant surprise.  Are you anything to do with all this unseemly commotion?'  She jerked her head towards the doors.  The sounds of fighting could still be heard coming from outside.

'Release that child!'

'No.  I need it for my own purposes.  You cannot prevent me.  Oh, and would you ask your companion to stand up, please?  He looks absolutely ridiculous, crouching down in that undignified manner.   And then could you both come out from behind the car where you have been skulking in that guilty manner and stand where I can see you?'  She waved the pistol.  'I am armed, as you can see.'

Who did she mean?  Which one of us had she missed?  Mr Shire or me?

Mr Shire stood up.  He muttered, 'She can't shoot us all at the same time.'  He and Professor Belacqua moved to the position that Miss Morley had indicated, on the other side of the car from me.

'Could you ask your gyptian friend to speak up, please?  I can't quite hear him.'

'I said, you is a cruel heartless bitch.'

'What an impolite little man you are.  I shall take it upon myself to teach you some manners.'  Miss Morley lifted the pistol and pulled the trigger.  Instead of the crack and whine of a bullet that I expected, there was a sizzling roar and a beam of violet incandescence sprang from the muzzle of the pistol.  Miss Morley carefully swung the light-beam across the wall over our heads, bringing down a shelf laden with paint and oil.  I could do nothing to avoid the cans and bottles as they scattered and burst around me.

'Next time, it'll be your neck.  In fact, I ought to kill you both now…' She appeared to think.  'No.  I'm leaving here shortly, once I've used this brat and his animal.  The guards will sort you two out.'  Miss Morley turned again to the panel.  A motor hummed and the guillotine blade started to rise, ready to descend and take the boy's life.

I realised that it was all down to me.  Miss Morley was facing us, waiting while the blade was wound up, ready to press the button that would release it and sever the boy from his daemon.  I was shaking with terror.  I didn't know what to do, so I did the only thing I could think of.  I shouted 'No!' and ran out from behind the car, ducking low and throwing myself at Miss Morley's legs.  I don't suppose she'd ever been football tackled in her life, and I had the advantage of surprise. 

All the same, she had the pistol and she used it.  The beam of light swept through the air over my head, leaving a sharp tang of burnt air behind it.  The Professor and Mr Shire dived for the floor.  As I caught Miss Morley's ankles and she fell back, the beam flashed out again, slicing through the roof.  A part of it came loose and crashed to the ground, catching me on the arm and grazing it.

Miss Morley's head banged against the control panel and I saw her eyes glaze over as she fell, concussed, against it.  To my horror, there came a sharp click from inside the panel and the blade, which had reached the top of its frame, started to fall.

Professor Belacqua screamed out loud, and Mr Shire leapt forward, but it was too late.  The blade fell into its socket with a lethal thump and the boy and his daemon (no longer his daemon) twisted and arched their bodies, thrashing about in their bonds and moaning softly.

I couldn't help it – I vomited where I stood.  On the other side of the room, the inside of the car lit up with a bright orange glow.  Mr Shire took the pistol from Miss Morley's limp hand and held it to her head.

'No, Arthur.'

'What?'

'No.  Don't kill her.  Don't be like them.'

'She did it!  She did it to him!'

'I'm afraid it was my fault.  I knocked her hand against a switch.'

'No, Peter.  It was set to happen automatically.'  (Was that true?  I hope it was, but I didn't look at the controls at the time, and it's too late now).

Professor Belacqua released the boy, and the being which had once been his daemon, from their cages with such a look of sorrowful compassion on her face that neither Viola nor I could bear to see it.  She put the creature into the boy's hands, and he sat on the ground by the wall, cradling it in his arms, whispering to it but getting no reply.  Sick at heart, I turned to Mr Shire.  'Arthur?'  (At a time like this, correct etiquette seemed so pointless).

'Yes, Peter?'

'The gun.'  I pointed to the apparatus of horror in front of us.  He nodded gravely, pointed the pistol at the tables and guillotine, and used the beam to cut them up into pieces.  The molten metal ran in streams across the marble floor.

It was quiet outside.  What had happened in the battle?  He we won, or lost?  That didn't seem to matter either.  Nothing would matter to us ever again, it seemed; we were so drained of emotion.

'Peter.  Over here!'  It was the Professor, by the car.  Listlessly, I went over and joined her.  'What is it?'

'This is a very strange car.  I don't recognise any of the controls, or the instruments.  Arthur!  Come and have a look!' (I've worked out since what Lyra was doing – she was trying to keep us going; give us something to be interested in, something to think about that was nothing to do with that poor helpless boy, crying his heart out on the far side of the garage).

All three of us sat side by side on the front seat of the car and looked at the dashboard.  As the Professor had said, the dials and controls were unusual, like the rest of the car.  There was the steering tiller, as normal, and the elbow rests for the throttle and the clutch, but there was also… 'I know that!'  "That" was the meter that Master James and I had fixed.  It was mounted in the middle of the dashboard.  The dial marked "transvergence" was at the extreme blue end of its travel, and the "attitude" pointer was at zero.  Next to it was another meter, labelled "charge".  Its reading was at maximum.  Between them was a brass lever, with a red knob on the end.

You'll remember I told you that when I was a young boy I liked to take things apart and put them together again.  Like the kitchen clock at home, or the barometer?  It's a bad habit, I know, although it's part of what's made me so well suited for my trade, but I can never resist the urge to try things out, just to see what happens.  Master James had had to beat me several times (not harshly, just as a reminder) in the early days of my apprenticeship for "meddling".

That red knob was like a magnet to me.  Hardly knowing what I was doing, hardly knowing that I was doing it, I put out my right hand and pulled the lever.

It's hard to describe what happened next.  The view through the car's windscreen had been of the house, dark-windowed and silhouetted against the glare of the floodlights which were still shining down onto the lawns on the other side.  As I pulled the lever, the house slid over to the left and then to the right, and then it seemed to squash itself up, or crease.  It was almost as if it had been a picture of a house, printed onto a balloon, and some huge someone was squeezing it.

Then the car began to spin – or the world outside did.  We clung onto the interior handles, feeling dizzy although the car didn't appear to be actually moving in any sense that we could understand.  I tried to lean forward and push the lever, to move it back, but either my arm had shrunk, or the dashboard was suddenly one hundred feet away.  Either way, I couldn't get to it.  I was still frantically trying to reach it when someone burst the balloon and everything became completely dark.

We could not see, hear, feel or speak.  We had no sense of time.  I've talked it over with the others, and it was just the same for them as for me.  It was as if someone, the Someone who was playing with the balloon, had flicked an anbaric switch and turned the world off.

So it was after only a fraction of a second, or as much as twenty million years, that the switch was flicked back.  And we were falling.  The car fell – I'd guess it fell about six feet – pushing my insides into my mouth, and landed with an almighty crash.  There was a sound of breaking glass from the boot.

Lyra (Look.  I've been calling her Professor all the way up to here, pretty much, but as I said a few pages back, the situation we were in was so far from anything I, at least, had seen before, that the strangeness had taken us over, as it were.  Titles and correct protocol and all that sort of thing were things that had nothing to do with what we were doing, so we put them aside.  We became (and we still are, in private) "Lyra" and "Arthur" and "Peter" to one another.) was the first to come to her senses.  The car's doors had sprung their locks when we crashed to earth, so she climbed gingerly out and looked around.  'It's all right,' she said. 'We're in a field.  Be careful.'

Arthur and I followed her out of the car.  We were indeed in a field, with shadowy sleeping cows all around us.  It was dark, with a few stars visible overhead.

'What shall we do?' I said, trying not to sound stupid.

'Do?'  Lyra, to my great surprise, grinned at me. 'Nothing!  We'll do nothing – until morning at any rate.  There's no point in us blundering around in the dark, stepping in cow-pats or walking into hedges.

'I'll sleep on the front seat.  You and Arthur can sort yourselves out in the back.'

She was so full of self-confidence (did she already, in some way, know what had happened to us and what would happen?) that, despite our recent experiences, we did as we were told, like good little boys.  I stretched out on the back seat, and Arthur slept on the floor.  I woke once, but it was only Lyra talking in her sleep.

I was woken the following morning, not by the sun, but by a hammering on the car roof and a voice shouting.  I expected it was a farmer, wondering what the hell we were doing sleeping in a car in the middle of his cow pasture, but it was not.  It was a boy, about my age but not so tall as me, with dark hair and bushy eyebrows.

'Dad!  Dad!  Over here!  It's them!'

'Are you sure?'  An older man, dark-haired like his son, appeared in the window next to him, bumping hard against the side of the car and breathing heavily as though he had been running.  I sat up, just in time to see the look on his face; one I have never forgotten.

Lyra sat up too, in the front seat.  She shook her head – to clear it, I suppose – and wound down the window to speak to the newcomers.

'Will!  John!  About time too!  Where've you been?  What have you been up to?'  She gave them both a dazzling smile; and burst into tears.