Time Ship (Book One): A Time Travel Romantic Adventure: The ideal Beach Book for reading on Holiday!

by IAN C. P. IRVINE

  The Rumble Seat was just inside the door on the right hand side. When they visited, it was the only seat free in the whole house: using her charm and incredible smile, Kate had persuaded the manager to let them both sit there, squeezed tightly together. Derek had not objected.

  "Over there," he could remember Kate pointing to another booth beside the window a few booths away, "...Is where JFK proposed to Jacqueline Bouvier and asked her to become the future wife of the 35th President of the United States!"

  Derek had watched her as she spoke, noticing the twinkle in her eye, the freckles on her cheeks, and the way she raised one eyebrow before she laughed.

  Only hours after he had met her for the first time, he put his hand on her thigh under the table, and kissed her gently on the cheek. She had stopped speaking, turned towards him, kissed him gently on his lips, and put her hand over his on her leg.

  That night he had walked her back to her hotel room, and forgotten to leave. They had made love all night long, sleeping only briefly. Derek had an early morning flight, and had to rush away just after six o'clock to make it back to his hotel, collect his stuff and get out to the airport in time.

  Unfortunately, he had made the flight. He had spent the next ten years wondering what would have happened, and how different life might have been if he had not made it and if he had been forced to spend another day in Washington, with Kate.

  They were living on different sides of America, he in California, and she on the East Coast.

  For six months they wrote to each other every week. Twice Derek flew to see her in Pennsylvania. It was whilst visiting her for the second time that Derek found out that Kate was Jewish. To him this was not a problem, and it did not affect the way he felt for her, but when Kate had told him this, she was sad.

  From then on their relationship had gone downhill. Not because he loved her less, and also, Derek believed, not because her feelings for him had changed either. But in her last letter to him that year, she had explained that her parents, whom she loved with all her heart, were putting tremendous pressure on her to marry a 'good Jewish man'. Although she had been rebelling for most of her life, she knew that her parents were probably correct, and felt she had no choice but to stop seeing Derek. They had to find new lives without each other: "This has been a wonderful, wonderful dream, but now I have to wake up, and live the life that God and my family expect of me."

  The next three months had been the worst in Derek's life. His heart had been broken. He tried to contact Kate, but couldn't. She had left Pennsylvania.

  Years later, he had managed to track her down on LinkedIn. Her pictures showed that she was still as beautiful as ever, even more so, but the name beside her photograph and on her profile said Kate Schwartz, not Cohen, as it used to be. She had been married for a year, to a stockbroker from New York.

  She was smiling in her photograph.

  Six months later, out of the blue, he had received a connection request from Kate, stating:- 'We've done business together', citing her time at Penn State for when they had met.

  He had accepted the request, and she had mailed him a single sentence: "Please can we meet?"

  They arranged to meet back in Washington, at Martin's in Georgetown. It was her idea. Perhaps she was hoping to rekindle memories from the past, or maybe it was innocent, and just because she liked the restaurant.

  Derek thought it was the former.

  They met, they hugged, they talked, and later that evening Derek had walked her back to her hotel room. And forgotten to leave.

  Kate was desperately unhappy. She had married because she thought she was in love. Joshua was a good, kind man. A good Jewish man from a good family. And when they had met, Kate was actively looking for a good Jewish man from a good family. When she had eventually taken him to meet her parents, they had both loved him.

  It was only after they were married that she realised that she had been swept away with the idea of the romance, rather than the romance itself.

  And yet, she could not leave him. To do so would be to break her parents' hearts, and it would probably kill them. And Joshua was a good man! He provided security and warmth. If she left him, it would destroy him, and he did not deserve it. He had given her everything... yet sadly, in spite of how 'good' he was, the spark that had existed with Derek was sadly absent from her relationship with Joshua.

  She was stifled, suffocating... and bored. But she couldn't bring herself to leave him. Surely this must be her fault? If only she could change, become a better wife...

  Over the next two years, Derek and Kate had met several times: at conferences, on work-related business trips, and several times for weekends when Joshua was out of the country visiting business clients.

  Whenever they met, they did their best to forget Kate's other life, and lived only for the moment, having fun, eating and drinking in romantic restaurants, and making love for hours on end. Until the time came to go home. Back to the real world.

  Then one day, Kate said she could not do it anymore. The guilt was too much. She could no longer go behind Joshua's back anymore.

  She ended it.

  Kate joined NOAA and found new sources of excitement, and Joshua moved with her, opening up his own business near NOAA headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland, so that Kate could be happy and close to her new job. He was a good man.

  For a few years, Kate and Derek never spoke, until late last week, when Derek had started to finalize preparations for the project.

  Whether or not it was fate, destiny, or pure coincidence, their lives had intersected again: Kate Schwartz was flying one of the Stormchasers that would look for Derek's Hunraken Vortex.

  And because of him, she was now missing, dead or possibly transported trough time and space to only God himself knew where.

  Flight 5742 touched down safely, the plane bumping gently onto the runway as the pilot conducted a flawless landing.

  It was then that Derek realised the hopelessness of it all: if Kate's airplane had flown through a Hunraken Vortex and had been transported back through time to before the twentieth century, how would they land the airplane without a runway?

  They couldn't.

  Chapter 17

  Blue Emerald Bay Resort

  Puerto Rico

  The first of the two boats was just arriving back at the shore when Silver got to the beach.

  As the second wave of men poured out onto the sand, Silver ran down to the boat and sent it straight back to Sea Dancer, telling them to bring back as many empty barrels as possible to transport, water, food and grog!

  The men had already started emptying the stores they had found in the first building on the beach, and they were making good progress in piling it up on the sand near the water's edge. They now started to load the first boat.

  James Silver was scared. He had felt uneasy about coming ashore even before he had left the Sea Dancer, and now already one of his men had been killed by the devil's magic.

  As soon as they had what they needed and were gone from this place, the better!

  Just then, one of the men came running up to Silver, gesticulating wildly at something towards the wooden hut on the beach.

  "Fresh water!" he shouted. "I've found a fresh water spring! We will soon have all the water we need!"

  Silver followed the man back to the side of the hut, where he showed the quartermaster a metal tube coming out of the ground with a cross on the top: when you spun the cross around, water would start to shoot out of the tube, pouring onto the ground below.

  Silver stuck his head underneath the hole from where the water poured forth, and drank the water, gulping it down. It was sweet and fresh and deliciously cold.

  Filling his hat with water, he poured it over his head and face, washing away months of dirt and grime.

  Feeling immediately refreshed, he clapped the sailor on the back and told him to fill as many barrels with this water as he could. Silver was relieved not to have to go back to the lagoon where
the body of Mr Wright still lay.

  By this time the men from the second boat were ready, and the full complement of men were now waiting for him under the trees.

  Silver could see the sky beginning to lighten on the horizon, and he knew the sun would soon be rising. They would have to make haste.

  Hurrying over to the trees, he signaled for the men to divide up into three groups, appointing two other leaders from the men, and instructing them to be back within the hour at the latest.

  "Follow me now, until I give the signal to separate. And then grab only what you can, and do not engage the locals. They are devils!"

  Silver set off through the trees, emerging beside the lagoon. Sprinting around it along the path, he quickly passed Mr Wright's body. The others followed.

  The path led past two other curved lagoons, surrounded by the strange, low-lying beds. As they ran along, it struck Silver as odd that there were so many beds, yet no one was sleeping on any of them.

  The path led back into some more trees, and then emerged in front of a set of buildings, the like of which he had never seen before.

  The buildings were three levels high, and built with beautiful workmanship. Silver could not make out if they were constructed of stone or wood, their appearance being smooth. Even though the sun had not yet risen, the dark of the night was cast away by more fire-sticks around the buildings, whose light illuminated them and showed that they had all been painted a light yellow.

  Wooden balconies were built into the walls, and empty seats and a table were positioned on several of the balconies that he could see.

  Brightly colored clothes and small, skimpy articles of clothing hung on pieces of rope that were stretched out across some of the balconies.

  But what struck Silver most were the big portholes that were spaced out regularly along the walls and set into the walls themselves: large pieces of glass covered the holes in the walls, the glass flat and transparent - and HUGE! He had never seen so much flat, clear glass in his life.

  As the pirates ran out from the trees onto a patch of beautiful grass, just in front of a row of these buildings, Silver gestured to the men, and the three groups split up. Each of the groups headed in different directions, leaving behind them a few good men to protect the path and their escape route back down to the beach.

  Silver contemplated smashing one of the huge windows and trying to climb into the room beyond to explore the building and see if there was food there.

  He and his men ran over to one of the buildings, and Silver tentatively reached out and touched one of the flat, smooth, yellow walls. He pointed at one of his men, indicating that he should kneel on the ground, and then Silver stepped up onto his back, looking in through of one of the windows. On the inside, a piece of hanging cloth obscured much of the view, leaving only a small gap through which he could see a large room and a bed.

  Silver's eyes opened wide.

  On the bed, a man was making love to a woman. Silver gawked, pressing his face closer to the glass trying to get a better look.

  Beneath him the pirate groaned as Silver pushed the heels of his boot deeper into his back. The pirate swore loudly.

  Inside the bedroom, the woman looked up from her nuptial activities, saw the face at the window and screamed.

  Silver fell backwards off the pirate beneath, landing awkwardly on the ground and rolling over, before picking himself up and running with his men around the side of the building and deeper into the devil's lair.

  They ran along another path lined with ornamental shrubs, palm trees and fire-sticks, past more beautiful houses and another lagoon full of water.

  A man was coming towards them across the grass. He was dressed in black in tight figure hugging breeches and a tunic. As they ran down the path towards him, the man started waving at them, obviously scared by the sight of so many pirates running towards him.

  "Who are you?" he shouted at the top of his voice. "Are you guests here at the Resort?"

  As they came closer, the man pulled out a small black box from his breeches, lifted it close to his mouth and started speaking at it.

  Silver was only a few feet away when he heard the man say something about 'Intruders' and 'Terrorist Attack'. Then suddenly, there was a loud cackle and a voice spoke back to the man in English.

  The sound of the voice emerging from the little black box in the man's hand startled the pirates, and some of the men beside Silver slowed down. Silver sped on, the man now only a few feet in front.

  As he drew closer, he raised his cutlass above his head, and in a single, powerful motion, he swung it downwards, hitting the man across the jaw with the metal basket that surrounded his hand, instantly knocking him unconscious. The man fell heavily to the ground.

  Without stopping, or faltering, the men ran on.

  Suddenly a tremendous smell of food filled the air. Silver stopped running, and sniffed the air. The other men ran up behind him, sniffing the air too.

  Quickly Silver looked around him. Seeing a man walking away from him through a door about a hundred yards ahead, he followed after him, the open door being the obvious source of the smell.

  Eighteen pirates followed after him, pouring inside the building, their mouth's watering at the delicious aroma of food wafting through the air.

  They entered into a large darkened building, a spacious hall filled with empty tables and chairs. Large windows filled with the biggest pieces of glass that the men had ever seen surrounded the hall, with a view of the open sea and the bay on the other side.

  Outside the sun was just beginning to rise, a beautiful dawn heralding a magnificent day ahead. The view of the bay and the sea beyond was stunning. The pirates had never seen the like of such a building before.

  There could only be one explanation. This was the palace of a Spanish King!

  There was a sound behind them and the men turned around to see a man with dark black skin, carrying a tray of goblets filled with an orange colored liquid. He looked up at the pirates in surprise when he saw them, and then walked into the middle of the hall, put the tray down on a table, said something to them that nobody understood, and then walked back out of the hall through the door he had just come from.

  On the right of the door through which the pirates had entered, there were what looked like several shops, their wares on display and open for anyone to help themselves to! The men streamed towards them. There were many different displays of food, some in colored boxes, some lying displayed on flat surfaces, with ice and green leaves surrounding them. There were also many different types of fruit, some of which Silver recognised, others which he did not. The smell of fresh bread filled the air, and Silver saw one display offering nothing else than what looked like thirty or forty different types of bread.

  Another display showed a banquet of meats, and eggs, and other things he simply did not recognise.

  Bottles of water and colored liquids lined one of the walls. There was a silver metal barrel on a table, and when he turned the lever that protruded from it, expecting beer or grog, boiling water poured out of it, the water splashing onto his hand, scalding him and making him jump back with shock.

  The men had never seen a banquet like this before. Slowly they edged forward until at last Silver started to pick up pieces of meat and eat them, the mission temporarily forgotten and hunger and greed getting the better of him.

  A second later the other men followed his example, the band of smelly, dirty pirates descending upon the King's feast and devouring it as if it was the first time they had seen food in years.

  Suddenly there was a loud shout, and a man dressed in a white suit with a tall white hat emerged from the door through which the previous man had disappeared.

  "Gentleman," he shouted. "Are you members of the hotel? If not, stop! Immediately. Breakfast is only for hotel guests, and we are not open for service until 6.30 a.m.!"

  Silver looked across at the man, his mouth stuffed with meats and eggs, and a strange looking fruit
in his free hand. Without further thought Silver threw the fruit at the man. The man stepped aside, and the fruit missed. A guffaw of laughter went up from the men.

  The man raised his right hand, stepped over to the wall behind him, and pushed something on the wall.

  Instantly the hall was filled with the light of a thousand suns, the light so intense and bright that the laughing pirates dropped the food in their hands, bent and cowered on the floor and lifted their hands above their faces to shield themselves from the bright fires which burnt down on them from the roof above.

  Silver immediately fell to the floor, and crawled under one of the nearby tables, and he quickly shouted to his men to do the same. They immediately followed his command.

  "What devilry is this?" Silver shouted loudly, his mind flooded with fear.

  The man who had summoned the fires from hell, walked towards Silver. He was laughing. He was laughing at him and his men!

  Silver slowly stuck his head out from under the table, pulling his pistol free from his belt and pointing it at the man in white.

  "Devil, I command you. Extinguish your flames of fire immediately, lest I blow your head off with my trusty pistol. Do it now!"

  The man in the white suit turned towards Silver and knelt down, looking for the source of the voice. When he saw the barrel of the pistol pointed directly at him, he drew back, stood up, turned and ran.

  No doubt to summon his King and warn him of the pirate's attack.

  Silver knew he had to do something, but as he scuttled out from under the table he looked up at the fires burning from the roof covering their heads, and for a second he was blinded by their brightness. He whimpered in fear and pain, and hurried back under the table, his face buried in his hands.