A/N: A little Easter present for my readers!

Thanks for the review, Leona - the need to find out what the hell's going on with Taylor is getting more urgent; if they can get him into the infirmary, of course. And more stuff is soon to be discovered on project figurehead!

Chapter Eight

Speculation and Deduction

Busy over his accounts, Josh looks up now and again at Skye as she works at the bar, serving coffees to a group of stallholders who've finished for the day. He is not ashamed to admit that, prior to his arrival in Terra Nova, he was almost idiotically naïve, and the stupid things that he did in those days prior to the arrival of the eleventh pilgrimage - the ease with which he could be led, earned him only the disappointment of his parents, and the death of the young woman that he loved.

That he has grown up considerably since then is an understatement. The occupation forced that on him, as well as the inevitable growth of maturity that caused him to recognise the ease with which he had been manipulated. Skye's motives, of course, were driven by her need to save her mother. Boylan's were - well, just Boylan being Boylan. These days, he is a hell of a lot more wise, and - as a consequence - it could not be more obvious that Skye is keeping something from him.

Coming back to sit with him, Skye notices his glance, and has the grace to look a little sheepish, "I know." She sighs.

"If I didn't know you as well as I do, I'd think that you were doing something behind my back." He says, perusing the balance sheet, "You've seen it as well?"

"What, that small group of people from the fields?" she asks. In spite of herself, she's surprised that he's noticed it. He certainly is becoming more acute.

He nods, "Mom and Dad aren't as good as keeping it to themselves as they think they are. Something's going on. If nothing else, Max and Malcolm have been over for dinner a hell of a lot recently. I know they're good friends these days, but they don't normally get together as often as this."

Skye nods, "I think it's a couple of things." She looks about, then lowers her voice further, "Something's wrong with the Commander, as well. He was really weird at Solstice."

Josh turns to her, startled, "Seriously?"

"Don't say anything, Josh." Skye warns, "Boylan may not be as bad as he used to be - but if he finds out that Commander Taylor's sick, he'll get that bad again real fast. If your parents and the Wallaces know about it, then we leave it to them. I found out the hard way that trying to help in the background nearly always makes things worse."

"It's worth telling Dad about the meetings, though." Josh observes, "He probably knows it's going on - but they only meet when he's on patrol, so he doesn't see them in here."

She takes his hand and squeezes it, prompting a smile from him, "I'm glad your dad's a cop."

Yseult sits back from the plex with a sigh, "This is going to take ages."

Looking up from the letter he's still studying, Malcolm appears surprised, "What - doesn't the search function work?"

"Not with these." She says, "The records covering ship losses are massive, and it looks like they were still in the process of working on them when the records were uploaded to the Eye. It's back to good, old fashioned searching by eye - and with writing like this, I can't skim. If I do, I'll miss things. Are you having any better success with yours?"

He frowns, "I'm not sure. Now that I'm looking at this in more detail, I think our writer's been rather more subtle than I realised. The writing's very precise - and I've got the initial ten down to three, but none of them strike me as being overly discontented. Apart from anything else, they're too senior."

Abandoning her own work, Yseult sits down beside him and spends a few minutes looking over the document, "I see what you mean - it's like someone's taken a lot of care to conceal their real handwriting, isn't it? Almost as though they used the wrong hand."

"Damn." Malcolm raises his eyes to the ceiling, "Why the hell didn't I think of that? I've wasted a stupid amount of time on this, and it's got me precisely nowhere. It could still be anybody."

"It was worth a try, though."

"The only good thing is that I spent a bit of time on an algorithm to work on that encrypted data, so it's been running in the background. I still don't know what we'll get - but the results are looking a little more promising than they did. At least there's some progress being made. With a bit of luck, I should have an answer by the end of tomorrow."

"That sounds good."

Returning to her plex, Yseult continues her slow perusal of records. She's learned a lot more about the Polly Constance herself - a trading Barque that plied the oceans for the Hadley shipping company, and named after Polly Constance Hadley, the ship owner's daughter. Now it's a question of tracing the voyages, until she finds the one that gives them a clue where she was lost, and thus a reference point to see if her loss is part of a pattern. That she only has the records lodged with Lloyds of London, as the insurer, doesn't help. The company records would've been perfect, but they haven't been preserved.

Given the risks of sailing in those days, of course, the loss of a ship was a regular occurrence, and depending on the location, it could be shockingly frequent. Consequently, there are a hell of a lot of records to get through. Given that she is now perusing them on a nightly basis after work, it could still be a good long time before she can get to the point where she can give Malcolm something new to work with.

"Fancy a drink?" he asks, standing behind her and slipping his arms over her shoulders.

"That'd be lovely. This is a slow process. The references I have at the moment show successful voyages, which is great - but at the same time, it's frustrating because I need the one that wasn't."

"Where are you up to?"

"1781. Without knowing when the ship was lost, I have no idea how many more years I have to go through before I get to it."

"In that case, I'll get you a cup of tea."

"Dad." Josh looks a little uncomfortable, as though he's hiding a secret, which always sets off alarm bells in Jim's head, "I think there's something you need to know."

His expression isn't one of someone who's just proposed, and for a moment he feels an irrational stab of concern - is he sick? What is it? Is there something wrong with Skye?

"It's not whatever you're thinking, Dad." Josh says, quickly, seeing the flash of worry, "It's something we've seen in the bar."

Now it's a frown, "What've you seen?"

"When you go out on patrol with Mira, there's a small group of people from the Agriculture department that get together as far back from the bar as possible. We've all seen it - they look as though they're talking about something and don't want to be overheard."

Immediately, Jim's senses are on alert. It's no surprise that the anonymous plotters would do so as far out of his view as possible - but it says a lot that they only go in the bar when he's not there. If they've got nothing to hide, why be so sneaky? But then, if they're that obvious about their behaviour, perhaps they're not as stupid as all that, after all. He may have no political acumen, but Jim hasn't got to where he has by being oblivious to other people's activities.

"Any idea who they are?" he asks, at once.

"Not all of them - just one or two, because they're regulars. One of them's Tom Jackson, one of the planting team leaders, and the other's Zack Drummond, a guy in one of the picking teams. The rest only seem to come in to have these meetings. There are usually four of them, but it can be as many as seven."

"Thanks, Josh. That's more information than I've got in nearly six weeks." He says, pleased, then decides to confide in his eldest son, "Just so you know - someone's started getting political on us, and they're talking about starting up a union. Doesn't sound that harmful, but some of the language is getting inflammatory."

"I'll see if I can find out who the others are." Josh offers, "I think Skye can do it without people catching her. She's more popular than me, and she doesn't have the 'Shannon' label. It tends to put people off if I talk to them because they think I'll report everything to you." He pauses, "Do you want me to get Boylan involved?"

"Not unless we get seriously desperate." Jim declines, after all, Boylan still hasn't really proved that he can be trusted to that extent. There's no guarantee that he won't see an advantage in working with this bunch of agitators and helping them overturn everything they've fought for. It'll be a long, long time before he can find it in himself to really trust Tom Boylan.

"Fair enough." Josh agrees, "I've gotta get back to work. See you later."

As he departs, Jim sighs. It looks like Mira's 'Terra Nova Popular Liberation Front' joke has a ring of truth to it, after all.

Sitting over his lunch in the kitchen, Malcolm looks up sharply as his plex alerts him to a completed process, and he sets down his fork to check it. No matter how good the food, work always seems to trump it.

A few swipes, and the source of the alert is revealed: the algorithm has finished. More importantly, it's worked.

"Good God…" while he's always been excellent with electronics and coding - as it suits the logical turn of his mind - Malcolm has never viewed himself as a hacker, but to describe this as 'successful' is an understatement. Whoever did this clearly didn't think that anyone would attempt to break the encryption, as doing so has not destroyed the data. Such was the conceit of Weaver and his cohorts.

There's a lot to work on - the files are huge - but with luck, he'll have something worthwhile to report to the Senior Staff at tomorrow's meeting.

Taylor's expression is odd - bad tempered, yes, but also with a vague sense of hostility that they've never seen before. All four of his staff look at him a little nervously as they seat themselves. Either whatever's wrong is getting worse, or he's had some seriously bad news - and either possibility is something they'd rather not experience.

If he's managed to make any progress in identifying the writer of the letter, or anyone with them, he doesn't seem likely to volunteer the information, and instead sits quietly - a black-clad thundercloud - as his team make their reports. Neither he nor Jim draw attention to the fact that he has not identified the member of the security team he has assigned to investigate the unknown protester, and instead he reports back on the usual matters - incidents, security details and anything that he and Mira have discovered while on patrol.

They continue with updates from the fields and labs, while Yseult reports on work at her compound. Finally, Elisabeth advises that medical matters remain as they were.

"What about the figurehead?" Taylor asks, largely because that is the next item on the agenda. Even now, his mood seems not to have improved.

"Er…" Malcolm stutters briefly, intimidated by that vague air of hostility, "We've identified the ship, as you know, and we're in the process of following its working life via Lloyds records. I've also been able to decrypt the data on that chip that Mira gave me - and there's a hell of a lot of information. A lot of it's of no use to us now as it's inventories, personnel lists and details of financial transactions with various businessmen who became intimately involved with the interior of a Carnotaur's digestive system. What we do have, however, is a set of data readouts and topographical details of half of the continent."

Suddenly, Taylor's expression is more animated, "How the hell did she get that?"

"One of her team stole it from Commander Hooper's plex just before they left the encampment. I think she was hoping there would be something she could use to persuade you to let them back into the Colony - but they couldn't decrypt it, so she didn't risk offering it in case it turned out to be useless."

"What can we do with it?" Jim asks, equally intrigued.

"Well, our navigational aids are reduced to altogether older fashioned methods these days as we don't have satellites to calculate positions from. Once we get beyond the navigational beacons for the outposts, we're largely working blind, as we don't know how the land lies without going there ourselves. What this does is give us the ability to pinpoint a location and identify its latitude and longitude - then all you need is standard navigational equipment to go and find it."

"What areas does it cover, Malcolm?" Suddenly, that hostility seems to have gone.

"The entire area that the Colony covers - including the outposts, and," He pauses, almost for effect, "Pretty much the entire area of the Badlands."

Everyone is staring at him.

"Look, before anyone gets too excited," he adds, "I don't want people thinking that this is the equivalent of an Ordnance Survey map. It tells us the contours of the land, and there are measurements that we can use to calculate positions. But it doesn't tell us whether the land is safe to cross, or where there's water. It just covers depressions and elevations - and there are a hell of a lot of them, so I can't be sure whether any of the depressions are an impact crater, or a natural bowl caused by other processes."

"And you want to go and find out." Taylor finishes.

Malcolm shakes his head, "Not yet, Commander. Until I have an idea as to how the natural portal works, we'd be wandering around all over the place, and quite possibly never find anything. At the moment, I don't have enough data to even make an educated guess as to whether the portal is fuelled on a cycle, or if it's entirely random. If it's random, then the degree of luck involved in finding it would be off the scale - but if it's cyclical, and we can work out the cycle, then that makes the difference. For all we know, it may have just fired up - and might not do so again for years to come."

"If nothing else," Elisabeth says, "It explains why Lucas refused to move from his encampment, doesn't it?"

"That was my thought." Malcolm agrees, "I was hoping that there might be some records in that data which might have helped with that - but that was a hope too far. Lucas never shared his research - not even with someone who wouldn't have had a clue what it meant, and wouldn't have known what to do with it."

"He kept it in his head, and wrote it on rocks." Taylor growls, then sits back, "I've got nothing on this letter writer. I'll let you know when I have it."

Everyone stares at him - did he just dismiss them? It's impossible to say.

"I have." Jim says, causing Taylor to glare at him, "We might have a couple of names to work with."

"Mira, I take it?" Taylor asks, as though he expects it to be lies.

"Josh, actually. He and Skye have noticed some unexpected meetings in the bar."

"Go on."

"There's a group of people that gather in the bar when I'm out on patrol. Josh doesn't know most of 'em - just two. A couple of guys from the planting and picking teams. There are usually two others with them - but it can be as many as seven."

"Who's the ringleader?" Taylor asks, at once.

"He didn't say - I guess it wasn't that obvious. It's not like he could go up and ask them."

"I'll pass that on."

Again, that sense of dismissal. Rather than object, Jim nods and rises, prompting his colleagues to do likewise. It's bemusing, but now is not the time to challenge it. Not when they don't know the cause.

"Dinner tonight?" Yseult asks, with feigned cheerfulness, as they descend from the Command Centre, "My treat."

No one has much appetite as they sit at the dining table, picking at the meal that Yseult has provided. It couldn't be more obvious that something has shifted in Taylor's perception of them. It's as though he has ceased to trust them; or, at least, has returned to that sense of uncertainty over their trustworthiness that existed in the early days after the arrival of the tenth pilgrimage.

"I need to get him in, don't I?" Elisabeth says, worriedly, "And I need to do it before he gets worse. It may be just his mood today - but if it isn't, then we could find ourselves pushed out - and that could give the malcontents a real reason to move against us."

"Let's see how he is tomorrow." Yseult suggests, "If this carries on, then we know that we've got to do something."

"I've asked Josh to see what he and Skye can do about finding out who these other people are in that group that's so careful to be in the bar when I'm not." Jim adds, "If we know who the ringleader is, then we can try talking to them and see what they want."

"From what the graffiti was saying, they want rid of Taylor." Malcolm sighs, "And that's the one thing we don't want. Until we've got something in place that's got his blessing and involvement, it's him in charge or no one."

"And if you say it," Jim adds, grinning, "it must be true."

"At least I didn't have to admit that the handwriting test was a failure." Malcolm admits, "I didn't give the writer enough credit - he disguised his handwriting just enough to make it impossible to be absolutely sure who it was."

"Let's see what Josh and Skye come up with." Elisabeth advises, "If they can identify the ringleader, we can approach him - or perhaps Chris can? Maybe a neutral party might be better."

"It's a thought - though Chris reports to me, so he might be too close to the imagined 'elite'. I'll ask him if he can think of someone we could try, once we know who we've got to talk to."

"And there the matter rests. Again." Yseult sighs, "It seems that, we get so far, and no further - all the time."

"How much further have you got now?" Elisabeth asks.

"1792." She sighs, "I'm getting used to the writing now, but it's still a pig to read, and I've got to be so careful not to miss anything."

Before she can say anything else, Malcolm's plex pings to alert him to a message. Being utterly unable to ignore messages about work, he reaches for it, and reads it, "Hell, I think we can do it."

"What?" Jim asks.

"It's Bram - he was examining the figurehead again, and he's found a sample of rock that's got strong traces of something in it that's giving off theta radiation. I think he's found us a sample of baldanite."

"Baldawhat?"

"Sorry - it's the name I gave to that theoretical element I was talking about; I named it after the Badlands - the Spanish word 'baldío' that means 'empty land', or if you prefer, 'barren land.'"

"Ah."

Malcolm looks much more cheerful now, "Well, that sorts out what I'm doing tomorrow."

At first glance, the sample doesn't look like much - just a small fragment of sandstone. But it's flecked with shards of something glassy, as though something shattered into it, and Malcolm looks at it with great interest, though it's now behind thick glass in a safety cupboard.

"My readings were going crazy, Malcolm," Bram advises, "It's not my field, but even I can identify what the rad-meter's saying. That's theta radiation, and there's something fused into the sandstone."

"That's a seriously good find, Bram." He agrees, examining it carefully with his thickly gloved hands, "I can get to work measuring the rate of decay; and once I have that, I'll be able to sort out some theories as to how quickly it's likely to gather enough to trigger a portal."

"Progress, then?"

"Most definitely." He agrees, "It's about time we had some luck. With a bit more of it, once Max has found out what happened to the Polly Constance, I can use that data to help find out if there are any specific circumstances about it that we can use to check later records for other disappearances."

"Do you think there might be?"

"At this point, I'm not discounting anything."

It's not going to be easy to extract the tiny flecks of baldanite - assuming that's what it is - as it's throwing out a shocking amount of radiation. He's going to have to do it all behind glass, which is very fiddly at the best of times, and with only a minimal sample. Still, it's better than nothing, and he's well aware that he's been handed a real stroke of good fortune.

"Whereabouts did you find this?" he asks, as he plans.

"It was caught in the fixings, Malcolm; and - you'll love this - they were made of lead. We couldn't find it because it was completely shielded by the lead."

That explains a lot.

"Do you need me to do anything?" Bram asks, as he has a lot of other projects to work on.

"Not right now, Bram. Thanks - you've got this project right back on track again."

"Happy to help."

Mira's expression is not pleasant, "Whatever clout I had with the discontented," she complains, "it's gone. I'm tainted by your aura of authority, Shannon."

He snorts with amusement. She is not at all pleased to discover that Skye and Josh have spotted something that she hasn't, "Sorry, Mira. Working with me has its advantages - my humour, charm and general all-round-greatness; but it's not all root beer and cheerios."

"Tell me about it." She sighs, "Any new graffiti recently?"

They round a corner on their patrol, and stop, "Yes." Jim says, eyeing the evidence right in front of them.

GET RID OF THE ELITE! UNITE TO PROSPER!

"Okay. That's rather definite." She says, "Should I start backing away from you now, or leave it for a few days?"

"I'd make a joke about it being spelled right - but what it's saying is getting too close to the bone. Who the hell around here is the 'elite' anyway? It's not like I'm living in a palace."

"Does it matter?" Mira asks, "The argument doesn't have to be rational - just convincing. There's a small group who have the ear of the commander - and that constitutes an elite to those who don't. It doesn't matter that Taylor holds surgeries and people can talk to him directly - or that he personally arbitrates over disputes. If you're a crop planter, or a fruit picker, you're bound to feel a long way away from the centre."

Jim sighs. Put like that - it's pretty obvious, really. The trouble is, with a population of nearly eleven hundred, now that there are so many kids around, how do you create a system of government that represents everyone's interests? Everyone's different, and they all have entirely different aspirations. But then - if a fruit picker is out in the fields getting rained on, bitten by insects and God-knows-what-else, then they're not exactly going to be happy to hear about the travails of a biochemist in their dry, clean lab.

"Everyone's got their own agendas, Mira. We can't fit them all into how this place runs."

"You don't have to tell me that, Shannon. I led a group of misfits in a tree-top village - I know what it's like to have to keep a lid on a bunch of people who don't like being told what to do. The difference here is that Taylor doesn't use the sanction of chucking someone out of the colony except as a last resort."

Jim shudders at the implications of that remark, "I'll get Chris to organise a cleaning crew."

"They're back." Skye observes, as she pretends to be talking to Josh, who is busy drying glasses with his back to the tables beyond the bar, "There are seven today." After a brief pause, she suddenly laughs, "You look ridiculous, Josh - I've gotta take a picture of that!"

Rather than ask her what the hell she's talking about, Josh immediately goes with it, "Okay, so I've got a stain all down my arm - do you have to?"

"Come on - left a bit." She raises her plex, takes care to focus, and takes a picture, "There."

They set the plex on the bar and examine the result, Josh pulling a face, "It looks stupid."

"I'll send it to Zoe, then."

"You wouldn't!" he pretends to try to snatch the plex, and she tussles with him briefly, before hitting 'send'.

"There - done!" She laughs again, "I look forward to seeing your revenge." Then she checks the plex, "And it's been delivered."

Her expression satisfied, she retreats to bring in some glasses from the nearby tables, while Josh looks again at her photo of the conspirators, which she has actually sent to his Dad. Raising his eyes, he glances briefly at the group, who continue their meeting, utterly oblivious to all that has occurred behind them.

"Take a seat, Chris," Malcolm says, as his field manager arrives, "I'll be with you in a minute, I've got some results coming through."

"Sorry about that message," he calls back as Malcolm checks that the results have downloaded to his plex, "I haven't a clue who's doing it."

"I think we might have." Malcolm says, more quietly, as he returns, "I've just had this from Jim Shannon - Skye took it earlier this afternoon in Boylan's."

Chris takes the plex and squints at the picture, "Ah. That explains a lot."

"You know them?"

"Oh yes, I certainly do." He says, "You've got Tom Jackson - he's a bit of a rabble-rouser, though he's never been brave enough to follow it through. The one to the left of him is Joe Peck, one of my fruit pickers. He's in the top fruit team - they do apples, pears and so on. Then you've got Paul Thatcher, he's one of the planters, and Butch Thackeray, who's one of our ploughmen. That's Zack Drummond, he's with Joe on the top fruit picking team, and Andy Packer - one of the soft fruit pickers. None of them are particularly troublesome, but…" he pauses.

"But?" Malcolm prompts.

"We could have a problem."

Elisabeth frowns, "Chris thinks that the ringleader is someone called Bob Parker?"

Malcolm nods, "It might be. I remember him giving us a really filthy look a few weeks back when Chris was talking me through the plans for this year's planting. Chris said it was because he wanted to be appointed Orchard Manager while the incumbent was on maternity leave - but there was already someone more qualified to do it. To his mind, if anyone could be doing this, it's probably him. He's always been intent on getting to a management position, but hasn't got the qualifications to do it."

"So, do we approach him?" she asks.

"Chris says not to. Apparently he's got chips on both shoulders the size of a continent - and he's a past master of deliberately misinterpreting statements to invert arguments against him. If we're going to approach anyone, he suggests Thackeray - he's interested in politics, but not to the point where he's irrational about it. It could be that he's something of a stabilising influence in the group. Besides, as a ploughman, he's one of the more qualified and better paid workers in the Agriculture Department, so he's got less of an axe to grind."

"There, all done." She says, accepting the results from the medical, "That's your fifty thousand mile service done for another year."

Sitting up on the bio-bed, Malcolm swings his legs to the side ready to stand up again, "Any luck in getting Taylor in here?"

She shakes her head, "I haven't managed to get the nerve up to ask him." She admits, "He's a nightmare to get in here at the best of times - and I can't find a reason to do it that he'll accept."

"It's amazing, isn't it?" he says, as he gets up, "We're stalled on all fronts - and then suddenly it all starts coming together. We might have our graffiti artist, I've got the sample of baldanite that I need, and we're getting closer to working out what happened to that ship. Max is going through 1793 this evening. We might even make it three in a row."

"Fingers crossed." Elisabeth smiles, "I'll get these results analysed and let you know that you're absolutely fine later."

Yseult is in the shower when he gets home, having overseen the opening of the latest charcoal pile, while Erin is in her playpen, engaged in some vitally important investigative work involving a cloth book and her newly emerging teeth. She laughs delightedly as he lifts her up to give her a kiss, and he rests her on his hip as her mother emerges from the bedroom, "You look pleased."

"That would be because I am." He smiles, as she kisses him on the cheek, then follows her across to the kitchen, where interesting smells are emerging from the oven, "I've measured the rate of decay of the baldanite, so, assuming we can find a likely spot, I can make some estimates as to how much buildup is needed to trigger a wormhole. Given how much is coming out of it, I can't believe it's a one-off thing. It must work on a cycle - and we just need to work out what that cycle is."

Dinner eaten, the washing up done, and Erin fast asleep, Yseult settles down again with shipping records while Malcolm examines the topographical records from Hooper's data. There's going to be a crater - that's obvious - but how much it's filled in depends on how long ago it impacted, how big it was, and whether it was an actual impact or an air-burst detonation. Based on the coordinates that Mira was given, he has a few candidates - but all of them are a bizarre distance away from the spot where she found the figurehead, and he can't help but wonder how on earth it got so far away from any of them. As Mira had said, it wouldn't have grown legs and walked.

"I've got it!" Yseult says, suddenly, startling him from his perusal.

"What?" he gets up and joins her.

"The Polly Constance's last voyage - she was reported lost in late August 1793. She departed Dartmouth in April, bound for Antigua with a cargo of sundry items for the British colony there, and arrived in June with some major damage to one of her masts. She put out to return to Dartmouth with a cargo of sugar and rum - but was lost about a week later. Her last reported position was two hundred nautical miles to the north west, when she was spotted by another merchantman."

"And?"

"This could almost be a gift, Malcolm." She says, "About three hours afterwards, the lookout reported a bright flash on the horizon - coming from the same direction that she'd gone. It was assumed to be a meteorological or astronomical phenomenon, but the captain of the merchantman went back, because he thought it might be a problem with the cargo - but he couldn't find anything except a single top-most sail, floating on the surface."

Malcolm examines the record, struggling to figure out the ornate, copperplate handwriting, "So they decided there must've been munitions on the ship?" he says, looking at the final statement.

"Looks like it. I imagine that didn't go down well with the Government - Britain was at war with America at the time, and it must've looked like they were attempting to smuggle munitions. I'll see if I can find out what happened to the company - chances are that, if that was the view, it wouldn't have lasted very well."

"What does this say?" Malcolm asks, checking a small note at the end, "I can't make it out."

Yseult squints over it, "Ah - it looks like the ship owner was aboard. It's saying he was lost with the ship."

"Give me a minute." Malcolm returns to his own plex and spends nearly ten minutes frowning over it as he scribbles with a stylus, calculates, deletes, tries again and then finally sits back, "Okay - based on the various likely depressions, I've pulled out a geographical algorithm that works out their cubic volume." He continues to tap with the stylus, "If I apply it to these figures, I might be able to get an estimate over how long it would take for the radiation to build up enough to fuel a wormhole. Assuming that the degree of distribution of the baldanite is constant in the bedrock debris…"

She watches, fondly, as he seems almost now to be talking to himself as he calculates. It's one of the things she loves about him: his brow furrowed in concentration, his eyes fixed on his work. She'd grab him and kiss him - but he's busy.

At length, he sits back up again, "Right. Give or take, I think we're safe to say that we're looking at a cycle of about thirty years. It's complete guesswork, but there's enough evidence to support it. Just."

"So, all we need to do is work out spans of thirty years from 1793 to the current year in the future to have an idea when it might open next?"

"I'd say so."

"Right, it'd be 2153 if we were still in the future, so…" she calculates a bit, then looks up, "If you're right, then it's going to happen this year."

"Seriously?" Immediately he comes back to join her, "My God - we could witness the formation of a natural wormhole…"

"This is why Lucas stayed where he did, isn't it?" Yseult says, "But he ran out of time."

Then Malcolm's face falls, "We've got to go out there." There are a multitude of fears wrapped up in his words. Much as he would be delighted to witness said wormhole formation, the downside is being forced to go back into the Badlands: something he all-but swore never to do again.

"We don't know for sure that it's going to happen, Malcolm." Yseult reminds him, "We still need to do a bit more research - it might be that we're wrong, and it's not going to happen for years."

He looks doubtful; this is probably the first time he's ever hoped that a calculation of his is wrong. Fear of the Badlands aside, the real danger seems to be here in the colony. Not to mention the sheer degree of organisation such an expedition would demand - would it be better to let things lie?

Somehow, whatever the answer is - Malcolm is quite convinced that he's not going to like it.