If this was a starship, thought Tennyson, like the Starship Enterprise, there'd be a proper briefing room with chairs around a proper table and with a computer screen mounted on the wall. On the Vinland Majesty, though, they had to make do with a function room. The chairs were still there, in the Orchid room, from the last staff meeting they'd had, just the day before. They'd been moved where one of the maids had been in to vacuum the floor, but it only took a moment to put them back in a circle.

The other members of the senior staff began turning up soon after, and soon everyone was seated; the same people as before but this time including Conrad and Agnes Bellamy. The two scientists looked uncomfortable and out of place among the smartly-uniformed officers and technical staff, but they had hardly sat down before the others were pestering them with questions.

"Is this real?" demanded Svein Tajik, the Chief Engineer, shoving his phone in Conrad's face. It was showing the video of the giant rhino creatures. The expression on his face was saying that if it was a joke, he had better own up to it now.

"It is real," Conrad confirmed. "Those animals are real. So are the Paleomastodons we saw in the river." The scientists looked around at the circle of officers seated around them, almost all of whom were staring back sceptically. "They're real," he repeated. "It's not some kind of trick."

"You expect us to believe that?" asked David Sutherland, the Chief Electrician. He looked across at Alan Fielding, but the Second Officer was staring down at the floor, thinking deep thoughts and lost to rhe world.

"They're real," Conrad repeated. "I was there. I actually put my hand out and touched one of them. And to answer your next question, they were real flesh and blood. Not robots of some kind."

"And you know that how?" asked Tajik.

"They were breathing. Their breath smelled. A rather pleasant smell, actually. Their hides smelled. The way they moved couldn't have been imitated by a robot. No robot in the world is that good."

"That we know of," said Joe Wardley, the Chief Security Officer. "Maybe some kind of secret government project..."

"They were real, Mister Wardley," Conrad told him firmly. "Just accept it, okay?"

"For the time being," said the Captain, "let's accept that they're real. Let's accept that we've somehow been transported to a world that has monsters in it, but no people..."

"Which is impossible," said Tajik, meeting his gaze defiantly.

"I know it's impossible!" Tennyson told him, his voice rising with exasperation. "Nevertheless, it seems to have happened, so let's just accept it. We're here to decide how we're going to deal with the situation."

"May I get the obvious out of the way before we go any further?" asked Conrad, raising his hand. "If we really have gone through a time warp or something and gone back in time, is it possible that we can go back to our own time by going back the way we came? Could the portal, or whatever, still be there?"

"We were on one of the world's busiest shipping lanes," said Sutherland, looking embarrassed at having to explain something so obvious to an obviously intelligent man. "If there were a large portal, or if it were open for any length of time, other ships would have gone through it. Ships are lost now and then, it's true. Usually sunk or shipwrecked. What happened to them is known. Mysterious disappearances, in the sense that no-one knows what happened to them, are very rare. That means the portal, or whatever it was, was small and short lived. Without GPS, we only have a very approximate idea of where we are in the world. Like, within a few miles. Even if the whatever it was is still there, finding it would be a one-in-a-million affair."

"Shouldn't we try anyway?" asked the scientist. "Can't we spare the small tender and a few men to sail it?"

"He's right," said Tennyson to Fielding. "Organise it, will you? Just send a few of the deck hands. There's no need to send anyone senior." He had to repeat the order before the Second Officer looked up at him, but then he nodded and took the phone from his pocket.

"In the meantime, let's assume the worst," the Captain continued, returning his attention to the room in general. "That we're here for good. We're not going home, and we just have to make the best to it we can right here. What are our chances?"

"We're dead," said Nina Bryn, the doctor. "I'm sorry to be so blunt about it, but if the situation really is what you say it is, then we're all dead. Everyone on this ship. Maybe not today or this week or even this year, but I guarantee you that not one of us will still be alive five years from now."

"Would you mind explaining that?" the Captain asked her.

"Well," said the doctor, "Let's start with the food situation. We have enough to last us... How long, Tyler?"

"At the normal rate of consumption, about five days," Tyler Ramsdale, the Hotel Director, replied. "Of course, those are five days of luxury, banquet meals. Say around five thousand calories. That's breakfast, lunch, the main meal and whatever snacks they consume throughout the day. We can extend it several times if we ration it to around 1500 calories a day. That's about the minimum a man can survive on. That right, Nina?"

The doctor nodded. "So we've got enough food for around two weeks," she said. "What do we eat then?"

"We go hunting," said Harald Greip. "There must be lots of meat on one of those big beasts."

"I'll get one of the chefs to look at the video," said Ramsdale, "but I remember hearing somewhere that there was around five to six thousand pounds of meat on an adult bull elephant..."

"Where the hell did you hear that?" demanded Sutherland incredulously.

"I can't remember," the Hotel Director replied, looking embarrassed, "but I'm pretty sure it's accurate. Those rhino beasts are way bigger, say two to three times more muscle mass. Even so, though, one of those beasts would probably only feed the whole ship for a few days."

"Talk to the chef," the Captain told him. "Check to see if that's accurate."

Ramsdale nodded and stood, pulling the phone from his pocket as he headed to the furthest corner of the room.

"Say he's right," the Captain said to Sutherland. "From that video you took, there look to have been around twenty animals in that herd."

"That's about right," the Chief Electrician replied. "So that's food for a couple of months, and then we're right back where we started."

"You can't live just on meat," said Nina Bryn. "You need vegetables as well, and we've got no idea what plants are good to eat over there. Some plants might even be poisonous."

"Let's stick to just the meat for now," Tennyson told her. He turned his attention to the Bellamys. "How many of those creatures are there likely to be over there?"

"Large creatures have large ranges," Agnes told him. "Modern African elephants have territories of around ten thousand square kilometres. Those big rhino creatures are likely to need even more room. It's nothing less than a miracle that they were close to us when we climbed to the top of the plateau."

"When we've slaughtered the herd we saw, we might have to search dozens of miles out from our camp site to find another," her husband added.

"There's those river creatures," said Greip. "The paleo-whatevers."

"Same problem," Conrad told him. "We eat the ones we saw, and then we'll have to search God alone knows how far to find some more. We can't survive by hunting. Not when there are so many of us."

"We need to grow crops." said the doctor. "We need farms."

"Lots of farms," agreed Conrad. "I don't know how much farmland it takes to feed one person..."

"About a hectare per person, I think," said Ramsdale. "And that's with modern pesticides and fertilisers. Without fertilisers, you only get about half the food, and without pesticides, three quarters of what you do grow gets eaten by insects. Maybe even more than that."

"So ten hectares per person," said the Captain, his face going pale as the truth of the situation came home to him. "Fifty thousand hectares. That's... How many square miles?"

"About two hundred," said Sutherland quietly.

Silence fell in the room. Everyone stared at the floor, as if afraid of what they would see on the faces of the others. "And it's all got to be ploughed..." Sutherland added.

"Yes, we get the picture," said the Captain sharply, and Conrad was alarmed to hear a note of fear in his voice. He looked across at Bryn, and saw nothing but grim acceptance on her face. She was right, he suddenly knew. They were all going to die.

"It's not as if we've got anything to grow anyway," said Sutherland. "It took thousands of years of selective breeding to create the carrots and cabbages we eat today. The plants out there are wild. Small and tough. Even with a plentiful supply of fertilisers and pesticides, we'd never grow enough to feed everyone."

"We have carrots and potatoes on board," said Ramsdale. "And turnips and peas. Fresh and healthy. Put them in the ground and they'll grow."

"And corn," said Tajik. "We have hundreds of buckets of corn kernels, ready to be made into popcorn. Will that grow if we plant it?"

"So long as it hasn't been irradiated or something to keep it fresh," said Sutherland. He turned to the Captain. "Can we do a stocktake? Go down to the stores and see just how much fresh vegetables we've still got down there."

"And stop people eating it," said Tajik urgently. "The cooks are probably chopping up some of it right now for the evening meals."

Tennyson nodded and turned to Fielding. "Send stewards to every restaurant and food outlet on the ship. No more fresh vegetables are to be prepared for food. Anything that'll grow is to be set aside and placed under guard." Fielding nodded and stood, pulling his phone from his pocket.

As he made his way to the corner of the room, he passed Ramsdale coming back. "Leonard Crabb thinks you're right about the amount of meat on those huge beasts," he said to the Captain.

"It doesn't matter," Tennyson replied. "We won't be eating them. They're much too valuable as beasts of burden." He turned to Nina Bryn. "We need to stretch the food we have as much as possible. What's the absolute minimum a man can survive on? Say for about four months. Long enough to get the first harvest in."

"Two harvests," said Tajik. "I can't see the first harvest producing enough food to feed everyone for four months. We'll probably need everything from the first harvest as feed stock for a much larger second crop. If we can survive that long, though, then we'll hopefully be self-sustaining."

"There's no way the food on board will feed everyone for eight months," the doctor told the Captain. "Stretch it that thin, and everyone will long since have starved to death."

"What about fish?" asked Sutherland. "Can we eat fish? We're surrounded by ocean, after all."

"We'd need nets," said Ramsdale. "Big nets. There's nothing on the ship we can make nets out of."

"Not nets," said Sutherland, though. "Hook lines. Just a long length of nylon rope with hooks tied to it, each hook with a bit of bait on it. We tow it behind a tender, dangle it in the water for a few hours, then pull it out with lots of fish on the hooks."

"Bunting," said Fielding distractedly, looking up from his phone. "We've got hundreds of metres of the stuff, to be draped across the ship on special occasions. We just cut the flags off and tie hooks on instead."

"Even if we do that," said Ramsdale, "do any of us have any idea how to operate a fishing boat?"

"Maybe some of the crew worked on a fishing boat before coming to work here" said Conrad hopefully.

The Captain forced a smile. "No," he said. "Definitely no. They're completely different skill sets." Then he looked thoughtful, though. "I want you to poll the passengers," he said to Fielding. "Find out if any of them have any useful skills. Farming, fishing. Living off the land. That sort of thing. Any knowledge we'll need to survive in the months and years ahead."

"I'm going to be busy," said the Second Officer. "Ashore."

"We'll get Harry's killers," the Captain promised him, "but we have to think of our own survival first. I need your head in the game, Alan, I need you to do this for me. Please."

Fielding nodded reluctantly, but he sat a little more upright in his chair. "The passengers are mostly millionaires and managers," he said. "They might employ people with those skills, but they won't have them themselves."

"Maybe some of them made it up through the ranks," the Captain told him, though. "A hands-on manager who used to be a field hand who married the CEO'S daughter. That sort of thing. Look into it, will you?" Fielding nodded.

"I'm putting you in charge of all aspects of food production," Tennyson added. "Get the farms up and running on the mainland. Requisition whatever you need. People, resources. It's all yours."

"Farms are pointless!" insisted Bryn, though. "There's no way the food we've got will last until the second harvest."

"We'll find a way," the Captain told her with determination.

"How? You really think we can catch that many fish? Maybe you're hoping for manna from heaven?"

"We'll find a way," the Captain repeated. He gave her a look that told her that there would be no further discussion of the matter, and the doctor scowled as she stared down at the richly carpeted floor.

"You understand what I'm asking you to do?" the Captain then said to Fielding.

"The impossible." The Second Officer's face had gone white with the weight of responsibility being placed on him, but the Captain was encouraged. At least it seemed to have snapped him out of the gloom he'd fallen into. "But I'll find a way. Somehow, I'll find a way." The Captain nodded with satisfaction.

"The passengers are likely to be un-cooperative," said Tajik. "They were expecting a luxury cruise, not to be turned into farmers."

"And a lot of them are elderly," added Greip. "They're simply incapable of hard, physical labour."

Tennyson nodded grimly. There was likely to be anger and resentment towards the elderly, who would be consuming food while contributing nothing to the effort. What could he do, though? What if survival for the majority required measures that no civilised man could contemplate?

"We'll deal with that problem when we come to it," he said. "We'll find something for them to do, for their own self respect as well as to appease the masses."

"We need to talk about the fuel situation," said Tajik. "All our electricity comes from the engines. The lights, the water purifiers, the air conditioners. Everything. Even parked here, not moving, we've got enough fuel to keep the lights on for about a month. Then the ship turns into a floating oven."

"So we've got that long to evacuate everyone to the mainland," said the Captain.

"Less time than that," said Sutherland, "if we're going to convert the tenders into fishing boats. They use the same fuel the ship does, and the sooner we've got fish coming in, the better."

"Can we get everyone ashore in a week?" the Captain asked the room in general. "We'll need shelter. Somewhere to live, even if it's just tents."

The others just stared at him, and Tennyson sighed with exasperation. "Svein, that'll be your job. Look at what we've got and see what can be repurposed into dwellings, infrastructure, transport."

"I have absolutely no idea how we're going to do that..." the Chief Enginger told him.

"Figure it out!" the Captain snapped at him. He swept his eyes around the room to address everyone. "I don't want to be told how impossible it is. I want to be told how we're going to do it. Understood?" Everyone nodded unhappily. Tajik opened a notebook app on his phone and began tapping out ideas using the virtual keyboard.

"Joe," the Captain then said, turning his attention to the ship's Chief of Security. "Once word gets around, there's going to be a lot of discontent on this ship."

"Discontent?" said Wardley with a barking laugh. "There's going to be riots!"

"It'll be up to you to keep a lid on things," Tennyson told him. "Maintain order."

"I have a grand total of twenty men on my staff," the Security Chief reminded him.

"So recruit more. There are plenty of young men among the passengers. Sign them up. Promise them extra rations if they help keep everyone else under control."

"Even if I recruit a hundred men, we only have twenty guns," Wardley reminded him. "The other three thousand could overwhelm us by sheer weight of numbers."

"See that it doesn't come to that," Tennyson told him.

"How?"

"That's your problem. We won't accomplish anything if we devolve into a chaotic rabble. Nina's prediction will only come true all the faster." He turned to the doctor. "And I don't want you repeating your doom and gloom predictions to anyone. If anyone asks, we're going to be fine. You understand?" The doctor nodded glumly.

Tennyson looked around at the people gathered around him. "Is there anything I've forgotten?" he asked.

Everyone just stared blankly back at him, though. Everyone was scared, he saw. Scared almost out of their minds. The magnitude of the tasks he'd set them was overwhelming them to paralysis. It would take time for them to process everything they'd heard and get their heads around it. He hoped it wouldn't take too long. Time was the thing they had the least of.

"Okay," he said, rising from his seat. "Alan, tell Olav to take the ship to that river you found. Anchor in the estuary, as close to shore as you can. There'll be fresh water there, and shelter from bad weather. Then we stay put. This ship doesn't move again unless we somehow make contact with civilisation again."

"Understood," the Second Officer replied.

"In the  meantime," the Captain continued, "I'm going to have to address the ship. Tell everyone what the situation is. Get Millie Bright up here. She's good with words. She can help me compose something that'll sound reassuring. Exciting, even. A great adventure."

"Until the truth hits them," the doctor replied. "That's when it'll really hit the fan..."