Wrong Side of Time

by J. J. Green

  After she’d caught her breath and cooled down a little, Carrie sat up and searched through her Officer’s toolkit. As Errruorerrrrrhch had said, there was a device for extracting water from the atmosphere. It had a clear bottle attached that already had some water inside. Carrie was surprised. The air was very dry, and she doubted it contained much water vapour. She opened the bottle and swallowed the precious liquid. Though it was warm, it still tasted wonderful in her parched mouth and throat.

  Dave had followed her example. “There doesn’t seem to be much in here. I’m still thirsty. I hope this equipment can extract enough water to keep us hydrated.”

  “There should be more inside these caves, and at night, when the air cools.”

  “There isn’t going to be any night. When we were on the placktoid spaceship, I remember Gavin saying their planet is constantly under the light of at least one of its suns. It’s always daytime.”

  “Urgh, yes, I was forgetting. Still, maybe if we go further in we’ll meet with more humid air.” Carrie stood.

  “Wait a minute. I want to check everything we’ve got.” He pulled a black box out of his bag and turned it towards Carrie, showing her the label in English the Council had helpfully stuck on it. Gateway Control. He put the box down beside him and pulled out something else. It looked like a cube of plastic-wrapped, dried food. Carrie's stomach squirmed. She’d eaten enough of the Council’s idea of human food on her last assignment. She hoped they wouldn’t be eating it for a whole two weeks. As well as saving the galaxy, returning to edible meals was an incentive to get this job over with.

  She crossed her arms, wondering how long Dave was going to take to familiarise himself with their equipment. From behind her, farther down the passage, came a humming sound. She looked over her shoulder.

  “We should test our translators, make sure we can communicate,” said Dave.

  “Wait, what’s that?” Carrie turned to peer into the darkness. A flash of light, followed by a silver form, passed by.

  Chapter Seven – Carrie Takes a Chance

  “I still think we should stop and test the translators,” said Dave. “If we get separated and we can’t communicate, we’ll never find each other again. And I’ve got the gateway-opening equipment. We have to stay together or you won’t be able to go back to our time.”

  They were scrambling through a narrow tunnel that wound through the mountain’s interior, on the trail of the silver object Carrie had seen. Their head torches illuminated the sandy, rock walls.

  “Mind your head.” She stooped under a rock that stuck out of the ceiling. As Dave followed he did the same. “And stop fussing. Of course the translators work. Do you really think that an organisation with the technology and the expertise of the Transgalactic Council would give us broken translators? We’ve probably got the latest and best of everything, all of it thoroughly tested over and over. And I’ve no intention of getting separated from you. We can’t waste any time in finding that thing I saw. It’s the first sign of life so far on this planet.”

  “But we must have been walking for over half an hour now. Are you sure you saw something? We were pretty hot when we came in from outside.”

  Carrie tutted. “I’m sure. It wasn’t a hallucination, okay?” She ducked to avoid another rock. The tunnel was sloping down now, and she braced herself with both hands against the sides to prevent herself from slipping.

  As they travelled deeper into the mountain, the walls of the tunnel grew gradually smoother, changing from the rough, sandy, crumbly rock to an almost plastic-like appearance. They were also slightly warm to the touch. Carrie wondered if the placktoid planet was volcanically active, and she gave a slight shudder.

  “And I want to read the briefing device,” Dave went on after a while. “There might be something important they forgot to tell us.”

  Carrie clenched her jaw. “We’ll stop in a minute, okay? I just think we should find that creature. It might lead us to the...what’s that?”

  There was a draft in the tunnel that had been growing steadily stronger as they descended. She’d assumed it was a natural effect, but as they had rounded a curve, the source of the draft came into view. A little farther on the tunnel sloped sharply down, and obstructing their path was the first artificially constructed object they had seen so far, not counting the flash of silver, which even Carrie was beginning to question at this point.

  Built into the tunnel was a fan, which spanned it entirely. The blades of the fan were spinning, creating a gentle whirring sound and the breeze that blew towards them. It was a simple structure, made of plain metal and very similar to an ordinary fan you might expect to see on Earth, except there was no visible power source. Maybe an electrical wire was connected to it on the other side.

  Dave sat down, drawing up his knees and resting his arms on them. “Well, that’s something. A sign of civilisation. Looks like that silver thing you saw was real after all. But where did it go?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We haven’t passed any turnoffs the whole way down. Whatever it was you saw, assuming it was heading in this direction, it would have been stopped by that fan.”

  “You’re right. Oh well, we can’t go any further this way.” Carrie sat down. “You’ve got your chance to read the briefing.”

  Dave rummaged in his bag and settled down to scan the supplementary information the Council had provided. Carrie turned and examined the tunnel wall. The rock—if you could call it that, as it wasn’t at all rocky—gave a little as she pressed it, as if it were made of very hard rubber. Its colour was different from the rock near the surface, too. It was a deep, rich purple. Carrie ran her hands over it. She stopped in surprise. The temperature was uneven. Most areas were cool, but a few channels ran through it that were warm to the touch.

  Carrie followed one of the channels with her fingertips, feeling out its path as it meandered through the wall. The channel forked it several places. At each fork she chose one option and followed it, drawing close to the high gradient slope that led down to the fan.

  “Carrie,” said Dave.

  “What?”

  “Answer me.”

  “I just did,” said Carrie, turning to her friend. He was holding his translator to his mouth. She realised that she had heard his voice in her mind as well as through her ears.

  “Answer using your translator, idiot. I’m testing them.”

  Carrie rolled her eyes and fished her translator out of her bag. “Papa India Sierra Sierra Oscar Foxtrot Foxtrot. Are you receiving me? Over and out.” Dave raised his eyebrows as she shoved the translator back in her bag and returned to examining the wall.

  “I just think it’s a good idea to—”

  Carrie craned her neck as she peered at the roof of the tunnel. “Yeah, sorry, I understand you want to check everything, but, honestly, Dave, if they’re broken, what are you going to do, fix them? We’re on our own here. We need to rely on our wits, not our equipment.” She put her hands on her hips. Her thoughts had returned to the silver creature they had followed. “I don’t get it. Where did that thing go?” It couldn’t have vanished through a tunnel wall, could it? She frowned. Unless? She inched closer to the fan. The breeze blew strongly in her face.

  “Be careful, Carrie. It looks slippery there.”

  The fan blades whipped around. The silver thing couldn’t have gone through it without being sliced up, but there was no debris to be seen. Or maybe it had all fallen through to the other side? “Have we got anything we don’t need? I want to try an experiment.”

  Dave had come closer to see what she was doing. “Of course we haven’t got anything we don’t need. Why would the Transgalactic Council pack things for us we don’t need?”

  “There’s got to be something.” She opened her bag and looked inside. “Ah, I know.” She pulled out one of the dried food packages. The label read Spaghetti Bolognese. She held up the cube for Dave to see. “Remember this?”

  Dave pulled a face. Sp
aghetti bolognese had been the first meal they had eaten aboard a Council starship. Like all food created by Council chefs for them, it had had all the appearance of human food but none of the taste.

  Carrie pulled back her arm, ready to launch the package at the fan.

  “Wait, don’t throw that away,” exclaimed Dave. “We might need it.”

  Her arm paused mid-throw, Carrie replied, “If it comes to relying on Transgalactic Council spag bol to survive, I’d rather die.” The cube left her hand and sailed in an arc towards the fan. She held her breath, her eyes focussed on the fan’s blades. Just as the dried meal reached the fan and was about to be cut to shreds, the blades opened. The cube fell through, unharmed, and less than a second later the blades closed and began to spin once more.

  She turned a triumphant smile to Dave. He slowly shook his head. “Haha, yeah, that’s not going to happen. No way. Uh-uh.” He waggled a finger at her as he backed away.

  “What choice do we have? We either go through the fan or climb back up the way we came and out onto the barren mountainside, with no signs of the Liberator anywhere. This way leads to something. It has to.”

  “And what if it leads to us being cut to ribbons. Just because it opened for the spaghetti bolognese, that doesn’t mean it’ll open for us. Maybe it’s programmed to only work for especially disgusting food items, and it thinks we’re delicious?”

  “Now you’re just being silly. It opened for that silver object I saw, and that didn’t look remotely edible. We have to take a chance. I’ll go first. Then when you see it’s perfectly safe, you follow.” She hoisted her bag up on her shoulder and gripped it tightly.

  “Carrie, don’t do it. You don’t know what’s on the other side.”

  “I saw the floor of the tunnel. It isn’t a long drop. I’ll be fine as long as I’m careful.” She would need to spring forward a little as she leapt to avoid hitting the side of the fan.

  “Carrie, stop, wait.”

  She jumped. Sailing through the air, she had a brief moment of doubt. What if Dave was actually right? She squeezed her eyes shut. A split second later she was through the blades and falling. She opened her eyes just in time to hit the tunnel floor. In another moment, Dave crashed onto her.

  Chapter Eight – Things of the Past

  Carrie rubbed her shoulder. “Next time, you go first.”

  Dave had also hurt himself. He was rubbing his knee. “I hit the side of the fan on the way through. Sorry, I should have given you time to get out the way, but I thought if I didn’t jump then I might never jump at all.”

  They were crouched in a short dead end. Another tunnel crossed it front of them. Carrie gasped and grabbed her friend’s arm. A silver machine had whizzed past. As Dave turned to see what she was looking at, more appeared, travelling in both directions.

  Carrie studied the robots, if that was what they were. They didn’t look anything like the Liberator except for their colouring, and neither did they look like any placktoid she had ever seen. They were about a metre and a half long and shaped like the kind of pill that’s designed to be easy to swallow but usually gets stuck crossways in your throat. All the placktoids Carrie knew resembled office stationery, from paperclips, through staple removers, to the placktoid commanders, which looked like gigantic shredders, but these mechanical aliens were much more simple and homogeneous. Their surfaces were a smooth, plain silver, and whatever mechanism they had that allowed them to glide through the tunnels wasn’t visible.

  “I wonder what they’re doing? And where they’re going,” Dave said.

  “Maybe we should follow one? Maybe they’re the Liberator’s servants and they’ll lead us to it.”

  “Maybe. What will we do when we get there, though?”

  As they tried to decide a plan of action, the whirring of the fan above them grew steadily louder. It developed a creaking whine.

  “That doesn’t sound too good,” said Carrie, looking up.

  “No. I think my knee might have caused some damage.”

  They watched the spinning blades as the noise increased in volume. Carrie raised her eyebrows at Dave and began to edge away from their spot directly beneath the damaged instrument. Dave wasn’t slow to follow, and just in time, for there was a crack, and a blade thunked into the ground where they had been sitting. It quivered upright in the hard, rubbery floor.

  “Woah,” said Dave.

  A silver machine abruptly turned and entered the dead end. Carrie and Dave backed away as it approached, but it ignored them and went to the fallen blade. The robot hovered for a second before gliding up to the broken fan above, which had stopped turning. Carrie tensed. Would all the robots realise they were there now that their attention was drawn to the damaged fan? Did they communicate electronically like the placktoids? More robots entered the dead end. Most joined the robot that had risen to the fan, but one remained behind. As it hovered above the fallen blade, its undercarriage opened and a pair of pincers emerged. The pincers closed around the blade, and the robot jerked upwards, pulling it out of the ground before zooming away.

  The motions of the robots that were attending to the broken fan were less easy to see, but they seemed to be fixing it. In a matter of moments, another robot entered the dead end bearing a new blade. It flew up to join its fellows. Clinking and clanking issued from above, and a few minutes later the robots withdrew as the fan began to whirr once more.

  “Wow, that’s some fixit crew,” said Carrie.

  Dave nodded. “Very efficient.”

  A crash sounded from the tunnel outside. One of the robots that had fixed the fan was on the floor. Its undercarriage was open and various instruments were spilling from it. Whether it had run into the wall or another robot wasn’t clear, but it was now in need of repair itself.

  Carrie was curious as to what would happen to the damaged machine. She didn’t have to speculate long. As with the broken fan, the broken robot’s fellows were attracted to the accident site. Instead of fixing the broken robot, however, they grabbed it in their pincers, hoisted it up and glided away.

  “Quick,” Carrie said, “let’s follow and see where they take it.” She was already on her feet and leaving the dead end.

  “Why?” called Dave. “What’s that going to tell us?”

  “I don’t know,” shouted Carrie, “but it might tell us something.”

  The two humans struggled to keep up with the robot accident team as they carried the damaged robot through the winding tunnels. Unlike the tunnel Carrie and Dave had followed on their initial foray into the mountain, this path had many forks, branches and exits on either side and above and below. They were forced to keep their wits about them and leap over gaps that appeared in their path. They passed by and through many fans, which opened their blades when the robots and humans drew near.

  As they ran on, Carrie hoped to herself that the Council had packed some kind of navigation device because there was no way they could retrace their route to the surface. Dave was puffing behind her. She hoped the robots would reach their destination soon, before her partner had an aneurysm. If they got through this assignment alive, she would have to enroll him in her Bagua Zhang class.

  “I...can’t run...much further,” he panted.

  “Come on, you can do it,” called Carrie over her shoulder.

  As they passed through the tunnels they lost their smooth, manufactured look and became rougher and rockier. Were they nearing the surface again? From up ahead, a sudden, blinding light gave Carrie her answer. The tunnel they entered was long and straight and ended in a circular entrance, through which the combined rays of two brilliant suns shone. Carrie lifted a hand to shade her eyes.

  The robot team in front didn’t slow their pace. They glided rapidly towards the light. They reached the exit but what they did then she couldn’t make out. Her eyes were still adjusting to the brightness. Whatever it was, it was over quickly. They returned without the damaged machine and zoomed past her.

  Carrie con
tinued on, squinting into the daylight. At the end of the tunnel, she gripped the wall and peered outside. A mountain slope fell away beneath her, littered with silver machines in various states of disrepair. Their instruments spilled out and their smooth skins were dented and twisted. Near the bottom of the slope in the distance, more of the silver machines were hovering over the robot graveyard. These undamaged machines seemed to be scavenging the debris. The silver shapes, moving and unmoving, spread away into the distance to the foot of the mountain a few hundred metres below.

  “Hey, put me down,” Dave exclaimed behind her.

  Carrie turned to see her friend in the grip of five or six of the silver machines. Their pincers had tight hold of his arms and legs and head, and they were gliding up the tunnel towards the exit.

  “Carrie,” Dave called, “do something. Make them stop. I’d just collapsed on the floor, too tired to run any further, and the bastards picked me up. Fire at them.”

  “I can’t do that, I might hit you.”

  Dave and the robot transport team were approaching the entrance. They were gliding much more slowly than they had been when carrying the broken robot. Dave was clearly a lot heavier, but they obviously thought he was broken and should be thrown out. He wriggled in their grasp, making the robots wobble as they flew, but they didn’t drop him.

  “Carrie,” he shouted.

  She ran towards the approaching group and banged her fist on one of them. Her hand bounced harmlessly off the smooth metal surface. “Ow.” She tried kicking another, but that resulted in nothing more than a dull clank and a painful foot. Nursing her hand, Carrie hopped after Dave and his towing crew.

  “Help,” he cried as they reached the tunnel mouth. “Carrie, stop them.” She pushed a robot hard, but only managed to swerve it slightly from its path. The robots paused at the exit, flew back a little, then surged forward. They launched Dave through the gap to the outside and into the air. “Help,” he cried again as he flew out. He yelled as he fell, his voice growing quieter as he disappeared from view.