Читать книгу Children of the Moon - Evadeen Brickwood - Страница 8

A pale half-moon watched over the commotion in the parking lot at Carter Valley Inn. It was cool this morning, but the weather could change rapidly in spring.

The place was packed with impatient school children. Many of them only half-listened to Dr. Broadbent’s speech and some even yawned. Why didn’t they go already?

“Ladies and gentlemen, I hope we understand each other. Please keep in mind that under no circumstances is anyone to go near the escarpment. I fully expect to see everyone safe and sound on top of the hill by lunchtime.”

The principal of the ‘Pemberton Academy for Advanced Learning’, a well-known school for gifted kids, made sure that his instructions were carried out properly.

“Stay on the footpath - yes, you too over there!” The culprit quickly stepped back onto the rocky footpath. “Remember poor Tom Fraser—”

General murmur arose. They all knew that Tom Fraser had tripped and fallen off the cliff three years ago. Luckily, he had been okay. Sort of.

“There we go,” Dr. Broadbent said with satisfaction. “The junior grades follow Dr. Naidoo and Mr. Van Straten. The senior grades line up to my left, right here. You will walk with Mrs. Meyer and Dr. Wilkins.”

Dr. Naidoo was so short that she almost disappeared between the students in the ensuing chaos. She tried to make herself heard in a shrill voice, “Victor and Brandon, come back here this minute!”

Dr. Broadbent pushed sparse strands of hair back from his shiny forehead and began to assign the students to groups. Soon orderly columns started to move uphill. Only three of the seven-graders hung back right from the start.

Chryséis Cromwell seemed to have hurt her ankle and sat down on a wooden bench. Her best friends Katherine and Trevor sat down next to her and they watched the others file past.

“Hey, lazy buggers. What are you still doing here?” they teased the three friends.

Chryséis pulled a face in faked pain as she rubbed her ankle and moaned, “Oh that really hurts.”

Chryséis Cromwell was eleven, had lots of freckles on her cute nose and blonde hair that was tied up in a ponytail. Her usually bold blue eyes took on a suffering expression as soon as somebody looked her way.

Katherine MacDougal was twelve and rather pretty with her long, auburn hair. She came from England and was as shy as a dormouse, according to the self-confident, younger Chryséis, who had an opinion on absolutely everything.

The third conspirator was the quiet Trevor Huxley from Chicago. He was twelve like Katherine and attended Pemberton on a scholarship.

It wasn’t easy to get into an exclusive school like that and it helped that Trevor was very smart. His parents had never really understood their gifted son, but a scholarship meant that they didn’t have to pay for their son’s education.

Because of the divorce, it was just better for everyone, if he went to boarding school.

Trevor loved to daydream. In his thoughts, he could do as he pleased: fly on sun rays beyond the grey clouds in Chicago to the African jungle, or work on an alternative to washing machines, or cruise the blue Mediterranean Sea. And when he felt like it, he could even travel back in time to ancient Rome.

The three of them had never done anything like this before, but today they had good reason. So they sat on the wooden bench and waited.

It didn’t take long for one of the teachers to approach them with a stern face to see what was going on. Of course, they were prepared. Katherine grew nervous all the same and started to fidget so badly that Trevor had to shove her a couple of times.

Would Dr. Wilkins buy the sore ankle or would he notice that they were up to something?

“And what’s that?” the educator asked. “Chry-sé-is Cromwell, shouldn’t you be with your group?”

“My foot rolled off that stone over there,” Chryséis complained. “It hurts.”

She pointed to a random stone on the ground. The teacher’s expression softened and he stared at the spot. There was nothing unusual on the ground.

“I see,” Dr. Wilkins said and scratched his long nose.

Thankfully, he liked Chryséis. Excellent student, and her mother, Professor Cromwell, wrote such interesting articles in the scientific magazine, he enjoyed as a bit of light reading at bedtime.

He decided to give Chryséis the benefit of the doubt and gave her an encouraging look. Chryséis was to stay at the little inn and wait for the other students to come back in the afternoon.

“The two of you—” he waved Katherine and Trevor over, “you come with me.”

Oh no, they had to stay together! According to plan, they also had to avoid cars, buildings and especially people. Electromagnetic interference was just about the last thing they needed for their experiment. The sooner the teacher left, the better.

“Ahem, Dr. Wilkins,” Chryséis said bravely. ”I’d really like to go to our picnic on the hill. Maybe we should just take it slowly. I’m sure my friends will help me. It doesn’t hurt so bad anymore, see.”

She stood up on wobbly legs and smiled. It worked.

Dr. Wilkins agreed. “Alright, then,” he said and told Trevor and Katherine to look after Chryséis. Then he caught up with his group and helped a flustered Mrs. Meyer herd some of the students back onto the path.

Dr. Wilkins turned around briefly and saw Chryséis limping, as was to be expected, and leaning onto Trevor’s arm. Then he went to the front of his group and soon disappeared behind a rock face.

“Phew, at last,” Katherine said relieved.

Chryséis bent down and rubbed her ankle, then she recovered in record time. “I’m going to get lame for real, if I keep this up much longer... okay, so what now?”

Trevor stopped and scanned the hill. He pointed with his chin to some larger rocks. “See, how the path kind of forks to the right over there?”

“Yes - and?!”

Trevor had already mapped out the best site, just right for their purposes. Also rather close to the escarpment, but that couldn’t be helped.

“We aren’t supposed to go so near to the edge!” Katherine said immediately. Her stomach ached with nervousness. “What if we get caught? And what about Tom Fraser?”

“What about him? He’d fall over his own feet when he had half a chance,” Chryséis said.

“Yes, but…”

“Give us a break, Katie. If we don’t do it today, we can forget about the whole thing.”

“We’ll be careful.” Trevor started walking. “The others won’t see us for a while. At least not until they get to the top of the hill. By then, we’re back on the path.”

“I knew that.” Katherine caught up with them. “And what if we can’t find a portal up there?” She was still skeptical, despite weeks of careful preparations.

“Oh stop it already.” Trevor was eager to get going. Today! “There has to be a time warp around here somewhere.”

“I guess,” Katherine mumbled and trudged after them.

“I found a time warp in the school garden last week, remember?”

Sure, she remembered. Trevor had told them all about it, over and over. It had been his job to test the time-portal-finder... and what a test it had turned out to be!

First a shimmering, holographic spot had appeared that was growing larger all the time. That was the closest description Trevor could think of for the warp in the space-time continuum.

Then behind that ‘curtain’ a vortex had opened up. Churning like a washing machine during the spinning cycle - and Trevor had jumped in. Just like that!

On the other side, he’d seen a large ‘thing’ with shiny scales and steaming breath, stretched out right there before him. Creepy! The ‘thing’ had moved in waves and given Trevor the grandmother of all shocks.

He’d lost no time and pressed the ‘Return’ button and had found himself back in the school garden at exactly the same point in time when he had left.

The possible monster couldn’t scare them off. It had been a real trip through time, no matter how short. Back at the lab, they’d thought up better safety features and now it was time for the first experiment together. THE experiment.

They climbed over sticks and stones, until they stood in front of a stone platform, shielded by rocks on three sides and virtually invisible from the footpath. The fourth side was open toward the valley. Just what they needed.

“Okay, here we are,” Trevor announced.

“Then let’s get going!” Chryséis took a deep breath and jumped effortlessly onto the rock terrace.

Trevor and Katherine did the same. Trevor plunked his daypack on the ground and took out a plain object that looked a bit like a flat metal-pear and fitted snug in the palm of his hand. The time-portal-finder. Chryséis had dubbed the time-portal-finder TPF, and the name had stuck.

The three friends were proud of their handiwork. It had taken loads of time and effort to get the TPF looking like that. It had all started with Katherine’s physics project - quantum physics project to be precise. The vacuum battery - an endless source of energy.

At first it hadn’t even crossed her mind to use this energy source for time travel. Trevor had come up with the idea and now they had to test the whole thing.

Time travel was perfect proof that the endless energy source actually worked and wasn’t just some sort of legend. Of course the project was unusual, but they had come this far, right? This year’s physics project would be a rip-roaring success!

The TPF was fitted with a row of black buttons on the right side. They were there, to dial the target epoch.

With three bigger red buttons on the left, they would save reference points in time. First of all, they would save the time of departure. This was one of the new safety features, the first model did not have. The other red buttons would be programmed with other reference point in time, they liked. A kind of shortcut.

Then there was a big white button right in the middle. When it was pressed, the TPF located a time warp. When it was pressed again, it activated a portal. A small display above the buttons indicated the number of years travelled. At the moment, it was set to ‘0’.

Tiny stickers under the black buttons had numbers on them. were still blank. The sticker under the red button at the top showed the date of departure. 21 February 2015.

“Here are the other TPFs with their own integrated vacuum battery. One for each of us. Here and... here.” Trevor handed the girls identical-looking devices, in see-through plastic wraps.

“I put them into sandwich bags, so they won’t get wet.”

“Ah, I was wondering...” Katherine said. “So that’s what you’ve been up to all day yesterday.”

“Good thinking, Trev. In case we land in the ocean or so,” Chryséis quipped and let the TPF slide into her jacket pocket.

“Right, if we lose one or this one here gets damaged, we still have the others as a reserve,” Katherine said.

Trevor carried on talking with a serious expression. “The top red button is for today’s time reference. We discussed that. We have to all press it at the same time - when we are ready to travel.”

“Sure thing. Now, the VICs - one virtual invisibility cape for each of us.” Chryséis opened the front pocket of her daypack and pulled out thin, black plastic hair bands. They had a tiny box on top and a deep-set button on the side. The VIC was probably the best thing.

Katherine and Chryséis had come up with the idea after Trevor’s strange time travel experience. One never knew what lay in wait. In principle, it had something to do with the bending of light waves. In case of an emergency, one pressed the button - and simply disappeared.

Trevor wanted to put his aliceband on this morning, but that would have been just weird. Imagine, a boy wearing an aliceband to the school outing! They had also decided to keep the VICs switched off inside the time portal. One never knew what might interfere with the frequency. The risk was too great.

“Oh flip.” The u-shaped plastic bands were entangled and Chryséis struggled to get them out of the pocket. Katherine looked worried. “Hurry up, Chris! This is taking forever.”

“Okay, okay.”

In the end, Katherine helped her untangle the alicebands. “All right then,” Chryséis said with triumph in her voice. They put on their VICs, careful not to touch the flat button on the side.

“Can we go now?” Chryséis asked all excited. She didn’t notice, how pale Katherine had become. ‘Time travel’ - the words echoed in Katherine’s mind. Her mouth felt so dry. She swallowed hard, but the fear didn’t want to go away. Now of all times she had to panic! Then, a completely useless question shot through her mind: Can you breathe prehistoric air just like that or is it dangerous?’

This whole experiment was insane. Dangerous even! Katherine swallowed again and fought the urge to run.

There was still time to cop out… no, it was too late. She couldn’t let her friends down now!

Trevor had already activated the big white button on the TPF and tried to find a good spot, pointing the TPF here and there. And sure enough, something began to shimmer by one of the grey rocks. Another curtain-thing. A portal to the space-time continuum!

“I knew it!” Trevor cried.

Chryséis stared mesmerised at the shimmering spot. A time warp, this had to be a time warp! For the first time in her life, she didn’t know what to say.

“All together. Now!” On Trevor’s signal, they pressed the red button through the plastic cover, locking in today’s time reference. Done. Step one completed.

“I’m going to activate now. Get ready.”

The girls grabbed each other’s hand and Trevor pushed the big white button a second time.