Ryan Taylor awakens from hibernation to a mystery that he, along with his crew, must solve in order to continue their mission. How they solve it and what they find is astounding.
What did you see down there?" Janet asked us when Kali and I sat down at the command station.
"Oh, nothing special," I said. "Just an amphibian monster and what looked like a mermaid."
Janet's eyes widened, "Are you kidding us?"
"Nope," I said. "The monster almost got Kali."
"Yeah," Kali said. "Old sure shot here drilled it in the head before it got to me."
"You guys get to have all the fun," Sharon said.
We laughed. Although, I didn't consider what happened to us as fun.
Bridget walked up holding the astrolabe and sat down. "I think I figured out what this thing does. It's not just an astronomical device. It's able to predict where active nodes are in hyperspace."
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"Nodes?" I reacted. "What sort of nodes?"
"Nodes are where timeline changes occur," she replied.
"No kidding! Can we use it to go back to our timeline?"
"I don't know for sure, but I can get us to the node that we were at when we slipped into a different timeline. If we go back to that location, we might be able to slip back to our timeline."
I smiled. "How in the hell did we get this lucky!"
Kali replied. "It's a stretch to believe that we just happened to find a planet where the aliens, who just happened to be extinct, developed an astrolabe that just happened to be able to predict where timeline nodes are located in hyperspace."
"Yeah, it sounds too good to be true, but I'll take it any way I can get it," I said. "I think we had better go to that node and see if we can get back to our timeline."
"It should only take a thee days in hyperspace, sir," Janet said after consulting her computer station.
"Good, let's do it!"
We strapped into the G-chairs and waited for COMA to do the burn to put us in hyperspace. Our time in that quantum soup would be timed by Bridget's knowledge of the alien astrolabe. Hopefully, it would be precise enough to put us in the timeline node that would send us back where we belonged.
When the burn was complete and COMA had started the wheels back up, we got out of the G-chairs and went to the command station.
"Everything is working as expected," I said after reviewing the engineering data. I stood up. "I'll go check out the agricultural deck."
That was a signal for Kali to follow me, but she didn't. I assumed she was tired and needed some shut eye.
When I got to the agricultural deck, I went to the robot charging station and sat down in one of the fancy chairs.
