July 18, 1986
3:02 p.m. EDT
Catledge traced a pencil over Doc's blueprints, a dark smile imposed on his foul lips. "What do you think, Haeckel?" he asked his dog, showing it the revised designs, "I'd say I've got a winner here. Once we get that spaceship back into our hands, I'd say we've got the basic model for our time machine that'll get us ultimate power."
Haeckel barked in approval. Just then the door to his office swung open. "Here's Miss MacAdams to see you, Dr. Catledge," Gately announced.
"Look I'd rather not be in…" Carolyn protested as Catledge's aide shoved her into his tobacco-choked quarters and slammed the door shut behind them. "Take a seat," Catledge ordered her, not giving her the benefit of a glance. "Now, my dear, I believe you were being a bit difficult with my associate Dr. Faraday down there. You had better tell me everything you know about how my old friend Emmett Orange stole my greatest discovery from me."
"His name is Emmett Brown," Carolyn said strongly, "And let me say that he didn't steal David from you, you and Dr. Faraday stole David from his family. I can see that much now."
Without any warning, Catledge slammed his fist down hard on his desk. "Don't you dare try to second guess me, young lady!" he barked, "I know more about this than you do!"
"You're going to kill David if you put him through any of those tests you have assigned for him!" Carolyn shouted, "He's a poor scared kid who needs family, not solitary confinement!"
"We make due with what we have, and you have no right to question my methods," Catledge said curtly, advancing menacingly toward her, "Now this is your last opportunity. Tell me right now how you helped Green get my discoveries out of here, or it's going to get even more ugly in this office than it was with your father when I ended his military career prematurely."
"I've told you and Dr. Faraday everything about it for the last hour!" Carolyn cried, exasperated, "Why can't you leave well enough alone? Why can't you leave David and that spaceship alone?"
"Because they hold the road to absolute wealth and power, the American dream, and I will have that dream come true for me," Catledge said darkly, "And nothing will stand in my way of achieving these goals?"
Carolyn gulped but managed to maintain at least an outward calmness. "My father was right then," she told the monster of a man before her, "You are a deranged madman!"
She spit at his feet and turned to run. The next few seconds happened in slow motion. Haeckel leapt in front of the office door before Carolyn could reach it and forced her backwards, growling savagely. Catledge grabbed her arm and pulled it painfully back. "Damn it to hell, give me an answer, how did you help Black!?" he bellowed. Frightened, Carolyn kicked him in the shin in self-defense, to which Catledge responded by shoving her toward the window as hard as he could. There was a loud crash as the glass shattered and a horrific shriek as Carolyn plummeted down to earth, ending after about ten seconds with a sickening thud on the pavement below. Catledge strolled over to the window and looked down. "Well," he told Haeckel, "It probably was for the better. We wouldn't have gotten anything out of her anyway."
Footsteps caused him to whirl around to find himself looking at Gately, who couldn't have resisted the temptation to see what was going on in his boss's office firsthand. "I didn't see anything sir," Gately said quickly, throwing up his hands, "She tripped on the rug and fell out the window accidentally. That's the story I'll tell before the Supreme Court."
"It had better be if you know what's good for you," Catledge warned him. He walked back over to his desk and pressed several monitor control buttons on the wall in front of him. "Nothing but failures all day long!" he muttered out loud, "First security here, then my security back in Hill County, then those Libyans and robots. If you want anything done right you have to do it yourself!" He rose and lit up his pipe again. "Gately," he told the junior scientist, "Call Stansfield Base up in Daytona and tell them to send down the Overlorder posthaste."
"The Overlorder, sir?" Gately was shocked, "Sir, are we sure want to go THAT extreme in catching them? The Overlorder hasn't been fully tested yet, and if…"
"We'll find out what it's got, Gately, no better way to find out than a field test, I always say," Catledge cut him off, "Get on the horn and tell them to bring it here now, do you understand me?"
"Absolutely sir," Gately said sycophantically, "I'll make the call this minute."
He rushed back out of the office. Catledge looked up at the radar monitor on the wall. His quarry was about to enter the Florida panhandle. He knew they were headed for Fort Lauderdale, and when they got there, he'd be waiting for them with something not even Emmett Yellow and his crew could withstand.
July 18, 1986
3:29 p.m. EDT
"I think I can see a rest stop of some kind in front of us here," Doc pointed out the front window, "We should stop there and give David's family the notification that we should be arriving in no more than five hours or so. And it looks like I can see a dumpster from here, so Wayne, have your machine ready, we may need that trash in it for further fusion purposes."
"Gotcha, Dr. Brown," Wayne said, breaking up the crate and pulling out the magnificent shrinking machine that had so captivated Marty's attention.
They stopped above a small gas station and rest stop named Al's Gator City. Doc bounded down the steps and strolled over to a large heavyset man Marty assumed was the proprietor. "Pardon me sir," the scientist addressed this man, "Would you per chance have any electrical generators available? I need it for a nuclear reaction."
The man didn't answer. He was staring in shock at the spaceship. "Well then, would you mind if we borrow your dumpster over there?" Doc tried another tact, "I promise you'll get it back; once the space-time continuum is restored, it'll be right back there as if I never took it."
The owner again did nothing but stare at the ship. "I'll take that as a yes," Doc shrugged, "Wayne, if you will."
"Show me how this works," Marty asked his friend's former pupil as they skipped behind the store toward the dumpster. He had wanted to see something shrunk since yesterday.
"Okay, the first thing you do with this is bring it to power," Wayne put the ray on the ground and flicked several switches to rev it up. "Then you lock onto whatever you're going to want to shrink," he went on, twisting a dial as he watched through a video screen at the dumpster. A schematic of the mass and other dimensions appeared on the screen. A small red beam shot out of the ray and hit the dumpster, although this had no effect on it. "Then you increase the beam to maximum power," Wayne pushed up a control toggle, causing the laser to turn progressively bluer, "And when it hits peak mass, you hit the shrink button."
"All right, let's do it," Marty said encouragingly. Wayne hit the button, and a blast of blue electricity shot out of the ray and shrank the dumpster. As the ray started powering down, Marty ran over and picked up the dumpster, which was now about the size of a chestnut. "Awesome," he exclaimed, "I think you'll have a big market for this, whatever you plans to use it for."
"Well, I'm weighing my options, can't be too careful after I shrunk the kids and all…." Wayne started to say. He gasped and covered his mouth, realizing he'd just breeched a forbidden topic to another. "You shrunk your kids?" Marty asked him. This admittedly made sense with some of the things he'd heard over the last forty-eight hours.
"Um, well, uh,…" Wayne was at a loss for words.
"It's okay, really," Marty told him, "Nothing worse than me being sent back in time and nearly causing myself never to be born. How'd it happen?"
"Uh," Wayne pulled him close, "You'll have to promise not to tell anyone about this, OK?"
"No problem," Marty said.
"It was strictly an accident," Wayne admitted, "One of the neighbors hit a baseball through window and turned the machine on. When they went up to the attic to get it, it shrunk them. Then I accidentally threw them out with the trash. My wife and I spent twenty-four hours searching for them before we finally found them and returned them to normal. I've been trying to come up with a way to keep it from happening again, but I haven't got a safety catch idea yet."
Before Marty could respond, Doc ran over shaking his head. "No generators," he informed them, "We'll have to look elsewhere. Do you have the dumpster?"
"Right here, Doc," Marty handed it to him. Doc looked it over and nodded. "Might as well make the call," he went on, "You have spare change?"
"Yep," Marty examined his pockets and found at least four dollars worth of quarters, "Just tell me what to dial." Then he realized something. "Wait a minute, Doc, I don't even know WHAT to dial."
"I'd better go ask David," Doc said.
"Good," Marty acknowledged as his friend strode off. "Hey pal," he asked the owner, "Where's your phone?"
"Around the back," the owner said weakly, unable to take his eyes off the spaceship.
"Thanks," Marty patted him on the back, "We need to phone home." He frowned. "Phone home? What am I saying?"
July 18, 1986
3:38 p.m.
"…reports of flying saucer activity around the world has proliferated over the last twenty-four hours," the newswoman was saying on the Freemans' TV, "Earlier, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, claiming to have been victimized by one of these crafts, openly accused the U.N. of trying to undermine him with them. And in Berlin, dozens of East Berliners have been pouring through a hole in the Wall that may have been caused by one of these vessels. The U.N. security counsel has decreed that a counsel be held on the matter as soon as possible. More on this story at eleven."
"Right," Mrs. Freeman muttered, "Eleven's too long."
"Hey, what's the matter with you?" Biff asked, looking up from the plate of at least thirty hot dogs he'd forced her to cook up for him earlier, "We're all celebrities now. You'll be good for life. And better later on the story than never." He took her chin in his hand. "And if you need cheering up," he told her, "I'd be more than happy to…"
"Lay one finger on my wife and I'll tear your filthy head off!" Mr. Freeman warned him, "It's bad enough you're robbing me of my son; you're not taking anything else off me!"
"All right, fix the hernia," Biff told him smarmily. He walked over to the window and looked out on the lawn, where Scroeder's men were setting up searchlights and other equipment. "How's it going, Scroed?" he asked the security man.
"Scroed-ER!" he told Biff sharply, "And we're doing just fine, thank you! We don't need your help!"
"I wasn't offering," Biff said.
Scroeder walked back into the house. "I'd better check in with headquarters," he announced and dialed the number for NASA. "Howard, we're all in position here," he told him.
"Very good, Scroeder," Marner said as he and Faraday climbed into a van at the base, "We'll be there in a couple of hours. Faraday'll bring you up to speed on the specifics."
He handed the phone to his associate. "Colonel Scroeder, we've got them on radar a little north of Tampa," Faraday told him, "Wait for them to come to you, then close the net."
"That's an affirmative, Dr. Faraday," Scroeder said, "We'll have them in…"
Mr. Freeman leapt up and seized the phone off Scroeder. "Faraday you jackass, I'll kill you for what you've done!" he shouted, "You lied to us!"
"All right Bill, just pull yourself together," Faraday tried to calm him down.
"No I will not!" Mr. Freeman told him, "You promised you would let David go after forty-eight hours, and you…!"
"You should have read the contract you signed more closely, Bill," Faraday told him curtly, "It specifically states that David would be available to us for forty-eight hours UNLESS CONDITIONS NECESSITATED OTHERWISE EXTENDING IT. And as it is, the situation became necessary for us to extend his stay indefinitely."
"Well its funny you didn't tell us about it when you had the chance to!" Mr. Freeman yelled, "And because you didn't you're going to get sued for more than you have!"
"You can sue me if you want, Bill, but the fact of the matter is that the documents are legal and binding, and will be upheld by any court in this country," Faraday told him, "And David is legally mine until we're finished running every single test we have planned. So any attempt on you to interfere with us is a felony and will be treated as such. Now don't call me again."
He hung up. Mr. Freeman slammed down the phone in disgust. "I'm going to kill him, I swear to God!" he growled.
"Yeah, well, he has money and power, and so does our backer, so suing him and killing him really make as much sense as a screen door on an aircraft carrier," Biff told him.
"You mean a screen door on a submarine," Jeff corrected him.
"Don't correct me," Biff said. The phone rang again. It's mine," he said, grabbing it before anyone else could reach the receiver. "Yo," he answered.
On the other end, Marty rolled his eyes. "Great, Biff!" he whispered to Doc.
"Who's Biff?" David asked him.
"A fool with a bad tendency for the wrong thing, to put it simply," Marty said. Thinking quickly, he lowered his voice again and said, "Good afternoon, I represent the Little Giant Vacuum Company of Walla Walla, Washington. I would like to speak to a…" he turned to David and asked, "What's your brother's name again?"
"Jeff."
"…a Mr. Jeffrey Freeman if you please," Marty asked Biff.
"Sure, no problem; kid, the phone's for you, some vacuum sales guy," Biff handed the phone to Jeff. "Yes?" he asked, clearly puzzled.
"You're Jeff?" Marty asked him.
"Yes, who is this?"
"I'm Marty McFly, I'm here with your brother," Marty told him, "Are we being recorded?"
"No, they didn't bring a tap," Jeff told him.
"Good," Marty breathed a big internal sigh of relief, "Look, my friends are I are bringing your brother back, but we really don't know where you are in Fort Lauderdale. Could you give us the street address?"
"Um," Jeff was noticing the stern look Scroeder was giving him, as if the security man knew something was amiss, "No sir, I can't give you any specific instructions. Just look for a sign though; I'll do my best to make sure you can find us."
"Well, that's not quite what I hoped for, but I guess that's as good as any given Biff's there," Marty shrugged, "My pal the Doc says we should be arriving in Fort Lauderdale around eight-thirtyish, but don't tell anyone, OK?"
"No problem there," Jeff said, "Can I have a brief word with David if he's there?"
"Just make sure it's brief," Marty handed the phone to David, who struck up a warm but hurried conversation with his brother.
"Excuse me, children, excuse me," Doc rushed over to the spaceship. A station wagon had pulled up to the pump while they'd been on the phone, and the two children were now hovering around the spaceship's stairs, treating it almost like a plaything. "Children," Doc addressed them, "This is not a playground. This is a serious piece of heavy machinery that could be somewhat easily damaged."
"We're not hurting it," the boy protested, "See, I put my foot here and nothing happens."
"Kids, come on away from there, you might break it," their father called to them from near the car. He turned to the nearby owner and said, "Boy, it's amazing how you can make it float like that."
The owner said nothing. He was still too much in shock.
"Well, if my calculations are correct, we're still pretty much on time," Doc theorized, checking one of his numerous watches, "I saw in the yellow pages in the store that there's a Lowe's about sixty miles from here. That's bound to have the electrical generators we need. Then all we have to do is get over Fort Lauderdale without being shot down, set the circuits for 1978, and God willing send David back to his proper time."
"Sure Doc," Marty mumbled, thinking of David's early death again.
"You seem troubled, Marty; is something disturbing you?" Doc had noticed his expression. Marty knew he couldn't keep it inside anymore. "Doc, I heard what you and Mr. Szelinski said about what happens to David in the regular timeline back in Hill Valley," he told the scientist, "Now I know how it's better of the continuum is restored and all that, but for the love of God, we can't just send the kid back to die!"
A wave of both guilt and resolve crossed Doc's face. "I understand how you're feeling Marty," he said, "I have reservations about it as well. But unfortunately that's just a chance we'll have to take. I wish there could be another way but unfortunately there isn't."
"What do you mean there isn't, Doc? It's not like anyone's going to die just because he's been taken into the future!" Marty said, unaware of what had just happened at NASA, "We could pick up his family, fly them somewhere safe, and they could start over again. You and I know Catledge wants the spaceship more than David. We could lead them away and let him and his folks run for it. You see what I'm saying Doc, he doesn't have to die!"
He realized his voice had risen a bit in desperation. Doc took a long look over and David on the phone and sighed deeply. "Well," the scientist said slowly, "Since we will be heading to Fort Lauderdale, I suppose we could given him the choice to stay with his family here and now. After all, part of the human experience is having free choice at all times. Now that you bring that up, that might be the only viable option if by some chance my calculations were off and temporal displacement can't occur, which hopefully will not be the case."
"You won't regret this, Doc," Marty told him.
David ran back over. "We're all set," he told them, "Jeff'll have it all ready for us." He stared at them. "Is something wrong?" he asked them.
"Uh, no," Doc said quickly, "Why don't we hop up on board and get going so we can pick up the generators we need?"
"Sounds good," David followed them on board. Behind them, the father was all set to take a picture of his family with the ship in the background. He almost dropped the camera in shock as they zoomed up into the sky and out of sight. "How did it do that?" he asked the owner.
"He said he wanted to phone home," the owner moaned softly, even now still not over the shock.