***********
On the other side of the wall, the energy bolt had also blasted a jagged hole in the main computer of the wormhole generator, and badly damaged it. The whine of the machine was now high pitched, and it resembled the noise made by an angry, and fabled, Globian dragon; it terrified the two scientists within the laboratory and even scared the hell out of the four Globian tourists. The two police officers heard nothing for a moment, one being temporarily stunned, the other being in too much pain. However, they quickly recovered, and they were now looking to shoot all four of the Globian troopers, until they too finally heard the whining noise, for its volume had grown as each second had passed.
The angry whining machine now sounded more like a flock of angry Globian dragons; and it was completely out of control. Botox had been thrown from his chair by the blast, to end up sprawled against one of the computers, however, he quickly regained his feet and rushed over to the controls to attempt to turn the wormhole generating machine off, only to find that the generator was stuck on full power, its inner workings fused together. Botox went to the electrical mains control unit to shut down the electrical supply; however, he found that it was sparking madly, for it too had been fused, it was now a solid mass, the sudden increase in demand had caused the disaster, so Botox left it well alone.
The massive increase in power made this end of the wormhole tear itself away from its normal fixed position, which was at the far end of the large laboratory building, it smashed through the laboratory wall, and it plopped down ten miles away, right on top of a nuclear fusion reactor. It soon demolished the wall of this building as well, and it then connected itself up to a new power source, the nuclear fusion reactor. With such a massive amount of energy to call upon this end of the wormhole somehow split into two. One end fed on the power while its sibling began to dance around the nearby countryside, picking up whatever it rested upon and sending it hundreds of light years away, and not to the fixed exit point on the target planet. For the sudden and massive surge in power had caused the wormhole to rip itself loose from its programmed exit location as well, and it had sent it careering through space to touch down on various other points in space, including a blue and white planet in a far off planetary system.
The men operating the nuclear reactor ran for their lives as they envisaged a very large nuclear explosion, little knowing that the wormhole was consuming all of the reactor`s power, and was asking for more, for the wormhole was now thirty feet across, and growing fast.
In the institute building, after thirty minutes of repairs, Grimly and Botox found that they could only operate the reverse button, but to press this big red button would make the wormhole operate from the other end instead of from Calamity, and this would allow objects to travel to Calamity. To press this button would be a very big mistake, seeing as how the machine was operating at full power, for there was no knowing just what would be ripped away from wherever it currently was, to plunge down upon the planet of Calamity. As Grimly considered the problem a large malignant fire bug swooped down at him and buzzed persistently around his head. Grimly did not like malignant fire bugs, in fact they terrified him because one had stung him once, and he had been confined to bed for a week before finally getting over it. Grimly attempted to swat it with a rolled up science journal, but each time he missed, but then the bug settled on the computer console. Grimly was terribly afraid that it would bite him if he did not kill the terrible bug soon, so he brought his now rolled up science journal down upon it, hard and fast, and finally squashed it, right on top of the large red button. Grimly almost fainted when he realised what he had done, and he was so angry with himself that he beat the dead fire bug repeatedly, while screaming out his woes. He was even angrier when the button caught fire and small explosions began to emanate from the console, for now they would not be able to reverse the procedure. He felt like screaming at the gods for their treatment of him, for there was no way that any sort of repair could be carried out, not now, this would only be possible after they had found a way to turn off wormhole-generating machine.
Another large machine within the laboratory now sprang to life; it scanned the point in the laboratory where the wormhole was supposed to be; when it could not locate the wormhole there, it scanned the world outside of the laboratory. It finally found the wayward rampaging wormhole and linked up to it remotely, it then sent a deadly stream of Gama radiation in a directed beam which wrapped itself around the outward travelling wormhole, the beam then travelled to the other end of the wormhole. When it reached the far end it slammed the wayward wormhole into reverse, moments later the wormhole computer sprang to life, and it gave a fearful Grimly some new data.
“The wormhole has been successfully reversed; incoming travellers will soon be arriving.”
Grimly heard the announcement and shook with fear, he then looked down at the big red button that was covered in quashed bug, and he went very pale, and felt very faint.
“Oh no Botox, if anyone or anything is sucked in to the wormhole, they or it will be brought to the planet Calamity, and the exit point is now hundreds of feet above the planet, and the lord only knows where on Calamity the exit will be when whatever is picked up finally arrives.” Grimly wailed in despair before finally coming up with an idea.
“Botox, phone the engineers at the reactor building, tell them we need help in turning off the power supply.” Grimly ordered. Which Botox did, and five minutes later four engineers from the nuclear reactor rushed in to the laboratory, they had finally worked out how to shut down their reactor, but they needed the wormhole shut off one micro second beforehand.
“Professor Grimly, we need to turn off your wormhole generator using this remote control, it will then shut down our reactor, and then all will end well for Calamity.” Doctor Watsonia said breathlessly.
“But Doctor Watsonia, we cannot shut it down, the controls are fused.” Grimly exclaimed in a wild panicky voice.
“Do not worry professor, we will fix an electronic power governor to your main power supply, it will activate when I push the button on the remote control. It will turn off the power to your laboratory and stop the stream of commands sent by your computers to the wormhole. Then, one micro second later, it will shut down our reactor.” Watsonia explained calmly, although when he said this, he did have his fingers crossed behind his back.
Thirty minutes dragged by for Grimly and Botox, watching nervously while Watsonia and his team of engineers connected their impressive looking machine to the incoming, and very live, electrical mains supply, but finally they was done. Doctor Watsonia then stood up and addressed the people within the laboratory.
“Right, I am ready, here goes.” With that, he pressed the remote control device, and less than a second later the whining generator turned off.
Outside the laboratory, and oblivious to the dangers of an out of control wormhole and a defective nuclear reactor, the four Globians, who were now under arrest, were arguing about the shot. “I think that the Scindle fly noticed your shot, so that is five credits that you owe me, Largbyt.” Lowbug said triumphantly.
“Sorry Lowbug, but the Scindle fly did not notice anything; the blast killed him before he even knew that I had shot him. It is you that owe me five credits.” Largbyt crowed.
Three Journeys of the Scary Kind Page 8