‘They’re trying to find a way in,’ said Foster.
‘Can’t we open the displacement window right now?’
He looked anxiously across the floor at the row of LEDs on the time machine, eleven of themblinking together… awaiting a twelfth to turn green.
‘Not yet… we open it too soon and we could blow this one chance.’
Scratching. He could hear a scratching… scraping noise.
Maddy held her breath, listening to the soft noise slowly growing louder, more intense.‘What’re they doing?’
‘I don’t know.’
But he did.
They’re probing the walls for a weak area. Perhaps they’vealready found some loose bricks and they’re now scraping out the crumbling mortarbetween them.
He looked again at the LEDs, willing that last one to flicker over to green.
They both heard the clatter of a brick falling to the ground outside. ‘Oh Godno!’ Maddy hissed. ‘They’re coming through the walls!’
Foster reached for the shotgun on the table. Maddy snapped on a torch and studied the wallsfor a sign of their handiwork. Her breath rattled and fluttered noisily in the quietstillness.
‘I… I don’t want to go like… like S-Sal.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, panning a second torch along the base of the archwalls, ‘I won’t let them take us. I promise you that.’
His beam passed over a small mound of dry grey powder on the floor.
‘There!’
She moved her beam over to the pale dust, then worked it up the wall until she glimpsed ahairline crack of daylight and a solitary brick shuffling in the wall, dislodging morecrumbling mortar on to the ground.
‘Oh my God… you see that?’
‘Yes,’ Foster replied. Getting to his feet and stepping across the floor towardsthe front wall, he aimed his gun at the loose brick. The brick fidgeted again and thenshuffled inward, falling on to the floor with a heavy thud. Foster glimpsed one of theboiled-fish eyes through the hole left behind… and fired.
They heard a high-pitched scream and anguished cries of rage outside. The scratchingintensified, now coming from several other places along the wall.
‘Oh God, Foster!.. It’s everywhere! It’s — ’
There was a bang and the sound of something heavy clattering on to the floor in the backroom.
‘Jesus!’ snapped Foster. ‘They’re in!’ He ran across the floorand quickly rammed home a locking bolt on the sliding door.
‘What?’
‘They were distracting us at the front, meanwhile working on the brick walls at theback.’ His eyes locked on hers. ‘They’re in the back room!’
There was a heavy thud against the sliding door, leaving a bulge in the thin metal sheeting.The hinges anchored to the old brick wall rattled loosely and rust-coloured brick dustcascaded down.
Maddy screamed.
Another heavy thud left another jagged dent.
‘This door isn’t going to take too much more of that,’ shouted Foster.
‘Oh God, no! Foster! I don’t want to die like this!’
He looked again at the charge display, cursing that last red LED.
Please change colour!
‘W-what… what if we open the window now? Foster? Can we?’
He grimaced as the door rattled again from another blow and more brick dust settled on hishead and shoulders. Through the thin metal door he could hear them, whimpering, crying andsnarling… frustrated by this last obstacle.
‘Foster? Now! Open the window now!’
‘OK… it’s got to be nearly there. Near enough.’
He handed her the gun and shifted to one side so that she could replace his weight againstthe door.
‘Hold this as long as you can. If they break through, you’ve got nine shots left.Do you understand?’
She nodded. ‘I understand… seven for t-them… a-and — ’
‘That’s right.’ He smiled grimly. ‘Two for us.’
Another heavy thud. The top hinge rattled loose from the brick wall, showering Maddy withgrit and dust.
Foster grasped her hand tightly and squeezed, then he scrambled across the floor towards thecomputer terminals, quickly opening up the interface dialogue box with the time machine andtapping in the co-ordinates on the keyboard.
The door rattled from another heavy blow and the second hinge, halfway down the door, lurchedoff the wall, showering her again.
‘Foster! Hurry! HURRY!’
He scanned the numbers he’d typed, checking them against Liam’suntidily scrawled figures.
God help us if I’ve got this wrong.
He hit ENTER on the keyboard.
CHAPTER 83
1957, New York
Liam fiddled with the stiff starchy collar around his neck, irritated by thestitching of the oak leaves and the death’s-head insignia. He undid the top button.
‘How much longer now?’
Bob was standing in the middle of the floor, surrounded by laundry lines draped with linensheets. His eyes blinked.
‘Scheduled window imminent. Precisely fifty-seven seconds from now.’
Liam realized his stomach was churning with nervous anticipation. In less than a minute theywere going to know whether Maddy had remembered the museum’s guest book. In less than aminute Liam would know whether he was going to be stuck in the past forever.
‘You see anything?’
‘Negative. No sign of density probing yet.’ And, of course, if the window didn’t arrive, then Bob was due to self-terminate shortly,leaving Liam all alone. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to cope with that,wondering when the men in dark uniforms were going to round him up and put him back in one ofthose camps. Or, worse, execute him by firing squad for killing their soldiers, stealing thecar, stealing the uniforms.
‘Ten seconds,’ said Bob.
Come on, Maddy… please remember the museum guest book.
He stood up, ducking under a laundry line to join Bob in the middle of thefloor.
‘So this is it, Bob… cross your fingers.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s meant to be lucky.’
‘Why?’
‘It just is… It’s… oh, forget it.’
‘Window due in six seconds… five… four…’
Liam clenched his chattering teeth, his fingers crossed tightly round each other for goodluck, knuckles bulging beneath his pale skin. ‘Come on… come on,’ hewhispered.
‘… three… two…’
Here we go.
‘… one…’
Nothing.
Liam looked around them, snatching the linen sheets to one side in case they hid theshimmering outline of the displacement window. ‘Where is it?’
Bob looked at him. ‘There is no window.’
‘What? You sure?’
‘I would detect tachyon particles in the vicinity if there was one.’
The nervous energy that had Liam trembling moments ago drained out of him like water from anemptying bath tub. His legs felt wobbly and he found a wooden stool to slump down on to.
So that’s it, then.
He looked up at the support unit, standing motionless, looking back down at him with a calmexpressionless face.
‘So how much time do you have left before you have to terminate?’
Bob’s brow flickered for a moment. Liam thought he almost detectedsadness in that expression… almost. ‘I have fifty-six minutes left on my missionclock.’
Fifty-six minutes left to live. Liam wondered what a person could do with fifty-six minutes.Not a lot. Time for a cup of tea and some cakes. A bath and a shave maybe.
‘I’m really sorry, Bob,’ he said quietly. ‘I think I was getting toquite like you, you know.’
Bob’s stern face seemed to shift, soften. Liam was certain that behind the flesh andbone, at some level, the unit was experiencing something beyond simple binary numbers andlogical functions.
‘I am…’ His deep voice searched for unfamiliar words. ‘I… amsorry too… Liam O’Connor.’