He hadn't meant to do it.

Reaching out for something to hold on to was a normal reflex of the drowning man.

For that is what it felt like, the desperate convulsions of a body realising there was no air to breathe, rising panic, heart pumping fit to burst… Then suddenly there was no need to breathe, just a terrible calm while impossible colours streamed around him in all directions.

It was a shame that what he had chosen to hold onto was Darwin's beard.

Even as the vortex swallowed him, Jeremy wished he had flailed a little more to the left, where a rather pretty young lady was fanning herself with bosom-heaving excitement. Yet he could not help himself; as soon as his fingers touched something he hung on for dear life, eliciting an outraged cry from the beard's hapless owner.

'What the bloody hell?' Darwin yelled, his voice barely audible over the space-time roar.

'I'm sorry!' Jeremy shouted. He and Darwin were spinning slowly, two shabby men gracefully circling each other in a sea of unimaginable, terrifying beauty.

'Where are we?' Darwin said, seizing Jeremy's arm and pulled himself closer so he would not have to shout. His breath smelled of expensive sherry.

'I call it the vortex,' said Jeremy. 'I think it's a conduit between space and time. A sort of wormhole, I think.'

'Of course,' Darwin relaxed. As much as any man could relax, while experiencing the conflicting sensations of tranquil weightlessness and hypersonic falling. 'Your paper.'

'Ah - about that,' Jeremy began.

'Such outlandish theories from a gentleman of your standing,' Darwin went on. 'Imagine my excitement at finding a kindred spirit, you know my own theories do not sit well with popular opinion.'

Jeremy wondered what a gentleman of his standing was. He looked down at himself, and, although gratified that the silken smoking jacket had survived the transition, felt morbidly embarrassed by faded corduroy and torn sandals.

'There's something I should tell you,' he ventured.

'So,' said Darwin, lost in his own wonder. 'What strange lands await us, lad?'

'Don't know. Where were we just now?' Jeremy said.

'Just when?'

'In the house. My house. Where - when was it?'

'You leap without knowledge? What manner of crude science is this?'

'I'm not exactly a scientist,' Jeremy protested, thinking mournfully of long, pleasant nights alone in the dark with his favourite space operas. Times he had taken for granted. TV, beer and loneliness. Not this.

'Nonsense. Don't mind what those ignoramuses in the Royal Society say. Look at us now! If this isn't science, then what is?'

Jeremy found it hard to argue with the logic of this. 'I'm not me,' he said.

'Sorry?'

Jeremy checked his watch. Five minutes. About long it had taken the first time.

'Never mind,' he said. 'It's time.'

Darwin looked down his nose at the little man. 'Now then,' he said. 'Are you going to let go, or do I have to thump you?'