He moved toward the steel door and keyed in a code, then leaned forward so the machine could do a retinal scan. The door slid open, and she followed him into the cave.
It was cooler inside, and she wiped the sweat from her forehead. The ceilings were high, with a small hole right overhead that allowed light to enter. The ground was darkgolden sand and the time machine stood in the center of the cave. Smooth, silver, broad at the base and tapering to a point at the top, it looked like a rocket. And it was too big to have come through either the door they’d entered by or the hole in the roof.
As with the first time she had been here, she felt drawn toward the machine. And without conscious thought, she shuffled forward until she was standing beside the structure.
The panel on the side still showed the countdown that had started when she had touched the machine that first time. Back then, they hadn’t known what it was counting down to. Now she had to presume it was to the cataclysm.
Something occurred to her. “Has the bomb got a timer?”
Christa answered. “Yes. And it’s got the same countdown.”
“That’s not good. Have you tried to stop it?”
“No. We didn’t like to interfere until we knew more. We didn’t want to set it off accidentally.”
“Good decision.”
She glanced at Kane who was at her side. He was gazing at the machine, more specifically at the door which was definitely new. He moved forward slowly, then raised his hand and pressed it to the panel. For a second nothing happened, then the door slid silently open. The inside was dark, but a moment later, the lights flicked on.
“Wow.” Her heart was racing. “Are you scared?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.”
He stepped forward, but she stayed where she was. He’d waited so long for this; he should do it alone. But he hesitated, then held out his hand. She slipped her palm in his, and he tugged her forward. Then they were passing through the doorway and into the time machine.
They stopped just inside the door and Kane dropped her hand. It was a smallish room, probably ten feet across and circular. Obviously, there were no windows, and the walls were the samesmooth silver as the external surface. There were six seats in two rows of three and in front of them was the console that Christa had shown them on the video feed.
Kaitlin’s fingers itched with the need to reach out and touch things, but she curled her hands into fists to stop herself. She didn’t want to set anything in motion. She moved farther inside and turned around.
There was the bomb. It looked vaguely harmless, certainly not capable of destroying most of the Earth.
Kane moved closer, and she wanted to yell at him to stop. But he didn’t touch the thing—just stared at it for long moments. “It doesn’t seem possible that it could destroy the world, does it?”
“I was just thinking the same. Maybe we’re wrong.”
“No, we’re not wrong, or at least not totally,” Christa said from behind them. “It’s definitely a powerful bomb, but not enough to do the sort of damage we’re expecting.”
“Maybe it starts some sort of chain reaction,” Kane said.
“Maybe when it goes off, someone thinks they’re under attack and retaliates with some bombs of their own.”
“Hopefully, we’ll find out more. And I think we might have found Kaitlin’s instruction manual.”
She whirled around. “You’re kidding?”
“We don’t know for sure. But we’ve downloaded a whole load of stuff. It’s in an unrecognizable language, but I’m running it through some translation algorithms Stefan devised. Hopefully we’ll be able to work out what it says.”
“Cool.”
“I’m still waiting for all the experiments I set off to finish. They’ll take a couple of hours more. Why don’t you head up to the house, grab a shower, something to eat and we’ll have a meeting once they’re done. Then we can work out where to go next.”
She disappeared out the door, leaving them alone.
“A shower sounds good,” she said. Although she didn’t want to head to the house. She wanted Kane to herself for a time. She had to be brave and let him into her head and her secrets.
“How about a swim instead,” he said. “I know a place.”
“Will I get eaten by piranhas?”
