()

Tintin eventually slowed and stopped, his breathing harsh and serrated as he searched for a sign of Jacques. But it was no use; the sneaky Syldavian spy seemed to have slipped into one of his many bolt holes, and Tintin had to admit defeat. He'd lost the battle.

The war, however, was a completely different matter.

'If you don't mind me asking,' Archie huffed as he ran to a stop beside him, 'who were we chasing? And why?'

'It's a long story,' Tintin admitted, still scanning the immediate area, looking for the tiniest hint, the smallest clue.

Archie gestured to the sides of the ship. 'It's not like I'm going anywhere.'

Tintin told him an abbreviated version of the tale on Deck, where the dusk breeze ruffled their hair and a few seagulls wheeled and banked in the air above them. They were still close to shore.

'So this… Jacques… stole the blueprints from a Professor,' Archie said, trying to work it out in his head.

'Yes.'

'And you got them back.'

'Yes.'

'So why-'

'He's the reason I… missed my train.'

Archie nodded, understanding dawning on his face. It was obvious that Archie suspected 'missing the train' was code for something a lot worse, but he didn't question it, and for that Tintin was inordinately grateful.

'But why is he on the Icarus?' Archie asked, brow wrinkled in confusion. 'Do you still have the blueprints?'

'No; my dog took them somewhere safe. I have no idea why he's on this ship, but can only suspect he's after me.'

'Why?' Archie's face was incredulous.

'I know about him being a Syldavian spy, and I could easily expose him once we get to our destination.'

'It all sounds a bit far-fetched to me.'

'Trust me, people have tried to bump me off for less,' Tintin said, his voice weary with experience. 'It sort of comes with the job… being naturally curious.'

'Being nosy, you mean.' Archie was smiling – it was a joke, but Tintin could barely muster up a smile. For a moment there, Archie had sounded just like the Captain.

'I suppose.'

'Hey, wait a minute- that crane, yesterday! You mean to say-'

'That was Jacques. Yes. And I have no doubt that he will try again.'

()

'I've been compromised.'

'What d'you mean?'

'You didn't tell me Tintin was on this ship!' In the man's anger he blew out a hefty amount of cigar smoke directly into his accomplice's face, and the young man coughed and spluttered.

'Who?'

'Tintin! Small young man, annoying white dog, tufted ginger hair… ring any bells?'

'Oh, you mean 'addock's new friend? I 'aven't seen a dog, though, if that's what you're askin'.'

In the darkness it was almost impossible to see facial expressions, but the pure exasperation and anger burning from the older man seemed to beam directly to the young sailor's brain.

'I'm... sorry, but I told you not to leave the hold while we're at sea! If they find's out I've 'elped a stowaway on board-'

'You seriously expected me to stay in this dark hole for the entire voyage?' The sneer was apparent in the older man's voice. 'You forget who's working for who, sailor.'

'So what d'you want me to do?' the young sailor asked. There was a short silence, and the glowing end of the cigar moved through the darkness as the man rolled it around in his mouth pensively.

'I don't want you to do anything as of yet…' he said slowly, smugly, 'but in a few days, when the ship is… compromised… see to it that Mr Tintin has a little accident in all the confusion.'

Little accidents. Now that was something the young sailor knew how to orchestrate.

'No problem,' he said. 'In fact, see it as already done.'

'Don't be complacent,' the older man warned, as he slipped back into the darkness, dropping his cigar to the floor and crushing the glowing end underneath the heel of his boot. 'You may find Tintin is a surprisingly hard bug to crush.'

()

'How's it going, Cuthbert?' Haddock asked grumpily, sticking his head round the door of the laboratory. There was a bang, and a puff of smoke, followed by Calculus coughing quite violently.

'I'm not going anywhere, Captain,' Calculus said, waving his hand in the air to dissipate the sudden influx of smoke. 'You know very well that I am busy trying to find Tintin's location in the time stream.'

'Yes yes; I know,' the Captain said impatiently, shaking his head and fully entering the lab. 'You've been at it for three weeks and I've not seen hide nor hair of you.'

'I am at a very delicate stage of the operation, Captain; but I have so far managed to narrow down the possiblitiies to around thirty thousand single points in time-'

'Thirty thousand! Blistering barnacles, Cuthbert, we haven't got much time-'

'On the contrary, Captain, time is something we have in unlimited supply.' The professor grinned rather manically, twisting a dial and flicking a couple of switches before removing his protective goggles and coming over to talk to the Captain properly. 'You see, no matter how long it takes me to find the exact point when Snowy came back through the window, in order to open it again just after it closed, we can always open it at that exact time! Without fail!'

'I wouldn't say we have an unlimited supply of time,' the Captain grumbled, 'neither you nor I are getting any younger.'

'What was that?' the Professor asked, already distracted by a blinking light on a machine. Haddock shook his head impatiently.

'Nothing, nothing,' he said angrily. 'I'll just go back to Marlinspike and marinate in my anxiety, shall I?'

'Yes, very good,' Calculus said, his mind already on other things. The Captain frowned.

Snowy woofed quietly from down by his ankles. He ruffled the dog behind the ears absent-mindedly.

'Come on boy; let's go get a bone from the village,' Haddock said. Snowy perked up slightly at the word 'bone', but his tail could not manage more than a feeble half-wag that stopped almost as soon as it began.

The door to the laboratory clicked quietly shut, just as Cuthbert cried out in triumph.

'Only 29, 999 to go!'

()

The air was still and heavy when they reached Hull, England, and began swap cargo. Archie chatted amiably with some of the English sailors who joined the Icarus at Hull, coming on board with the cargo, swapping with some of the crew who had been with the ship for a couple of weeks. Tintin hung back, staying in Archie's shadow, nodding and smiling, but saying little. The language wasn't a problem; Tintin spoke perfect English, not to mention German and Dutch, albeit with a slight accent, but by staying the quiet Belgian boy who spoke only French kept him off the radar.

Much to Tintin's disappointment, Allan was not one of the crew members to take a respite in England. In fact, it ranked almost equally with his disappointment over losing Jacques' trail. He'd scoured the ship since he'd given up on the chase, but hadn't seen hide nor hair of the Syldavian spy.

How could the man have just… disappeared? Could he have somehow left the ship?

No, Tintin decided, he must still be there. None of the safety boats were missing and somehow he didn't think Jacques would give up and run away so quickly. He was still on the Icarus. Of that Tintin was sure. He had, however, been slightly anxious when they docked at Hull, in case Jacques took his chance and escaped then.

Archie had interrupted his worrying when dusk fell on the ship and the lights of Hull twinkled off the choppy seawater.

'Have you seen the paper?' Archie asked, breaking Tintin's reverie.

'No; why?'

'I thought you might want to see this.'

Surprised by the rather grave tone of Archie's usually light and cheery voice, Tintin took the paper and looked carefully at the paper, taking a few seconds to adjust to the language change. He'd always found speaking easier than reading in languages other than French, his mother tongue, and English was no exception.

'Need some help translating?' Archie offered, obviously picking up on Tintin's struggle.

'No, no. I'm fine,' he said, shaking Archie's helping hand off as he focussed on the thick black headline.

Syldavian Ambassador receives warm welcome from Spanish Royals

'The Syldavian Ambassador, travelling to Spain for a trade meeting, was greeted warmly by Spanish Royals when he arrived in Barcelona last Sunday…' Tintin trailed off, scanning the page for more information, rapidly translating any key words and phrases he picked up on.

'… seen on Monday at a party thrown by… ah, here we are… at a party thrown by Dmitri Romanov, the billionaire renowned for his collection of scientific equipment.'

'Scientific equipment?' Archie snorted. 'If I were a billionaire, I wouldn't spend all my money on microscopes.' Tintin ignored him.

'This makes perfect sense!'

'It does?'

'Jacques stole the blueprints from Professor Calculus, but was intending to sell them to Romanov by using the machine to travel back in time!'

'But how would that help Syldavia?'

'I'm sure Romanov would have paid handsomely for the blueprints, probably almost three quarters of his entire net worth. He could easily earn it back using the time machine – betting and so forth, that kind of thing – and Jacques would bring the payment back to the future and it would be used to fund Syldavia's war efforts!'

'Why couldn't Syldavia have just used the time machine themselves?' Archie asked, confused. 'Surely that would earn them more money that whatever Romanov could pay them.'

'Syldavia has nowhere near the equipment to build the machine, or the money to fund such a project, not by themselves. And I doubt they would want to draw attention to the fact that they owned blueprints to a time machine by calling in scientists from other countries. No,' Tintin slapped his hand decisively, 'this was the only way it would work for them.'

'So how are the diamonds involved?' Archie asked. Tintin scowled, quite uncharacteristically.

'The one loose end. How do the diamonds fit in?' He stared angrily out at the choppy sea, a stiff English breeze buffeting his head and freezing his ears.

'It doesn't make sense,' Archie complained, leaning against the rail and following Tintin's gaze at the line of horizon where inky-black sky met sparkling sea.

'We've got a little while to find out,' Tintin said. 'Until we dock at Spain, Jacques isn't going anywhere.'

Later on, Tintin would come to think of those lines as famous last words.

()

The building was a huge stone monstrosity that loomed against the slate grey sky, surrounded by thin, bare trees and dry, dying grass. Tintin didn't look back at it, however, as he ran, the blueprints rustling in his hands, Snowy running faithfully at his heels. His other hand clutched a small gun so hard his knuckles were white, and his face was set with determination. He'd been out of action for almost a whole day – the sun he'd seen rise that morning at the dock was sinking now, although its path was masked by a thick layer of heavy cloud.

It had all been relatively simple once he'd escaped from his small prison; the guard that brought him dinner was one of only two between him and what was apparently the main room of the building, a large empty office dotted randomly with cheap old desks. When he'd kicked his way through the weak lock on the double doors and heard the hopeful bark coming from the messiest desk, it didn't take long for Tintin to liberate Snowy and the documents from the desk.

Snowy had been tied to the leg of the desk, the rope tight around his neck and tight around the desk, and the dog's exuberance at seeing his master made it almost impossible to untie the tricky knots. Eventually, though, Snowy was free, and licking Tintin's face enthusiastically.

'Yes, it's good to see you too,' Tintin chuckled, before standing and examining the contents of the desk. For such important blueprints, they weren't exactly inconspicuous. Jacques must have been in a hurry to go somewhere else, because if two guards and a wooden draw were the only protection he could give the blueprints, he couldn't have tried very hard to keep them safe.

Although, Tintin supposed, it had been very unlikely anyone in the past would know of the stolen blueprints apart from himself, and he'd been locked in a near impenetrable cell.

'Let's go, boy,' he said, and Snowy in agreement. The little white dog trotted at his heels as he walked briskly to the door, his nerves pushing his legs into a run, slamming his way out of the apparently empty building, the anxious itching burning at the base of his neck warning him about some hidden danger, his reporter's instinct blaring at him.

It shouldn't have been that easy.

()

The ship sliced through the small, choppy waves, sliding peacefully through the night, manned by a skeleton crew unlucky enough to draw the short straw and end up working through the night. Among the droopy-eyed sailors were Archie and Tintin, both working hard and unruffled by the late hour.

Archibald Haddock surveyed his strange new companion as they worked. The young man intrigued him, as everything he was seemed to be a contradiction.

Of course, Archie himself couldn't really talk – he came from English gentry, a rich family who owned land in both England and Belgium, and yet wore old turtlenecks instead of expensive clothes, and worked for pittance on old cargo ships when he could have received instant promotion. He wanted to work for his title.

He recognised in Tintin the same sort of discordance as he saw in his own personality. Tintin was obviously young, probably younger than him by a good few years, but he talked and acted as though he had seen so much and done so much it made Archie feel young and inexperienced. Everything Tintin did, he was competent, even sometimes brilliant, at. From what Archie could tell, the boy also spoke about three languages fluently and had a sharp, analytical mind. This, however, was hidden by a quiff of fluffy ginger hair that gave him a rather simple appearance, teamed with bright, guileless eyes that exuded innocence and naiveté.

He was a hard worker, too; in fact, Archie doubted Tintin did anything by half, but threw his entire effort into everything and anything.

Archie also knew that he and Tintin got along effortlessly, fitting together as well as lifelong friends. He sometimes forgot he had known the boy for little longer than two days.

Yes, Tintin was an enigma, from his name to his origins, a subject he had been amazingly tight-lipped about. He covered up the truth behind a flimsy lie – a missed train could hardly have caused such despondency, and there was the matter of the missing dog – but Archie didn't press the subject, knowing that when Tintin wanted to tell him, he would, and not before.

'Need any help?' he offered, seeing that Tintin was struggling with a heavy barrel almost twice his breadth.'

'No… I'm fine,' he grunted, displaying another of his qualities – stubbornness. Archie ignored his refusal and helped him anyway, catching the barrel just as it began to roll from Tintin's arms. Together they righted it and moved it, and Archie grinned to himself. Stubborn and independent he may be, but Tintin knew when to accept help.

Hopefully he also knew when he was overreaching himself.

()

A/N: Again, sorry for the wait, and the info-dump heavy chapter. Next chapter we actually see some action!

I'm still in study leave, however, and exams are rearing their ugly heads, so next post may not be for a while. I promise to try and post as soon as possible, though.

Meg

P.S. I'm not sure I like the new layout of . What do you think?