Uchronie

by Richardson, Ian

  ‘He’s out of fuel.’ said Doctor Mentor. ‘His engine has stopped, his controls won’t work and he’s headed straight for the Hindenburg.'

  ‘Oh My Goodness.’ gasped Lolly, as Nate plunged earthwards. ‘It seems that Nate and the Hindenburg may be inextricably linked by fate after all!’

  Final episode: The Last Drop.

  The Last Drop

  In which the curious crew of the Uchronie find their way into the future and, our hero, Nate arrives at an acceptable conclusion.

  As soon as the triplane’s engine stalled, I began to plunge earthwards, with increasing speed, in a relentless headlong dive.

  Suddenly I burst through the swirling mists and there, directly in front of me, was the Hindenburg.

  Recklessly, I pumped the pedals and hauled the steering wheel left and right, but the controls were as dead as the stalled, silent, engine.

  Nothing was working.

  The tiny red triplane was going to crash into the massive German airship and I was sure that I was about to breathe my last.

  My only hope was to jump for my life.

  I unhooked my leather safety straps, unscrewed the steering wheel and tried to stand up in the cockpit. The rushing wind kept knocking me back down as I tried to haul myself on to the top wing.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ‘Nate’s going to crash into the Hindenburg!’ cried Lolly, watching events unfold on the Uchronie’s tachyscreen. ‘We need to do something, daddy!’

  ‘How many souls are aboard?’ asked Commander DeBlanc, cutting the safety seals that protected a big red button.

  ‘She’s only half full.’ said Doctor Mentor. ‘Quick! Hit that scram switch.’

  ‘In the air she is as graceful and poised as a cloud.’ said DeBlanc, watching the Hindenburg’s ungainly bulk being hauled towards the mooring mast. ‘But once she gets near the earth she becomes rather more cumbersome and awkward... like a swan landing on a frozen lake.’

  ‘We need to recover our triplane.’ said Doctor Mentor, pointing at the red button with his good hand. ‘We can’t afford to lose it.’

  ‘Standby to run the C.R.E.D.I.T.S program.’ barked DeBlanc, slapping the red button. ‘The countdown has begun.’

  ‘Do hurry it up.’ said Lolly, anxiously. ‘Or Nate will be dead before his time.’

  ‘Action stations.’ shouted DeBlanc into the voice tube. ‘Is the steam on full reverse?’

  ‘Yes sir. Magnetic steam on full reverse.’ shouted Wayne, among the roar of pounding pistons.

  ‘Clear the forward area.’ ordered DeBlanc. ’Everybody down. Repossession is underway. We are about to punch back and end this anomaly.’

  Everyone squatted down.

  ‘This is it!’ said DeBlanc. ‘This will be a doomsday moment in History.’

  The image of the Hindenburg shimmered as purple sparks gathered around the Uchronie.

  ‘Temporal shift executed at 7:25 p.m.’ shouted Captain Wright, as they rematerialized between the Hindenburg and Nate’s tiny triplane.

  ‘No!’ cried Lolly. ‘Now he’s going to collide with us!’

  ‘Don’t concern yourself my dear.’ said DeBlanc, as the triplane ran into a haze of violet steam. ‘The steamchav’s will catch him as easily as a temporal ninja catches an arrow.’

  As he spoke the triplane stopped dead in the pale purple cloud and hung in mid air like an optical illusion. Several grappling hooks snaked down from the prow of the Uchronie and attached themselves to the plane.

  ‘Right’ said DeBlanc, as the steamchav’s swung the plane smoothly into the forward hatch. ‘That’s it, we’re finished. Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘What?!’ said Wayne, as the Uchronie dematerialized into the time streams high above Lakehurst. ‘No explosion? That’s not a very good ending!’

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  My next few seconds were a blur. Too late I realized that I was bailing out at the very moment that the Uchronie had recaptured their aircraft. As the triplane hit the cloud of heliotrope steam I was thrown high into the air and landed, with a thump, on top of the Hindenburg.

  Bouncing off the stretched fabric I began to slide down the side of the curved airship.

  Unable to find anything to hold on to, I feared that I would plunge all the way to the ground. For a split second I dared to hope that the Uchronie would return to save me but, as it disappeared into the swirling mists of time, I knew that I was clutching at straws.

  All of a sudden I slid into a ventilation shaft that reeked of hydrogen gas all the way down. With a thud, that knocked my remaining breath out of me, I hit a metal gangway that ran down the centre of the Hindenburg.

  In a daze, I opened my eyes.

  Yellow flames were roaring up through the ventilation shaft above me and there was a sickening crunch as the Hindenburg’s tail hit the ground. I could feel the blistering heat on my skin, even though hydrogen fires burn upwards due to the lightness of the gas.

  As the Hindenburg’s bow lifted, I slid down the metal gangway and collided with a red hot girder.

  Suddenly a water tank burst above me and soaked me to the skin. This cold shock snapped me back to me senses and put out the fire around me. I tried to stand up but the exploding Hindenburg’s forward section hit the ground and threw me through an open hatch.

  This time I landed outside, on the soft sand of the Lakehurst landing area.

  Somehow, I had fallen straight through the blazing airship with little more damage than a few bruises and soaking wet clothes. Instinctively I leapt to my feet and ran through the chaos of tangled metal and roaring flames.

  The huge fireball burnt out and, quickly recovering my composure, I raced back with the ground crew to help the injured and search for survivors.

  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  ‘The hour of Mercury is over.’ said DeBlanc, standing up in his control room. ‘And, as we predicted, the heat of the moment has returned the main time stream to normal.’

  ‘But how did the Hindenburg catch fire?’ asked Captain Wright, standing up and taking his place beside the commander. ‘Was it Nate? Was it us?’

  ‘Perhaps a last drop of burning fuel from his leaking petrol tank ignited the hydrogen.’ said DeBlanc. ‘Perhaps it was the St Elmo’s fire that formed around our magnetic steam. Perhaps a gust of wind… we’ll never know for sure. The fact is that hydrogen is flammable and, as such, turned the Hindenburg into a flying bomb. This disaster will bring an end to the age of airships; there has to be a safer way to fly.’

  ‘Where is Nate?’ asked Lolly, grabbing hold of Ginger‘s hand.

  ‘Nate has returned across time and space to where he belongs.’ said Commander DeBlanc.

  ‘But where exactly is that?’ asked Lolly.

  ‘Let’s look and see.’ said DeBlanc, zooming in on the burning wreckage of the Hindenburg.

  Amidst the chaos that was Lakehurst aerodrome, a lone figure in a brown leather flying jacket emerged from the fire and smoke that wreathed the stricken Hindenburg.

  ‘It’s Nate!’ cried Lolly. ‘He is a hero. Reincarnated, like a phoenix from the ashes.’

  ‘Nate has been returned to where we first found each other.’ said Doctor Mentor. ‘I wonder if breathing in Biffo’s mist has done him any harm.’

  ‘He shall continue, alongside the currents of time.’ said DeBlanc, as the Uchronie turned this way and that in the swirling sky. ‘His lot is to be an observer.’

  The Uchronie had passed the last few hours idling with her engines at half pressure as the Hindenburg disaster took its place in world history. But now, at DeBlanc’s signal, the bustle began again and the Uchronie came alive.

  ‘Wayne?’ enquired Commander DeBlanc, ‘Have your men got steam up?’

  'Sir, yes sir!' replied Wayne, jumping to attention.

  'Make up your furnaces and put on all steam.’ ordered DeBlanc.

  ‘Make steam.’ shouted Wayne. ‘MAKE STEAM!’

  Three hurrahs from the steamchavs
greeted this order and, some moments later, black smoke from the four giant funnels of the Uchronie mixed with the pall of smoke that hung over Lakehurst.

  The floors trembled and gilt framed mirrors shook as the Uchronie powered up, spiralling higher and higher into the ether.

  ‘What now?’ asked Lolly. ‘Are we ready for another adventure?’

  ‘We’re ready!’ said Ginger, displaying a far-fetched weapon with unlikely steam powered attachments. ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’

  ‘But, where are we going?’ asked Lolly.

  ‘Africa.’ said DeBlanc. ‘Our sojourn with Nate in Europe was merely a diversion.’

  ‘I feel that we treated Nate rather badly.’ said Lolly. ‘Always imagining the worst of him when he was actually capable of creating a growing good. He just needed a chance and the freedom to become all he imagined that he could be! We should have given him more space… more time.’

  ‘It’s all one space and all one time.’ said DeBlanc, ‘Our futures are unwritten… unless we confine ourselves to three dimensions.’

  ‘Or less.’ said Doctor Mentor, refitting his hand. ‘We need a resolution to end this confusion.’

  ‘So is this the end?’ asked the enormous Corporal Price, taking his place beside DeBlanc at the console. ‘Is there not going to be a big, final battle?’

  ‘Not unless time itself ends.’ said Doctor Mentor. ‘There will always be another ‘final’ battle to come.’

  ‘Always remember that it is you and nobody else that owns the time and the space that you inhabit.’ said DeBlanc. ‘You’re view of the world is unique.’

  ‘Nate didn’t really belong aboard the Uchronie.’ said Doctor Mentor. ‘He didn’t understand our ways and, as such, he was always going to be a passenger... an observer.’

  ‘I reckon ‘e were a good bloke.’ said Wayne, tossing his blank playing card high in the air and catching it. ‘I was tryin’ to teach ’im our card games an ’e were tryin’ to civilize me. I can’t stand that… someone tried that once before.’

  ‘I feel like I’ve tried that once before.’ I muttered to myself as I pulled at the door handle of the crew waiting room. The flickering flames of the still burning Hindenburg were reflected in the polished window.

  Insidethe waiting room there was a comfortable looking seat beside the fireplace and, for a moment, I thought that I saw someone asleep in the corner.

  But the room was empty.

  I sighed and put my blackened fingers against the glass. I could smell carnations and I could hear Lolly’s words... ‘Mauve carnations, which herald fantastic dreams…’

  There was a young girl handing out flowers at the entrance to the terminal.

  It all felt rather familiar.

  ‘We have all had troubles today.’ she said, putting a posy of mauve carnations in my top pocket. ’But who has really changed and who was really to blame?’

  I turned and looked up into the smoke filled sky. Somewhere up there, high above my world, the Uchronie would be powering up.

  Then, in an instant, I realized that the flower girl was Lolly.

  I turned back, but she had gone.

  ‘I have had my vision.’ I said, picking up my back pack and walking down the corridor.

  At the end I wondered whether I should turn right or left.

  I turned left and walked off across the concrete runways into the setting sun.

  Behind me, in the stained sky over Lakehurst, the Uchronie was being borne away by the currents and tides of time and she soon became lost among the shadows and shades.

  ‘You’re right. Nate wasn’t really one of us.’ said DeBlanc, unable to see Doctor Mentor or his crew for the clouds of steam that wreathed his console. ‘We few, we happy few.’

  ‘He did stand beside us and I shall call him brother for that.’ said Lolly dabbing water from her fathers monocle. ‘I will wear a mauve carnation to remind myself of him.’

  ‘The days he spent with us shall be remembered.’ said Ginger. ‘And others shall feel deprived that they were not with us when Nate stood side by side with us on St Arwar's day!’

  ‘Where are we goin’ again?’ asked Wayne.

  ‘Africa !’ said DeBlanc. ‘We were supposed to be there seven days ago. There is a new adventure waiting there for us.’

  However that is another story, to be told at another time and in another space! For now, you, dear reader, have reached the end of The Uchronie.