Part 4 - Gadget's Most Excellent Interdimensional Achievement
There ware shocked looks all around, and silence.
Then Charlotte turned to look at Gadget, and said, "No it's not, because we're not going to let it happen!"
She glanced at the nearest camera viewpoint, and Gadget put her paw to her mouth.
"Oops! I guess that wasn't the most comforting thing to say on global TV."
"You think?", Charlotte said, and looked around. "Okay, we don't panic, we work the problem guys. We've been in worse scrapes, those Fleeblebroxians for one. They were going to blow up the whole planet, not just part of it. Sparkie, you said this thing could make orbit. Get us to the safest place you can in the time we have."
The lab rat nodded and she dashed on four paw drive across the makeshift bridge to the main control panel.
"Okay, can we repair the machine, stop the explosion?"
Both Gadgets thought, and started to say something. Then the male one gestured with a paw. Miss Gadget nodded and said, "Not exactly. I think we can build a replacement Molecular Regurgitator in the time we have… just, especially with parts from our mobile phone modemiser."
"I thought it was toast?" Del said.
The female Gadget shrugged, "Um… it was primarily the de-materialisation circuits that were wrecked, it still worked as a receiver…"
Charlotte nodded, "Okay, Maddy, get back to that store room and bring the phone here!"
"On it Chip-lass, I'll 'ave it back here in two shakes of a roo's tail." The big mouse slid down a cable onto the floor and headed off.
The male Gadget was thinking. "Gadget, are you pondering what I'm pondering?"
"I think so G2," she responded, unconsciously mirroring his posture. "If we recalibrate the dematerialisation circuits on the main transporter to cycle matter from the superposition buffer rather than the outside we may get an extra ten minutes."
"But we certainly won't have time to calibrate it. So we should be able to get most of the half ton of mass energy out of the superposition buffer, but the registration will be out of whack and there's going to be some imbalance… maybe a few grams… about a 50 kiloton explosion?"
The female Gadget nodded, "I think so. Nothing to worry about… unless you're within half a mile of this thing when it goes up… scratch that, it needs to be at least 20 miles, to allow for the gamma radiation to disperse."
"That's a problem… we won't be able to rig an automatic changeover, not with the system in it's current state. And even with the extra time the construction will be cut close. One of us has to stay behind and finish the job." The male Gadget sounded resigned.
Charlotte started to protest and Gadget waved her silent. "That'll be me. We rig a radio link to the orbiter, it should already have that transceiver that was rebuilt as a radio direction finder built in. When I'm ready, I start the re-materialisation cycle and let you know. Foxglove cancels the spell that holds me here, and I snap back to my own dimension with seconds to spare!"
Charlotte sighed with relief. "Sounds like a plan. Go to it! I'll get a team started on the orbiter."
The male Gadget turned and said, "Oh, and just focus on stripping off the old fire extinguishers, and collecting parts like some of Nimnul's oxygen spray inhalers. We need to do some extensive on it. It was never designed to reenter from so high, or at such a steep angle."
"We're on it! hen there's only one thing to say... Rescue Rangers Away!"
As the two Gadgets slid down a stretched out Del escape slide to the base of the matter transporter control panel, they all felt their weight increase. Sparkie came scampering back. "I'm afraid the anti-gravity system's damaged, the best I could give us was an additional 1 meter per second squared on the vertical axis, because the anti-gravity system's damaged. I also added some sideways vector to put us out over the Atlantic."
"We've got around 28 minutes, The Gadgets have figured out a fix to extend the time before the buffer overloads."
The lab rat lady nodded, "Good, That means we'll be over 1000 miles above ground when the explosion happens. That'll attenuate the explosion effect on the surface over 800 times, compared to our 25 mile starting height."
"Which means?" Chip asked.
Sparkie looked puzzled, "Means what?"
"Attenuating the 10 gigaton explosion 800 times. What are the effects?"
"Oh, you'd have to be at least 1000 miles up to do that." She looked across at the main control panel. "We should reach that easily. The flash will still be bright enough to blind anyone staring at it, and the EMP pulse will knock out a lot of Low Earth Orbit satellites. It may well blank out radio for days and interfere with electronics too. But it'll be above the Van Allen belt, so most of the charged particles will be diverted. The atmosphere will absorb enough energy to cause severe weather disturbances, but obviously you can't calculate those kinds of effects exactly. It won't be fun, but it won't be world wrecking either."
Chip sighed with relief. She said, "And if they manage to reduce the explosion to a 50 kiloton one?"
"But they could only do that by rematerialising matter from the superposition buffer…" Sparkie looked down at the activity around the open matter transporter access panel. Maddy had just arrived with the damaged mobile phone modemiser.
"Oh, they're building a replacement molecular regurgitator. That means they can rematerialise most of the matter, greatly reducing the size of the explosion. So Earth would get nothing more than a pretty light show, and some temporary static."
"So the earth is as safe as we can make it… Good!" Chip looked pleased.
The two Gadgets were already directing Del and Maddy in levering off the access panel, while Speedie and Foxglove were flying in electrical components from over the workshop. Foxglove had a glowing ball in front of him, some sort of divination spell that was leading him to what they wanted.
Tommy spoke up. "Uh… I don't want to seem selfish, but how are we going to get away before the explosion? We need to fix the orbiter too."
Chip nodded, blonde curls waving. "Yeah, that's next on my list. We really need Gadget… one of them I mean. We have… 26 minutes."
Del stretched up to catch the edge of the table, and pulled herself and Maddy up.
The Australian mousette spoke. "Gadget, our Gadget that is, gave us a list of parts for reconditioning the orbiter. He'll be up with Foxglove in a couple of minutes, once he's finalised that regurgitating widget design with the other Gadget."
Chip sighed, "Darn it, we owe her so much! Without her we'd never have gotten up here! And we don't even have time to thank her properly… Well, let's get the list and start pulling things together."
&&&
The world watched and waited as the Rangers went about their tasks, seemingly having forgotten the entire planet was looking over their shoulders. Under lady Gadget's speeding paws, and aided by Speedie the fly, a circuit board of incredible complexity was being constructed. A portable soldering iron, and a selection of other micro-tools from Nimnul's development of the mecha animals, were employed with skill and deftness.
The other Rangers, commanded by the other Gadget were putting together a simpler, but more massive project. Nimnuls automated machine tools and 'helping hand' waldos, along with Foxglove's levitation and Del's rubber band powers made making and moving the parts easy, but there were many to do, and not much time to do it.
A new battery pack had been fitted into the extended lower deck of the dustbin hull of the orbiter, along with the Gyro tank, rigged up for remote control from the control cabin. The main hull would rotate inside it's gyro ring, and provide attitude adjustment during re-entry. A number of oxygen inhalers from Nimnul's bathroom medicine cabinet had found their way inside the cabin itself.
The airlock chamber under the lid was in use for several things, firstly a hangar for the tied down Rangerwing. Above it, separated by a cardboard spacer, was a parachute made out of a sheet from the laundry cabin. Springs were under the spacer to eject it when a magnetic latch released.
The bottom of the dustbin had been bolted onto a shallow cone of sheet metal that extended beyond it's rim, originally a reflector for one of the workshop's room lights. Sprayed onto it was a coating of aerogel foam that Nimnul had developed to paint the exterior of her lab. She might be a psychotic mad scientist, but she'd been energy conscious, after the power company shut her off a couple of times.
At Gadget's direction they'd also foamed the work surfaces of the folding tables, and a larger dish from a discarded satellite system. The Rangers had thought they'd be able to make do with pushing the ship out the airlock and letting it fall, but male Gadget had quickly disabused them of that notion as they worked on the orbiter.
"Sorry guys, but we'll be going at over a mile per second upwards when we separate. If we launch 2 minutes before zero time, that will still put us 50 miles away when it blows, but we'll still be falling nearly 1000 miles through vacuum. We'll hit the atmosphere at over 3 miles a second, and we don't have the materials to build a rocket unit, or at least not one that can make tha kind of velocity change."
Tommy was up top, hauling in parachute shrouds. "What about those gravity grids, surely there must be spares?"
"There are, but we'd need too big a battery to carry inside, and complex control runs. No, I have a simpler idea. A simple balistic re-entry vehicle. With our current trajectory, it should land in East Africa." Male Gadget was at the control panel for the automated manufacturing cell, and he bounded back and forth across the controls, programming a production sequence at fantastic rate.
Charlotte was examining the list. "But, folding tables, a tilting vanity mirror? Aerogel foam, fire extinguishers, yes, I can understand, but some of this stuff… I don't see…"
A schematic appeared on the screen and she stopped as the design became clear. The four tables had pair of legs at each short end that folded in. The pairs of legs at one end of each were to be welded together to form a square set of pillars with internal bracing that would just allow the orbiter to slot inside. The satellite dish covered the square hole underneath.
With the tables folded up, the thing would be a tall square based pillar. Inside the pistons were set to extend the tables, and a set of fire extinguishers taped to the outside would act as thrusters. The vehicle would be driven out the airlock style sliding doors to Nimnul's lab by the air pressure, the fire extinguishers would neutralise any rotation, and the ship would fall away from the lab. The tilted mirror would be bolted outside the porthole in the side of the orbiter and used to look out the open end for attitude control.
It was designed to catch the outer edge of the mesosphere and aerobrake. The fire extinguishers would be fired about a minute before, not to slow them, but to reduce their acceleration before they hit atmosphere, at which point the tables would be unfolded and the fire extinguishers fall away. As the pressure increased, the pistons would be compressed, folding the outermost sections of the tables inwards and reducing the surface area. The whole would be like a shuttlecock, weight forward and self righting.
This would give a deceleration of between 12 and 15 gravities, fatal to a human for more than a few seconds, but not to smaller animals. Chip and Del had already proved that long ago on the G trainer at Cape Kanootie. If it worked. Once falling freely in atmosphere, they could pop the garbage can lid, and deploy the parachute which would pull them free of the re-entry section. If it looked like the landing site was a problem, they would get away in the Rangerwing.
With the aid of the automated manufacturing cell, construction took little more time than needed to describe it. The vessel was completed and the orbiter lowered into place 10 minutes before boom time.
Foxglove dropped from above, where he'd been watching the orbiter slip into place. "It looks like it's seated properly."
Del oozed out from underneath the base. "I hooked up the links to the servos, so the controls should work. This is gonna work great!"
Chip, Tommy and Maddy were already at the control panel with the guy Gadget. He grinned. "Then all we have to do is get it into the air lock and get insi…"
Suddenly the lights flickered and the feeling of the ground beneath them decreased it only lasted for a second, then the lights came back on.
"What's wrong?" exclaimed Chip. Gadget was already bounding along the control panels to the main controls, and the others followed. Speedie zoomed up from where she'd been helping Gadget, and added her query. "Why did we suddenly drop like that?"
When they got there, Gadget was already bringing up images on screen. "Golly, it's not good guys. The solar collector died when we got above the atmosphere, no air to form the lens, but that was okay, the accumulators had enough power for hours of flight. Unfortunately, when I blew the super-laser, debris damaged an exterior junction box. And now we're in the Van Allen belt it's failing intermittently, and when it does, everything loses power. I've tried switching it to a backup, but the control circuits are damaged too."
She focussed in on a part of the darkened underside, illuminated by the extended oval of a spotlight. The camera viewpoint had to be from a projection on the lower hull. The twisted stub of the super-laser mount extended out in the middle distance, and the far edge of the underside formed a horizon for the stars. The intervening hull was corrugated with nameless extrusions, boxes, panels and pipes. A number were clearly damaged, with holes or dis-colouration, and sparking going on inside.
"If the power goes out again…?" Chip was quick to prompt.
"If it goes out for more than 20 seconds, the matter transporter will explode. It has a small internal power reserve to allow it to complete normal transports safely, but extended use will drain it, and without power the superposition buffer will collapse."
The chipmunk girl in the fedora asked, "So what can we do?"
There's a manual switch here." Gadget replied, indicating a bit of hull with hazard striping. "I have to go out and switch it over by paw."
"But… even if you recondition the suit on the orbiter, there's no way you can get out, do it and get back before we launch. You won't even be able to keep up with the lab!"
Gadget shook his head. "We launch as soon as I've fixed up the suit. I'll set the lab to accelerate at a couple of centimeters a second, just enough for the other Gadget to keep things on the floor, when we go. It'll make it easier to transport the orbiter to the airlock anyway. I'll rig an MMU and stay outside the orbiter with a tether when we launch. We maneouvre under the lab, I go up and make the switch, and be back in a jiffy. We tell my other self when I'm done and she sets the lab back to full acceleration."
"But I should be the one…" Charlotte 'Chip' Maplewood looked into her beloved's eyes and saw love, but also the determination there. "Fine, but you'd better come back in one piece! I thought I'd lost you twice, and it almost killed me."
Gadget hugged her close, his tail wrapping possessively around her. "Golly Chip… I'll always be there for you."
He released her and sniffled slightly before starting to issue requests. "Okay, we need my old suit, the crossbow plunger from the Rangerwing, three O2 inhalers, a dessicant packet and servo-motor from inside one of the wrecked machines, a safety pin, and a lot of duct tape…"
The lights flickered and the weight dropped for another brief period.
"…And fast!"
Sparkie added, "I can set the acceleration and door controls."
Chip interjected, "We should really have an exterior camera tracking us, if you can?"
The lady lab rat grinned, "Easy as integrating a fourth order derivative!"
Speedie spoke up as well. "And I'll tell Miss Gadget our change in plans."
&&&
The main screen and the panel that controlled the gravity grids were in line of site from the female Gadget's workplace by the open matter transporter panel. She couldn't help but look up for a second as her weight dropped. A few seconds later the outer airlock opened and the Ranger spaceship tumbled out, propelled by the air that came with it. It spun away slowly, seeming to drop as the lab inched ahead. The digital countdown in one corner, thoughtfully set up by Sparkie during her programming, showed 9 minutes left.
Suddenly jets of gas spurted from the CO2 extinguishers on the exterior, slowing the tumble, and leaving the open end pointed back and upwards at the underside of the lab hull. The viewpoint shifted to another camera, and she nodded approvingly as the ship jetted slowly forward, turning on it's Gyrotank 'flywheel' to first reverse attitude and then point up as the jets slowed it. Probably Chip's work, if she was anything like the original.
A copper line, courtesy of servo-motor windings, shot out from inside the nested re-entry panels, carried by a plunger crossbow bolt with a magnet replacing the plunger, also courtesy of the servo motor. A figure started scaling it, attached to it by a safety pin and a chain of paper clips. It was a glove and jam-jar space suit with a certain intrepid mouse inside. Twin O2 inhalers were duct taped to the backs of his legs, and he was simply sitting and riding up on the twin jets.
The free 'finger' of the glove clearly carried the third one inside, because when the male Gadget reached up and pushed it, a stream of air ruffled his head fur. He glanced at the wrist watch head mounted inside and to one side of the helmet. It had been the Black Table guys, and had been left behind with all his other personal effects. Eight minutes thirty seconds… not much time at all.
Inside the station, Gadget had long since stopped watching and gone back to her work, paws flying over the complex lash-up she'd wired around the exposed boards of the mobile modemiser and the main transporter. However, the world media was following the progress of the space suit too. Inside the main lab, Gadget could hear Stan Blather living up to his name as he gave a detailed commentary on the EVA.
"Now we see Gadget Hackwrench is ascending the line using his thruster pack. This is crucial in the attempt to ensure that the ailing battle station retains a stable power supply, which in turn is needed to prevent the matter transporter exploding prematurely. Rather than using the time to escape, he, and the rest of the Rangers are selflessly working to protect us. I'm sure all our hopes and our prayers are with them.
"A repeat of the latest information from the Centre for Disaster Control. The worst case explosion will not directly affect Earth. However, people in the western hemisphere are warned against looking up at the sky, as the explosion will be ten times brighter than the mid-day sun. The electromagnetic pulse may affect unshielded electronics, so stay in your homes, or stop your car and pull over carefully. There is plenty of time, several minutes… All airplanes have been grounded or are landing if they can, and those that can't, are detouring to get as far away from the epicentre as possible."
"We can only hope that these precautions are not necessary. The smaller explosion created if the Rescue Ranger's bold plan succeeds will not cause disruptions except in a few nearby satellites, and those only temporary..."
Gadget tuned him out and focussed on her work. The counter set on the main screen, showed only 6 minutes left. Her paws flew over the complex lash-up created from the mobile phone modemiser and various hijacked circuits. The lights dimmed again, and the slight feeling of weight disappeared completely as the station suffered another brown-out, this one lasting several seconds. They stretched out endlessly as she waited for the power to return, but she simply took the opportunity to wipe her forehead with the back of her paw, and carried on when the lights, and weight came back on.
"Golly! That was too close."
&&&
The other Gadget had stuck the end of his chain of paperclips and safety pins to the magnet that held the tether to the hull. Under the low gravity conditions the magnetic force on the metal paperclip would be enough to hold him there. It was lucky the underside of Noreen Nimnul's workshop was built on steel girders and not coated with aerogel insulator the way the geodesic dome was, or hooking there magnetically wouldn't have been an option.
The 'waist' of the glove based spacesuit had a belt with loops, made from duct tape, and several pieces of equipment were pushed into them. He retrieved the flat headed screwdriver that ha once been used on the Spaceplane, and addressed the access hatch in front of him. It was flush with the underside, with the hinge opposite where he'd hooked on, exactly according to plan. There had been no time to give the suit itself gloves, or even mittens, so he couldn't simply flip open the panel directly. Instead, he jammed the screwdriver into the latch, bracing himself against a projection behind him, and heaved.
Fortunately, the access hatch hadn't been greased, or subject to vacuum long enough to weld itself shut, so after some resistance, it flipped open. The sudden release of pressure was unexpected, and the reaction force against the screwdriver also pulled Gadget free. He slid down the tether several feet before stowing the screwdriver and using his inhaler thrusters to stop himself. Holding the tether between arm and body held him in place as he pressed on the glove finger that held the air supply inhaler, refreshing the oxygen in his helmet, and evaporating the mist that was forming on it. The dessicator packet stuck to the glass behind his head could only absorb moisture so fast.
He examined the interior of the recessed switch housing and spotted a problem. It was a fairly standard handle style switch, common to power installations, but it was currently flipped away from him. This put it beyond his reach even at the greatest extent of his paperclip chain, and with no way to brace himself to pull, it was impractical anyway. His only option was to unhook from the tether and free fly across to the far side of the housing, where he could work on it. He had his thrusters for manouvring, but a mistake could leave him falling away or spinning randomly, and the time it would take to recover could doom him and the Orbiter.
He pushed off against the same projection that he'd used for bracing earlier and dived across the recess like a slow motion trapeze artist. He dropped away from the recess as he flew, and tucked up to spin himself around, using his leg thrusters. He rebounded off the open access panel and onto the switch itself, sitting, once again, like a trapeze artist. Then he braced the screwdriver into the inner edge of the recess and heaved, heedless of the fog forming on the inside of his helmet.
He felt the switch shift underneath him… more… more… Clunk! While there was no noise in the vacuum of space, he could feel the switch flipping over from the vibration through his body. He slipped off and dropped away, not bothering to wait for his helmet to clear and swing back to the line. There was no time… well six minutes, barely enough to reach minimum safe distance. He trusted that Chip, who was piloting, would move the ship to catch him.
&&&
Gadget suddenly heard a voice from the human headset, sitting by her, Tommy's, it sounded like. "Miss Gadget, could you start the lab accelerating again? Over."
"Roger Willberry! Out." She carefully brought herself to her knees, mindful of the ultra-low gravity, then aimed and bounded, making the journey to the main screen in one jump, rebounding off to land on the control panel. Quickly she triggered the preset sequence, and her weight increased to normal and a bit beyond. The timer showed 4 minutes, barely enough time…
She tweaked the controls and added some lateral component. It might damage the gravity grid system, but not significantly in the moments they had left. The screen was still centered on the shape of the Orbiter, now appearing to fly away from her at great speed. In fact, it was now simply falling, and she was the one flying away. She bounded back across to the matter transporter, using the removed access panel as a slide to get back to her workstation.
"… Come in Miss Gadget…" She could hear from the headphones.
"I'm here. Did you get your Gadget back? Over." She made a couple of last adjustments to the mechanism as she spoke.
"He's still getting unsuited. How are things at your end? Over."
.
"I'll be done in a jiffy… there!" She smiled brightly, examining her work. "Okay, I can switch this replacement molecular regurgitator into the transporter circuits with a single switch."
"Then why don't you?… I'm sorry, over."
Gadget shook her head, ignoring the fact that the other Rangers were about the only ones who couldn't see it.
"I'm afraid it will require disconnecting the dematerialisation cycle too. The rematerialisation process will start as soon as I do. The matter will be reconstituted in about 6 seconds, then the residual energy will blow it up. I'm waiting until the last possible moment to make sure it's as far away as possible from you when that happens. Over."
Chip's, that is Charlotte's voice came over the headset. "If it looks like you have to do it early, don't worry about us. Over."
Gadget sighed, "… Okay, but I'm monitoring the Superposition buffer and it's holding so far. We have about two minutes. When I engage the switch, I will count seconds. On the three, have Foxglove send me back. That way I can double check things are starting up okay. Over."
"Two minutes…" The Rescue Ranger leader's voice was wistful as it came over the headset. "Just enough time for us to say thank you. Without you, our transporter would have been useless, and we'd never have had a chance to get Nimnul."
"Golly, it's what any mouse with a mind bashingly high IQ would have done. I'm glad I could help, after all that's what we Rescue Rangers do."
"Too roight lass, but you were the only one able to help _us_." Maddy was taking her turn. "I hope you have a bonzer life back where you came from."
"Yeah, thanks a lot!" added Della's voice. "Give your Chip a big sloppy kiss from me!"
"DEL!" yelled Charlotte.
"This whole world owes you more than it can ever repay…" stated Foxglove. "… I'll try and contact you, let you know how things went, but dimensional stuff is tricky at the best of times."
"I wish we'd had more time to explore the variations between our two universes. The idea is most intriguing." said the male Gadget. "Maybe I can invent a way to do so… hmmm…"
"Uh uh…. Theorise later, goodbyes now." Chip said, "That and a kiss, darling." There was a short silence.
"Umm… I think Gadget would have added his thanks for breaking Nimnul's mind control, if Chip wasn't exploring his tonsils at the moment. I certainly add my thanks for rescuing me, and I know Gadget would too." Sparkie added her piece.
"And I would have loved to take you to the Acorn Club for a romantic dinner for two… if you didn't have your Chip and were going back to an alternate universe." Tommy sighed, "Why are all the good ones taken, or from another dimension, or both. Farewell."
The others added their goodbyes and the clock ticked down. At thirty seconds, Gadget noticed a slight rise in the energy flow through the capacitor matrix. "Okay guys, goodbye and good luck! I'm going to start the changeover in a few seconds. I suggest you turn the ship to put the heat shield between us…"
"Already done!" came Chip's voice.
"Okay then…" Gadget grabbed the switch. "Counting down… three… two… one… SWITCH!… one… it's working!… two… thre…"
She sat up sharply in the dimness. Her brain was still processing the image of the transporter platform wrapped in a polychromatic glow as the rematerialisation started. It took several seconds for her to adjust, and several more for her eyes to adapt to the darkness. Moonlight shone through the window of her room in the Treehouse. Everything looked the same as it had been when she went to sleep.
Her shoulders slumped slightly, had it all been just a vivid dream? Then she noticed the chill. She realised she was sitting on top of her covers and her nightgown. She gave an embarrassed little squeak, then realised no-one could see her anyway, and got up to put the dressing gown back on. The moonlight showed her bedclothes, while rumpled, were not thrown back. Somehow she'd been moved from under the sheets to on top of them, and the same for her nightclothes.
"Ohmigosh! It really happened!" Clearly, when she'd jumped back, the borrowed jumpsuit had stayed, and her dressing gown had snapped back with her, but not onto her. She wondered as she got back into bed, had her construction been correct? It had appeared to be operating with no problems, but obviously she hadn't been around to see the finish. She hoped the explosion had been small enough not to harm anyone, especially the other Rangers, and that their improvised re-entry vehicle operated with no problems.
'Foxglove said he'd try and contact me, but how?' she thought to herself, then sighed. 'I guess I'll never know how things turned out.'
After getting re-attired, she got back into bed and pulled her covers over herself. She expected to have to force herself, but she found she was very tired, and quickly dropped off to sleep.
She wasn't exactly dreaming… just vaguely aware, when a deep voice insinuated itself into her consciousness. It was Foxglove, the Foxglove of the world she'd just left that is…
'Gadget… Gadget… can you hear me?'
She was now fully aware, but her dream state was a blank slate, not even a void. 'I can hear you… Foxglove?'
'Yes!… I'm sorry, I've been trying this spell every night… it's good to finally contact you.'
'But it's only been a few minutes… oh, of course, our continua must be asynchronous, how silly of me...'
'Well the time that passes varies if that's what you mean. As long as I don't try to talk to you before a previous talk, I can pretty much target any time.'
'That makes sense, I guess otherwise you'd violate causality.'
'It gives me a blinding headache, I know that. I was hoping to get you the same night, for us it's been almost a month.'
"Well you certainly got that much right, I only just back to sleep. So you are all okay?'
'Better than okay! We couldn't actually see the explosion, but cameras on the ground caught it. Caused some static, and that's about it. We spun the ship, fired the CO2 thrusters at the right time and deployed the 'feathers'. It wasn't fun, I think we hit 13 G's at peak, but we made it. Del splodged herself out and acted as a bunch of acceleration couches.
'But the interesting stuff happened when we splashed down, we ended up off the shore of East Africa. We were going to deploy the Rangerwing and head for land, but within a couple of minutes, a Royal Navy search and rescue chopper was overhead. They picked us up, orbiter and all, and transported us to their aircraft carrier.'
Gadget was puzzled, 'How is that good?'
'Because they were treating us with kid gloves. We got Royal Marines in full dress uniform lining up on deck, a plush state room, the kitchen staff waiting on us hand and foot, and then a Harrier jump jet to the Azores where we hopped a US Airforce transonic courier to Washington. I mean, I've occasionally got a bit of hero worship in my role as the Masked Bat, but this was something else. Everyone we met wanted to ask us about all our past adventures...'
'How did they know? And how could they understand you?' Gadget was intrigued.
'Well, as for the how, some months ago, when we got the new computer at the Treehouse, Del managed to argue Chip into scanning in all her old case files. Gadget build a scanner from a fingerprint detector... all good. But Gadget, while under Nimnul's control got a copy, and the Black Table got a copy from her, and it was tagged with their highest security level...'
'Uh oh... so it went out with the rest of the files when Del hacked the system.'
'Exactly. The Black Table bases got dropped on from a great height by UN peacekeepers and the International Police before we even landed. Their leaders are in jail, and their catspaws are talking, spilling their guts actually.'
'Speaking of talking, did Gadget... Golly, that's still really weird to say, rig up some sort of replacement translator?'
'Oh, yes, you couldn't know. Most of the people who were watching that broadcast can understand us now, even though Nimnul's machines were destroyed. Gadget and Sparkie have some double dome explanation about mental barriers, social framing and memetic contagion. At that point, I kind of checked out. Give me a nice simple grimoire any day. I think it comes down to, humans have this mental block against tapping into the common understanding we animals share. Maybe it's evolution, maybe just learned.
'Anyway, Nimnul's device didn't just let them understand us, it punched holes in that wall until it looked like cheesecloth, and all kinds of interesting things are leaking through. It's not just with us, an ever increasing number of humans are becoming full blown Speakers. The whole world's going mad, but in a good way.
'We were personally congratulated by the president, the whole first family. I thought Chip was going to faint from the force of her blush when she met up with Tress again. And it wasn't just the president, we were presented at the UN, Buckingham palace, the Hague. We ended up with more medals, honours and awards than even Maddy could carry, even though they'd usually cast reduced scale ones. And the media attention… it was complete zoo!'
'Golly! So what are you doing now? I mean in general, specifically for each of you of course, but in general as far as the various tasks you're doing. It sounds like you've been busy.'
'Is that ever an understatement! When Chip was recuperating at the White House, she joked about setting national policy from her hamster wheel. Well now it's true, the setting policy bit, I mean. The president personally asked for her help in understanding the implications of intelligent animals. The laws, everything needs to be reworked from the ground up.
On the other hand, Gadget is leading a team of scientists and techies, both human and animal to reduce Nimnul tech and Black Table tech to practical applications. There's Sparkie, of course, and creatures from Thorn Valley, London Under even Watership Down. Devices like the gigantico ray and metamorphasiser are suggesting new ways for waste disposal and food production… the ati gravity gear was reverse engineered from a Black Table prototype, and Gadget also figured out the bugs in Nimnul's power generator design...'
'Oh yes, the Quantum Electron Cascade Generator. We're fitting one to the Sea Ranger, or new submarine. I'd have talked about it with my counterpart, but we never really had the time.'
There was a smirk behind Foxglove's words. 'I should have guessed.
'So where was I? Oh yes, both Chip and Gadget are pulling down 14 hour days and loving every minute of it! Del and I are covering the hero work part of things, along with Maddy and Speedie. Only now we have a much better relationship with the police. Speaking of which, Sergeant Spinelli appeared at our tree to apologise to Maddy for chasing her off so many times. Tommy helps too, but he's doing a lot of public appearance stuff.'
'It sounds amazing. I'd love to see it...'
'Maybe you can, but not soon. I was lucky to have the right conditions for that first transport. But it will take some time, real time in both dimensions before I could try again. I'll contact you... oh dear, my link's weakening... I wanted to tell you about the statue...'
'Statue?'
'A group shot, including you, 50 feet high, where the old Treehouse was...'
The voice faded, and Gadget drifted off into a deeper sleep, still with one question. What would the plaque read?
The End
