Chapter 18: With So Little Time

The horizon took on a blazing crimson glow as the RLS Legacy ascended into the air. Smoke billowed in the sky now where once only threads of it had filtered through the atmosphere. The air was hot and moist, almost noxious to inhale, and the landscape which had once been a lining of green foliage now seemed to have been completely burned away, to reveal an unexplainable metallic-looking floor that glowed brightly in the heat. The rumbles that kept occurring were ever-increasing in both noise and magnitude, which shook the very core of Treasure Planet to the point that I fancied the explosion was being triggered from within the planet itself. In fact, the whole of Treasure Planet, with its environmental features burned away, now more rightly resembled a massive machine than an ecosystem.

The Doctor, under my guidance and with much less confidence than he revealed, directed us into a rickety launch and we sped hastily to the east in the direction of the sun, which had now fully risen, and was smeared and blended to the point of invisibility in the fiery blaze of the sky. The rumble and shudder from Treasure Planet's core was fully affecting the surface now, and was rocking the earth with a tremendous thunder. Tremors split the ground into long, jagged chasms that ran erratically across the planet's floor, spitting from them a strange yellow and orange liquid and steam.

"Keep your head, now!" I called in a thin voice to the Doctor, who was attempting crazily to avoid the spontaneous flares of the geysers below us. "Don't watch the helm, Doctor—keep your eye ahead of you!"

"Captain, I—"

"Concentrate, Doctor!"

"Aye, Captain, I just—"

"Doctor, look out!"

And as the Doctor whirled the helm involuntarily to the right at my cry, one side of a newly created chasm jutted up like lightning, directly in front of the Legacy, shooting upward and upward until it towered over the mainmast and lurched to a stop.

I heard the Doctor murmur something dumbly in awe at the new, glowing wall crowding the left of us, and then instantaneously afterward we heard a spitting sound of boiling liquid, and then the same tell-tale thunder from the earth's core trembling. And with that, in intense rapidity, another wall rocketed up from the planet's ground to the right of us that made the Doctor shout in surprise. Again by instinct, he whirled the ship to the left, sending us careening into the first wall that had taken him so by surprise.

The impact made my teeth rattle, and in such close proximity I could actually feel the heat of the blazing, golden metal wall that we had crashed into. The RLS Legacy grinded harshly against the wall as she drove onward, throwing sparks, until at last we passed the huge wall and feebly recovered. B.E.N began calling a damage report to me, but I could tell even from where I sat against the mizzenmast that there was not much. Instead I drove my concentration to the Doctor.

"You've got to think more tactfully than that, Doctor!" I called to him admonishingly. The last thing we needed was an incapacitated ship. I understood that the Doctor was just learning, but he had to learn faster than this.

"I'm sorry, Captain," the Doctor called back, watching ahead of him intently as we sped enduringly onwards. "I'm afraid I'm not very good at thinking on my feet."

I shook my head. "You simply lack the experience," I told him over the constant roar of the detonating planet. "I believe you can do this, Doctor. But I also believe you can do it with much more tact than what you're showing me now."

The Doctor clutched the helm in both hands. "Simple!" he replied, with no genuineness in his tone that I could perceive. The spitting of boiling water again spluttered to our ears, and soon after the Doctor narrowly dodged another fiery geyser flare. "Can you give me a hint as to how one thinks more tactfully?"

"Trial and error, Doctor—surely you've noticed the sounds that come before the obstacles! The geysers—"

"That spitting sound…!"

"Yes, and the planet's rumbling and new chasms occur just before another wall comes up! You've got to utilize as many of your senses as possible, and that means you listen as well as you watch! Now, Doctor—shall I stop yelling at you so you can listen to what's actually important?"

The Doctor's grip on the helm tightened perceptibly. "Aye, Captain," was his only response, but I intuitively felt that he was concentrating with a little more acuteness and confidence than he had begun with.

The planet's unpredictability went on, increasing as our time declined with worrying rapidity, but the Doctor managed by trial to learn little by little what to do and how to react to the different scenarios the planet threw at him. By the time we reached the place where Silver had left us to seek the treasure on foot, which could only be identified by B.E.N, for the terrain had become so altered in the planet's destruction, the Doctor acted a bit more sure of himself.

"We all headed that-a way!" B.E.N pointed in the direction that Silver, Mr. Hawkins, and the rest of the crew had traipsed in pursuit of Flint's hoard, and we made our way thusly, under the eccentric, but overall indispensable guidance of the little copper automaton.

We wasted very little time to follow B.E.N's directions, and as we closed in upon where B.E.N said the hoard of gold had been found, an emerald glimmer that could just be perceived greeted us with an eerie, haunting shine. I was absorbed by the source of the green light which marked our destination: a massive, mysterious isosceles triangle looming above the horizon as we stole onwards, which glowed a phenomenal, alien green. It was suspended in the air by what seemed to be nothing at all; it simply stood there, tall and imperious, like a triangular eye watching our advancement dauntingly.

"B.E.N!" I shouted hoarsely as we speedily approached the spectacular triangle. "Can you tell me what that is?"

"That's a portal, Cap'm! Flint's portal, the one he used to get in and outta' here alla' time, and the only one that leads directly to his treasure!"

I looked back at the looming shape, and within closer vicinity of it I realized that the environment within its perimeter differed obviously from that of ours. The place within its perimeter had already been destroyed far more. "Are Mr. Hawkins and Silver inside the portal?" I asked in astonishment.

"If they're smart, they're not!" B.E.N replied. "It's opened to the center of the mechanism, and that's where the explosion that'll blow this whole planet up will activate! Jimmy's gettin' far away from it as fast as he can if he knows what's good for 'im!"

"You said mechanism, B.E.N?" I called over the planet's roar. B.E.N, tapping madly at the plate protruding from his chest, nodded hurriedly. "Yeah, Cap—Treasure Planet is really just one really big machine! That's why it could be rigged to blow!"

As we neared and the Doctor slowed the Legacy slightly to coast to a stop, we realized a magnificent, metallic drop-off had been created in the planet's depletion, one that Mr. Hawkins and Silver would never have managed to brave unless they had gotten out before the ledge's creation. The portal was magnificently huge; the Legacy, or even a larger ship, could have easily driven through it, and silently I marveled at the thought that this portal had been the method Flint used to appear and disappear so many times long ago. Directly below the portal was the huge cliff that had been created, so that the triangle stood on its own island, cut away from the rest of planet's land. At the foot of the portal was a small, green hologram that closely resembled a globe.

As the Doctor steered our slowing ship to the ledge of the cliff, we spotted Jim Hawkins and Mr. Silver leap through the portal door and onto the cliff at the base of the portal. They both then paused to look back at the destruction within, and I thought fleetingly of the fate of Flint's trillions of gold.

"Aloha, Jimmy!" the little navigator bellowed to the two. Waving his hands, he gesticulated at the navigation device that protruded from his chest while informing them frantically, "Hurry, people! We got exactly two minutes and thirty-four seconds 'till planet's destruction!"

"Now," I called in a thin voice once again to the Doctor, preparing to guide him through docking the Legacy next to the cliff so that Mr. Hawkins and Silver could board her. "You're doing fine, Doctor—now, ease her over gently—"

The Doctor, listening with renewed anxiety, reared the ship to starboard and slammed the hull into the side of the drop with a deafening clatter.

"—Gently!" I repeated exasperatedly, after the impact had already taken place. The Doctor looked over his shoulder sheepishly, and try as I might to eye him reproachfully, I could not help but begrudge him a forgiving sigh after a moment.

Jim Hawkins and Silver scrambled aboard and I turned hastily to B.E.N, commanding, "Take us out of here, Metal Man!"

With a quick salute and an 'Aye, Captain', we took off anew, this time back to the west, venturing as speedily as we dared to clear the planet's explosion. Making his way up the companionway to the bridge, Silver—the same placid, amiable and fraudulent man he ever was—put on the very first face he ever gave me and grinned with a benign demeanor. "Cap'm!" he exclaimed breathlessly, leaning over the railing of the companionway as Jim Hawkins passed him in his ascent. He lifted his cloth hat in my direction to demonstrate his utter relief and gratitude, saying, "Ye dropped from the heavens in the nick o'—"

Having tasted so much of Silver's fraudulence, and even having been shown his true, intimidating, unpredictable and intelligent duplicity, the last thing I wanted to hear was this false blather of a Silver that was in no way a genuine representation of the man I now knew I beheld. Straightening with indignation, I snapped at him before he could finish his sentence, "Save your clap-trap for the judge, Silver."

He had been correct about one thing back in B.E.N's formation, when the Doctor and I were on our knees in front of him: I planned on seeing any mutineer swing. Easy.

The planet was breaking apart quickly. The metal body of the massive machine lay in puzzle piece-like bits and separations, and from these rocketed hot geysers, melting metal, white beams of light that tore apart anything that connected with them as they shot into the air, and huge conflagrations that flared from the core. The air was filled with horrible heat and smoke, and the sky was no longer a smear of red and orange and gray; it was now a solid, intimidating crimson.

Explosions were happening within the machine below us as we sped frantically to the west, and from these smaller detonations shot blazing pieces of rubble and debris. They were large, most of them, and they flew uncontrollably in the air in any direction possible, adding to the confusion and terrible turmoil it was to fly our ship as successfully from the explosion as the planet allowed without being destroyed ourselves. We were soaring blindly onward, the Doctor at the helm, Mr. Hawkins on the bridge, and I propped on my feet against the mizzenmast, as the planet broke apart and the destructive forces from within the planet's core burst through the surface to demolish the great machine entirely.

Mr. Hawkins had only just come to the bridge when a shard of rubble from the destruction around us careened into the mizzenmast and tore the top half of the mast from the bottom half, assailing the mizzen topgallant and topsail. The clamor of the mast's halving dictated all of us whirling around to see the top half of the mizzenmast plummet to the main deck, just missing where we stood on the bridge and instead shattering the cannon on the starboard side of the deck. Most of the cannon was flattened, but the impaction dislodged the cannon's compulsory device, which fires the laser balls from the mouth of the gun. This part tumbled onto the deck, its power glowing with remaining vitality inside it, despite the loss of its encasing.

We all watched the disembodiment of the mizzen mast with horror, and then in a haze I heard B.E.N rattle out the damage report.

"Mizzen sails demobilized, Cap'm! Thrusters at only thirty percent of capacity!"

"Thirty percent?" I heard the Doctor echo. Frantically I tried to recalculate our chances of escaping with only thirty percent thrust. Going at the full speed we still had, we would move only a little over half the rate we had been moving before. With so little time still available to us we needed all the power we could manage, but with only thirty percent thrust all the power we could manage still wouldn't be enough. As the realization dawned on me, the Doctor turned from the helm to look at me, the same horrible epiphany coloring his face a pallid hue.

"That means…" he articulated quietly, "we'll never clear the planet's explosion in time."