()
Marlinspike had felt big even with the three of them living there, but now Captain Haddock felt like a lone pea rattling around in a kettle drum. The halls had never felt so empty, the rooms had never felt so cavernous, and the pictures all seemed to stare at him distrustfully, as though he didn't quite belong there.
He kept to his routine. He woke up at around nine, and shuffled lazily to the dining room in his bed robe and slippers. He pushed open the door.
'Morning Tint-'
He sat down, trying not to look at the empty place at the table.
Nestor would walk in carrying breakfast for two. The Captain knew that Nestor hadn't forgotten that Tintin was… currently away, but perhaps the butler hoped that if he brought in enough food for two, two would be sitting in the dining room.
It made no sense on a logical level, but neither did the way the Captain greeted an empty room every morning.
'Anything in the paper this morning, Nestor?' he asked, his voice ringing loudly and awkwardly in the silence.
'Not that I could see, sir,' Nestor replied, and then he excused himself, as he always did, escaping to the kitchens where he had always been alone.
About half an hour later, when the Captain's tea had gone stone cold and he'd reached the last few pages of the newspaper, Snowy slumped in through the door, padding dejectedly across the room and jumping onto the chair beside Haddock. The Captain stroked his head absent-mindedly and fed him a bit of bacon.
Calculus always forgot about breakfast. He spent even more time than ever out in his laboratory by the walls of Marlinspike, fiddling with that thrice-damned machine. The Captain occasionally brought him meals and, if he was feeling up to it, tried to have a conversation.
Haddock spent the morning cataloguing some of the old shipping books in the library.
He had his lunch at precisely half one.
He answered any letters at two.
He took his usual afternoon walk at half two, Snowy plodding at his heels, half-heartedly barking at the occasional squirrel. But his heart wasn't in it.
Sometimes a magpie flew across Haddock's path.
In the evening he sat down in front of the fire with the telly on. He intermittently found his eyes wandering towards the whisky on the drinks cabinet.
He went to bed at half ten, unable to stay up any longer, wondering how his life had drained to black and white so quickly.
The bottle of whisky remained untouched.
()
The room smelt musty and creaked loudly in the night, rocking gently in the swell and ebb of the river currents. The air was chilly and dusty and the bunks were lumpy and uncomfortable.
Tintin couldn't sleep.
Of course, he'd slept in worse places before, and the creaking didn't bother him much. The scratchy blankets were warm, and the rumbling snores coming from the bunk above him made it feel like home. If he closed his eyes, it could be his Captain Haddock snoring in the room with him, dreaming happy dreams of a comfortable life at Marlinspike.
No, Tintin couldn't sleep because his mind kept on whirring, evaluating the possibilities of getting home. He couldn't stop thinking about it, and it was driving him crazy.
Eventually he slipped from between his blankets and placed his feet softly on the floor, careful not to wake Archie as he left the room, walking quietly between bunks containing other men taking a job on the Icarus.
'Come on, Snowy,' he whispered out of habit. There was no quiet answering bark or sound of padding feet on the hard floor, and he had to swallow hard past the lump in his throat.
He felt minutely better in the cold fresh air out on deck, where the stars shone brightly out of the clear, cloudless night sky and the moon shone off the black, roiling waters of the Senne. He took a deep breath and leant over a cold, rusty railing, staring at the small, brightly lit city.
'You up 'ere for a smoke too?' asked a voice from behind him. Tintin started, and jumped around. Behind him stood a young man with a familiar, rather distinctive nose. He was wearing a long coat and clutching a small, unlit cigarette between his large fingers.
'Oh, no,' Tintin said quickly. 'Just… couldn't sleep.'
'Pity,' the young man – Allan – sighed. 'I was 'oping to bum a light. Mine's gorn and fallen out me pocket.' As if to prove his words, Allan pulled the inside of his pockets out and showed Tintin.
'Sorry, but I don't have a lighter,' Tintin said, wishing that Allan would go away and leave him to mope in peace.
'S'alright,' Allan said, coming to lean on the rail beside him. Tintin stifled a groan. There was silence for a while as they stared at the city of Brussels.
'You friends with 'addock, then?' Allan asked, trying to sound nonchalant but failing miserably.
'Not really,' Tintin admitted. 'We only met today.' He glanced at his watch. 'Yesterday,' he amended.
'Strange,' Allan commented, still staring at the flickering lights on the water. 'Archie don't usually make friends very quickly. I mean to say,' he paused, pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and stuck it in his mouth, chewing it thoughtfully, 'this must be the fourth or fifth time I've worked with 'im, and 'e's been friendly and that, but never… chummy. You two ge' along like a 'ouse on fire.'
'He reminds me of a friend,' Tintin said shortly. 'What's it to you?'
'Nothin', nothin'. I was just bein' friendly,' Allan said, glancing at Tintin.
'Yes, well, I'm going to head back to bed,' Tintin said, turning away from the city (not his city) and making for the stairs down to the sleeping quarters.
'I'll see yer tomorrow,' Allan called after him.
'Not if I can help it,' Tintin muttered, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. There was something about Allan that made his skin crawl, and he didn't like knowing what the man was capable of.
Back on deck, Allan watched Tintin's retreating back thoughtfully, before spitting the thoroughly chewed and completely mangled cigarette into the Senne, where it bobbed a bit on the surface before sinking slowly underneath.
()
'… do with him now?"
'…somewhere he can't cause any trouble…'
'… what about where they take the…'
'… careful, now…'
The voices blurred in and out of focus as Tintin's head lolled on his shoulders. He tried to scratch his nose and found his wrists were tied tightly with a rough rope. There was cold metal behind him, propping up his back, and cold metal beneath him, chilling his legs through his plus-fours. Both surfaces were vibrating quite violently.
That meant something, but in his foggy and bewildered head the answer was not forthcoming.
Somewhere in the background, a dog growled.
'S-snowy?' he muttered, trying to prise open his eyes. It took a herculanean effort, but eventually he managed.
'Look, guv, 'e's waking up!'
'Quick, knock him out again! He mustn't see where we're going!'
That was Jacques' voice, Tintin thought blearily, and then he thought, Jacques! There was something important, something he had to remember-
And then a cloth was pressed roughly against his mouth, and before his brain told him not to breathe his lungs had gasped in a mouthful of thick, cloying air… and the world swam and darkened once more.
()
'Captain! Captain!'
The professor's thin, reedy voice called out shrilly, running along the path to Marlinspike. Captain Haddock leaned his head out of the dining room window at the call, only to be greeted with the strange sight of Calculus running as fast as he could, his little legs whirring comically as he bustled along.
'What is it, Cuthbert? Haddock yelled back, hope rising in his throat.
'The hair! The hair!' the little man squealed as he ran towards the front doors.
Captain Haddock didn't wait for Calculus to reach him in the dining room; instead, he jumped to his feet and sprinted out of the room, sending an incoming Nestor spinning in his wake.
'Sorry Nestor!' he called over his shoulder as he ran.
Cuthbert entered Marlinspike Hall just as Captain Haddock left. Since the laws of physics state that no two bodies can exist in the same space at the same time, this resulted in a collision.
A rather painful one.
'Thundering typhoons, Cuthbert, will you look where you're going?' Haddock groaned, sitting up and gingerly feeling his head.
Calculus didn't bother replying, but instead stood and triumphantly raised his right hand, clenched in a fist.
Sticking out from his fingers was a thin, translucent dog hair.
About an hour later Captain Haddock found himself in the Professor's lab, being talked and gesticulated at. But Calculus might as well have been speaking Chinese, because he was not any the wiser to the breakthrough than he had been earlier.
'… I found this hair from Snowy on his cushion in the lounge, and when I compare it to a hair freshly plucked-' Snowy whined slightly, 'I discovered a few key discrepancies in the electron configuration of the hair.'
Haddock nodded, grunted, glanced at the complicated machinery and even more complicated equations on the chalkboard in the corner.
'I ran both through this new type of microscope I thought would give an accurate picture of the surface of the hairs by using the number of electrons crossing over to the probe-'
'Cuthbert, can you just get to the point?' Haddock groaned, wishing he'd brought his pipe. Calculus' eyes lit up.
'Explain it to you? Why certainly, my dear fellow. It is, after all, a very important discovery in the field of quantum physics. It relies solely on the fact that electrons, while still particles, are also clusters of waves, the amplitude of which give the probability of the electron being found in a particular place.'
'So… they're a ball that's been smudged?' Haddock hazarded, staring at the hasty diagram on the blackboard. Calculus ignored him.
'Going on from this, if the tip of the probe of the microscope is no more than an atom or two across, and barely a few femtometres from the surface of the hair, then some of the waves from the electrons will spread across to the probe and bingo! An electron will pass from the hair to the probe. The smaller the gap between the probe and the hair, the more electrons will pass over.'
'I don't see what the point of this-'
'Listen, Captain, and I will explain. On the first dog hair, one that has not travelled through time, the surface is as expected, a simple terrain easily navigated by the probe.' Calculus pinned a picture to the blackboard, showing what looked like a 3D picture of a hilly landscape in greyscale.
'The second hair, however, shows irregularities in the wave formation of the electrons that can only have been caused by the time-travel.'
Haddock peered at the second picture, which looked not unlike a field of spikes.
'I don't understand what it means,' he said finally.
'It's really quite simple, Captain,' Calculus said, pointing to the pictures once more and holding up a hair triumphantly. Snowy cringed backwards slightly, the place where the hair had been pulled out still twinging slightly.
'Really? Because to me it just looks like a fancy photograph of the countryside and one of a forest of needles,' Haddock said grumpily. 'How does this help us find Tintin?'
'If you'd let me speak, Captain, I'd explain,' Cuthbert sighed. 'As I said previously, it really is very simple. The electrons have been malformed, squashed, if you like, by the strenuous activity of passing beyond the limit of the speed of light, causing them to defy all laws and appear where they are least likely to.'
'And?' Haddock grumped.
'If we send other hairs through the machine to other times, we can cross-reference the shape of the electrons and narrow down Tintin's position. Then we can successfully pinpoint the exact moment he entered the past, fast forward and pick him up just after it closed for the first time!'
Haddock tried to sort this statement out in his brain, and failed. Instead, he used Cuthbert's bright, excited face to work out that Tintin might be coming home soon.
'You're brilliant, you know that!' Haddock grinned, springing around the lab like a young lamb. 'Don't worry lad; we're coming to get you!'
()
Snores and sighs reverberated through the iron belly of the ship as it rocked gently on the swells of the river. A few seagulls broke the silence with a harsh, serrated cry – but other than the birds, the only sounds were the slapping of the waves on the hull and the creaking groan of old joins straining with cargo.
Clang
Clang
Clang
Every footstep was unnecessarily loud and made the man wince. Tonight there was a risk- tonight there were more ears, more eyes, more witnesses.
The bowels of the ship were the only sensible rendezvous, nestled amongst the boxes of silk and cotton and wool and beer. It was a veritable maze for all but the most seasoned of sailors – and he was confident in his ability.
He'd been on the seas since he was a babe in arms.
The cigar smoke of his companion was the red string to lead him through the maze, and the tangy scent did not lead him astray. The other, older man was slumped against a crate, his head surrounded by a cloud of smoke, his voice rough and low.
'D'you 'ave em? The princesses?'
The man did not move from his relaxed position.
'Yes,' he grunted out.
'Let me see 'em first,' the first, younger speaker said. 'I need to know you're not cheatin' me.'
A hand stuck out of the thick fug; it opened to reveal the prise, glittering in the sparking glow of the cigar.
'Blimey, will you look at that,' he breathed, bending in closer to look. The hand snapped shut and withdrew.
'Not yet.'
'Soon,' he said belligerently.
'Soon. But not yet.'
()
A/N: Can you tell I'm revising for Physics? BTW, some is real physics, some blatantly pulled out of thin air. Such a microscope does exist, but was invented in 1981… so Calculus wouldn't have had one. I imagine it goes without saying that time travel has not yet been invented and, I'm sorry to say, the future in that area looks bleak. Also, a computer would be needed to analyse the data from the scanning tunnelling microscope Calculus uses to view the surface of the dog hair, something he would not have had. And, it only works on metals with free-moving electrons (I think). So don't complain that the physics is wrong… because I know it is. And if you feel the need to correct me, make sure you're also doing Physics at a university level because otherwise you don't trump me in knowledge (unless you just like reading around). The phenomenon here is called quantum tunnelling, if anyone wants to know.
Anyway, hope you enjoyed!
And forgive me Allan's horrific accent, but I got carried away.