Out of Time (The Adventures of Eric and Ursula Book 4)

by A. D. Winch

  "Please don't leave me," she pleaded.

  "That depends. I have to ask you to do one thing."

  "What? Anything!"

  Alexander felt guilty about what he was about to ask, but he had to be sure. He could not risk taking along another Sasha.

  "I need to know that you are not wearing any devices. Please take off your clothes down to your underwear and then slowly turn around."

  She looked at him in shock.

  "I'm not interested," he tried to reassure her. "But needs must, I just need to know that you have nothing on you."

  She did not move.

  "If you don't do this then I am not taking you with me!"

  Doctor Karima Khan removed her top and jogging bottoms reticently, and she turned on the spot. After one rotation she stopped, and Alexander could see that she was crying. He felt disrespectful and a creep. She was clearly not wearing any devices, and he began to believe her story.

  "I'm sorry," he said quietly, "but I had to be sure. Please, join me in the front."

  He lifted the laptop from the passenger seat and waited for to dress. Once she sat down beside him, he gave her the computer to hold.

  "I am very sorry," he apologised again and passed her a tissue. "But I am not like that. Honestly."

  Doctor Khan wiped her eyes but did not answer.

  Alexander put the van into reverse, looked over his shoulder and drove backwards into the door in the billboard. The metal bent but did not come away. He drove forwards and then did it again. On the third go, the door was bent enough to see a jeep and a track stretching out behind. It was enough to make people curious, and when the media came someone may alert them about the strange road from the freeway.

  Alexander drove off.

  "I am very sorry for making you do that," he said again. "I had to be sure."

  "Once we find the children they can vouch for me," she sniffed.

  Keen to change the subject, Alexander replied, "Until then, you can help me. On the screen are locations of the tracking devices I gave out. That is how I found you. We need to go here first," he leant across while still driving and pointed at a dot six kilometres from them.

  "That's the children?"

  "No. If you read the name underneath you can see that it is Andrea." He zoomed out from Roswell until the whole of the United States was visible. "The children are here. In a place called Centralia, three thousand kilometres away, and I have no idea how they got there."

  "I think they took the extra-terrestrial craft. As I was driving away from the base, I saw the three of them in the sky. I watched them in my mirror. The speeds were incredible. This could explain how they are so far away."

  "While I drive, please could you keep an eye on them. Even if they are far away, I would like to know where they are."

  They drove back along the freeway towards Roswell and passed five news vans heading in the opposite direction. Alexander hoped that they would see the hole in the billboard and investigate further.

  Karima kept her eyes glued to the screen. For a while, the dots remained static over Centralia and then this changed.

  "The children are moving now and they are going very fast."

  "Which direction?"

  "East. They are already over the Atlantic Ocean and…"

  "What is it?" Alexander asked, hitting the brakes.

  "The dots have gone. They've vanished!"

  Back to Contents

  ***

  Chapter 29 - Back to Roswell

  The ocean glinted in the morning sun. Ursula allowed herself a peek at the waves as her pod sped through the sky above them. Eric's pod was only fifty metres to her right and matched her speed exactly.

  Ahead of her a vapour cloud shaped like a disc suddenly grew around the dart that they were pursuing. She looked across at Eric's pod and saw the same thing happening around the curved platinum. It was followed immediately by a sonic boom as all three crafts broke the sound barrier, and the clouds vanished.

  The dart increased its speed and climbed higher into the sky. After leaving Centralia, it had headed towards the morning sun and out to sea. At first the children had had difficulties trying to locate it as the reflective surface camouflaged the craft. Only when the sun's rays bounced off the body and made the dart look like a flame had they spotted it.

  All three craft headed upwards. From within the pods, the children saw the landscape open up below them. At first they could only see the blue of the sea, but as they went higher, they could make out the coastline and then cities. They climbed further until they saw both sides of the ocean, and the cities blurred into the natural colours of the land. The three craft continued upwards until the sky began to darken like night. It was not long before they could make out nothing below them except clouds, land and sea. On the edge of space, the dart simply stopped. The suddenness of its braking took both children by surprise, and they almost flew past and out of the Earth's atmosphere.

  Nothing more happened. The dart kept its altitude but appeared to sway slightly.

  The children looked around themselves. The view was mindblowing. In one direction, they could see oceans and continents and the curvature of the earth. In the other direction, they saw stars and planets with a clarity that they had never seen before.

  "Did you ever watch the video of that man who broke the world free fall record?" Eric asked into Ursula's mind.

  "No," Ursula replied from her pod.

  "He took a balloon to the edge of the Earth's atmosphere and then jumped. He fell for about five minutes. He was wearing a helmet, specially made clothes for warmth and had oxygen for ten minutes. Otherwise, he would have died."

  "I don't think I needed to know that."

  "But it looks as though we are at the same altitude as he was, which means we're about thirty-nine kilometres above Earth."

  "And in vehicles that we have no idea will last up here."

  "Yes, we do," Eric answered. "Remember these are the pods that brought us to Earth when we were babies. They were built for space. I'm sure we are fine."

  Eric's words did not reassure Ursula. For him, this was an adventure like no other. In spite of the pain in his leg and knuckles, he was loving every moment of it. However, Ursula did not feel the same. Her ponytail rested against her chest, and the white hairs were much more noticeable than the black. The longer they kept chasing, the worse she feared the aging would become. This wasn't an adventure any longer. To her, it was a matter of life and death. Alexander's and Andrea's prediction of her and Eric's early demise seemed to be coming true, but Ursula desperately wanted to live. She knew she was being ridiculous, but she could almost hear a clock in her head marking every second she had left with a loud tick-tock.

  "What are we doing here?" she asked.

  "Waiting. It's waiting for something. See if you can sense it too."

  Ursula stared at the dart and focused on what was inside. She could feel an expectation that something would happen, but had no idea what. While she stared, Eric moved his pod into her view so that it was almost touching the rear of the dart.

  "I don't want to be far away if something happens," Eric said to justify himself.

  Ursula pictured her pod on the other side of the dart, and it moved to this exact position. She still could not believe how easy it was to control her pod. Already it was becoming almost second nature. When she scratched an itch on her hand, she did not think about moving her fingers into the exact position, she just did it. Piloting the pod was the same.

  They waited, and they waited. The view of the Earth should have helped them pass the time, but they were both concentrating on the dart.

  They had sensed its movement a fraction of a second before it dropped. The nose pointed towards the Earth, and it fell as if shot from a bow. Almost instantly, it began to spin. Within a few seconds, it looked like a massive drill. The children's pods dropped parallel to it. The force of the dart's spin sucked the pods even closer, and they also began to spin wildly.<
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  Inside the pods, the children were thankful for the red material that enveloped them. Without it, they would have fallen forward and smashed against the see-through walls. Neither Eric nor Ursula had any idea how fast they were flying or spinning. Their eyes struggled to focus. Everything around them and the world below was a spinning blur. Just when they thought that they could take no more, the dart's spin slowed down, its nose lifted and it reduced its speed.

  'Stay with the dart,' the children willed, picturing their pods beside it as they struggled with their vision. Their craft followed the instructions.

  The dart levelled out above a rocky desert. Once the children's heads stopped spinning, they could make out features of the landscape below. The earth was baked hard and was barren. Pathetic looking bushes, barely green in colour, were scattered around; their roots desperately searching for water under the sun-cracked earth. Rugged mountains rose up below them. There had once been rivers, but they had dried up, leaving only their channels behind.

  "I know this place," Eric said to himself. "I've been here before. I've seen this before."

  A movement below the pod caught his eye, and he looked down onto a small town. Old cars that looked like toys drove slowly around the blocks but within a second the three craft had passed over them. They were over the desert again.

  "Stop!" Eric screamed. "Stop! Stop!"

  Both pods stopped in mid-air, but the dart did not. It flew on and widened the gap from its pursuers.

  The children watched. They both had the feeling that something terrible was about to happen, but they were powerless to stop it.

  Suddenly, a flying disc shot into the air and was visible for only a second. In its centre was a bulbous cockpit containing two men. The disc was flying at a slant with one side of its circular rim pointing upwards and on a collision course with the dart. Neither craft stood a chance. The edge of the disc hit the dart and instantly folded back like a piece of paper. Despite the speed of the two craft, there was no explosion, no flames and no loud bang. The disc simply smashed into a thousand pieces. Some bits flew towards the pods and bounced off harmlessly before falling away. Debris began to rain down, but part of the disc was stuck. One large piece of metal had joined to the dart's body and wrapped around it were the lifeless bodies of two men.

  The collision slowed the dart, but it continued to move at a tremendous speed. However, it had lost control. Smooth movements were replaced with a rocking from side to side, and it quivered in the sky.

  A sliver of silver peeled away from the dart. It was still attached to the metal, and both objects were pulled downwards by gravity. As it fell, the two bodies came loose and began their own separate journeys. Free of the extra load, the dart began to glide towards Earth.

  Eric looked behind him and downwards towards an army runway. He knew what was going to happen next, but the thought was too unbelievable to comprehend. He could just see two jets taking off and heading in the direction of the crippled dart. From the books he had read about UFOs, he knew that the two jets were P-80 Shooting Star Fighters. He recognized their shape and knew that they were going to try to hunt the dart before heading back to the base empty-handed.

  "What just happened?" Ursula cried in shock. "Those two men!"

  "They're dead," Eric said sadly. "We can't help them now. We need to follow the dart. Keep at our present altitude. I think we're too high for anyone to see us clearly. They'll be watching the dart and falling debris anyway."

  "Eric, I don't understand what you are thinking."

  "Come on. Follow me, I think I know where to go. We need to head north-west before the dart goes that way. That's where it is going to land finally - about eighty kilometres away from here; near a place called Corona."

  "How do you know that?"

  "From that UFO book I read at your grandparents, and from what Johan told me about this day."

  "But that was in the past. This is now."

  "Just follow me."

  Eric directed his pod away from the sun and flew away. For a while, Ursula did nothing. She watched him go and tried to understand what was happening. Either Eric was going mad or… She didn't want to consider the other options, and watched as the dart continued its drunken and gradual descent away from her. As Eric had predicted, the two planes failed to keep up with it, even though it had slowed down dramatically.

  Ursula looked back up towards Eric's pod and imagined her craft beside it. In an instant, her pod sped towards its twin. If anyone had seen them from the ground, they had not done anything about it. The Jets were far below them, and the sky was theirs.

  A few seconds later, Eric's pod stopped over a small village.

  "It's a one horse town," Eric joked. "I think we've come too far. This must be Corona."

  They headed back the way they had come but at a considerably slower speed.

  The countryside to the south-east of Corona seemed even more barren than Roswell. Great areas devoid of any human life stretched out as far as they could see. There were small bushes to break up the brown vista, but these were few and far between. The only noticeable landmarks were one dirt road, and some dried up rivers that looked like veins across the desert. Eric headed for one of the bigger, dead riverbeds. The river banks looked like the sides of a mini canyon, and they crumbled away as he brought his pod down onto the river bed. He had chosen this place as he guessed the pods would remain hidden. Once he had landed, Ursula brought her pod down directly beside Eric's.

  For a few minutes, neither of them moved. After dedicating parts of their brains to flying the pods, it was now difficult to switch off. Ursula breathed a sigh of relief and let the red material peel away from her body. She could not believe what she had done, and the whole journey felt like a dream she was about to wake up from. The side of her pod rippled away like a wave and hot, dry heat seeped in. When she stepped outside, Eric was already waiting for her. There was a thin layer of sweat on his brow.

  It had been cool in Roswell when they had left, but in this part of the desert it was beyond hot, it was sweltering. The sun beat down unforgivingly and there was no shade except for under the pods. Ursula took a bottle of water from her bag and put it to her lips.

  "Save it," Eric said, holding her arm. "We will be here until this evening at least, and judging by the sun's position it is somewhere around noon."

  Ursula took a sip and then sat down in the shade under her pod. She loved the sun. She loved the feel of the rays on her body, but the heat that accompanied it here was almost unbearable.

  "Where are we?" she asked.

  Eric sat down beside her on the hard ground.

  "I think we are between Roswell and Corona, in New Mexico."

  "How do you know that, Eric?"

  Eric swallowed before replying, "I have a memory."

  "Of when the OSS kept you here?"

  "No, it's not my memory. It's that thing we have been chasing. The alien," he paused to get his thoughts together. "When I was taken to it, and I fought back, I experienced what I think was its memories. I saw the town of Roswell. I saw the collision. I knew it was going to happen. That's why I yelled 'Stop!'"

  "But the memory you're describing happened decades ago, and we just saw it. It can't be the same crash, that's not possible. That would mean we have travelled ba…"

  "Look," Eric shouted, jumping up. "I was right. It's coming. It's coming to us."

  Above the river bank, they could see the dart. It was shooting toward them over the horizon, but swaying in the air as it neared. Gradually, it glided towards the Earth until the children could no longer see it from their position in the river bed. They scrambled up the banks just as it hit the desert and bounced back into the air. It came down again and then skidded for a long way across the dirt on its side, creating a dust storm as it went.

  Neither of the children thought the dart was going to stop. The uneven ground slowed it down but not enough to bring it to a halt. They watched the dart zip across the desert floor
, and the trail of dust expand into the air. Even from their distance, they could hear rocks being crushed and cracked open as the dart moved over them. Suddenly it vanished, and a plume of dust like a mushroom cloud exploded into the air.

  "It has fallen into one of the old rivers channels," Eric explained.

  Ursula had already realized this and gave him a look that said, 'I'm not stupid!'

  The dart had come to rest over a kilometre from where they stood.

  "Let's go," Eric said.

  "Wait," Ursula told him. She opened her bag and made sure she had her water bottle, the water pistol and most importantly, the test tubes, syringes and scalpel for collecting samples. "Do you have all your things?"

  Eric didn't bother to check, but patted his bag confidently and limped off.

  Except for the heat, it was not hard walking across the desert floor. The dust cloud provided a perfect marker, and it was easy to follow. By the time it had dispersed, they had reached the track that the dart had made as it landed. A shallow groove, gouged into the dessert, led them straight to the river bed where the dart had come to rest.

  When they were less than fifty metres away, Ursula pulled Eric back.

  "We don't know what we are going to find. We need to be ready," she said and pulled the water pistol from her bag.

  Eric smirked but did the same anyway.

  "I don’t believe this will do anything," he said and squirted some water into his dry mouth.

  "After going down that mine, I think it will work," Ursula replied knowingly.

  They slowed down and crept forward. When they saw the sun reflecting off the dart they crouched down on all fours and began to crawl. Neither of them knew what they would find, and they were both wary. They could sense a presence close by, but it felt weaker than before.

  Slowly, they neared the river and lay down on their bellies. About a metre from the edge, they could lift their heads and look into the channel. The dart had skidded along the bed before lodging itself in a bank. There was no sign of life.