Chapter 45

Leaning against the metal wall of the large container shed, Tiberius sighed heavily, knowing that if the idea he'd had failed, he'd be sent down for life and lose everything, and all because the pen-pushers that ran Sodor Council were too scared to invest in his plan for a super-highway on the island.

He'd received the call from the mayor himself last night, and yes, the man had been full of regrets and apologies for how his fellow councillors liked the potential financial return it could bring them, they felt it was just a bit too bold an idea to risk major investment in while the national economy was, and to use the mayor's own words, 'going down the shitter like a lead turd'!

He shook his head dejectedly, snorting at the similarity between himself and the partially uncovered E-Two he'd just been talking with, both of them cruelly abandoned by their creators. He snorted again, but this time it was mixed with a chuckle as he thought of them being like some sort of prodigal sons. He wasn't religious, and the biblical reference had amused him, though I doubt there'll be any celebrating when I DO get to take over Sodor Railways, he thought, as long as this new plan worked, that is!

The original plan he and Boomer had come up with to sever the link between Lady and Topham's engine's should have simply left them without any magic, leaving them as just simple mechanical engines he'd have no qualms about scrapping, but seeing the result of their actions that morning when the magic failed had certainly surprised the two men…

A week last Friday…

"You're sure if worked?" Tiberius asked the American, annoyed at being woken up in the middle of the night and dragged to Tidmouth to stand on top of a hill over-looking the marshalling yards..

"Yeah," replied Boomer, looking down to the yards in the near-distance, his eyes flicking from one patch of arc-lamp-lit ground to another. "I got a call last night from a friend I've got keeping an eye on Lady, and he said she's been acting kinda weird all day. Coughing, blowing out black clouds of smoke and, why I think this is it, you know that gold dust she leaves behind her? Well, Tiberius, my funny-sounding Welshman, now, all she leaves behind her is some kinda rock-like, black shit!"

"It sounds like it worked, then!"

"Yeah, and I can't wait to see how they react when they realise their precious little talking trains are nothing more than ordinary engines!"

The two men watched with anticipation as they waited for the drivers and firemen to arrive and fire up the engines, but after waiting for what seemed like ages, the only thing they saw were groups of colourfully dressed people wandering in and out fo the lit-up areas and talking to each other.

"Who the fuck are THOSE guys?" growled Boomer.

"How the fuck should I know," Tiberius answered, equally perplexed.

"Never mind that," said Boomer, then, "Look, there's a bunch of 'em heading towards Knapford! What the hell are they all doing this time of the morning?"

Before Tiberius could say anything in reply, though, loud shouting from near the fuel pumps caught the two men's attention, and together, they puzzled over the angry rantings of a man with what looked like an artificial arm as he roused a crowd of strangely-dressed adults and children into a frenzy. In the otherwise silence of the morning, they could just about make out what he was shouting.

"Did you hear what he was saying?" Tiberius asked his companion.

"Yeah," replied Boomer, but it doesn't make any sense! It's like they think THEY'RE the engines!"

"Maybe," said Tiberius, looking at the American to see how he'd react to the possibility that had gone through his mind, "maybe they WERE the engines? Maybe the railway magic had to go somewhere and that's what it did, made them like, I don't know, call them joking people? Think about it, Boomer! The engines have sentience and faces to communicate with people, and you know as well as I do the crystals they use to direct the magic, maybe because the engines think they're alive, that's how the railway magic reacted? Otherwise, we've come here in the middle of the night to see a load of train-spotting fanatics dressed up in the colours of Topham's engines performing some sort of pantomime about rebelling against their rivals!"

Boomer's face took on a grim expression. "If it is, they're playing their parts well, I gotta admit, especially that crippled fella acting as Diesel Ten! Suppose you're right about this? D'ya think he'll play along with us? And what do we do about THEM?" he asked, pointing to the supposedly former diesels.

"I don't know," said Tiberius. "I've known scrapped engines in Barry to have lingered for YEARS without losing their sentience. They went mad, yeah, but they still carried on. Maybe now they're no longer connected to Lady, their magic will fade away and they'll all die. It's all we can hope for."

"That Diesel Ten chap really hates Thomas, though," said Tiberius. "I wonder if we can get his gang to do our work for us and wipe out the steamies?"

"Do you think he's up to it?" asked Boomer.

"We'll find out soon enough," replied his accomplice, "or else he'll find his 'new' form somewhat less robust than what he'd like!"

Laughing, the two observers turned around and set off in opposite directions.

It was an interesting concept: the magic held by their facet stones being a form of "life" itself no longer being controlled or limited by the magical engine must have expressed itself by transforming the engines and wagons into facsimiles of the "lives" it represented.

It was pretty obvious, he thought sourly, that what he knew of the railway magic and its associates was a mere pittance when compared to what his half-brother was most likely aware of. Since finding out who his father was, he'd been envious of what he could have been a part of if the man had done the decent thing and simply acknowledged him as being part of the Hatt bloodline, but no, he'd gone back to his family in their big mansion on Sodor to enjoy a life of being rich and well-fed, leaving his unwanted son and his mother behind in the small two-up, two-down they lived in with his mother's parents who had no interest in the well being of whom his grandfather referred to as his way-ward daughter and her ill-begotten child.

Being left to bring a kid up on her own had weakened his mother badly, draining her spirit to the point where, after catching pneumonia, she'd become too frail to work and they'd had to rely on the "charity" of her parents to keep a roof over the heads of their and food on their plates, all because of his mother's stupid love affair that had been destined to fail.

The strain of it all eventually led to her becoming bed-ridden, forcing him to leave school early and find a job. Although he'd hated his grandfather for his attitude towards them, including the many times he'd referred to Tiberius as "bastard-spawn", he'd rejoiced when, a couple of years after his mother died, his grandfather had had a fatal heart attack during his night-watchman job at a warehouse in Penarth Docks.

His miserable and lonely childhood had been one of receiving second or third-hand toys for Christmas, no bicycle of his own until he'd scavenged enough parts from the local rubbish tip for the car mechanic living next-door to piece together for him, and having to rely on cast-off clothes from the neighbours so that he could go to school in barely-decent clothes and be picked on by the other kids for being from a poor family and having to do dirty odd-jobs for people to try and earn some money for extra food or to help with the rent.

One of the things he'd done to earn a few pennies, if not a whole shilling on the rare occasion, was to follow in all weathers the milkman or the draymen or anyone else who used a horse and cart and wait for the animal to shit on the road so that he could collect the horse-droppings in a bucket to sell to the allotment keepers and gardeners. There were times, though, when he'd have to fight other kids with the same idea in order to win the right to scoop up the smelly manure, often with his bare hands because the other kids would run off with his shovel, or bucket, even, forcing him to make a pouch with his jumper so he could carry the stinking stuff home.

There were even times when he'd risked falling off the church roof by stealing some of the lead to sell to the rag and bone men, or nicking copper pipes from building sites. Many were the times when he'd sneak into the local allotments and help himself to potatoes and assorted vegetables for their Sunday dinner so his grandmother could use her pension to buy proper beef instead of the usual scraggy piece of mutton the local butcher always foisted onto her.

Then came the day when his luck changed for the better. He'd lost a fight over the butcher's horse's droppings and so had to follow one of the rag and bone men's carts instead, finally ending up at the big engine scrapyard where his mother used to work. Listening to the tinkers haggling with the yard foreman while he waited for the horse to decide whether to have a shit or not, he heard the foreman complaining that two of his burners hadn't come in to work and that he'd had to do their work himself. Seeing an opportunity to earn some money that didn't involve going home smelling of horse shit, he asked the foreman if there were any spare jobs going.

The foreman had laughed at him, and asked how a puny kid like him expected to lift and carry heavy lumps of scrap metal around all day. He'd shrugged his shoulders and answered that there was no harm in asking, adding that his mam used to work there. The foreman had looked curiously at him for a moment, and then asked what her name was, and when he'd told him, the burly man had grabbed his arm and dragged the struggling Tiberius to the owner's office.

He'd tried to get away, thinking he was in some sort of trouble, but after the foreman told the owner who he was, to which the owner asked Tiberius how his mother was these days, but after telling him of how sick she was and how so much in need they were for money that he was mitching school to look for work and that he'd just been fighting over a bucket of shit and that was how he got a cut lip and bruises, the owner offered him work as a labourer, cash-in-hand as a burner's mate for a shilling an hour from Monday to Saturday, seven in the morning to six in the evening. The money was crap, but it was something, and so they shook hands on it, and totally overwhelmed by a really strange feeling that nearly made him faint, but on his first day there when he was shown the talking trains waiting to be scrapped and told about railway magic, it more than made up for the shit wages he'd be taking home.

What surprised him again was when the owner told him that it wasn't just the railways that used magic to make their vehicles seem alive, but also the haulage firms and bus companies as well, and he'd rushed home that first day to tell his mother about this wonderful thing he'd been shown, staring stupidly at the buses and lorries with faces sticking out of their engine grills and hearing them call to each other!

When he'd arrived home, however, he realised just what the scrapyard owner had meant about the railway magic keeping itself a secret from outsiders when, as he'd tried to tell her about it, his words failed to take form and he ended up almost coughing his lungs out!

It was hard work at first, though, being a labourer, and he often burned his hands on the hot metal or cut himself on a jagged bit of steel, but the occasions when he actually got to speak to the engines made him feel so special, asking them all sorts of questions like "What's it like being an engine?", "Do you have dreams like people do?" and, once, to the shunter that had just brought in a dozen engines marked for scrapping, "What's it like bringing your friends here to die?"

He learned also that there were higher levels of knowledge that were inaccessible to him as a lowly labourer, but, if he became a burner or, dare he hope, a yard foreman, then those higher levels would become accessible to him.

At home, though, his mother never spoke to him of his father, only saying that he'd been forced to go back home and leave them behind, and he developed a loathing for the man for abandoning them, but one day, not long before she died, his mother revealed to him how they'd met at the scrapyard where he now worked.

His father used to travel down to the yard from Sodor looking for a suitable steam engine to recover and take back home with him, and there were plenty to choose from, what with the Beeching Act closing down hundreds of branch lines and stations and condemning thousands of engines, coaches and wagons to destruction.

In work the day after his mother's revelation, Tiberius asked the owner if the man still called there looking for engines, but he hadn't been seen for over a decade now. That didn't stop the young man from checking out visitors whenever they came to look around the yard for an engine, though, but no-one by the name of Hatt ever showed up again.

The only things Tiberius could recall that connected him to the man were vague, childhood memories, one in particular from when he was about four years-old at a picnic where his mother was shouting and crying at the man who'd come with them, and of even more crying by his mother whenever he asked her why the man he was told to call daddy had left them there.

One day, whilst clearing out his mother's dresser drawers after her death, he found an envelope addressed to him in his mother's shaky handwriting. Inside it was a business card, a photograph and a letter for him to take to a solicitor in Cardiff. The letter explained just who his father was and where he could be found, but, back then, there was no way he could afford to pay for the services of a lawyer, and vowed that, one day, he would do what was necessary to get what should have been part of his birthright. He hated the man for abandoning him and his mother, and especially so for keeping him away from the magical railway, something fate had decreed he'd only find out about after being beaten one day in a fight over ownership of a pile of horse shit!

His only escape from the insults and belittling from his bastard of a grandfather and indifference from his grandmother, both of whose only pleasure seemed to be implying that their daughter's death was a result of him being born, was the joy of being out in the cold and wet as he humped lumps of steel and other various metals from one place to another and catching a chill every so often that made his nose constantly run.

The only good thing to happen at home, he felt, was when his grandfather had died, the downside being him and his grandmother left to fend for themselves on her pension and his own meagre twenty quid a week and sitting in candlelight at night because they didn't have any money for the 'leccy bill or paraffin for the heater or coal for the fire, and having to wear his dirty coat in bed just to stay warm during the cold winter months. It was nights like that when Tiberius often imagined his father back in his country mansion and sitting in a fancy armchair in front of a large, roaring, log-fire as its heat warmed the elaborately decorated and ornament-filled sitting-room, a butler bringing him a drink on a silver tray and telling him that dinner is about to be served, the meal consisting of so many different mouth-watering fancy meats that Tiberius couldn't even imagine what animals they all came from, and his resentment of his father increased with every cold, frosty night he had to wear half the clothes he owned just to stay warm in their poky little two-up-two-down terraced house in the back streets of Barry.

His work, though, soon became his life, and over the course of time, he learnt that, like people, the engines sent there to be burnt had their own distinct personalities. "Different horses for different courses," Ted had told him one day when he asked why this was so. "Don't go thinking of them as being like people, now, lad. They were made like that to serve their owners in their own particular way, and that's all I know of it!" It seemed to Tiberius, on hearing that explanation, that maybe being a burner wouldn't give him that much more knowledge after all, and that he'd have to aim higher to get the knowledge he yearned for.

Talking with some of the other burners and the shunters, though, he found out that there were "magical engines": engines that "ruled" over the others and controlled the magic that allowed them to speak, but he'd never met one of those, and asked the men what they looked like, but they hadn't come across one themselves, and so couldn't tell him.

It got busier at the yard over time as yet more unprofitable branch lines were closed down and more and more engines and wagons were brought in for burning, and the scrapyard owner realised that the only way to have room for them all, notwithstanding the fact that he could make more money as well, was to break up just the wagons and coaches and sell off the engines to restoration groups and private owners.

The increased workload meant that Tiberius was finally trained up as a full-time burner and, to his gratification, did actually gain an increase in knowledge of the railway magic and sentient engines, knowledge that included the fact that the engines possessed two unusual objects inside them called "facets". These facets were large, diamond-like gems of a hard, white - sometimes black - substance that contained the magic that gave the engines the ability to think and speak, and sometimes, even to move by themselves, however, the security over those special gemstones was incredibly tight, and every engine or wagon or carriage's facets had to be accounted for or the hapless worker who lost one or tried to steal one would be sacked on the spot, with the terrible consequence that any knowledge they held of railway magic or its associates would be lost to them forever. Where they went after being taken to the scrapyard owner's office, though, Tiberius didn't know, as only the owner himself had the authority to take them off the premises.

Usually, he and his fellow burners would remove the facet from an engine's firebox to stop it from moving by itself, leaving the one in the smokebox in place until just before the engine was finally burnt up so that they could talk to it. An engine that had had its smokebox facet removed just sat there, silent and inert as anything made out of countless metal parts would, and it was quite sad at first for Tiberius to hear the other engines talking amongst themselves about their impending doom as though it was an acceptable thing for them now that they were no longer useful to their owners, and he was glad to know that they were just magical constructs and not, in fact, "alive" like real people. That sadness, though, didn't last long, for Tiberius became curious about how "real" the engines were supposed to be, and did they feel "pain" like humans would, especially if a hot flame was held against their wheel-rims for minutes on end, for example. This, of course, meant leaving their smokebox facet in place so that the engine would "feel" the heat.

The scrapyard sometimes had guests in the form of train-spotters writing down engine numbers on their notepads, or former drivers and firemen coming to say a final farewell to the engine they'd worked with for most of their lives. Sometimes, though, holiday makers would wander in out of curiosity for a look around and the chance to take a photo of something other than the local fairground and beach as their memory of a summer at the seaside. One thing they couldn't do, though, was to hear the engines speculate on whether or not they'd actually feel anything when the burners started cutting into them with their white-hot torches.

One day, though, an American tourist riding a flashy motorbike came in to have a look around. He was different to the other visitors in that he was macabrely pleased on finding out that so many engines were waiting there to end their days, and introduced himself to Tiberius as P T Boomer.

Tiberius had met several such Americans on holiday in South Wales before that were curious about the scrapyard, but what had piqued his curiosity was when the American asked him if they'd burnt up any of the magical engines. They hadn't, he told him, to which the American said it was a pity, going on to explain that he'd actually destroyed one before coming over to Britain.

Tiberius wanted to know more about this achievement, and as they talked, Boomer told him of how he'd tricked a visiting diesel engine to make the magical one crash, and despite its owner managing to get it back to its cave home and working on it, it was still out of action to that day.

Sadly for the Welshman, there wasn't much else the American knew or could say about the magical engine other that it was a very old and small tank engine with purple and gold paintwork that went by the name of Lady. Tiberius had then let the man watch him cut up an engine's boiler before chatting a bit more and swapping contact details before the two men parted ways with the promise to keep in touch.

It was over a year later when he met an old tank engine by the name of Tyrone, and whereas all the other engines had seemed accepting of their fate, this one gave the impression that it was quite outraged over its soon-to-be demise. Tiberius couldn't really blame it, though, as, despite being a Billinton E-Two from nineteen-sixteen, its green paintwork had been well looked after, and would no doubt be eagerly snapped up by a restoration group or rich individual. When he asked the engine why it was so upset, the engine told him of how it felt useless after being shunted all around the country and from one marshalling yard or docks to another without having a proper owner to serve.

Tiberius knew from talking with the other engines before removing their facets that one thing they all had was a need for was a place they could refer to as their "home", somewhere where they knew they'd regularly work from and go back to at the end of their appointed tasks and be looked after and cared for. For an engine not to have a proper home made it feel unfulfilled, and went against what had been instilled into it from the first moments of its creation, the need to serve its owner and/or the Company it worked for and prove itself to be a really useful engine. Overall, the engines made him think of them as children with their simple need to belong to someone, rather much like his own need for a father, and the thought was quite unsettling.

Tyrone then told him of how he'd been the eleventh of the E-Twos to be built, the first of a new batch before the order was cancelled and left behind in the factory once the series of five engines before him had been allocated their places of work.

The engine asked him if any of the other E-Twos had been brought to Barry, and so he asked the clerk in the office, Hilda, to check the records, only to be told that, no, none of the E2s had been brought there or sold on, though several had been already been scrapped at the Eastleigh Works in Southampton. Tyrone hadn't taken that news well, and told Tiberius that since he'd last seen his brother engines working at Stewarts Lane in Battersea and at Southampton Docks, it was unlikely any remaining E-Twos would be sent to South Wales for scrapping, as he was looking to meet one in particular.

The engine's frustration had struck a chord within him, and he felt bad about the thought of ending its "life" on such a disappointing note. Without thinking too much about what he was doing, he had the yard's Class Seven shunter take the engine to a siding where it could wait for however long it took him to think of some way to help it.

He told the engine what he was doing and removed its smokebox facet so that it wouldn't have to dwell on its situation any longer than it had to, and hid it away in the yard where it wouldn't be easily found.

Life went on as normal for a while until, one day, he was asked by one of the more shadier characters living in Barry if, for a back-hander of sixty quid to keep his mouth shut, he'd use his burning tools to cut open a safe the crook had "found" on his various travels. The chance of some easy money appealed to Tiberius, and so he agreed. Word got around about his willingness to help in similar endeavours and, soon, he found himself invited along on a few warehouse robberies where his useful skill could help to open locked storerooms and yet more safes.

His grandmother's eventual passing meant that he now had not only the house to himself, but also the cost of renting it and paying for electricity, gas and coal as well as food, so he was forced to take on on a second job driving short, night-time delivery runs for a local haulage firm. Getting fed up of having little sleep and no life of his own, he borrowed some money from one of the crime families in Cardiff to buy himself a lorry.

Years passed and his haulage business became more established, but it was taking forever to pay off the money he'd borrowed as the crime family was adding even more interest to it, but a job came up one day to take some animal feed to the island of Sodor, the very place where maybe his father still lived.

He decided to do the job himself, and set off not knowing what to expect, but after delivering the feed to a farm near Kellsthorpe, he realised that it had paid off in more ways than one when, on the railway track running parallel to the road, he saw a purple and gold tank engine just like the one his American pen pal had told him about some years back! Was this one of those magical engines like the one Boomer had destroyed, he wondered.

Stopping at a garage to refuel and chatting with the guy behind the counter about the local railway company, he learned not only that their head office was based in Knapford and that his father, Topham Hatt, had died many years ago, but that its current owner was Topham's son, Sir Stephen Hatt, a man not much older than himself and who would be his half-brother!

He'd deliberated over driving to Knapford and asking to meet this Stephen, but the problem he had was how could he prove they were related? Getting his haulage business going had taken up so much of his time and money that he'd put off seeing the lawyer in Cardiff, and not knowing how to go about proving their kinship in court, he knew he needed to, somehow, finally get it done.

Calling in at the station in Crovan's Gate, he asked the station master there about the purple and gold engine he'd seen. Passing himself off as an eager train-spotter had been easy, and talking with the man about old engines was a piece of cake, after all, he'd cut up enough of them in the past, though he hadn't had to pretend he was surprised when told the engine's name was Lady and that this was one of her visits from America where she lived!

He decided to wait until he had the proof he needed before contacting his half-brother, his long experience with crooks and swindlers making it necessary he had every angle covered, but he would let his American friend know that the engine he'd thought destroyed was back on its wheels again!

Using some of the money he'd earned from burning open safes, he'd asked the scrapyard owner to hold on to the green E-Two as a favour, paying him a not-so-small back-hander as a "deposit" to ensure it wasn't sold on to anyone, and feigned shock and disappointment when told that one of its facet stones was missing, the firebox one having long since been removed for safe-keeping. He'd replied that if his future plans bore fruit then he only needed the use of a plain engine and didn't really need one that could talk, especially not after helping to kill so many of them! He'd laughed as he'd said that to his former boss, and hoped that he wasn't suspected of stealing the facet, not that it mattered now that he no longer work there, he'd thought to himself.

A particular quirk he'd discovered later in life after becoming the owner of a haulage company was that his magical knowledge had increased somewhat in that he had more responsibility in maintaining its secrecy. That didn't bother him too much as it was, by now, part of his nature and deeply ingrained, but he'd also learned that there was no real loyalty between the competing industries, and as long as the secret was kept, there was nothing stopping one side from sabotaging another.

That was made obvious to him when, one day, he'd retrieved the facet stone from where he'd hidden it in the scrapyard and successfully walked out through the gates with it tucked inside a special box he'd made for it. No alarms went off, there was no compelling suggestion that he remain on the yard's property like he'd had all those years ago while handling a facet, and more importantly, no backlash from the railway magic. He'd done it, he had the engine's facet stone! Now, all he had to do was to wait until he could afford the expense of legal fees before getting the lawyers involved to claim his birthright. He still wasn't sure what he wanted to do with the engine, though, and it was only the odd friendship he'd formed with it that had stopped him from forgetting it altogether.

Standing on the platform outside afterwards, he heard a couple of men complain about an engine called Percy failing yet again to make its delivery in time.

He'd introduced himself to them and asked if he could give them a reasonable quote for a short-term haulage contract. They didn't have the authority to accept that, but did give him their company's phone number and the name of its owner, and after a brief phone call later and an agreement on terms, he'd acquired a new contract, one that would enable him to visit Sodor quite regularly and get the lay of the land, so to speak.

It was during one of those visits that he'd had quite a surprise, for as he was driving to Ffarqhuar to deliver some quarry stone, what should he see pulling a couple of antique carriages into the railway station there was a blue Billinton tank engine, an E-Two identical to the green one he'd met at the scrapyard in Barry, and then the spark of an idea took form in his mind. If Stephen Hatt refused to acknowledge him when they finally met and he couldn't get his share of Sodor Railways, he'd make sure no-one would!

ooo

While Thomas waited for his trucks to be loaded at Brendam Docks, he'd couldn't help noticing how strange the diesel shunters were acting. It was as if they weren't sure what they were supposed to be doing, and even Salty, an engine well known for its-, No, Thomas mentally corrected, his fanciful storytelling was looking warily about him. Vince and his fireman for the day had gone to chat with the dockyard foreman and so Thomas decided to tackle the old shunter about his weird behaviour.

~Arr, there be something strange blowing in the wind these days, young Thomas,~ the toothy engine said, ~and I don't know if I like the smell of it!~

~Whatever do you mean, Salty?~ he asked.

~Well, it's like this… the tides are all wrong, you see! The sea be quite different to what it should be, and I've heard strange tales of extra lorries being used to unload ships instead of rail wagons, but I'VE not seen any of those extra lorries, at least, none that I can recall! Maybe… maybe they were like the Flying Dutchman, Thomas. Maybe they drifted in here at the dead of night when all was calm and still, only to be swept away by the onshore mists that blew in before the dawn, as though they were swallowed whole by a foul and mighty leviathan from the deep that has invaded the land!~

He knows SOMETHING weird has happened recently, Thomas thought, but just not what!

~Tell me, Salty,~ he asked, ~what do you remember from last week?~

The old shunter stared back at him, almost glaring, even, before finally deigning to reply. ~Now, don't you be asking me THAT, young Thomas. Last week… last week was… different to this week, and I don't need no reminding of it, you hear? I had a troubled sleep last night and I've got some strange things to think about, so run along now, please, and wait to be loaded like a good… engine!~

Thomas was well aware there'd been extra lorries working at the docks last week due to no trains being available, he also knew that the tide came in an hour or so later each day, and reckoned that that was what Salty had noticed but was unable to talk about due to Lady's manipulation of all their memories. Maybe, he thought, it's something similar to what Percy wants to talk to me about when I get back to the engine shed. Maybe he's noticed unexplained discrepancies as well! Ah well, he told himself. I'll know for certain later, and settled down to wait for Cranky to pull his finger out and offload the ship!

ooo

Tiberius looked at the silent Tyrone and nodded his head. There was only one way that he'd be able to move by himself again, and knew what he had to do to make that possible!

ooOOoo