So it was that two days later the four time travellers assembled their gear in John’s transport, Elke had, with the vidbox’s help, taught the sisters the rudiments of English, the three women had been on a shopping expedition, there were things John had not bought such as underwear and they now each had a shoulder bag for their belongings. John had armed himself with a small pulse gun, Elke found a decent bow in a sports shop, she was at least competent with that, the sisters still had their own weapons. Other than weapons, clothing was the bulk of the rest; John had his terminal but that about wrapped things up.

John headed his vehicle north into the hills which at one time and plane Streines was located in. Even now there were still places where few people ventured, it was to one such area they were headed. The hills were quiet and those aboard the vehicle each felt trepidation of the moves to come. Elke set the co-ordinates; the others prepared themselves as best they could, then light intense as the sun, then an equal amount of darkness. Their surroundings appeared almost unchanged. They had jumped but twenty years, would it be enough or was this the first of many such jumps? The now veteran vehicle rolled down the road out of the hills once more, they needed to be closer to a time unit to tap into its control circuits.

They eventually parked up on a lane near the city of Derby, which in this time sported its own time centre attached to the university. John set to with his terminal; the others ate from their meagre supplies while he tinkered with the keys. When he put it down again his news was not only not good, it was worse than they thought possible.

“The good news is that the mobile unit is accurate, but that’s the only good news. First the time units here are not much advanced from 2013, worse than that though, I don’t know how or why, but the authorities know about us, there is an arrest warrant out for us.”

As John had used English, Elke tried to clarify matters for the others, on hearing confirmation of the last part their faces dropped.

John went on “We’ll jump again, then we must dump the car, it’s too obvious to keep using.”

They organised themselves, John re-stowed the terminal, Elke set the next set of agreed co-ordinates, but John suggested they go two steps to 2110. Elke hit the button once more. It was dark when they materialised, the dial showed they were on target time wise. John gunned the engine and headed into the sprawl that was Derby in 2110. Not much traffic was moving, even so their museum piece would soon attract attention, so it was with relief that they turned into a quiet precinct where much to John’s delight one of the ground effect cars that served in this time was parked.

The low, sleek machine was without wheels being effectively a hovercraft, and apparently without doors. The Fokker 21 however was a user-friendly machine, at least for the new arrivals, Cherryh inadvertently releasing the door catch as she ran her hand along the bodywork. The vehicle opened like a huge clam, the motor started its warm up, the ‘time bandits’ bundled their gear inside and followed themselves. This time with Elke at the controls they left the precinct and quickly made their way toward the express route to put some space between them and the abandoned vehicle. As they drove along John played on his terminal keys and with a flourish let out a sound of success.
 
“Ta dar!”
“What?” Cherryh asked.
“I’ve managed to bypass the tracking device on this car, the police won’t be able to home in on us so quickly now.”
“Well that’s one thing off my mind,” Elke put in, “what about the other?”
“I’m working on it, but we need to be nearer to a time unit, there’s one in Nottingham, that’s not too far.”
“Left here then” M’lenie had spotted the unfamiliar name, her knowledge stretched to a basic concept of letters and sound related to them, something people born to the language never get to grips with. They turned up onto the other road and headed east across the low hills of south Derbyshire, even now still a political region. They crossed other routes, local roads mostly but then the busy even at this hour Route 1, which ran from up in Scotland to end in Athens.

The University campus hove into view, now they just had to get in, find the right building and avoid detection!

Maddy Bell © 1998, 2004