I hope you enjoyed Chapter 1! Here is Chapter 2 where our heroes find themselves somewhere they didn't intend to go.
The trip through hyperspace seemed rougher than usual. Each successive azure ring of quantum energy they passed through seemed to bring another shudder throughout the sphere of red tiles as it, now visible, hurtled through time and space. Peabody shrugged it off. The readings on his display looked normal and it wasn't unheard of for local solar flares or black holes to make their journey home more interesting than usual. Rare. But not unheard of.
As Peabody contemplated the path home, Penny and Sherman sat behind him, perched in their swivel seats and sharing meaningful looks. What had started as a great intellectual rivalry had blossomed first into a partnership and finally into true friendship. Penny no longer cared what kids at school whispered behind her back, what tables she was excluded from at lunch. What could any of that possibly matter now, now that she was Penny Peterson, inductee of the warrior tribe of the Amazons, slayer of the blood-thirsty Egyptian god Sobek (turned out to just be a crocodile on a growth spurt), and contributor to the Great Wall of China! And Sherman, how could she ever be ashamed of the boy-turned-man who had by the age of 16 written a campaign speech for President Lincoln, faced Genghis Khan on the fields of Mongolia, and (without Peabody's knowledge) relocated the entire populace of Pompeii, replacing them with realistic mannequin duplicates in time for Volcano Day. They were both heroes of history in their own right and no child in the suburbs of New York City could ever hope to comprehend what that truly meant.
Still, they were very much 16. 16. An age when Sherman made her nervous just by standing too close. A time in her life where she checked her hair 5 times on the elevator ride up to the penthouse. Aside from his feats of cunning, ingenuity, and thoughtfulness, Sherman had developed into a dashing, athletic, and courageous young man, not entirely lacking in the muscles department or short on good looks. He still had a mop of unruly orange hair atop his spectacled face but on 16 year-old Sherman, the look worked for him. They were friends, sure. But Penny often wondered to herself how much longer they could stay "just friends."
Penny was roused form her thoughts by a commotion at the front of the pod. Mr. Peabody was making increasingly frustrated noises as he pounded at the controls and twirled knob after knob. It wasn't like the professor to lose his composure which made Penny more nervous than anything else.
"Is something wrong, dad?" Sherman asked, starting to inch his chair forward via its arm-rest remote control. By now Sherman was well-versed in flying the WABAC, handy for the increasingly frequent event that Peabody was sound asleep by the time he and Penny made it back from their history lesson assignment.
"We may be in trouble, Sherman. A rare white hole is blocking our path home and I'm having trouble coaxing enough power to navigate around it!" It wasn't like Peabody to be an alarmist. By his preference, every answer would be responded to with an even toned precise response but for once in his life, he was truly worried. The fuel gage was dipping lower much faster than it usually should and at its current rate of descent would bottom out long before he could manage to skirt the exploding point of space, shooting eons of light and matter from a matching black hole on the other side of the galaxy. For the first time in his life, the way ahead was completely occluded. He couldn't see a path to victory where normally he could see seven. Was he finally getting old enough to make these trips dangerous? Was he no longer fit to navigate the waves of the intergalactic sea?
"There has to be a solution! Are we near enough to the Renaissance? We could pop in 5 minutes after we left on our last energy trip and just use the same device!" Sherman exclaimed excitedly, proud to hopefully be contributing.
"It's no good, Sherman. Time isn't the problem, we were close enough to modern eras to make the jump through time relatively easily. What we're lacking in is space. To make it back to where the Earth is now in its modern orbit, I plotted a course across the Solar System. We're in the middle of that trek now so coming out of time jump would place us roughly in… the Sun. How stellar." Peabody muttered, instinctively making a wry joke.
"I don't get it." Sherman said reflexively. It was a game they played. Of course by now Sherman could understand the pun but when he was younger the humor of his furry father would often fly right over his head.
"What about the White Hole?" Penny inquired. "Can we use that to push us where we need to go?"
"Penny! What a wonderful idea. I've never thought of that. Let's see, calculating the launch velocity by the quantum gallops in our trail, divide by the sea of tranquilities pull on the astral projection…carry the 4… I think it will work! I hope…" Peabody muttered.
Sherman, content there at least appeared to be a path to save their lives, decided to overlook his father's moment of uncertainty. "Take us home then, Mr. Peabody. I believe in you…dad."
Peabody smiled at the boy. He twirled 4 dials, cranked on a lever, and slammed the red button home, plotting a course directly into the fountain of white light before them. As they neared closer, the shaking in the sphere grew steadily more abrupt, throwing Penny from her seat at one point, luckily into the waiting arms of Sherman, anticipating her fall. Tendrils of light and what looked like plasma of purples, pinks, greens, and blues swirled around the front window, bathing them in its twisting game of celestial tag.
Suddenly the craft shuddered more violently than before. It began to spin faster and faster.
"Mr. Peabody, what's happening?" Sherman managed to get out.
"I don't know, Sherman! We appear to be getting bombarded with a strange form of energy. I've never seen anything like this before!"
The centrifugal force seemed unbearable to Sherman now. He had trained at the NASA astronaut training facilities, well the ones they had in 1969 at least, and nothing they had subjected him to could prepare him for this. Just when he felt himself blacking out, it stopped as suddenly as it started. His head spinning and blood slowly draining from his head, Sherman's vision began to return. Bright light streamed from the window, illuminating the room in bright incandescent hues. The ship also seemed to be sitting at a slight angle starboard. Not much could be seen from the window except for tall leafy plants and the trunk of an enormous tree.
"Penny, Mr. Peabody, are you two okay?" Sherman mumbled, his tongue feeling too large for his mouth. Once they had both responded in the affirmative, Sherman got out of his seat and processed to the instrument panel.
"Dad, where are we? Central Park?" Sherman asked. He was usually very adept at reading the odd display of units and numbers that Mr. Peabody had invented just to make time travel possible. With his head spinning and the ground seeming to move beneath his feet, however, he found himself quite incapable of the task.
"Sherman, I'm afraid we're not quite in New York City, or at least it's not called that yet…" Mr. Peabody trailed off.
A feeling of disbelief settled in his stomach, "You mean we're in early America, pre-colonization? Just how far back did that White Hole shoot us?" By the look of the vegetation outside, he probably should have been able to guess that. New York didn't have trees that big in Central Park or anywhere else. It was massive around with a brown-gray tent. It was strange it almost seemed to be moving, swaying back and forth, likely in the wind from up above.
"Sherman, we've landed here a long time before man or early hominid will ever set foot. Here…or anywhere. This is the Late Jurassic. And Sherman…that's not a tree."
As Mr. Peabody spoke, the leg, for that is what it was, lifted from their view, marching past their vessel as a tail as long as a block in Brooklyn swayed past, narrowly missing a devastating crash with the WABAC.
"Well," Sherman sighed, "this is new."
