Sliding Into Antar

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Highs And Lows

Chapter 35

XXXV

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Morning on the New Granolith found everyone heading to the dining hall for breakfast. It was ten minutes till seven, Antarian time, and most of the members of the crew had already gone in. The five "Sliders" all showed up together, as a group, and Alex noticed that Maggie was still holding onto Quinn's arm. He wondered what Quinn was thinking at that moment. Had he decided to stay with Maggie after all, or was he biding his time, trying to think of how he would set things right?

Precisely at seven o'clock, Antarian time, the little diner droid came out and rolled up to Liz, who quickly told it what she and Max wanted to eat. Then it proceeded to Isabel.

Isabel thought for a moment… "I feel like something different… a couple of blue hen eggs… poached… and maybe a piece of pashita bread, lightly toasted, and some Betonian vinis. Do we have any vinis left?"

The little droid replied affirmatively… "We have four vinis fruits left in the storage cooler. The Betonian vinis fruit is out of season, so the vinis trees in our gardens are not producing any more at this time."

"Well, one's all I want. Thank you, Ylomo."

"Ylomo?" Max asked, looking at Isabel curiously.

Isabel smiled. "He needed a name."

"Ylomo?" Max asked again, "Isn't that a Vellustian creature that looks like a big turtle or something… with a really high shell?"

Isabel nodded. "They do have really high shells, and he kind of reminds me of one, so…"

"Ylomo," Max repeated, shrugging. "Okay."

There was some good-natured chuckling around the table, and the droid proceeded to Alex, who asked for two Aluzian golden eggs, scrambled, with pashita toast and coffee. The next person at the table was Professor Arturo, who seemed to be as fascinated by the little droid this time around as he had been the first time the Sliders had been on the ship.

"Does he understand everything we say?"

Max nodded. "He does… in Antarian and in English."

"Amazing! I don't suppose you would have any brown eggs produced by a Rhode Island Red, New Hampshire, or Plymouth Rock hen… or by any other brown-egg-laying earth hen…"

"No, sir."

"Ummm… too bad. How about white eggs… from a leghorn hen, then?"

"No, sir."

"Uh… I believe we have some Krolian pink-and-green-spotted gruvyyi eggs left," Kyle said, looking rather impish.

Maria gasped and shook her head vigorously… "Oh, no, we're not doing that to them! They're our friends!"

"Krolian gruvyyi eggs aren't bad," Kyle retorted, "They're just different."

"They're different all right," Michael agreed, laughing, "They're chewy… and they taste like bubble gum… one of those giant redhot things."

Professor Arturo chuckled, although he appeared mildly aghast… "How would one cook something like that… and why would one want to?"

"Usually they're poached and then chilled," Liz replied, "Like Michael said, they're chewy and taste a bit like fire hots or bubble gum… quite a bit like strong cinnamon bubble gum, actually."

"I don't guess they can be scrambled then," Remmy said, chuckling.

Michael shook his head. "You'd get something all fluffed up and stringy… like cotton candy… but it would taste like redhots. Actually, that might be pretty good! I might try it sometime! I like gruvyyi eggs."

"See!" Alex said cockily, "Michael likes them! What does that tell you?"

"Well, I think I'll try the 'groovy' eggs," Remmy said adventurously, "They sound interesting! Do you swallow them or just chew them like bubblegum?"

"You eat them… They're actually pretty nutritious. And yeah, they are interesting, for sure," Liz said, looking at Maria and giggling. "You can try them. If you don't like them, we'll cook you some Aluzian golden eggs. They taste more like real eggs are supposed to taste… a little exotic maybe, but basically eggs, not redhot… uh, bubblegum."

"How would you like your Krolian pink-and-green-spotted gruvyyi eggs prepared," the droid asked.

Remmy thought for a moment… "Uh… the usual way… poached… and, uh… chilled… I guess. Can you bring me some toast and coffee with it?"

"Certainly," the droid replied, moving on to Wade Welles.

"Do you have cereal?" Wade asked, fully expecting a negative reply.

"Cocoa Puffs or Raisin Bran?"

The corners of Wade's mouth rose into a broad smile… "Raisin Bran! I can't believe you have real earth cereal!"

"Michael likes it," Maria said, "So we try to keep some on hand all the time."

"See! I'm not so abnormal," Michael said smugly, casting a "so-there" glance at Alex.

"Will you have your cereal with milk, or will you have it in Tabasco sauce the way Michael always has his," the droid asked.

Everybody turned and looked at Michael, and Alex grinned angelically. Michael shrugged and sank back into his chair… "It tastes good. So sue me!"

The droid proceeded around the table, getting a quick, "The usual," from most of the remaining crew. Quinn asked for two Aluzian golden eggs with pashita toast and coffee, and since Remmy was trying them, he asked for one Krolian pink-and-green-spotted gruvyyi egg on the side. Then the little droid rolled back into the food preparation area.

"I thought you were going home," Quinn said to Max, after the little droid had gone, "Are you guys on another mission already?"

Max shook his head, and Quinn noted a definite hint of sadness in his face. "Our mission never ended. It just changed. We were thrown off course, and every Antar we find now is in the wrong dimension. Our only goal has become to find our way home to our own Antar… in our own dimension."

Quinn looked stunned and seemed to consider what Max had said for several long moments… "Our timer… it must have moved you out of the dimension you were in… into a different dimension."

Max nodded. "We could get back home if we knew where we were exactly. The problem is we have no point of reference from which to calculate the return route home now."

"I'm so sorry," Quinn said contritely, "We never meant to draw you guys into our predicament. You helped us get back home, and we doomed you to be lost out here in interdimensional space. I don't know what to say."

Max shrugged. "It wasn't your fault… It wasn't anybody's fault, really. It's just the way things turned out. We'll find our way back home eventually. It's just going to take us a little longer than we had planned."

"Maybe together Varec and I can figure out how to get you back home," Quinn said with a smile.

For Quinn, offering to work with someone else was actually fairly extraordinary. He was accustomed to working alone. Quinn had little patience for trying to explain anything to a "helper" who couldn't even begin to understand the scientific theories on which his timer was based. Varec was an exception, though. In Varec, Quinn recognized someone who not only understood his timer but who knew even more than he did about… probably everything. It was such an unusual occurrence that Quinn actually savored it.

"Have you ever found an Antar in any of the other dimensions you've been to and found that it was just way different," Wade asked.

Max nodded. "Plenty of times… about half the time. Half of the Antars we've been to were pretty normal… maybe different but… still kind of like ours; but one of the Antars wasn't even there. It was just a black hole."

"Omigod!" Wade gasped, "What happened to it?"

Max shrugged. "We don't know. Maybe they had a nuclear holocaust, or maybe it was a natural event. But all that was there was this black hole. No Antar."

"If you were that close to a black hole," Quinn said, with a puzzled look on his face, "You should have been pulled into it. It would be inescapable. Black holes are pure mass and gravity. Even light can't escape from them. That's why they're called 'black holes.' How did you avoid being pulled in?"

Max smiled and nodded toward Varec. "Gravity is not a problem if your ship has anti-gravity capability. The black hole was just a curiosity for us. We circled it and studied it… Well, Varec and Liz studied it. The rest of us just stared at it and wondered what happened. It was a somber moment… kind of like a funeral. It's hard to explain."

Professor Arturo nodded, and Alex noticed that Maggie was nodding, too. Her world had been destroyed by a super nova. If anyone understood, she did.

"One Antar we found had been taken over by our worst enemy from earth, an FBI agent named Daniel Pierce," Kyle said. "We totally could not understand how he could have got to Antar. Turned out he got trapped in the other granolith… the original one… while trying to capture Max, and it blasted off with him onboard. Once the people on that Antar saw Pierce for what he really was, though, they took care of the problem themselves… even if we did give them a little help."

"Oh," Maria said, waving her hand, "And on one Antar that we found, Michael and I were the king and queen… That was WAY cool! And on another one, Alex and Isabel were the king and queen, and we took them back to earth to visit their parents. That was cool, too, 'cause everybody on earth thought they were dead, so it was really emotional."

"And on another Antar that we visited," Tess added, "They had twelve different countries, and there was no monarchy. Max was the president of one of the twelve countries, called 'Western Coruz,' and Kivar, our old enemy, was the president of a large eastern peninsula called Traznyk. Nicholas was the high Admiral of Kivar's Navy, such as it was, and Michael was Max's vice president. Alex and Isabel were senators… I was, too, and so was Maria… and the Secretary of State was Maria's mom… Amy DeLuca!"

Maria almost choked on her food laughing and nodding, as she recalled their visit to the Antar that Varec had named, "#36 - Democratic Antar."

"Well, I have to admit, Amy made a darn good secretary of state," Max said, grinning, "She never took no for an answer and never took any guff. Wherever my double sent her to negotiate, they always threw in the towel and gave her whatever she wanted. She was definitely her country's Ace up the sleeve, if you know what I mean."

"More like their weapon of mass destruction," Michael said under his breath, with a trace of a smile on his lips. Maria gave him a quick elbow in the side, but then she smiled and nodded grudgingly… "Well, some of the other presidents may have thought so… especially Kivar. Mom made his life pretty miserable. That guy couldn't put together a Navy of three rowboats without Mom finding out and scuttling his plans. It frustrated Nicholas terribly, because he was Kivar's high admiral, and he probably could have just about floated his whole fleet in Kivar's royal bathtub.

"She was just looking out for her country," Max said, "It's what she was elected to do."

Michael nodded then grinned… "She WAS pretty impressive, wasn't she!"

"Well, I have some more exciting news for you," Varec said to Quinn and his group, "According to my calculations, we will be visiting another Antar in less than ten of your earth hours. So if this one turns out to be our Antar… you may get to see our home."

Liz, Maria, and Tess all gasped at once, hoping beyond hope that Varec's words would turn out to be prophetic and that this would finally be "the one." Even Max sighed deeply and smiled. Quinn looked at the other Sliders, and they all smiled. Apparently, the idea of visiting an alien planet… a friendly one… was an idea that they all approved of.

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As the New Granolith drew nearer to Antar, the crew and guests watched from the huge bridge window. Already they could make out the Golden Sea; it seemed to cover everything on this side of the planet.

"We need to go around to the other side," Michael said, "This side's all water. I don't remember there being this much water with no visible landmasses on any part of Antar."

Max nodded and put the New Granolith into a lower orbit around the planet… and they watched… and watched…

"It's… it's all water," Michael said, incredulous. "I don't see any land at all… anywhere!"

Max was silent; he just stared at the sea below. It was endless. Michael was right. There were no landmasses… There was only sea. It was a drowned planet.

"Let's go," Michael said, heartbroken, "There's no need to hang around. We'll just be wasting time we could be looking for our own Antar."

Max nodded solemnly, but as he passed his hand over the sensors to take the ship around and back out into space, a sound came over the high band-width radio receiver. At first, it sounded like static, but then Max felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up, as a voice came over the air.

"To the vessel approaching our planet… you may dock at Port Orland. You have clearance. Please identify yourself."

Michael and Max both stared out the window of the ship, looking in vain for a landmass… any landmass… even a small island… but there was none.

Varec quickly picked up the communication device and replied to the call… "Uh… Antar, this is the ship, 'New Granolith.' We are visitors to your planet from another dimension… But we do not see any ports or land at all. Please direct us to Port Orland."

A moment later, the radio crackled again… "New Granolith, if this is your first time here… is your vessel capable of subsea travel?"

"Yes, it is," Varec replied.

"Then you will find Port Orland at the following coordinates: North 258 seb, West 397 kor, Depth 543 rys. We look forward to meeting you."

"Understood," Varec said, laying the communication device back down slowly. Then he looked around the room. Max and Michael had their mouths open in disbelief, and Varec knew that both of them had grasped the meaning of the conversation… so had all the others. They were going under the sea.

End of Chapter 35

tbc…