The second journey to the mainland, on the morning of their third day in the Miocene, was in one of the big tenders.

It was bright orange and white, and hung from the side of the Vinland Majesty from two stout cranes that held the boat with steel cables. As Alan Fielding watched, electric motors lowered the tender gently down the side of the huge ocean liner until it touched the water, opposite the featureless white door in which he was standing. The door was already open, having lowered from the top until it formed a bridge reaching out across the ocean, and the tender descended until the door in its side was directly level with it, with a gap of just a couple of inches between the two structures. A gap that widened and narrowed as the tender rolled on the waves.

Fielding made his way gingerly across, expecting the bridge, unsupported at one end, to sag under his weight, but to his relief it felt quite firm and solid. He kept one hand on the rope barrier that was all there was to keep someone from falling into the clear, green water, a couple of feet below. Which wouldn't be any kind of disaster, of course, since it would have been a simple matter to climb back up, but Fielding was still careful to keep to the cente of the bridge, because who knew what kind of prehistoric sea creatures lived in that water? The lecture Conrad Bellamy had made on the subject, and which he'd watched that morning while waiting for the sun to rise, had spoken of long, serpentine whales resembling the creatures from early maritime mythology, as well as sharks larger than any that inhabited the oceans of his own time. The water was calm and placid beneath him, but he still gave a sigh of relief as he reached the Porpoise, the name that had been given to this particular tender. He opened its door and stepped inside.

"I thought we might be taking the two smaller tenders," said Junior Officer Dave Preston as he joined him there. "This big ol' girl must use a lot of fuel."

"Dave's taking her out anyway," Fielding replied, "To test his prowess as a fisherman. You're right, Fuel is a precious resource, so we're conserving it by using the same boat for both purposes. He'll drop us off near the shore, then go hunting for swordfish, or whatever's out there."

He was looking in the other direction, though. Towards the shore. Harry's killers were out there somewhere, laughing at the crew of the Majesty for their cowardice. Their reluctance to go hunting them. I'm coming, you bastards, Fielding promised himself. Maybe not yet. He'd promised the Captain he'd put the good of the ship first, but later. One day, soon, they would stare down the barrel of his gun and realise the depth of the mistake they'd made.

Preston's voice snapped him out of his dreams of revenge. "So we'll be stranded on the mainland until he gets back?" he was saying, his eyes wide.

"We've got these," said Fielding, slapping the pistol he was wearing on his belt. "And these." He held up the newly-made crossbow he was holding. Almost identical to the one Preston was carrying, except for minor details as the engineers who'd made it had spotted and corrected minor design problems. They both had a quiver sling across their backs, each carrying a dozen steel bolts.

"Also, the Majesty's less than a mile from the shore," he added, pointing to the mainland visible on the horizon. "Standing on the beach, we'll be well within range of the ship's cellphone network. If there's any trouble, all you've got to do is phone for help."

"But we'll be going inland, won't we? We'll be out of cellphone range."

"That'll be true whether the tender's there on the beach or not. Having second thoughts?"

Preston grinned nervously. "No, I'm still in," he said. "We'll have our brave guardians looking after us, after all."

He looked back at the Vinland Majesty, a sheer wall of steel rising beside them. A wall with a small door in it from which a group of men were emerging to follow them across the bridge. Four of them were experienced security men, all carrying pistols and crossbows, plus their new-recruit partners who were only armed with crossbows. "Don't worry," one of the experienced man, Derek Dempsy, was saying to Joe Crouch, his partner. "We're British. Archery is in our blood. Remember Agincourt."

"They had longbows," the former millionaire replied as they climbed aboard the tender.

"You'll be fine," Dempsey assured him. "You did fine in the gym just now."

"Shooting a few darts at a dartboard that's not charging at me doesn't make me feel like an expert. It takes at least ten seconds to reload these things. We could be gored to death several times over in that time."

"I doubt we'll need the crossbows," Dempsey told him. "We'll shoot anything that bothers us. We're only carrying the crossbows to get used to them, for when the bullets run out."

"But when the bullets do run out..."

"That's why we'll always be in pairs. If one of us misses, the other one'll get the beast."

"Let's hope there's just one beast."

Dempsey just laughed at the suggestion, though, and they walked through into the passenger section of the Porpoise.

Next came a family of four, the Derby's. Frank and Christine, both in their thirties, with their children; Patricia, an auburn-haired eighteen year old, and her fifteen year-old brother Ben. They were carrying picks, spades and shovels that had, just a few hours before, been part of the camshaft of one of the Vinland Majesty's fifty thousand horsepower diesel-electric engines. They were still shiny where they'd been cut and hammered into shape, and the bare steel had the rainbow iridescence left behind from when they'd been raised to a white heat to soften the metal. Fielding wondered whether they were still warm, even after having been quenched in sea water to cool them.

The farming family were chatting happily as they crossed the bridge, eager to start digging holes in the grassland to assess its suitability as farmland. Behind them came Janice Wright, an architect, and Gerald Wayne, a quantity surveyor, the closest thing they had on board to a landscape surveyor. Fielding had been assured that his early training had included a course on landscape surveying, though. Hopefully, it would be enough to help them pick the best place to put the new community they would be building on the mainland.

The last of his people to come aboard were Conrad and Agnes Bellamy, their experts on prehistoric life, and a couple he hadn't met before. Their names were Abraham Dillinger the Third... Fielding smiled to himself... and his wife Doris. Apparently they had been ranchers back in the States, and were there to assess whether any of the local wildlife could be domesticated as draft animals. Fielding mentally wished them luck, but he remembered hearing somewhere that horses and oxen had required thousands of years of selective breeding to become the animals they were familiar with. Maybe I'm wrong, he told himself. Maybe there's something out there just begging to pull a plough.

That was the shore party all aboard, but then the prospective fishermen began crossing the bridge; David Sutherland, and a group of passengers who'd agreed to give it a try. They were carrying boxes of equipment, including improvised tents and camping gear and a large crate that contained the five hundred metre length of nylon cable to which the fishing hooks had been attached. Another box contained some of their precious reserve of fresh meat, a combination of chicken, beef, pork, lobster and oyster, since they had no idea what the local fish would find appetising. Another group of passengers helped bring a number of lobster pots aboard, hastily made from the flexible canes that had recently been a suite of wicker furniture. The pots were ugly and awkward where the canes kept trying to return to their original shape, but Fielding thought that whoever had made them had done a surprisingly good job of it. The passengers carrying them dumped them aboard the tender, then hurried back aboard the cruise ship as if afraid the smaller boat might carry them off into peril without warning.

Inside, the passenger compartment of the Portoise looked like a bus, with rows of seats on either side of a central aisle. At the front and sides were long windows, giving a good view of the scenery around them. There was some shuffling and re-arranging of cargo as everyone sorted themselves out, but the boat had been built to hold a hundred and twenty people, so they had plenty of space. When they were all sitting, Fielding and Preston climbed a ladder that went up through a hole in the ceiling to the cockpit. He sat down in the pilot's seat, turned on the boat's radio and called the Captain. "We're ready to go," he said.

"Good," the Captain replied. "I'll tell the winching crew to cast off. Keep in touch, you hear?"

"We will," Fielding promised him. "Wish us luck."

"Good luck, Mister Fielding," the Captain replied.

Fielding disconnected the call and watched through the window as a pair of deck hands removed the lifting cables. He went through the cockpit checks, turning on the radar and the depth sounder, and checking they were working properly by looking at the images on the display screens. Everything looked good.

"You're free to go," one of the deck hands shouted at him. "Have fun over there."

"We will," Fielding shouted back. "See you in a couple of days."

"We'll be here."

The tender had already drifted a couple of feet away from the drawbridge, but the deck hands jumped across and scurried in through the door that Fielding and the others had just emerged from. The door then closed with a whisper of electric motors, restoring the clean lines of the ship.

Fielding turned on the intercom. "Well, here we go," he said to the people below in the passenger compartment. "It'll take just us a few minutes to get to the shore. Should he a nice, smooth trip, but please remain in your seats just in case."

A muffled voice drifted up from below. "What's the in-flight movie?"

"Titanic," Fielding replied. Laughter drifted up from below, and Fielding shared an amused glance with Preston. Then he turned on the engines.

☆☆☆

Down in the passenger compartment, most of the passengers were looking out the windows, either at the cruise liner shrinking as they left it behind, or at the enigmatic coast they were approaching. All except one of the newly recruited security men, who had managed to get himself seated next to Janice Wright, the only adult, single woman on the boat. Janice, aware that she was being examined, kept her attention fixed firmly on the view outside. She was a very attractive forty year old, and was accustomed to receiving the unwanted attention of men. The best way to deal with it, she'd discovered, was to simply refuse to engage with the man. Eventually he would get the message and turn his attention elsewhere.

"Hi," the new recruit said with a friendly voice. "My name's Nigel."

Simple politeness made it necessary for her to reply, but she kept it as simple and short as possible. "Pleased to meet you," she said.

"I'm a golfer," he said. "A pretty good one. I came third in the Masters last year."

"Congratulations," she replied.

"I used to work in a clock factory," the golfer added, "but I was fired. A rotten thing to do after all the hours I put in."

It took Janice a moment or two to realise that it was a joke, but when the punchline clicked in her head she couldn't help but smile with amusement. Then she cursed herself. He would have seen it and been encouraged by it. Now he would think he was in with a chance.

"Sorry," Nigel apologised. "I use really bad jokes to try to break the ice. They're not usually as bad as that, though."

"Give it up," said Lucas Huzaski, sitting across the aisle from him. "She'd got too much good taste to be interested in you."

"Shut up, you far Polish footballer!" said Nigel in an unnecessarily loud voice. Everyone in the passenger compartment turned to stare at him.

"Fuck off, you fat English golfer!" Lucas replied, equally loudly. "And don't call me Polish."

"Why not? You are Polish."

"You say Polish like it is an insult. Polish is great to be. Better than English."

"The Poles are all a bunch of useless fat pricks."

"Stop being racist! You are racist towards me."

"You can't be racist towards a country, you stupid Pole. You can only be racist towards a race. I was being... Countryist." He was almost laughing as he said it, Janice noticed, which shocked her for a moment until she noticed that Lucas also had a broad grin across his face. Some stupid male bonding ritual, she decided, relaxing. Just get a room, for God's sake.

"I apologise for the Pole," said Nigel, turning his attention back to her. "We try to keep them out, but he came across hiding in the back of a shipping container."

"I am premier league footballer," Lucas replied indignantly. "I came across on 747. I am more famous than you. I play for Arsenal."

"Arsewipe isn't a proper football team," Nigel told him. "They're a bunch of foreigners and losers."

"I'm a foreigner," Janice pointed out, stiffening beside him. "I'm from Alaska."

Lucas laughed and made a hand gesture of an aircraft crashing and exploding.

Nigel ignored him. "Beautiful place, Mrs Wright" he said with a pleasant smile. "I always meant to go there one day. What's it like in Alaska?"

"It's Miss Wright," she replied. "I'm not married. And to answer your question, it's cold. Why do you think I wanted to go on a tropical cruise?"

"How come such a beautiful woman never got married?"

"Behold, the master at work," said Lucas in a low, serious voice.

Janice was forced to smile despite herself. "Just never found the right man, I suppose," she said. "And you might as well call me Janice. Everyone else does."

"He shoots," said Lucas, still in his low, serious voice. "He scores."

"Will you shut up!" Nigel shouted back at him.

"Friend of yours?" said Janice. She found that she was warming to him. He was funny and confident, a formidable combination. She was well aware of his reputation, of course. The Heartbreaker. He would have his wicked way with her, then dump her and move on. Unless it was she who dumped him first, of course...

"We're approaching the beach," said Fielding's voice from the speakers. "Brace yourself in case we run aground with a jolt."

They all grabbed hold of the armrests of their seats, but there was no jolt and the tender slid gently and easily onto a bank of soft sand.