Paris was burning.

In the office we called up portals to anywhere is Europe we thought could provide the hospital facilities for the gassed hunters, and left the less effected Acryli-beast hunters there explaining what had happened - the Captain explained to them what Chlorine gas was and did.

I tried to find anyone who was familiar with the controls of the equipment, but no one in the throng of those escaping from the fire admitted to any involvement with them.

There were large number of women from the garment making factories in the suburbs, they all wanted to return to their family villages, and if they went though to the wrong substation they would wait until we remade the portal and return to the Hall, complaining loudly about our inefficiency.

We lived on the brown liquid that was called coffee and grabbed food when we could, we were even glad when a couple of Fashion Police appeared and began to order the people about and march them through the portals more quickly, but when a mob of Wolf Hunters came in they vanished very quickly, along with the last of the population of Paris.

The Wolf Hunters demanded that we make a portal through into the Fashion Fur Home World so they could go and attack them there. It took a lot of explaining that we did not know how to move between the dimensions before they accepted that fact, and by then the roaring of the fire was alarming, the air was almost too thick to breathe, and what was worse, the batteries were worn out. I had noticed one portal switch off, but when the Wolf Hunters let me back to the controls, all of them were dark.

We had been changing the batteries regularly, and possibly there were some in the pile of used ones were some which could have suported a portal, but which ones they were we had no way to tell.

If the Chorister had not remembered the batteries in the rod, renewed for Ivana's visit, we would have been in some difficulties. The roof of the Hall was smouldering by the time we could light up one of the portables. The Captain had taken some of the calmer Hunters into the office and from the sounds I assumed that she was smashing up the controls, but when they reappeared they brought the cases with them, and half a dozen were carrying a pallet upon which rested a thing of bubbles and crystals, beneath a clear dome.

'Get through the portal!' I screamed at them, for the wall behind them was glowing red and only the lack of a roof was allowing the heat to escape upwards.

The Captain paused.

'How are you going to get out?'

'I'll move the focus of the ring over myself and the equipment.' I said blythely, 'Go through now so I don't have to try to include you as well.'

There was a crash behind me, she saw what it was and shot through the portal.

I looked down and adjusted the controls, the ring moved towards me, passed me, and the heat was replaced by clear cool air. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the building on the other side of the ring was collapsing, so I hit the off button, and then I looked around.

A man was looking at me.

His skin was ginger, as was his beard, his hair was the colour of red mahogany, and formed gravity defying ringlets. His eyes were silver grey and resembled two gun barrels. He must have been close to seven feet tall, and was clothed in black, a stab vest, various straps which protected from elbow to knuckles, a skirt of some sort, and again straps from below the knee down to the soles of sandals.

He glanced down at a device in his hand, grinned and held up his right hand in the Star Trek Vulcan salute.
'Live long and prosper' he said.
I raised my hand in the same gesture. 'Prosperity and long life.' I returned.

He had turned slightly and I saw that on the front of the stab vest there was a glossy circle, with Department of Otherworld Security around it, and in the centre, a four cusp hypocycloid, or astroid.