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By Root 763 0

was right, it was worth a try. She clicked the PURGE button on the screen and the shimmering window in the middle of the archway vanished with a soft pop and a gentle puff of displaced air. She entered a new set of time coordinates: exactly five months, thirty days, twenty-three hours and fifty-five minutes after the time they’d been sent into the future; exactly five minutes before the support unit’s mission time span was up and it was scheduled to self-destruct. It made sense. It would be the last possible chance to rendezvous with a return window. With the support unit dead, Liam would not be able to receive a tachyon signal to instruct him on a new rendezvous time-stamp. If they weren’t there, in that storeroom six months after arriving and impatient to get back home, then Maddy had no idea what she could do next.

She clicked on the screen to confirm the new time coordinates and then activated the displacement machinery. Once again a twelve-foot-wide sphere of air began to shift and undulate, revealing the storeroom again. Both girls squinted for a while at the dark space beyond. Same store cupboard … a few things had been shifted around; clearly someone had had a spring-clean in there. But no sign of either Liam or the support unit.

‘Oh,’ said Sal. ‘We’ve really lost them.’

Maddy pinched her chin. ‘No … let me think.’ There was a way to communicate with the support unit. A tachyon signal beam. That’s what they’d done last time: aimed a broad beam of particles in the direction in which they’d guessed Liam and Bob were and transmitted an encoded signal back through history. It had worked. Bob had picked it up.

‘Bob,’ she spoke into the mic, ‘can we send a tachyon signal beam forward?’

> Affirmative. We have enough power.

‘Right … what if we send it to, say … five minutes before whatever happened to Chan, happened.’

‘What message?’ asked Sal.

‘I dunno. Something like – abort the mission, something is going to go wrong.’

Sal nodded. ‘Yes, we should do that.’

Maddy sat down in one of the office chairs and purged the open window. It puffed out of existence. She then opened the message interface and quickly tapped in a message.

Return to the store cupboard immediately. We’ll pick you up there. Something is about to go wrong with your mission. Something is about to happen to you. A return window will be waiting for you.

Bob’s dialogue box popped up.

> You wish to send this message?

‘Yes, immediately.’

> Recommendation: a narrow beam transmission.

A narrow beam meant she needed to know quite precisely where to aim it. But she had no idea where the two of them might be. They might have been somewhere else in the facility. Something may have caused a detour, a fire alarm perhaps? Or some malfunction in the lab may have resulted in everyone being evacuated.

‘Bob, let’s make the beam broad enough to sweep the whole area. Make sure the support unit gets the message.’

> Caution: there will be technology in the vicinity that may be unpredictably affected by tachyon particles.

‘I really don’t care if we mess up somebody’s experiments, or damage their precious gizmos … I want Liam to get that damned message!’ she snapped angrily. ‘All right?’

> Affirmative. Wide beam sweep to cover vicinity.

Sal looked at her. ‘Are you sure about this?’ She nodded towards the computers. ‘Bob just sort of cautioned us, didn’t he?’

Maddy spun the chair to face her. ‘You got any other suggestions?’

Sal shook her head.

‘Right, then,’ she replied, her voice brittle. ‘We have to make contact.’

Stay calm, Maddy. You’re the leader, so stay calm.

Her face softened as she reached for her inhaler on the desk. ‘Sorry, Sal … I’m just a bit stressed and –’

‘No, it’s OK.’

‘I don’t know what else to do.’

> Confirm transmission?

‘Bob, you cautioned me … because what? Is there some sort of danger to Liam if we throw a whole load of tachyon beams forward?’

> Information: tachyon particles might interfere with zero-point energy experiments that are being conducted at the institute at this time.

‘But does that endanger Liam in some way?’