Chapter 29
The Professor couldn’t be telling the truth. But if he were, the children sincerely hoped they weren’t going to disgrace themselves.
Reece’s eyes were huge and only the tiniest bit watery. “But it is there, and we need to go back.”
The Professor reached out to offer a comforting pat on their shoulders, but that emotion was too foreign to him and he withdrew his hand. “You see, children, that path will be there someday, but it’s not there yet.” He sighed, but gently this time. Really, children were so dreadfully unreliable. They could smile and rejoice one second and fall into an utter state of dismay and sob the next. One hardly knew quite how to handle them. That’s why he’d always avoided them until now.
Sean reviewed all the science fiction books he’d ever read, heard on audio tape, or seen in a movie. “Is this a time machine?” he asked. “Are we in a different time than when we first got here?”
Reece turned to her brother ready to laugh, when she heard the Professor utter this incredible sentence.
“I’m most awfully sorry to tell you that we are.”
Reece swallowed hard, recovered her shock and said. “Well, just turn your dial back to where you picked us up, and we’ll go home.”
The Professor was silent and stared at the floor for so long that the children thought he hadn’t heard them. Finally, he raised his head. “You see, my system developed a little problem when I entered the coordinates. The place and time in history that I chose were a bit off, so I designed a new system.” He swallowed before continuing. “I have tested it twice. The first time is when I arrived in the woods behind your house.” His knees began to jiggle up and down as he avoided their eyes again.
The children waited a few seconds then Sean asked. “You didn’t set your controls to land in our neighborhood?”
“One does not land a time machine,” The Professor said. “But actually. . . no, I never intended to be in these particular woods in the time period in which you live.”
“Where did you want to go?” Sean asked.
“Hardly matters, now, does it?”
Reece stared at the Professor. “You didn’t set your control panel for where we are now either?”
“Well, no.”
Reece dropped her head and thought then looked up. “Did you know we weren’t near home when you let us take Bear and leave?”
The Professor’s expression told them that he hadn’t known. “I hoped I’d taken you back to the correct time so you could return home, but I wasn’t altogether sure. I didn’t want to alarm you, so I sent ANNA along as an escort.”
Now it was Sean’s turn to drop his head and think. “But, our parents would never let us leave if we didn’t know where we were going.”
The Professor slumped over with his elbows on his knees. “I know. I shouldn’t have permitted you to leave until I was sure. I’m a complete failure as a substitute parent.” Finally, he stood and walked over to the door. “I ended up. . . wherever this place is,” he said staring with unseeing eyes into the woods. “You see somehow this new system is not recording data, so I do not know how to reverse the settings, and that’s rather put the lid on it.”
The Door Into Time Page 29
