Time Storm Shockwave (23 page)

“You have no reason to apologize”—he said flatly—“this is a deplorable situation, which I helped cause.”

She shook her head. “Why do you even think that?
You did everything you could to stop him. You were willing to die.”

“Without my help—” Mark shrugged “—his plan wouldn’t have succeeded. He simply didn’t have the knowledge base to implement it.”

“You helped him to save your friends”—Stewart interjected—“and you wife. Besides, you thought you would be able to stop it. Quit beating yourself up over this, it wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t your plan. You aren’t responsible.”

“He’s
right”—Kathleen said—“and I’m sorry that I made assumptions. We’re all just distraught, and we aren’t thinking clearly.”

Ashlyn nodded. “Please
Mark”—she touched his shoulder—“tell us what you’re thinking. We don’t expect you to fix this. Those people who were …you know—”

“
Demolecularized.”

“—yeah. That wasn’t your fault. None of this is.”

Mark was quiet for a while and then finally said, “The only thing, and I do mean the only thing that I can possibly think of is to turn off the machine”—he shook his head—“thinking about it longer won’t give me another idea. Actually, we don’t even have to turn it all the way off; just disrupt one of the relay switches. The overload should force the admiral to turn it off himself.”

“I believe
you”—Ashlyn smiled sadly—“you are the idea man, after all. If you say that’s the only way then we believe you, right?” She turned to the others, and they nodded their agreement.

“So it’s that simple—” Stewart asked “—just …turn off the machine.”

“It took a tremendous amount of power to turn it on”—Mark let out an exhausted breath—“I’m sure you’re all aware of that. That’s why we had to time it with the Hadron Collider experiment, solar maximum, and drill deep into the earth. However, once started, the machine is self-powering. If we turn it off, it can’t possibly be restarted.”

“So if we turn it
off”—Ashlyn asked—“it will take us back to our time?”

“
Possibly”—he said—“or we could simply be stuck here and the admiral would summarily execute all of us.”

“That seems worth the risk to me,” she said.

He shook his head again. “Those aren’t the only possible outcomes”—a serious expression clouded his face—“by destabilizing it, we could create a black hole, and that would probably destroy the planet.”

“How likely is that?” Kathleen asked.

“I don’t have any statistics for you”—he answered—“but I think that it’s highly unlikely. I think we would have to put more power into the system to do that, which we don’t have. It’s much more likely that it would destabilize the void of the worm hole and vaporize us.”

They all sat there in silence for about an hour, contemplating the options.

Finally, Stewart said, “I think we should do it and the sooner the better. Can you do it by tomorrow?”

“I
agree”—Ashlyn weighed in—“the longer we wait, the more damage the admiral can do.”

They turned to Kathleen. “Sure, do you need me to do anything?”

“No”—Mark looked at Ashlyn—“but I would need your help.”

“
Okay”—she said—“what do you need me to do?”

He
clinched his jaw and met her eyes. “Pretend to be Dierdra.”

Chapter 20

Know that love is truly timeless. — Mary M. Ricksen

~

Mark’s sabotage
idea worked, and the machine began to lose its carefully controlled balance.

“We have to shut it off!”
he yelled to the other scientists.

“We can’t shut it off, it will close the void.” The lead scientist was beginning to sweat as the dials spun out of control.

Mark started to run up the stairs, but Dierdra blocked his way.

“Listen,
Dierdra, you’ve got to let me talk to the admiral.”

She didn’t budge; he was about to take her on but tried one more time, “
Listen, this is the reason the admiral wanted me as a scientific advisor. You don’t know much about science but trust me; I have to talk to him.”

Just for a second he thought he saw
her flinch as if he had struck a chord and then her face became impassive again, but she moved aside.

He ran up the stairs two at a time. “Admiral, we have to turn it off
. The machine, it’s lost its balance. It will create a black hole.”

The admiral just ignored him
.

“You’ve got to shut it off;
an imbalance in the void could take the whole planet!” Mark screamed at him.

“
No”—the admiral yelled—“they will get it back under control.”

“Listen to me
—” Mark grabbed the admiral by the shoulders, and began to shake him “—we’ve got to shut it off; it’s going to suck us in.”

Mark’s words were interrupted by the roaring screech caused by the straining of
metal. The admiral looked shocked. He ran down the stairs, and across the monitor room. Mark contemplated just for a second before running back down too. Partway down the stairs, he stepped onto a landing, which ran around the entire room. He stopped directly in front of the large breakers.

In the confusion, no one was paying attention to him and he
began shutting each of them off one by one. He hoped to break the connection and turn off the machine. They were difficult to push up because of the huge amount of current running through them; each one required a tremendous effort. The imbalance, from the lack of synchronization in the power, started causing sparks and lightning bolts to shoot through the machine room.

One of the high-pressure, large liquid nitrogen pipes, a foot in diameter, was hit. It ruptured and started spraying pressurized liquid nitrogen in the direction of the control room. When it hit the bulletproof window, the sudden temperature change made the glass shatter. The liquid continued to spray through the breach and into the room. The
Leidenfrost effect was causing the liquid on the floor to boil into a gas almost instantaneously, but not soon enough. Pools of it gathered, building more quickly as the now frozen floor slowed the evaporation.

Like the stream from a
n enormous fire hose, it hit one of the guards full on. He screamed in agony right before his torso froze solid and broke in half. His eyes were still wide open and aware as the top half of him toppled to the floor, leaving only disembodied legs.

“No!”
the admiral yelled when he saw what Mark was doing.

Trying to avoid
the spray, the admiral didn’t notice the deep pool of liquid, which now covered most of the not quite level floor. When he stepped into it, his feet froze solidly in place. He looked down in shock and tried to pull one of them free, but it broke off instead.

The admiral’s scream was a horrible sound.
Several other people in the room also found their feet frozen to the ground but were now paralyzed with fear from what they had just witnessed.

Dierdra
leveled her gun at Mark who didn’t stop. Thankfully, he had been on the landing. The liquid nitrogen had not yet risen to that level. He was pushing up the last breaker when the ground began to tremble and rumble. A bullet whistled passed him. He was sure that Dierdra would not have missed if not for the quickly building shaking of the earth beneath them.

Guards from the entrance moved to stop him, but couldn’t get to him because the Earth was now
bouncing them as if they were in a fun house. The room was filled with screams of agony as the jerking broke off the frozen feet of the scientists, who then fell to the floor into the ever deepening pool of liquid nitrogen—never to move again.

One guard
finally managed to reach Mark, but caught a bullet that was intended for him. The guard fell from the landing into the freezing liquid below. Mark pushed up on the last of the breakers, and then ran as fast as he was able, nearly falling himself. He felt increasingly dizzy as the nitrogen gas began to pull the oxygen from the air. He felt as if he were about to pass out, but managed to crawl his way up the stairs.

Dierdra
was standing in the open doorway where there was still oxygen coming from the outside. She aimed her gun right at him and held onto the doorframe to steady herself, but he plowed into her like a football player. As she fell, the gun went off, barely grazing Mark’s shoulder. He practically flew over the top of her and was finally out into the fresh air.

She
turned over onto her stomach and tried to get up and chase him. Mark looked back and saw her reaching out, trying to cling to something just as the entire underground building was sucked into the Earth. He turned toward the fence and sprinted as fast as possible, revived by the oxygen that was once again filling his lungs.

Ashlyn, Stewart, and Kathleen all were running toward the fence as Mark plowed through the gate.

He yelled at them and motioned wildly, “Turn around, run!”

They
watched in stunned horror as the Meliorator fell into the void. The shaking of the Earth abruptly stopped and so did Mark. He stood there staring at the hole in the ground.

Stewart asked in a frantic voice, “what happened?”

“We closed the void,” Mark answered him, still staring at the scene before him.

“
It worked then?” Kathleen yelled over the noise of sirens that were beginning to go off in the barracks of the enlisted men.

“
There’s no way to know until—”

His words were cut off by the shock of the sudden return to darkness. At first it seemed pitch black, after the brightness of noonday, but as their eyes adjusted, they could tell that they were indeed back under the sea.

Then a deafening sound pounded in their ears. He had to yell in order for his answer to be heard over the noise. “We are definitely back!” He pointed to the darkened sky. Then the source of the sound became apparent. There was a crack in the dome, and it was spreading fast.

Th
e sudden force of all the water, compounded by the small singularity into which the Meliorator had fallen, had created a pressure imbalance in the shield. It was no longer capable of holding the ocean back, at least not for long.

Ashlyn
’s face went white. “What should we do?”

“Stewart, get the cart, fast
, and our gear,” Mark yelled in response to Ashlyn’s question, and Stewart took off as fast as he could move in the direction of the golf cart.

Mark cursed the fact that there weren’t any faster vehicles available
to them. At that moment, he would have traded his right arm for a real car.

Kathleen
shouted loudly over the noise, “Shouldn’t we be running?”

He looked up before answering her.
“We can still move faster in a cart in spite of how slow they are.”

Mark tried to pull Ashlyn into his arms, but s
he stopped him, staring at his shoulder. “You’ve been shot.”

He looked down at it
as if it were the first time he had noticed, and then after a moment said, “Don’t worry, it’s just a graze, I’m fine.”

Within minutes, Stewart showed up with the cart. “Come on, let’s go!” Stewart yelled.

Mark stared up again at the growing phosphorescent fissure.

Ashlyn had climbed onto the cart, but Mark continued studying the sky for another minute until
she yelled at him. “Get on Mark!”

He obeyed, jumping onto the back seat. Stewart took off, pushing the
electric motor as fast as it would go.

“How are we going to decompress fast
enough”—she asked—“we’re under six thousand feet.”

Kathleen corrected h
er, “Only 175 feet, that’s what the stable pressure is at, the depth of the middle floor of the pyramid.”

“
But the admiral said—”

“He
lied”—Kathleen interrupted—“he tells everybody that so that they won’t try to leave.”

“
Of course”—Mark shook his head—“we didn’t even feel our ears pop on the way down. I should have known.”

We came in through the water in scuba
gear”—Ashlyn said—“how does the navy transport people in and out of here?”

“The Navy shaft is camouflaged with rocks at about twenty-five feet and is only accessible by submarine.”

“How slow will we have to decompress”—Stewart tried to calculate—“we’ve been at 175 feet for months, and it’s cumulative.”

“
I don’t know”—Mark answered—“but this can’t be good. How do we get to the shaft the navy built?”

“We can’t get out that way,” Kathleen said.

“Why?” Mark asked.

“
The navy shaft requires the admiral’s code, and he’s …,” she didn’t say it; she just looked behind them.

He shot Ashlyn a look, and she clearly got the message. They only had three sets of scuba gear.
Maybe Kathleen and Stewart can buddy-breathe
, Mark thought. He and Ashlyn couldn’t share; their systems were self-contained.
I hope Stewart has enough left in his tank
. It was ill advised at best, but there wasn’t another option.

“Wait a minute
—” Kathleen panicked “—I’ve never scuba-dived before! Why can’t we just stay in the upper pyramid until we find another way out?” 

Mark turned to Stewart, and then looked at Ashlyn. They both had worried expressions on their faces.

“We might be able to, but”—Mark sounded doubtful—“assuming that it happens fast, which I think it will, the air pressure in here will sky rocket. It will breach the pyramid and rip us all to shreds. It’s basic hydraulics on a scale never imagined.”

“That
pyramid was designed by the Atlanteans”—Kathleen said hopefully—“it’s strong. Won’t it protect us?”

He thought for a moment. “Look, they didn’t design it to hold that much pressure—” he paused “—we can’t wait around to see if it will hold.
If it doesn’t, we won’t have a chance to change our minds. Getting out the way we came is still our safest bet.”

“Don’t worry
”—Ashlyn said empathetically—“we’ll help you.”

They rode in silence for a while. At least they were silent. Sirens, men yelling, and even screaming in the distance was filling them all with dread.

“What about my assistants”—Kathleen asked—“and the other thousand plus people down here?”

When nobody answered her, silent tears began running down her face.
They all wore grim expressions. None of them wanted to think about it.

Explosive sounds were coming faster—from above and all around them.

“Can’t this thing go any faster?” Ashlyn complained.

“No, unfortunately
—” Stewart pressed harder on the pedal just the same “—just pray we don’t run out of charge in the battery.”

“
Oh great”—she said—“that hadn’t even crossed my mind!”

“Sorry Ash,
” he said.

She glanced back at Kathleen who had gone white as a sheet.
“It’s going to be okay, I promise”—Ashlyn said—“you can use my suit; it’s easy, you don’t have to know how to scuba dive.”

“I don’t
understand”—Kathleen asked bewildered—“are they different? What will you use then?”

“Don’t worry about it, I can
buddy breathe with Stewart. We are both experience divers and—”

“
No, you will not!—” Mark cut her off “—she can use my system. You are pregnant, and I’m not taking any chances that you will be deprived of oxygen.”

“You’re pregnant?”
Stewart said, alarmed.

“
—I will be fine,” she said. “I’m an experience diver and …,” she repeated but didn’t finish her thought.

“
No, Ashlyn”—Mark wasn’t bending on this—“you will wear the rebreather. Stewart and I will buddy breathe.”

None of them wanted
Kathleen to realize how unsafe the trip was going to be, so they didn’t speak. It would be safer if they were just going up, but they had to swim down the tunnel first. It was only large enough for one person at a time. Secondly, and probably more dangerous, was the fact that they had to stop and decompress at various levels. They had been down here a long time. Failing to decompress would kill them. Scaring Kathleen might kill them faster.