Hawkeye shrugged, leaving the carbine and picking up a vicious-looking lightning-gun frame.

“I suppose. Well, the Folds are kind of like pinched-together sections of the world – it brings together two places that would otherwise be very far away or even inaccessible. The biggest, the least dangerous one – that’s the one we just went through, which links Earth and the Other Side. There are others, many others – but those are smaller, harder to find and much more dangerous.

“Captain Jerem makes a good living out of mapping the smaller folds, although I’m not always sure when we are on a cartographic expedition, or when we’re just ferrying goods and messages.”

Picking up an intricate-looking piece of tooled brass from the same worktop, he casually fastened it to the weapon while talking, switching tools single-handedly with practised ease.

“I don’t know very much about Folds, if I’m honest. No-one really does, not even the captain, and by all accounts he’s spent the last decade trying to find out more.”