Duffy felt the ground give a lurch under his feet as the explosive charges went off. The detonation blew open the doors of the basement's service entrance to release a rushing cloud of smoke and debris and a moment later the entire building began to collapse as the crystallised steel of the reinforced concrete was stressed beyond endurance. Duffy, along with everyone else, watched from a safe distance as the building seemed to fold in on itself and then the scene was hidden by billowing clouds of smoke and dust. Then the scene was lit a livid green as energies from the Furnace gushed forth and Duffy felt a chill washing over him as if he'd been hit by a sudden gust of cold air. It only lasted a moment, and then the scene was once again that of a normal collapsing building, grumbling and rumbling as the wreckage settled itself in the hole where the basement had been.

  "Is that it?" asked one of the soldiers. The one the Captain had named as Murphy. "How do we know if it's really destroyed?"

  The question answered itself, though, as they felt a change in the air around them. The sudden absence of something different that they'd stopped noticing; the eerie, mind-altering quality of the anomaly itself. Duffy looked up and saw a sky that looked completely normal, with a few wispy, white clouds drifting across a deep blue background. No swirling fractal patterns. No half imagined, half hallucinated angels or demons flitting about above them. The half-finished buildings of the new housing complex across the street looked mundane and ordinary with no spectral faces peering out the windows at them, and those plants and weeds too small to have been altered by the Intelligence no longer carried any sense of threat or danger.

  The Captain drew his sidearm, aimed it up into the air and pulled the trigger. The gun fired just as it was supposed to with the sound echoing from the buildings around them. "Go see if the vehicles will start," he said to one of the drivers.

  "What about them?" the driver asked, watching the anomaly creatures warily.

  The creatures were just wandering aimlessly, though, like the captive creatures back in Phoenix. They showed no sign of intelligence. The Captain aimed his gun at one and shot it. There was a shower of gore where the bullet exited and the creature staggered back, shedding damaged fish-egg body modules. It showed no sigh of either fear or anger, though, and a moment later it was wandering aimlessly again.

  "I don't think they're a threat any more," said Corporal Ellis. "The plants might be, though. Don't shoot any of the gourds or they might release more dust. They'll have to be incinerated with flamethrowers."

  The driver nodded and climbed into the nearest Rhino. A moment later its engine roared into life and the men gave a cheer of delight and relief. "We'll done, men," said the Captain. "Ellis, go fetch me a satellite phone please. Let's inform Flagstaff that our mission has been successfully accomplished."

  "Yes, Sir," the Corporal replied and he ran for the nearest MCV.

  "What was that image in the centre of the room?" another of the soldiers asked Duffy. "It looked like a window or something."

  "That was a portal into another world," Duffy replied. "A world in another universe with different physical laws. The laws of that world were bleeding through into our universe, something called an incursion. That's what was causing the anomaly."

  "A rather simplistic explanation," said Bergman, wandering over to join them. He was still accompanied by his two guards, Duffy noticed, while the two that had been assigned to him had gone. It seemed the Captain had decided to trust him.

  "Of course, you'd need about six doctorates to achieve anything close to a complete understanding." Bergman continued. He turned to the soldier. "The Furnace was changing the laws of our universe so that they were similar to those that govern the other universe. This drew the two universes together..."

  "No-one's interested in the ramblings of a madman," Duffy interrupted him irritably. "He was on the side of the creatures," he told the soldier. "He wanted them to win."

  "An outrageous accusation," said Bergman. "I was just as much their prisoner as he was."

  "Yes, Sir," said the soldier. "What I was wondering, though, is whether that portal, or whatever, could still be open down there, under the rubble." He stared at the ruined building, growing visible again as the smoke and dust drifted away.

  "If the anomaly's gone, the portal will have gone," said Duffy. "We'll know for certain when they bring in bulldozers to clear the rubble away but I'm confident already. All contact with that other world has been severed for ever."

  "Possibly," said Bergman with a smirk.

  "Definitely," Duffy replied. "I intend to make certain of it."

  At that moment Corporal Ellis returned with a satellite phone which he handed to the Captain. Daniels took it and typed a number into the keypad. "This is Captain Andrew Daniels in command of the Maricopa expeditionary force," he said when it was answered. "Reporting that we have accomplished our mission. The Furnace has been destroyed and the anomaly has dissipated."

  "Roger, Captain," said the voice of General Bromley from the handset. "We confirm that the anomaly has disappeared. Congratulations to you and your men. You have performed a great service for your country. It's no exaggeration to say that you have quite possibly saved the world."

  A cheer went up from the men, quickly muted as they remembered the colleagues they'd lost. "I regret to report that we have suffered casualties," said the Captain. "Only about half my force are still, er, still alive."

  "We all knew the dangers you were facing when you went in," the General replied. "You can give me a full report when I get there. I'm on my way by helicopter. See you in about an hour."

  "Yes Sir." The Captain turned off the phone and gave it back to Ellis. "Well, you heard the man," he then said in a louder voice to his men. "Let's get this car park cleared. He'll want a nice, clear area to land on."

  The men went happily to work, fetching tools to clear away the rubble from the collapsed building that littered the area but then more soldiers came running into the car park. The Captain's men immediately raised their weapons and fired at them, making Duffy stare in shock. "What are they doing?" he asked the nearest soldier, a young black man with glasses.

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  "They're infected," the man replied, looking grief stricken. "Some kind of dust released by the trees. It drove them crazy."

  "Permanently?" asked the physicist.

  "I don't know. Maybe it'll wear off."

  "Take them alive if you can," ordered the Captain. "They're still American soldiers."

  "We've all still got dust all over our clothing," replied Corporal Ellis. "One bite or scratch..."

  The men continued shooting and infected men continued to fall while the Captain turned his face away in horror and grief. Duffy couldn't look away, though, unable to believe what he was seeing. American soldiers killing each other as if they were members of opposing armies, except that the newcomers weren't carrying any weapons. They were attacking with teeth and fingernails, seemingly driven by a pure fury too great to resist. Rabid men with spittle flying from their mouths as they ran to their deaths, not caring that those beside them were dropping so long as they could hurt the uninfected before they also fell. One or two were physically overpowered, though, pinned to the ground by two or three men each while they were restrained with zip ties, and Duffy saw the doctor inject one of them with a syringe that he plunged into his neck. The crazy man went limp and was quickly tied up.

  Soon it was over. The four crazies that had been taken alive were taken to one of the Rhinos and locked in while the others, the dead, were carried, solemnly and respectfully, out of sight. "We shouldn't have taken off our gas masks," said the Captain, his face white as if he were contemplating what might have happened to them. "Some of the dust might have been knocked from our clothing, into the air. We might have breathed it in. God, what was I thinking?"

  "That must have happened," Ellis agreed, "but no more of us were infected. The dust must have become harmless."

  "The ultraviolet in the sunlight perhaps," said Duffy. "Ultraviolet light is used to sterilise stuff in hospitals."

  The Captain nodded but didn't look any happier.

  Duffy wandered away, still shocked by what had just happened, and tried to think about something else. The military men seemed to have relaxed again, as if they thought that it was all over, but Duffy knew there was still work to do. The two scientists Bergman had sent letters to, along with samples of superconducting rock, would need to be contacted and persuaded not to reveal what they knew to anyone. That might be possible with the American. Whoever Bergman had sent the letter to might not have told anyone about it yet. He or she would have seen the anomaly on television, would know the dangers and might decide it was better for Furnace technology to be lost forever. All Duffy would have to do was identify that person and talk to them. See if they already shared his views on the subject and, if they didn't, persuade them. He thought he would have a pretty good chance of being able to do that. He was a science communicator after all. He was good at talking to people.

  The Chinese physicist, Chen Yan, would be a whole different kettle of fish, though. Duffy thought it very likely that the Chinese authorities opened all mail to its citizens coming from foreigners, which would mean that the Chinese government might have received the information before the Professor himself. Duffy would face the challenge of persuading not a person, but a government. The Chinese would need to be convinced that the Americans weren't intending to create another Furnace. If the Chinese had even the smallest suspicion that the Americans wanted to harvest that supply of superconductors on the other world, there would be no hope of persuading them not to do the same.

  He sighed. It seemed he had his work cut out for him, and he would be working against Bergman as well, who would be trying to achieve the very opposite. All his notes might have been lost when the laboratory was destroyed but he very probably had copies elsewhere, in the safekeeping of friends and relatives. Everything he needed to create another Furnace. He could send copies of those notes to as many people as he wanted. Make sure that the genie was well and truly out of the bottle...

  No, he decided. He wouldn't have the opportunity. The anomaly had killed over sixty thousand Americans, cost them two cities, and Bergman could have ended it at any time just by turning the Furnace off. The Americans would lock him up in a tiny cell and he'd never see sunlight again. And even if he was able to share his notes, he didn't have any more samples of superconductor to give away. Nothing to convince people of the value of going back to the other world. Anyone he contacted would only see the danger, not the profit.

  He allowed himself to relax a little. The American government would only want to build another Furnace if they found out about the superconductor, and so long as that didn't happen there was a chance of persuading the Chinese not to build one either. The absolute first priority, therefore, was to find the American to whom Bergman had sent the letter. He would start on that the moment he was back in civilisation. There were only a handful of people who had the expertise to understand and take advantage of what Bergman had sent them. Duffy would contact them one at a time.

  While deep in thought he'd absent-mindedly wandered out of sight of the soldiers and, suddenly realising how far he'd gone, he turned to go back. A movement off to his left startled him until he saw that it was one of the soldiers, approaching him from down the street. He'd thought that all the soldiers were behind him, though. What was one of them doing over there?

  The soldier was coming right at him. Almost running, and there was a mad look in his eye. He wasn't holding any weapon but he had his hands out in front of him, his fingers bent into claws, and there was a mindless, idiotic look of fury on his face. Another crazy! Duffy turned to run but the soldier was faster as he broke into a sudden sprint. Duffy wasn't a physically impressive man, but the crazy was massive with huge muscles, as if he'd spent half his life in the gym. Even without a weapon, he'd be able to tear Duffy apart with his bare hands, and the nearest help was too far away to save him...

  Just before the crazy could grab him, though, three anomaly creatures jumped on him and began tearing at him with their clawed tentacles. Duffy stared in astonishment as they cut the crazy to ribbons, blood jetting from a dozen severed arteries, and then he fell. The crazy stared at Duffy as the last of his blood drained away, and he reached out with one clawed hand, his eyes still filled with an insane hate, but then he collapsed and lay still. The anomaly creatures stared at Duffy with their six-eyed flower heads, and then they ran off into the city.

  Duffy breathed a sigh of relief, but then he caught his breath as the significance of what had just happened came to him. The anomaly creatures had saved him. They'd been acting purposefully, still under the control of the Intelligence from the other world, but how was that possible if the portal between the two worlds had been closed? There were two possibilities. Either the portal was still open, somewhere under the rubble, or...

  Or the Intelligence had found a way to come through the portal into their world. What was the Intelligence anyway? Not a living animal, certainly. The view he'd had of the other planet had seemed to be that of a completely dead world. A planet of crystals with an unbreathable atmosphere. Animals weren't the only things that could be intelligent, though. Computers could also be intelligent, and one of the things a computer had to have were many, many identical elements in which to store information. And crystals were composed of many, many identical elements. Could the crystals of that world have been the Intelligence, with impurities in the lattice being the means by which information was stored? And the anomaly had been turning everything inside it to crystal.

  He imagined the crust of the alien world being one giant crystal, the home of an intelligence so powerful that it was virtually godlike to mankind. The anomaly hasn't just been spreading outwards. It had been a sphere, spreading up and down as well. Up into the air, a giant dome centered on the Furnace, and down into the ground as well. It had been turning the bedrock of the Earth's crust into crystal. That's how it had created the escarpments that had blocked the roads on their way in. What if the Intelligence had turned that crystallised crust into a giant computer and copied a part of itself into it?

  He turned and ran back to where the soldiers were still clearing the car park. They had to be warned. They had to be told that the enemy was here, literally right under their feet, and no doubt plotting to spread itself all across the planet...