Timeslip by Bruce Stewart

Author:Bruce Stewart
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Published: 2020-03-25T00:00:00+00:00

21

The wind sighed around the old buildings of the Naval Station; through broken windows and gaps in the crumbling stone; and across the empty field to where Commander Traynor stood by the broken wall with Frank and Jean Skinner. The sky was an even grey.

‘Well,’ announced Traynor bleakly, ‘no sign of them. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they haven’t come back through the barrier.’

‘Commander, if they had we’d have seen them at the inn by now,’ replied Skinner, deeply worried.

Traynor took no notice of him, but turned to Jean. ‘You’ve really lost all touch with them, have you, Mrs Skinner?’

‘I think so...’ Jean for her part was trying to tell herself everything was all right. ‘It was very peculiar. Just that awful feeling of cold after they’d reached the fence ... then nothing.’

‘Cold. Yes.’ Traynor nodded.

Skinner said with a sudden asperity: ‘Look here, what on earth’s happened? You’re the one who was so anxious for the children to go back into the time bubble, Traynor, and you’re always making out you understand the theory. So what’s gone wrong? Are they in difficulty?’

‘More things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy,’ murmured Traynor, moving away a few paces.

‘What kind of answer is that?’ Skinner was after him in an instant, seizing his arm and twisting him back. ‘I want the truth! You needn’t play your games with me. We’ve already seen what that can lead to.’

‘For goodness sake, man, what do you take me for — the oracle of Delphi?’ Traynor snatched his arm away from the other, at once angered. 'We’re dealing with indefinables here. From the sound of it. I'd say Liz and Simon had come through the barrier expecting to return to their own time — but finished up somewhere else instead.’

Skinner stared at him. ‘Well, that’s straight enough,’ he said in a flat voice. But he had plainly failed to find the mot juste. His eyes went to Jean, as did Traynor’s. Her silence was louder than tongues now, an inaudible cry.

'We’d better go back to the inn and wait there, Mrs Skinner,’ said Traynor with unusual gentleness. ‘Nothing more to be done here.’

‘No — no, I expect that’s right,’ Jean responded. But the voice within called out: ‘Where, then? Where do I go to understand?’ And the sighing wind replied only that it was a grey summer’s day in an open field, and the children had been snatched from her vision: that her only daughter and the boy who was her companion were lost in time.

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