Sliding Into Antar
A Timer For Disaster
Chapter 2
II
Rembrandt Brown found Quinn Mallory sitting in the hallway of the ship, his head buried in his hands. He had all the appearance of having surrendered and given up, but Remmy knew better. Quinn was thinking… making calculations in his mind even as he sat there against the wall, his head in his hands, looking lost and dejected.
"Come on, Cue Ball… cheer up, man. What's the worst that could happen? We miss one slide, right? So we get to spend a little time on this ship, checkin' things out. Seems like a trade-off to me. Besides, they know where they're going. We don't even know where our next slide will take us. I mean, look where we wound up this time!"
Quinn Mallory took a deep breath and lifted his face from his hands momentarily.
"You don't understand, Rem. Missing the slide screws everything up. I'll have to recalibrate the timer to see when another vortex will open up here… if one ever will."
"Well, I don't know, man. You said yourself that the timer was malfunctioning. If it was workin' right, that'd be L.A. out there, not a bunch of stars and planets and empty space."
Quinn nodded reluctantly. He knew that Rembrandt was right, but it was still hard to admit it.
Rembrandt held out his hand…
"Come on. Let's go talk to E.T. and see if he can put your timer back together again."
Back in Varec's lab, meanwhile, Max and Michael, along with Professor Arturo, Wade, and most of the crew from the ship watched as Varec reassembled the timer, piece by piece. It seemed a daunting task, if not impossible. Some of the screws and parts were so tiny that they were hard to see, and some of the smaller parts were pre-manufactured and not meant to come apart, but that had not stopped Varec, whose curiosity was all but legendary in the Antarian star system.
Varec replaced the back of the timer and tightened the last screw. Then he held the completed unit up for inspection just as Quinn and Remmy walked back into the room. Quinn rushed to take the timer back and checked it over carefully, almost as though it were a kidnapped baby being returned to its mother. But one could see in his eyes that he felt a great deal of awe and wonder at seeing it back together again so quickly. The truth is, he had expected to have to put it back together himself and had estimated, in his own mind, that the task would take the better part of a day, given all the tiny parts that Varec had disassembled… more than eighty in all.
"Is it working," Wade asked. "We've still got time to make the slide in four minutes."
Quinn shook his head. "I… I can't be completely sure. Now it says that our next slide is at… 10:03 AM tomorrow."
Remmy looked at his watch. "What happened to the slide four minutes from now?"
Quinn shrugged.
"I made some adjustments to the computational modem in your timer," Varec said.
Quinn looked shocked. "Did you take into consideration the Eisen-…"
Varec stopped him. "Are you familiar with the Or'zyn-Kort'yyc-Styas'vor theory of refractive recurring space holes?"
Quinn shook his head.
Varec smiled ever so slightly. "I didn't think so. You've been traveling through space holes all this time and you've never taken into consideration the Or'zyn-Kort'yyc-Styas'vor theory of refractive recurring space holes?"
Quinn shrugged. "I guess so."
Varec shook his head. "Amazing."
"Maybe it's the same thing as the Eisen-Rosenberg theory of bridges between worlds… or whatever…" Wade said. "It could be, you know."
The professor nodded, seeming pleased with Wade's observation.
"It seems to be a variant," Varec admitted. "Your theory is valid, but it appears that it fails to take into consideration the variant curve of recurring space hole fracture episodes."
"Just my luck, the first alien I meet and he talks like Quinn," Rembrandt said. "What does all that mean in English?"
"No… no… it makes sense," Quinn said, holding up his hand. "I understand what he's saying. Don't you see?" He looked at Professor Arturo, and the professor nodded cautiously…
"I believe I do. Amazing! Absolutely incredible! I should have seen it myself."
Quinn looked at the timer again and smiled. "We have until 10:03 AM tomorrow before we slide."
"All right!" Rembrandt exclaimed, appearing more than a little relieved at not having to slide again in what was now less than two minutes.
"If we had slid with the timer like it was before… two minutes from now," Wade said, looking back and forth between Quinn and Varec, "What would have happened?"
Quinn thought about it and swallowed, then he looked at the professor, who seemed unsure.
"You would have come out right… here," Varec said, putting his finger on a point on a space map above his workbench.
"I don't see a planet there," Professor Arturo said, looking closely at the map.
"There's not one," Varec replied.
"Oh." Professor Arturo swallowed. "Then it would seem, Mister Varec, that we all owe you our most sincere and heartfelt gratitude."
Varec smiled. "It was nothing."
"Nothing to you maybe," Rembrandt said, laughing nervously, "But it means a whole lot to me, I want you to know! I guess you guys saved our skin. I really appreciate that. I'm kind of intimately attached to mine, you know what I mean?"
Michael chuckled and nodded.
"Well, I want to thank you, too," Wade said, giving Varec then each of the others in turn a quick hug.
"I guess I'll make it unanimous," Quinn said, with a nod to Varec, "I probably seemed aloof and a bit… you know… back there before, but it's just that nobody else understands this stuff except the professor and me… and Bennish. But I've got a feeling you could teach me a few things."
Wade rolled her eyes at the mention of Quinn's decidedly socially challenged and unconventional, if admittedly genius friend, Bennish, back on their world.
"There is one thing, though," the professor said," I wonder if you would mind telling me where you obtained those amazing harem pants."
"Yeah, I like those myself," Remmy said, keeping an almost straight face.
Max and Kyle both looked down and realized that they had forgotten to change them back. Max touched his pants, and the Hammer harem pants reverted instantly to his usual style.
Kyle waited… "Come on Max! You know I can't do it! Don't leave me hanging here. This is embarrassing."
Michael grinned. "NOW you think so. I told you guys you should have done Metallica."
tbc