The Imprisoned Earth

by Vaughn Heppner

  Like Schaine had said a few minutes ago, this was surreal.

  “Are there any legends concerning time shifting?” I asked.

  “Terra abounds in them,” Calidore said.

  “I’m talking about galactic legends,” I said. “And I don’t recall any Earth legends about time travel.”

  “Rip Van Winkle,” Calidore said. “And stories about elves abound with them, how one can become trapped and stay too long in Elfland, aging years there in a matter of days.”

  “Elves equal Avantis, is that what you’re saying?”

  “As far as I know, both ancients dabbled with time machines, shifters and other odd devices. But from the little I’ve learned on the subject, they finally both pulled away from time twisting or fooling around with time travel.”

  “Schaine,” I said, jerking her from a too-near halftrack. The treads—I could hear them easier all of a sudden. One set had almost rolled over Schaine’s right foot.

  “They’re not real,” she told me.

  “Let’s not test that,” I said. “And if they’re not real, what are we walking on?”

  “The ramp,” she said. “Oh. Right, I see what you mean.”

  “Good thinking,” Calidore told me.

  We reached the top of the ramp, and saw inside the ship: more halftracks, each waiting for its turn to start down. These vehicles held equipment instead of Gorth infantry. I had no idea what they planned to do outside, and I didn’t feel like asking Calidore about that just now.

  Instead, I asked, “Are you detecting any Masters anywhere?”

  “No.”

  “What does a Master look like?”

  “Your curiosity does you credit,” Calidore told me. “Schaine, where is the sky-raft?”

  I wondered why Calidore needed to ask.

  As I wondered, Schaine bent low in order to look outside. “The raft is almost here, Seer,” she shouted, straightening.

  At that moment, the huge spaceship shook so Schaine and I stumbled.

  “Is the alien ship lifting off?” Calidore asked.

  “No!” I shouted. “The sky-raft crashed into it. We just felt the impact.”

  “Jason,” Calidore whispered. “I—I see the spaceship. That must mean it’s coming into phase, into sync with me, with us.”

  “If that’s true—”

  Harsh alien words sounded as engine noises revved into loud existence. The crash between vehicles seemed to have shoved or pushed us into sync, as impossible or crazy as that sounded. Had Lord Ra planned that?

  More harsh Gorth words assaulted my ears.

  “Jason!” Schaine cried.

  I speed-drew my laser and burned a green-skinned Gorth aiming an ugly blaster at us. The burn stank, was nauseating, in fact.

  The big ugly roared with pain, pitched the blaster from him and crashed onto the deck, bleeding a black, oily substance that didn’t look like blood.

  “Is he a machine?” I shouted.

  “Run,” Schaine said, as she dragged me away.

  Other Gorths staring at us drew blasters. The closest halftrack vehicles lurched to a halt.

  I ran with Schaine and saw a side corridor. “Come on,” I said. “This way.”

  “That’s the wrong way,” Calidore said. “The temporal shifter is up and to the left.”

  I ignored him, sprinting for the corridor, wondering if we’d reach it before the Gorths opened up with blaster fire.

  -44-

  We barely made it, the blaster fire leaving smoking holes in the bulkheads behind us. Then, I pulled Schaine once more, discovering that I could run many times faster than she could.

  “Are they following us?” Schaine shouted, trying to look over her shoulder.

  “Run,” I yelled. “Doctor, scan for them.”

  The computer slate did not respond.

  I took a turn, sprinted harder, dragging Schaine after me, took another turn and found another, smaller ramp, racing up it. I was panting and sweating more than ordinary, and I found that the Gorth ship’s humid air stank.

  “We must go higher still,” Calidore said.

  “What happened back there?”

  “You must be more precise,” he said.

  “Why aren’t the Gorths following us anymore?”

  “Perhaps the better question is: do the hallways seem ghostly to you again?”

  I halted, and yanked Schaine to a halt as she tried to keep running. “Wait a minute,” I told her.

  She panted, with her mane of red hair in disarray. I could see in her eyes that she was fighting terror. That was the bad thing about running; it put a person’s flight or fight mechanism into high gear. Since we’d run, that meant ipso facto that we were afraid and that there was something to be afraid about.

  “Jason,” she pleaded.

  “Look at the corridor, the bulkheads,” I said. “Tell me what you see.”

  She frowned, but she obeyed. “It’s different. I can’t explain it.”

  I touched a bulkhead, and it had the spongy feel the ramp had formerly had. We didn’t sink through it, my hand couldn’t push through it, but it didn’t feel as real as it had just a few seconds ago.

  “What’s going on, Doctor? How did you detect the change had taken place?”

  “My sensors are more finely tuned than your vision—”

  “Give me the short version,” I said, interrupting.

  “Of course,” he said. “I lost sight of the walls, of being in sync. I saw the time eddies again instead. That caused my conclusion that material in the past had drifted out of phase with us.”

  “Why?”

  “It must have to do with a property of time or a glitch in the temporal shifter. The sky-raft crash caused the ship to synchronize with the others, which helped to synchronize with us. After a while, the effect must have drifted back to normal.

  “Damned strange,” I said.

  “Just different from normal physics,” Calidore said. “I’m certain if I studied the phenomenon long enough that the quantum mechanics of time shifting would become perfectly clear to me.”

  “Well…if we’re ghostly again, let’s use that to our advantage and get to the temporal shifter as fast as possible.”

  “I’m beginning to wonder if the eddies I’m seeing are the structures you’re seeing. I just ran an analysis comparing the position of the bulkheads to the time eddies. This is interesting. They are a match. Thus, in a way, I’m seeing what you’re seeing. Isn’t that interesting?”

  “Very,” I said.

  “What did I tell you about sarcasm?”

  “Do you know that you’re the touchiest computer I’ve ever met?”

  “That makes perfect sense, as I’m not really a computer, but a mentalist turned into a computer. Sort of like a prince turned into a frog.”

  I glanced at Schaine, but she didn’t get it. Was Calidore going to ask her to kiss him? It wasn’t really funny anyway, and she wasn’t a princess, although she had been the ruler of the Fighting Hunge. So maybe she was a princess after a fashion—if by princess, one meant a governing authority.

  “Are you listening to me?” Calidore asked.

  I realized he’d been talking, and I’d been ignoring him. “Say that again,” I said.

  He gave instructions, helping Schaine and me to negotiate the passageways. He could see through the various time eddies, and thus could see ahead and see which corridors ultimately led the wrong way.

  “What about Ra and his neutraloids?” I asked. “Can you detect them?”

  It took Calidore several seconds to answer. “No,” he said. “The time eddies must be blocking them from me. They should be more real to me, however, and thus easier to spot. I’ll let you know the instant I see them.”

  “Super,” I said, panting because I’d been taking us up one ramp after another.

  We raced through the Gorth ship, Calidore zeroing in on the temporal shifter. Schaine and I gasped for air, but we didn’t dare rest. This was a monstrous s
paceship, surprisingly so considering that it had descended into a gravity well to land on a planetary surface.

  “I have a question,” I wheezed. “Is this ship stuck in a time loop?”

  “I have no reason to think so,” Calidore said.

  “I mean, is the time distortion we used to reach here the same in every era on Aiello? Or is this window to the past only ‘open’ in certain eras?”

  “What a fascinating question. I should have already thought of that. I haven’t even suspected a time loop. Interesting, interesting—I believe the distortion is open in many eras or times, and that would make the magnitude of the distortion fantastic. That means something very odd must have caused the rift.”

  “Does that necessarily hold?” I asked. “Did the Masters tamper with time as a matter of course?”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “How much or how often did the Masters mess with time?”

  “The legends I know suggest it was a passing thing. Time travel turned out to be too dangerous.”

  “Maybe that’s why the Avanti sent us here. Out of all the relics lying around the Orion Arm, this is the most dangerous.”

  “We are speculating far too much instead of concentrating on the problem,” Calidore said. “I have just detected a neutraloid. He is moving fast, in the same direction we are.”

  “Ra must have a temporal-shifter detector,” I said.

  “Obviously,” Calidore said. “Now, save your breath for running and get a move on. We want to get there first.”

  “And then what?”

  “We grab the temporal shifter,” Calidore said, as if speaking to an idiot.

  “Sure. I get that. My question is how do we grab something that’s insubstantial to us?”

  “Oh. Yes. I see what you mean. Well, just get us there. By the time you do, I’ll have figured out the answer.”

  -45-

  Calidore lied. I got us there, but he hadn’t figured it out by then.

  The chamber was big with all kinds of strange equipment pulsating and winking with muted colors and while seemingly insubstantial. I counted thirteen Gorths wearing long blue coats and tall, distinguished-looking hats. Some of the gorilla-like aliens had hand calculators or small computer slates like Calidore. Some of them calibrated long banks of machinery.

  As a group, the Gorths were busy, punching in code or doing different things with the machinery.

  “If we’d entered the time distortion a hundred years ago,” I whispered, “would we have found the aliens exactly like this?”

  “I already told you, I don’t know,” Calidore said, sounding testy.

  “Now what?” I asked. “How long until the neutraloids get here?”

  “At their present rate of locomotion, and if they continue to take wrong turns, I would estimate four minutes and thirty-seven seconds.”

  “Soon, in other words,” I said. “If you don’t have any ideas, Calidore, I’ll start trying a few of my own.”

  “Pray tell, what are you planning?”

  “Taking out my laser pistol and firing at will.”

  “Actually, that’s not bad. Go ahead. Try.”

  I pulled out my pistol, and a terrible sense of lethargy fell upon me.

  “Jason,” I heard, as if from far away. “Jason, can you hear me?”

  I blinked several times, wondering what was wrong with me. Then my pistol became incredibly hot. With a shout, I snatched my hand away from it, letting it drop.

  From on the deck, the pistol began humming.

  “Oh, crap,” I said, kicking the pistol, sending it flying. It was overloading. As the pistol sailed away, it became harder to see and then ghostly, in that I could look right through it. At that point, it exploded.

  I threw my arms before my face, expecting to feel a scalding heat as the laser chemicals burned me up. Instead, I felt warmth along the length of my forearms, but that was it. Dizziness struck—a terrible sense of unnatural motion. I wanted to vomit, but couldn’t. I swayed, staggered and crashed against a bank of machinery.

  With a thump, I fell backward onto my butt. My eyes flew open, and I saw big ugly Gorths wearing blue lab coats staring down at me. The nearest one opened a slit-type mouth with black teeth. He made harsh alien sounds. That caused a strange sensation in my ears. He spoke again. The tingling in my ears happened again.

  A babble of noise broke out as the rest of the Gorths questioned each other concerning me.

  “Ah,” I said, finally understanding them. They also looked all too real and present. “Hello there.” I winced after saying it, realizing I sounded like an idiot.

  I climbed to my feet, noticing a bright hovering light to my left. I had the distinct impression that the light was watching me, was intelligent. Did that make it a life form? Oh. Could that be a Master, the archenemy of the Avantis?

  The second I thought that, I knew I was right. So, this thing hovering nearby was a horrible Master that had ravaged much of the Milky Way Galaxy. If the Avantis hadn’t been around to stop their depredations, there would be no life forms left in the universe today.

  Had the Master done that…thing to my laser pistol? I suspected so.

  The hovering light pulsated, and I heard otherworldly music like angels singing, an eerie sound.

  The Gorths all looked up at the light. A big old ugly with a more scrunched up face than the rest looked at me sharply. That Gorth spoke, and the others around me backed away.

  “You are a servant of the Avantis,” the old ugly told me. “You wish to destroy our ship and burn out the Master. How you managed to slip through our—

  The Master—the hovering light—sang its eldritch music once again.

  Everyone looked up at the light.

  “I’m, ah, in the wrong time,” I said.

  The old ugly chief of the Gorths peered at me. He did have bright burning eyes like Schaine had said before, and they were hard to look at for any length of time.

  “That’s what’s going on here,” I said, indicating the machinery. “This is a temporal shifter, or something similar. Am I right?”

  “Amazing,” the chief Gorth said. “You are indeed correct. This is a work of art, of love, and of time. It is the first of its kind. Yet, you suggest that you do not belong to this era?”

  “Your machine is creating a distortion in the fabric of reality,” I said. “It’s making you vulnerable.”

  “Interesting,” the chief said.

  The bright hovering light began edging toward me. I had the sense it would begin the otherworldly music soon.

  “You attempted sabotage a moment ago,” the chief Gorth said. “The Master thwarted you, and it brought you here, in sync with us, so we could experiment on a filthy Avanti spy. Oh, clever little spy, you will not—”

  At that point, the hovering bright light flared intensely. I turned away, covering my eyes because the brilliant light almost blinded me. The thing—the Master, I suppose—made its music.

  Then, all hell broke loose.

  -46-

  The chamber was already crowded enough with the big ugly Gorth scientists. I’d say they stood between six and seven feet tall and had to weigh a solid four hundred pounds apiece. They had hands like lumps of clay, and if they swung like boxers, I imagine they could break my bones with one punch.

  The hovering light flashed, and in an instant, a bunch of blue-skinned neutraloids stood in the chamber with everyone else. There were at least ten of them. The neutraloids did not appear stunned but angry, and they aimed blasters—

  Those were heavy Gorth blasters. Somehow, the neutraloids had gotten hold of this time’s weaponry. The neutraloids aimed and fired, blowing big smoking holes in the Gorth monsters. The smoke reeked. The black oily-looking blood gushed and spurted and Gorths bellowed louder than gorillas, some of them hitting the deck hard.

  I clapped my hands over my ears, staggering backward, shoving myself out of the fight—

  “I got you,” said a thin man with s
teely hand strength.

  I twisted around to stare up at Lord Ra. He had the same pelt-like hair that Ammon used to sport. I imagined he had many modifications, too, like his brother Ammon. One of the modifications must give him hysterical strength when he needed it. Those thin fingers were far too powerful to explain otherwise.

  I groaned as his fingers pressed into my collarbone. I couldn’t take the pain, sinking down to my knees.

  The surviving Gorths fought back against the neutraloids, the big uglies throwing themselves on the blue-skinned enemy. A few Gorths simply tore neutraloids apart, ripping off arms and twisting necks until bones snapped. Then the rest of the blaster-armed neutraloids burned down the murderous Gorths. In their haste, some of the neutraloids burned down their own kind, but nobody was complaining.

  “What is that light?” Ra asked me. “Ah. It must be a Master. Myrmidons,” he said in a loud voice, “burn that.” The thin mentalist pointed up at the light, as he kept hold of me with his other hand.

  Neutraloids aimed and fired, and the blaster shots pierced the light, tearing holes through it, but not appearing to hurt it, for it shined just as brightly as before. Would holes harm an ordinary cloud?

  “No matter,” Ra said. “Let’s try this.” He booted me aside, took out what looked like a lantern, used both hands to hold it and pulled a lever. A pink beam shined into the light.

  The hovering light retreated, flowing into the ceiling and disappearing.

  “Excellent,” Ra said, as he snapped the shutter shut. “I thought that would do the trick. Now…”

  The mentalist peered at me and gestured.

  Two neutraloids bent down and grabbed my arms, hauling me to my feet.

  “So…you made it to the Gorth ship,” Ra said. “I’m impressed. Yet, I suppose I shouldn’t be. You killed my brother after all. Tell me, did Doctor Calidore aid you in that, too?”

  I shook my head.

  “Where is Doctor Calidore?” Ra asked, looking around.

  I opened my mouth, wondering what had happened to Calidore—and to Schaine. They were both missing.