by Peter Ward
Mr. Knight didn’t look quite so pleased with himself anymore. He struggled to get to his feet, but it was a futile attempt. He fell back on his wounded leg and screamed out in agony.
“Don’t even think about it,” Tim said, grabbing Mr. Knight by the collar and pressing his gun into the back of his head. “One more move and I’ll kill you on the spot.”
The only problem with Geoff’s little plan was that in its present state, the Concordia was about as maneuverable as a drugged elephant and wasn’t having much luck in catching up with its target. It didn’t take long for Mr. Knight to realize this, and he was soon smiling again as he watched his ancestor’s ship accelerate safely away from its crippled pursuers.
“We’re losing them!” Geoff screamed. “Can’t we go any faster?”
“Engines are barely functional, sir,” the officer replied. “If we go any faster, she’ll fly apart!”
“Fly her apart, then!!” Geoff shouted.
The officer nodded and typed a few more commands into his console.
The Concordia began to pick up speed, but just as the officer had warned, computer terminals began to explode all around them, showering the bridge in electric sparks. Above their heads, rows of piping began to split, pouring out plumes of thick smoke. Geoff waved his arms to clear the air and hobbled back to his seat, determined not to lose sight of the one ship he was after.
Unfortunately, the extra burst of speed didn’t seem to be enough—the alien craft was still managing to fly farther and farther away.
Mr. Knight began to laugh.
“Nice try,” he said, his voice weak with exhaustion. “You had me worried for a moment.”
The officer slumped back in his chair and shut his eyes.
Geoff stared at the screen and thought for a moment. What else could this ship do that might help?
“Um … you there,” he said to the officer, not sure how to address him.
“Sir?”
“Does the tractor beam still work?”
The officer immediately opened his eyes and sat up straight again, spinning round on his chair to check a panel behind him. He ran his finger down a row of figures on a computer screen and smiled.
“Yes, sir!” he said. “Tractor beam is fully functional!”
“Then activate it, for heaven’s sake!” Geoff shouted.
The officer twisted a small dial to the right and looked up at the main window. In the distance, a large ball of red light engulfed the escaping ship, stopping it dead in its tracks.
“Gotcha,” Geoff said, watching as the alien craft dangled helplessly ahead of them like a fly caught in a spider’s web.
“I don’t know how long I can hold it!” the officer said. “We’re on the verge of a ship-wide systems failure!”
“Then transfer all power to the engines!” Geoff said. “We’ve got to destroy that ship!”
“Even life support?”
“Everything!” Geoff shouted.
The officer spun around in his chair again and typed a few more commands.
“Here goes nothing,” he said, pressing a final button on the console.
The Concordia began to pick up speed again, lurching towards the alien ship as fast at it could go. As Geoff had ordered, this final burst of acceleration came at the expense of everything else, plunging the bridge into darkness and powering down all nonessential systems. The only source of light now came from the main window, which was glowing bright red as the alien ship came closer into view, struggling to free itself from the tractor beam.
Geoff took a deep breath—the air was getting very thin.
“How long … before … we make impact?” he gasped.
“Thirty seconds,” the officer replied.
“And how long … before the … tractor beam fails?”
The officer looked at the panel behind him and shook his head.
“It’s gonna be close, sir,” he said.
“Come on …” Geoff said, standing up from his seat, his body silhouetted against the glow of the oncoming ship. They couldn’t have been more than a few miles away. “Almost … there …”
At their present course, the alien ship was going to smash straight through the main window.
“Sir!” the officer cried. “The tractor beam … is failing!”
Everyone held their breath as the red glow began to flicker around the oncoming craft. There were two reasons for this—firstly, this was a pretty tense situation, and secondly, there wasn’t actually any air to breathe.
The tractor beam finally failed. The alien ship immediately fired up its engines, desperately attempting to pull away from the Concordia.
Geoff smiled.
“Too late,” he said.
Geoff dived to the floor and shielded his eyes as the alien ship smashed through the main window, the weight of its hull buckling the walls to either side. The impact was catastrophic, instantly killing the last remaining officer and sending shards of glass and metal flying in all directions. Beneath Geoff, the floor began to split in two, sending him tumbling towards a bank of damaged computer terminals, and through the debris, he watched as the alien ship listed to one side, ripping the ceiling free from its few remaining supporting beams. Over on the other side of the bridge, Tim was pressed up against the rear wall, still holding on to Mr. Knight by the scruff of his neck.
Tim appeared to be shouting something at Geoff, but in the vacuum on the bridge, everything was silent. Geoff strained his eyes and tried to read his friend’s lips. It looked like he was saying, “She’s gonna blow,” but Geoff was never any good at reading lips. For all he knew, he might have been saying “It’s gonna snow” or “Let’s tie a bow,” but under the present circumstances he assumed his first guess was probably the most likely.
His feelings were soon confirmed as the alien ship ricocheted back out into space and folded in on itself, exploding in the characteristic flash of light they’d come to expect from every other ship they’d destroyed today. As the shockwave burned through the bridge, bathing everyone in its warm glow, Mr. Knight screamed out in silence, his body fading away into the thinnest of thin air. Geoff tried his luck at reading lips again—unless he was mistaken, it looked like he was saying, “Agggggghhhhhhh!”
This latest series of events was proving to be a real headache for the space-time continuum, which was struggling to work out what should happen next. Indeed, this was the question on everyone’s mind as they lay suffocating on the bridge of the Concordia, basking in the pleasantly warm if somewhat radioactive glow of the explosion they had just witnessed.
Twenty-Eight
Fortunately, the space-time continuum must have been in a pretty good mood that day because with Mr. Knight gone, it proceeded to undo everything he had done. As the shockwave faded, Geoff watched as the bridge began to rebuild itself—fallen beams rose back into the ceiling, the floor leveled off and joined back together again, and scorch marks erased themselves from the walls, leaving no trace of the damage that had just been done. All around him, crew members were coming back to life, their bodies rising up from the ground and floating back to their original positions, wounds healing themselves as they landed gently in their seats, and the front of the bridge was also healing its wounds—the buckled walls straightening themselves out again, the scattered shards from the main window gliding back through the air, forming a solid pane of glass once more.
But it wasn’t just the bridge of the Concordia that seemed to be benefiting from the fact that Mr. Knight never existed. Through the newly re-formed window, Geoff watched as all the other ships that had previously been destroyed began to restore themselves, the charred remains of hundreds of battle cruisers transforming back into pristine condition and the split hulls of so many collided ships joining up again, their engines flickering back to life.
Geoff got to his feet and walked over to Tim, who was no longer holding a gun. His leg didn’t hurt anymore.
“I don’t know,” Tim said, running his finger along the cut on his forehead as it healed itself up and disappeared. “I guess you were right about that ship—it must have had Mr. Knight’s ancestors on board. And if Mr. Knight’s never existed, the space-time continuum must be catching up with how events would have transpired.”
“So why are we still in space?” Geoff said. “I mean, if Mr. Knight never existed, we wouldn’t even be here, would we?”
“Beats me,” Tim said. “Perhaps the space-time continuum has a mind of its own. Perhaps it needs us to destroy the rest of these bloody aliens before it can go back to normal.”
That didn’t seem to be too much a problem for the newly restored fleet, which, in its new lease of life, appeared to be doing just that—blowing up alien spaceships left, right and center. Through the window, hundreds of tiny explosions were joining the stars in lighting up the blackness of space, each one fading away to reveal the remains of a destroyed flying saucer.
Geoff walked over to the resurrected captain, who was sitting calmly in his seat, overlooking the battle.
“Well done!” the captain said, leaping out of his seat and shaking Geoff’s hand. “Very well done indeed!”
“How’s it going?” Geoff said.
“Much better than it was a few moments ago,” the captain replied. “For a start, I’m no longer trapped in a corridor with those bloody Varsarians, and with your Mr. Knight out of the way, Mai is more than capable of handling the situation. Right, Mai?”
“Affirmative, Captain,” Mai replied, her voice no longer stuttering like Geoff every time he talked to Darren Bell. “We should be down to the last ship in a matter of minutes.”
“Let me know when,” the captain said. “I want to destroy that last one myself.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“Well, it looks like you saved the day,” the captain said, reaching out to shake Geoff’s hand. “Well done.”
Geoff smiled and walked back over to Tim. Behind him, the lift doors opened. Ruth and the Defence Minister stepped out.
“What the hell just happened?” Ruth said, looking around the bridge. “One minute we were trying to put the computer back together, and the next minute, it just fixed itself!”
“You should have seen it,” the Defence Minister said. “All the pieces just floated in the air and joined back together again as if they had a life of their own! It was … creepy.”
“You two know something, don’t you?” Ruth said, narrowing her eyes, sensing that Geoff and Tim weren’t that surprised.
“Well, it’s a little bit complicated,” Tim said. “But we think we may have changed history.”
“Changed history?” Ruth said, watching a flying saucer spiral past the main window in a ball of flames. “How?”
“I found the mother of all weak spots,” Geoff said.
“What are you talking about?”
“Geoff worked out a way of identifying the exact ship with Mr. Knight’s ancestors on board, and we destroyed it. So as far as history is concerned, Mr. Knight now never existed.”
“He … never existed?” Ruth said.
“Nope.”
“So how come we still remember him?”
“I don’t know,” Geoff said. “Maybe that will remain one of the great mysteries of the universe, like why you can eat an infinite number of cocktail sausages without feeling full.”
“That’s not quite the same thing really, is it?” Ruth said.
“Excuse me, Captain,” Mai announced over the loudspeaker, “but you asked me to let you know when we were down to the last ship.”
“Thanks, Mai,” the captain said, turning to his navigations officer. “Where is she?”
“She’s two thousand clicks off the port bow, Captain,” the officer replied. “Bearing 7-9-5 mark 2-6-6. Looks like she’s trying to flee.”
“Set a pursuit course,” the captain ordered, getting to his feet. “We can’t let her get away.”
The officer typed all the commands necessary into his console to set a pursuit course before saying the somewhat predictable words: “Pursuit course set.”
As he spoke, the Concordia banked to the left to face the final alien ship, which was darting about erratically in the distance as it tried to make its escape.
“Do we have a lock?” the captain said, walking over to his weapons officer and leaning on the back of her chair.
“Yes, Captain,”
“And all weapons are fully functional?”
“All weapons are armed and ready.”
“Then let’s hit this last ship with everything we’ve got,” the captain said, walking back to his chair and sitting down.
“Torpedoes armed, plasma cannons primed, and particle beams ready, Captain.”
“Fire!” the captain said, leaning on the arm of his chair and clenching his fist.
The bridge shuddered as the Concordia unleashed every nasty weapon in its arsenal, sending a barrage of destructive mass and energy swarming towards the fleeing ship. The torpedoes were first to strike, tearing through the center of the ship and ripping it in half like a fortune cookie, and if that wasn’t enough, they were soon followed by a lethal burst of laser fire, burning through the two separated halves like molten lava through a paper plate. This really left the ship no choice but to explode, which it did in spectacular fashion, the two semicircular sides of the hull crashing into each other and detonating across the stars in a dazzling burst of blue light. It was by far the biggest explosion of the battle, and as the light faded, all that remained were a few splinters of hot metal drifting peacefully through the air to join the rest of the debris from the battle.
The crew of the Concordia leapt up from their seats and cheered, hugging each other ecstatically, and punching the air.
“Well, that was good, wasn’t it?” Geoff said, slapping Tim on the back and smiling at Ruth.
“I don’t know,” said Tim. “I wasn’t so keen on that bit when we nearly died, but apart from that, you did a great job.” He reached out and shook Geoff’s hand. “Well done indeed, mate.”
“You were magnificent, Geoff,” Ruth smiled. “Who would have thought it?”
“So what happens now?” Geoff asked.
“I’m not sure,” Tim replied. “I suppose, now that we’ve destroyed the final ship, there’s no reason for us to be here.”
“No?”
“Think about it. If the aliens never invaded the Earth, we would have no reason to come back in time to defend the planet. So, if the space-time continuum is correcting itself again, I guess we should be disappearing any …”
Twenty-Nine
“… second.”
Geoff looked around.
“Did … something just happen?” he said.
“I think so,” Tim said. “I think we’re somewhere else.”
“Yes, but where?” Ruth said. “Where are we?”
That was a good question. They seemed to be back in the room where Geoff had first had his interview—the room that overlooked the London skyline. But something had changed. The room certainly looked the same—wine glasses and paper plates from last night’s party were being swept away by an army of cleaners, and a group of workmen were dismantling the elaborate Roman decorations, but the view out of the window was very different. Whereas before, the London of the future had looked identical to the London of the past, it now looked like a new city: one that had evolved and grown over time like you would expect. There were still all the recognizable landmarks: St. Paul’s Cathedral, Big Ben, and the London Eye, but they were joined by a whole host of new, futuristic architecture: beautiful glass skyscrapers towering into the air, their ergonomic construction reflecting the clear blue sky onto the streets below.
“Are we where I think we are?” Geoff said.
“I don’t know,” Ruth said. “It looks like we’re back at
headquarters, but everything looks so … different.”
“Well it would, wouldn’t it?” Tim said. “If the aliens were totally wiped out in the twenty-first century, they never would have been able to invade in the twenty-second century, and the original London would never have been destroyed. What you’re looking at is a different London—this city’s no longer a memorial; it’s a city that’s been allowed to build up over the years and change as any normal city would.”
“Looks pretty good,” Geoff said.
“There’s still one thing I don’t understand,” Tim said, turning to Geoff. “If Mr. Knight no longer exists, why are you still here?”
“Me?”
“Well, he was the one who thought up the Time Rep scheme, wasn’t he? Without him, we wouldn’t have thought to recruit people from different time periods to act as tour guides.”
Geoff nodded to himself. Tim was right. Was he going to disappear again any second? He hoped not—today had been confusing enough as it was.
“What are you lot doing just standing there?” a voice said.
The group turned around. Eric was walking towards them, a computer disk in one hand and his walking stick in the other.
“Eric!” Tim said. “You’re alive!”
“Of course I’m alive!” Eric said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Tim said.
“Let me just test something,” Ruth whispered to the group. “Eric?” she said, stepping forward. “Where’s Mr. Knight?”
“Mr. who?” Eric said.
“Mr. Knight. The chief exec.”
“But … you’re the chief exec, aren’t you?” Eric said.
“I am?” Ruth said.
“Well, you’re the one who thought up the Time Rep idea, aren’t you?”
“I did?” Ruth said.
“Of course you are! That’s why you’re the one the Defence Minister appointed to the job!”
“The Defence Minister appointed me to the job?” Ruth said.
“What is this, some sort of joke?” Eric said. “Look, I‘ve got no time for this—I’ve got to get down to the paradox-scanning facility right away.”
