The Time Trousers of Professor Tempus: A Captain Space Hardcore Adventure

by Michael Ronson

  “Air duct!” shouted Delroy, pointing over to a square grate in the corner. We rushed it and Delroy kicked the thing handily off of its hinges and let the three civilians crowd into it first. The metal gave a warning groan on its hinges once more by the time that the soldier himself had squatted and crawled into the tight crawlspace. Flex went next, pausing for a moment to look back towards me. I stared at the door. Teeth had joined eyes as the metal wrenched apart to let in more horrors. There was no opposing the sheer force of those numbers. No plan, I thought, no reactor.

  “I can do this,” I muttered as I braced against the grate opening. “I did it before, I can do it again”

  I just needed to make a plan. One more plan against these unbeatable odds. One more impossible fight to save the day. Just another Tuesday. No sweat. I was just tired, was all. I had done this once already today. No shame in being a little rusty. The plan would come to me. Any second.

  “Gulp,” said Flex.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Start of a Case/ A Challenge for Space

  * * *

  What doesn’t kill us can, in some cases make us stronger. In most cases, however what does not kill us can still rip our legs off, shatter our spines, cause our thumbs to explode or infect us with a tropical disease. Any of these can and will lead to death.

  Frederick Vietsche

  A Practical Guide to Injury

  Ѻ

  The door nearly ripped off its hinges as the two men tore in.

  “Sir! Sir! I am in urgent need of a detective.”

  “As am I, sir!”

  Sherlton looked over at Humsworthy and myself with an air of punchable smugness that I knew I would not see on another face for several hundred years. He extended a hand and bade these two huffing gentlemen sit in two armchairs. He slowly closed the door, affected the bored manner of a supremely confident lawman and, leaning on the desk, told them grandly, “You have come to the right place.”

  “And” added the portly gent, “the fellow next door in flat B has his calendar full and you were nearest.”

  “Right across the stairwell, you were,” agreed his neighbour enthusiastically.

  I saw colour rise up past Sherlton’s starched white collar. He pushed away these last statements with a shrug. “Well, let us hear of these cases, then. Out with it. I abhor boredom and a lack of conundrums. Feed me puzzles- cases, quizzes, wordsearches, spot the differences.”

  “Me first, sir?” enquired the portlier of the two portly gentlemen.

  “Or shall I proceed?” asked the man who lacked quite so much portliness.

  Sherlton sighed dramatically and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It matters not. Say them at the same time and I shall unravel them all the same. Pray both spill your problems before me and I shall dazzle you both with my ability to settle them in one stroke. It is my professional experience that most seemingly unconnected cases invariably turn out to be linked in some way.”

  They shared a skeptical look with each other, but Sherlton threatened another theatrical sigh and thorough bridge-of-nose rubbing so they haltingly proceeded. The good doctor Humsworthy settled his paper down and took up an air of guarded curiosity at the two worried gentlemen and bade them sit in in two chairs reserved for clients. As they sat, the larger fellow removed his hat and worried it in his hands while the other rudely kept on his own bowler hat. Hardcolmes took up residence by the mantelpiece and started to distractedly fill his tobacco pipe. He invited Bowler Hat to begin with an imperious waft of his hand.

  “Sir, I think you may know me. I let out an apartment across the road from this very location. You may know my face as I wave across at you quite often in the night when you are practicing with the bassoon. Our windows are on the same level you see-”

  “Good,” Hardcolmes interrupted, and pointed to the other man. “Now him.” The hatless man looked askance at Bowler and Hardcolmes and then haltingly began.

  “A-and I run this neighbourhood’s small but thriving local cannon shop-” he said. Hardcolmes pointed back at Bowler Hat, prompting.

  “I come to you with a troubling suspicion over one of my tenants-”

  A point back to Hatless “And I trouble your doorstep on the matter of a theft.”

  Hardcolmes smiled to himself, immeasurably pleased to be able to prompt speech by a simple gesticulation. I wondered if he was even listening to them. He pointed back to Bowler Hat.

  “Well, I am much concerned with my new tenant who has locked himself away in the room over there. I suspect foul deeds. He is a strange gentleman, new to Londinium and queer in his habits. Sinister he is, sir.”

  “My shoppe has suffered a burgalarization that is most troubling, sir. I arrived this night to find the locks in pieces and a very valuable item stolen.”

  “-I do not idly gossip of my tenants. I saw his room once and it was plastered with pictures, schematics, architectural drawings of this building, a big stack of papers marked ‘assassination ploys’-”

  A point to Hatless. “And I have just this morning had one of my largest cannons stolen, along with seven cannonballs and a cask of gunpowder-”

  Bowler Hat: “The gentleman is peculiar in his habits. He has all manner of scientific apparatus, the likes of which I have never seen and one thing most worrying above all other things is that he was in possession of several pictures and etching of you, detective. Notes of your name and address littered his room also.”

  “The strange thing is that the tracks of the cannon lead away from the burglarized shop and not down towards the docks or the- may I say- more criminal parts of town. Nay, they lead toward the apartment building right across the street from you-”

  “-And this day my suspicions were inflamed when I found some tracks leading through the tenement and into his room. ‘Twere as if some large weapon had been dragged there.”

  Hardcolmes stroked his chin and looked baffled.

  I shot a glance at Humsworthy who was already wide eyed with fright. I followed his gaze toward the window of the lounge. I began to feel very exposed. I looked back to the consulting detective, who was still pointing between the two men, orchestrating his own story, his back to the window. Bowler Hat spun his tale under the encouragement of a fingering by Hardcolmes.

  “Just this past day his room- the one you can see right across the street, mind- has been filled with the sound of dragging around a heavy object. A smell akin to gunpowder fills the air. I have knocked on the door but the man refuses me entry. He shouted something about ‘final calibrations’-”

  Hatless; “Of course the cannon needs to be calibrated properly first, before firing, but that can be achieved quickly enough, assuming you have the right-”

  “-Instruments of all kinds, all over the room. It wouldn’t bother me so much if this fellow wasn’t always muttering about how he was going to-

  “-Kill someone. Oh it’s certainly powerful enough for that, even if it was set up in-”

  “-One of my rooms. And I need him out within the next-”

  “-Sixty seconds. Once the cannon’s primed it’s ready to fire in a minute, sir.”

  Humsworthy had moved stealthily over to one side of the large window and was looking out. The busy capital’s cobblestones were clearing of foot traffic as the night dwindled but it was not the streets that drew the good doctor’s eye. He was inspecting the tenement house that faced us. It seemed to loom out of the inky night. He gestured to me to focus on a specific window. In the gloom of the evening light and the dark of the room I fancied I could almost make out movements in the dark. I cast an eye at the great detective to see whether he had deduced any danger that might be coming. He was still indulging in his prompting of his clients.

  “-That’s the make of the cannon, if that’ll help you find this shifty-

  “-Shuttlebum, that was the name of my last tenant. Lord, I wish he had stayed instead of this blasted-”

  “-Ballshafter! That’s right, he even nicked the stick that puts t
he cannonball down the shaft! If I caught this thief I’d-

  “-Twist the knob violently! But the door’s locked tight. I’d kick the thing down but I’m old and don’t have the-”

  “-Balls. He’s got a stock of good explosive cannonballs. Cleared the shop out, that damn-”

  “Dick! Dick Spencer stays in the room next to him, He might have a clue about the man. Dick knows all about-”

  “-The long black shaft, that’s what it looks like. Hard to miss, is a cannon. When I find this thief I hope he gets hung-

  “-Like a horse, or maybe a mule. I swear he stamps around in that room like a farmyard animal.”

  Humsworthy pointed but I could already see. In the gloaming dark of the adjacent window I could start to make out the shapes as my eyes had adjusted to the low light. It was the shape of a man alright, and the machine he had set up at the window something distinctively cannon-esque, to my untrained and non-detective mind. The man seemed to reach for something, what looked like a lamp. A match sparked in the room and in that flare of yellow sulphurous light I saw it all.

  “Hardcolmes!” I called in unison with Humsworthy.

  The great detective looked irritated at the interruption.

  “Gentlemen, gentlemen. Please. These stories are an absolute jumble. It’s a mess of contradictory information, a maze of bizarre facts. Missing cannons, murderous tenants, men who mean me harm, rooms directly across the street from me? It beggars belief and buggers credulity. I’m the world’s keenest mind, not a miracle worker. Now, I’m not one to use the word ‘unsolveable’ lightly, gents, but put yourself in my shoes for a minute-”

  The match extinguished the light still remained. It came from the end of a fuse now. Above that fuse loomed the face of Professor Tempus, staring at me, smiling a pleasant greeting, his eyes twinkling with malice and cannon ownership. He squinted past me into the room and, frowning momentarily, shifted the barrel of the cannon slightly to the left, then slightly to the right. He nodded to himself and patted the huge metal tube and looked back up at me grinning.

  “Hardcolmes!” we shouted again, stepping back from the window.

  He frowned at us for a moment but continued.

  “Now, this case will take at least two fortnights to solve. I immediately suspect the involvement of the Masons and the Illuminati. The ‘track marks’ are clearly a ruse. I’ll have to start my investigations in Bermuda-”

  “Get down!” I yelled at him urgently taking his arm. Humsworthy was wedging himself between a chaise-longe and a wall and squatting down behind it for protection. Our two portly clients registered this alarm and rose.

  “Please, gentlemen, don’t be alarmed, I have an idea about the case!” he pleaded, shooting me an annoyed glance.

  The two clients looked around Hardcolmes and turned ghastly white at what they saw there. Tumbling one over the other they made for the door.

  “I think it goes all the way to the top!” he called after them, “To Queen Victoria herself!”

  He looked round at the two of us, exasperated, then curious. “That’s a fine job you’ve done; scaring away some customers. Now what’s all this business? Hiding under furniture and pointing toward the window, eh? Trying to tell me something? Well, let’s see if we can deduce the cause. Now, judging by the angle of your fingers and the morse code you’re blinking I’d say you were trying to tell me about-”

  It was about at that point that finally, mercifully Hardcolmes stopped speaking.

  This was mostly because the room exploded.

  ---=◈◆⬤◆??◆⬤◆◈=---

  No reactor. No reactor. No reactor.

  The words beat out a rhythm in my head to march the thudding of my own knees and elbows off the air duct’s flimsy metal interior. No. Reactor. How the devil was I meant to stop this holographic apocalypse now, now that they drew their power from the very wind and the suns?

  “And you’re absolutely sure we can’t?” I called over my shoulder again.

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we can’t blow up the wind and the sun.” Deloux said in a tone that I’m not sure I appreciated.

  “I’m getting pretty sick of people telling me that,” I growled.

  “Just keep crawling.” He nudged against my boots.

  I muttered darkly, but did as he suggested.

  “Mutter,” added Flex unhelpfully

  No reactor. No reactor. No reactor.

  Our group of survivors were crawling through the ducts of the Tremulon station in a jostling line, heads butting uncomfortably into posteriors like some kind of centipede made out of people. We had been doing this for longer than I would care to admit. In the dark bowels of the station we were crawling a conga that none of us had wished for, trying to find a way out, trying to form a plan of attack, trying not to break wind. I didn’t care for this tactical retreat. Oh, damn it all, I thought, this foul mood was nothing more than the thwarting of my plan. I had to lift myself out of this black mood if I was to be of any use to anyone, and I knew I had to be. I should have suspected Tempus’ interference from what I had seen aboard Bathby’s robot factory. He was always going to throw a proverbial wrench in the ointment, I should have expected this kind of meddling again.

  It was just that the original plan had seemed like the only option. No, no- it had been. The reactor was the only power source to this army and its destruction was a total victory secured through an enormous fireball- my favourite kind of victory. Now we were simply retreating from the armies of Rasputin with no plan of attack. Every room we entered was perforated in minutes by a thousand bony hands from which we could only flee.

  Ahead of me light spilled into the vent and I approached it cautiously. It was a grate that seemed to look down into another empty room. I stopped suddenly to inspect it and, after a brief collision and a procession of muffled apologies from behind me, I took a minute to observe that it was as empty as it seemed. No skeletons, no historical madmen, no time travelling villains. Silently and stealthily, I punched the grating through the duct and hefted myself into the room. Quietly, I freed my right shoe from the potted plant I had landed in and, with the stealth of a ghost’s whisper, untangled my other foot from the wastebasket. I surveyed the room.

  Computer terminals stood bleep-blorping serenely in the room like slumbering robots. This was a change from the last few holodecks, at least. Some kind of server room perhaps. Behind me the rest of the survivors plopped out of the grate with less subtlety and elegance than I, and we tentatively walked the room, scanning the place for exits and entrances and any traces of Hitler.

  We all stalked out to the perimeter of the room but it was Grace who made the first real noise, pulling out and tapping on a hardlight keyboard at one of the central terminals. She nodded to herself and poked tentatively..

  “Know where we are?” I ventured.

  “Bottom of Deck C.”

  “What is this place?”

  “One of the facility’s backup memory systems,” she said, running a hand over one humming machine affectionately. We all looked at each other, eyebrows raised, trying to gauge if that was good news or not.

  “Can you access the system from this computer?” I asked.

  “Not sure,” she said and laced her fingers together and cracked them, looking seriously down at the display. “I’d need ten minutes”

  It was a computer problem. Out of my realm of expertise, but I wasn't ready to let Grace proceed without my guidance and leadership yet. The La in LAPAW was there for my leadership skills after all. I knew what these pallid computer people needed to get them motivated- deadlines. I poured some gravitas on my voice and spoke to her gruffly.

  “You’ve got three,” I said finally.

  Three Minutes Later...

  “What have we got?” I demanded, pounding my fist against a computer screen.

  She looked up irritably at me for a second and stopped clacking away at the interface.

  “I’m sorry, what?”

  “What h
ave we got?” I demanded again, pounding my fist more assertively against a computer screen.

  “Got? Nothing! I said I’d need ten minutes! Did you think I was lying to you? Why would I? I’ll need another six or seven minutes still. I’m not even nearly finished”

  I looked sternly at her and cracked my knuckles. They’d be closing in, sealing off exits. No good.

  “You’ve got two,” I said firmly.

  Two Minutes and a Generous additional fifteen seconds later…

  “We in?” I demanded, pounding my fist urgently against a nearby screen.

  She jumped, as though she had been deep in concentration and work up until that point.

  “Ah! What? In? No. No, no, no. I said I’d need about seven minutes. Why do you keep bothering me and, wait, have you broken that screen? I was using that!”

  “Damnit, Grace, how long?!”

  “Longer and longer the more you keep yelling at me, to be quite honest.”

  Delroy looked up from his vigil at the lip of the security door.

  “Let her be,” he hissed over to me. “She’s doing her job, you do yours.”

  A few murmurs of assent went up from around the room. It was as though these people had never even heard of motivational tactics. I looked back at Grace, who had resumed work, as though the matter was now considered closed, even though I had said nothing with an air of finality while thumping my fist into something.