There must have been a dozen or more fins, circling below as if they’d heard the dinner bell. Todd decided his best hope of delaying their feed was to throw himself flat on the plank and grip it with hands and feet as if his life depended on it. Because it did. But before he could do that a violent poke in the back from an oar sent him hurtling off the end of the plank. He attempted to fly but it didn’t help. He plunged into the heaving green waves and went under.
Todd flung his arms around underwater as he struggled to discover which way was up. By sheer luck he broke the surface. The ship, under full sail, was moving away from him at surprising speed. As he rose and fell with the waves he saw that the fins were closing in on him at an even faster speed. It was near impossible to ignore them but that’s what he tried to force one part of his brain to do as he concentrated the rest of his brain on looking into the colliderscope. Half the time he was below the surface so the image he saw was blurry, but he found the switch and slid it across.
Footnote.
Here’s an interesting fact about pirates that hardly anybody knows. There’s a reason why they’re often shown wearing an eye patch and it’s not because they’ve lost an eye. Well, it could be, they were a rough lot, but it’s mainly because when they went below decks to eat or sleep they needed one eye at least that was already adjusted to darkness. There were few, if any lights down there and after being in the glare of the sun above decks they’d be as blind as a bat below decks. Now, go and show off to your friends,
Will B Riley.
Chapter 12
Again the swirling and sucking sensation, then he found himself flung onto a solid floor. A familiar floor; He was back in his uncle’s attic room. After a spell of coughing and spluttering out salt water he whooped with relief. He jumped to his feet and checked that none of his limbs were missing and inside a shark’s belly. Apart from being soaking wet and cold and dripping seawater all over the floor he appeared whole. He looked around.
Nothing seemed to have changed. The carved wooden box lay open on the table just as he’d left it. He found a rag on the worktable and dried the colliderscope off before carefully placing it in its box. He closed the lid. Marvellous it might be but he never wanted to see it again. The thing had catapulted him into a world where his head had almost been chopped off, and into another where they wanted to remove his brain, then into a third where he’d almost been shark food. Who knew where it might have sent him next?
He looked out of the window. The bare moorland looked the same as he remembered so this should be his own reality, but he wouldn’t be sure until he knew that the people he met didn’t have dinosaur heads or wield swords or wear eye patches. If all was normal all he had to worry about was how he was going to explain to his Uncle Silas where he had been all this time. He tried to calculate how long he’d spent in the medieval, dinosaur and pirate worlds. He’d been unconscious in the dungeon at Camelot so had no idea whether he’s been there hours or days. Uncle Silas must have been sick with worry. Todd exited the room and put the key back in the vase at the bottom of the stairs, then realised he should change into dry clothes and find a mop to clean up the attic floor and the wet trail he had left.
As he descended to the ground floor at last, dry and in different clothes, he tried to work out what he would say. When Uncle Silas couldn’t find him he’d have driven around in the old Landrover looking for him He’d have asked people in the village, then called the police. Worst of all he’d have notified Todd’s parents. In the end the best explanation Todd could dredge up was that he’d become lost on the moors, fallen down a cliff and knocked himself out. He found the professor in his study.
‘Uncle Silas, I can explain …’
‘Ah, there you are. Have a nice time? Nothing like a brisk walk on the moors to clear your head, I always say. You should do a longer one next time. That few minutes walk didn’t raise a sweat on you.’
Todd remained speechless from confusion. A few minutes? He’d spent longer than that just getting dried and walking down the stairs. That meant that all the time he’d been in the three alternate realities hadn’t even registered in his own world. Was that why Blackbeard had reappeared after only seconds?
‘Er … yeah, I’ll try a longer walk next time.’ Since the professor seemed ready for conversation now might be a good time to find out more about the colliderscope’s strange powers, but there was no way he’d admit that he’d already learned some of them. ‘Uncle, what exactly is it that you’re working on. I didn’t understand what you meant earlier by ‘alternate realities’.
Professor Maxwell put down his pen and studied his nephew. ‘You’re really interested? Not just being polite?’
‘Yes, really.’ If asked earlier it would have been for no other reason than politeness, but after what he’d been through he was very interested indeed.
‘Well now, I wish my old colleagues at Oxford would show as much interest. All right, I’ll try to make it simple.’
In the next hour Todd learned more about science than in all the years he’d spent at school. He’d had little interest in the subject before, but then he’d never had a teacher like Professor Maxwell.
‘Do you know where you live, Todd?’
‘Of course, 27 Sycamore Ave, Longhurst.’
‘And where is Longhurst?
‘Near London.’
‘And where is …’
‘Oh right, the full address. London is in England, Europe, Northern hemisphere, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way galaxy, The Universe.’
‘It’s good that you know your address but I’d be even more impressed if you had also told me that the Sun and its family of planets are located in an insignificant outer spiral arm of that galaxy and that there are a hundred billion other suns in it, and that there are billions upon billions of galaxies. Now, imagine you could travel in a spaceship at a speed of a hundred and eighty six thousand miles per second. Per second, mind you. It would still take you four and a half years to reach the next nearest star, two million years to reach the next galaxy You see the problem? the immensity of Space? Yes, all those science fiction movies about faster than light spaceships are rubbish. Nothing can ever go faster than the speed of light. That’s an established fact.’
He turned around and ripped a sheet of paper from a large notepad. When he turned back he was smiling in a strange, knowing way. ‘But what if there was another method of getting there?’
Chapter 13
Another method? The professor had said it with a twinkle in his eye.
‘Nothing can travel faster than light, Todd, because … well, because that’s the way the laws of physics operate. At least in this universe. But some scientists are working on the concept of what they call ‘worm holes’, where something can pass from one point to another without actually passing through the distance between. Here, look at this.’
He took a pencil and made a mark on the piece of notepaper, then made another on a different part of it.
‘This dot we’ll call planet A and this one planet B. Let’s say they’re, oh … fifty light years apart. Close neighbours by astronomical standards but remember it would still take you fifty years to get there even if you travelled at light speed. Ah, but watch what happens when I do this?’
He folded the piece of paper so that the two dots were touching. ‘Not so far apart now, are they? That’s what happens with worm holes, a sort of folding of Space, and believe it or not scientists have already succeeded in creating one in the laboratory. On the subatomic level at least.’ He sat back and looked at Todd expectantly.
‘Wow! That’s amazing,’ Todd said.
‘And what would you say if I told you I was a step ahead of them?’
Todd knew he was expected to show doubt and disbelief, so even though he knew this had to be something to do with the colliderscope he said ‘yeah, right.’
‘That’s more or less what my university colleagues said. But they’ll be apologising when I complete my ex
periment.’
Now was Todd’s chance to find out more about the colliderscope. ‘What experiment is that, Uncle?
Professor Maxwell hesitated as if he thought maybe he’d gone too far. He picked up his pencil and put it down again. He straightened his papers. Then he sighed and rose to his feet. ‘Come with me, Todd.’
Todd followed him to the upper floor where his uncle made him wait in the corridor. He knew the reason why; Uncle Silas didn’t want him knowing about the key in the vase. He watched him disappear around a corner. A moment later he heard footsteps on the bare wood of the attic stairs.
‘Come on up, Todd.’
In the attic Todd was relieved to see that his uncle didn’t appear to notice the still damp floor. He was holding the carved wooden box and looking at it as if it were a holy object. When Todd closed the door Professor Maxwell placed the box reverently on the table and opened it. He called Todd over.
‘I found this in an antique shop in Istanbul, Turkey, an old kaleidoscope and quite a beautiful object too. I thought that was all it was at first. It wasn’t until I got it home and spent time playing with it that I discovered it had an extra and totally different function. I don’t think the shopkeeper knew it either because despite his haggling I got it quite cheaply. Here, have a look, but keep your hands away from the leather part.’
Todd took the colliderscope and muttered suitable impressed noises at the patterns. He didn’t need to be told to keep his hands away from the slide switch. No way was he risking being sent to any more weird worlds if he could help it.
‘How do you like it?’ Uncle Silas asked.
‘Cool,’ Todd said.
‘Now, what if I told you there is something you can do with it that will transport you from this world to another, or at least from this reality to another?’
Todd handed the colliderscope back with what he hoped was a smirk of disbelief. Uncle Silas laughed.
‘Don’t believe me, eh? I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t believe such a preposterous claim if I didn’t know the facts. Stand back, Todd and prepare for a shock.’
Chapter 14
If Todd had blinked he might have missed it. One minute Professor Maxwell was standing in plain view looking into the colliderscope. Then he vanished. A second or two later he was picking himself up from the floor. If Todd hadn’t already experienced it for himself he would have doubted his own eyes. Uncle Silas dusted himself off and checked for damage. The coat and tie he’d been wearing before he vanished were missing
‘Well, Todd, what did you see?’
Todd put on a shocked face. ‘I saw you vanish, just for an instant. Then you were on the floor over there.’
His uncle took a notebook from his back pocket and wrote something. ‘Good, I’ve been needing a witness.’
‘Uncle, what just happened?’
‘Quite a lot actually. In the instant between you seeing me vanish and return I spent a few days in what appeared to be an ancient Roman city, then some hours in a desert world that was apparently devoid of life, followed by a few minutes in a world entirely populated by robots. I went through gaps where realities collide. Because of that I’ve decided to call it my ‘Colliderscope’. Got it? Starting with the letter C? I’m understanding the sequence better now too. It seems that every third or fourth transfer brings you back here.’
Todd knew he was expected to appear sceptical. ‘You weren’t gone long enough to do all that.’
‘As I said, Todd, the laws of physics may not be the same in all realities.’
‘So how come it didn’t send me anywhere? I looked through it too.’
‘Because, Todd, you don’t know the secret of how to use it. And I’m not about to tell you. I don’t want to have to explain to your mother and father that I sent you to some horrible place that you may not be able to get back from.’ He placed the colliderscope back in its velvet–lined box and closed the lid.
‘But how does it work, Uncle? You said it wasn’t magic, so …’
‘Of course it isn’t magic. There’s no such thing as magic. It’s something to do, at least in part, with the science of optics. There are several mirrors inside it that can be switched about by … anyway I’ve analysed minute samples of them and found they’re not made of ordinary glass.’ He pointed to the table where the unfinished lens lay. ‘I’m trying to reproduce one over there. Once I’ve succeeded in making my own I’ll have no trouble convincing my former colleagues. Your old Uncle Silas will go down in the history books alongside the likes of Newton and Galileo. How’d you like that, eh?’
‘Cool,’ Todd said. Being related to a famous scientist would be something to boast about at school. Almost as good as being related to a famous rock star.
As they made their way back downstairs Todd was thinking that if the tube really did bring you back home every third or fourth click of the switch it might be safe to try it out again.
Chapter 15
The next day Professor Maxwell drove to the village for supplies and took Todd with him. Apart from the tiny railway station Little–Puddingly–On–The–Moor had a church, a village hall, a petrol station, a pub, a grocery shop and about thirty houses. A poster advertising a movie to be shown in the village hall made him shudder and he hurried past it. The movie was Jurrasic Park and he wanted nothing more to do with dinosaurs. To his dismay the shop had no triple–A batteries for his game charger. The owner said he’d order some in for his next delivery on Wednesday. Since Todd was going home on Tuesday that was as about useful as a clockwork banana. He groaned. It meant he would have to do without his electronic games for the rest of his stay. Midford, the nearest town big enough for a real shopping centre was forty miles away and Uncle Silas showed no signs of needing to go there.
Back at the house life was as boring as before. So boring in fact that Todd’s mind kept returning to the excitement of the Medieval, dinosaur and pirate worlds. They were frightening but he could never accuse them of being boring. And now that he knew there was a way to get back they didn’t seem as scary. The best part was that he’d always come back to the same time as he left so his uncle need know nothing about it.
The more he thought about it the more interesting it seemed. It had been like actually being inside one of his electronic games. Now he understood why the adults in his family felt that real life was better than staring at a screen. Yes, he’d do it.
#
He’d made his decision but it took several attempts before he worked up the courage to actually go through with it. Three times he made it to the attic door with the key in his hand. Three times the memory of the sharks, the chopping block and the tyrannosaurus cop sent him scurrying downstairs again in a sweat. At the fourth attempt he made it. His uncle was tending his vegetable garden and feeding his hens. In mixed excitement and fear Todd forced himself to grab the key, rush into the attic and pick up the colliderscope. Before he could change his mind he looked inside it and slid the switch.
Chapter 16
The sensation was different each time. The first transfer, to King Arthur’s court, he’d compared to being turned inside out and sucked through a straw. The second, to Dinosaur land was like being swilled about in mouthwash and spat out, while the one that had taken him back to his uncle’s felt like being inside a swirling paintbox. This one reminded him of an enclosed, disco–lighted waterslide. It spat him out on to soft, green grass.
He sat up and looked around. If he’d been hoping for excitement this didn’t look like the place for it, a picture postcard English village complete with quaint, thatched, stone cottages surrounding a village pond. Willow trees dipped their branches in the water and a little stone bridge spanned the stream that fed the pond. The tower of a church peeked above the trees. It all reminded him of the picture on Grandmas’ old chocolate tin. Lamp posts told him that the village was at least at the technology stage of the mid twentieth century so he wouldn’t be dealing with uncivilised barbarians, and as long as the inhabitants didn?
??t have dinosaur heads he should be safe enough.
The church bells tolled as he got to his feet and he decided to walk that way since that was probably where the centre of the village lay. He’d only gone a few steps when the door of the nearest cottage opened and a family emerged. Todd tensed, but to his relief the family were normal human beings, a father and mother, a boy about nine–years–old and a girl about six. Each held what Todd took to be a prayer book. Clearly they were on their way to a church service. What could be more normal? The only thing wrong with this picture? In Todd’s experience nobody walked to church completely naked.
‘Look, Mummy,’ the little girl pointed. ‘That boy is wearing clothes.’
The mother gave a little scream and covered the girl’s eyes. She tried to do the same to the boy but he moved aside and stared at Todd in wide–eyed curiosity. The father stared too, but in shock rather than curiosity. He glared at Todd, mouth open, then strode towards him.
‘Hey! Get those clothes off right now, you shameless little brat!’
Chapter 17
The man was halfway to him before Todd recovered from his own shock. It was startling enough that a whole family should be walking around in public completely naked, but for one of them to call him shameless was beyond belief. The naked man was almost on him before Todd turned and ran. Of all the places the colliderscope could have sent him what were the odds of his landing where the first people he saw were the resident loonies? Todd increased his speed because the particular resident loonie who was chasing him was a fast runner.
Todd kept running. Surely there’d be a village policeman who could take the insane nudist in charge or something. Or any adult would do. He dodged as his pursuer lunged for him.
‘Come here, you disgusting little creep!’
Todd’s prayer seemed answered when another door opened ahead of him and a man, alerted by the nudist’s shouts, came out. Todd ran towards him for help. He was a fat man smoking a pipe. He was naked too.