"Jeez, what was that?" I heard Natty gasp, as I opened my eyes again.
We were in a huge light-flooded room. The room looked vaguely like an office – it was furnished with two desks, chairs and what appeared to be an oversized e-board – but at the same time it was way too large for an ordinary office.
There was a comfortable lounge with easy chairs, a couch and a coffee table, and even a small kitchen had been included. Not to mention the four big windows offering a view of park-like surroundings and an ensemble of buildings that reminded me of the campus of my City's university.
I shook my head, bemused. "I don't know, though I do have a certain suspicion."
On one of the the large window-panes mathematical equations were displayed, handwritten in white marker. Lines upon lines of equations. Natty started to read them, beginning at the top.
"Can you tell what that is about?" I asked her.
Natty shrugged, completely engrossed in the math.
I heard quick footsteps approaching.
A tall, casually dressed woman entered the room through a side-door. She frowned when she noticed the two of us.
"Who are you girls?" she demanded to know. "And how did you get in here?"
"My name is Catherine Hart," I told her.
Natty half turned around, reluctant to be distracted from the math she had been reading.
"I am Natalie Fogg," she declared, "and this here," she indicated the set of equations written on the windowpane, "is crap."
"Right. And I am the Ylgrad of Keirn Hadir," the woman retorted.
"Nice to meet you," I politely replied.
"Yes, pleased to meet you," Natty echoed.
The woman's frown deepened. "You have no idea what the Ylgrad of Keirn Hadir is, do you?"
"No, we don't," Natty admitted. "Is that a problem?"
"Not really." The woman's smile looked a bit forced. "It's just that you claimed to be Natalie Fogg, and so I said, in that case I am the Ylgrad ... Ah, never mind." She sighed. "Actually, my name is Brianna Vercours and this here is my office. The real question is, how ... " She broke off and focused on Natty. "Wait a second. You said this derivation here," she pointed towards the mathematical equations Natty had been reading, "is, what's that term you used, crap?"
Natty nodded. "Obviously."
"Well, the end result is what we hoped it would turn out to be," the Vercours woman told us. "Do you think there is something wrong with the derivation, then?"
Natty snorted. "Is that some sort of a trick question?"
The woman shook her head. "No, I am serious."
"Well, the math used here is unsound in several places. Most obviously, up here." Natty pointed. "That infinite sum of functions converges point-wise at best in the interval you integrate over. In fact, there is even a singularity at r equal to one. You cannot just go on and assume that interchanging the order of summation and integration will lead to the same result, here."
Ms Vercours blinked. "You may be right." She sighed. "No doubt, Victor was in a hurry when he did that, and under a lot of pressure. We all wanted this so badly to succeed."
"Nevertheless, the question remains how you girls managed to enter my office without clearance," the woman insisted. "This is no light matter. We are at war, and what we are working on here is classified."
Natty and I exchanged a glance.
"To be honest, we are not sure how we got here," I replied. "I guess we were sent here."
"Who sent you, then?" the woman asked.
"I don't know. I imagine, those women did. The Meddling Natives."
Ms Vercours looked confused. "The what?"
"Uh ... That's not what they call themselves. They used another name. The Adventurous Ones."
The expression on Brianna Vercours' face changed.
"Ah," she breathed, as if what I had just said explained everything. "That would explain how you ended up in this particular office." She touched a nondescript part of the wall which made a small rectangular screen light up. "Well, that's easy to check. From where and when did they send you?"
"A cave somewhere in the south of Wales, on August 14, 1965," I told her.
"That agrees with the log entry here," the woman announced. She tuned towards Natty. "Which makes me wonder ... Is it possible that you actually are Natty Fogg?"
"That's what I told you." Natty was starting to sound a bit petulant.
"But why would the Seipra send you and your friend, now?"
"We have no idea," I cut in. "Clearly, you know a lot more about all this than we do. So, would you mind telling us when and where we are? This is a future version of one of the Cities of the Alliance, right? But when? And in particular, what's that war you are fighting?"
"We write the year 3014. As for the war ... Well, see for yourselves." She cleared her throat. "Display Monitor Five, on."
Without warning, another part of the same wall turned into a huge screen. We could see a canyon, and an approaching drone. Almost immediately, intersecting beams of laser light caught and tracked the vessel. A few seconds later, the drone got hit by some sort of energy beam. It burst into fire, disintegrated and crashed.
"Looks like you handle the enemy's attacks pretty well, though," I commented.
"I wish." Brianna Vercours sighed. "They are still testing us, or perhaps merely toying with us. Preparing for the crucial assault scheduled for tonight, the one meant to destroy us."
"They are extraterrestrials, aren't they?" Natty observed.
"What?" I stared at her.
"Well it's kind of obvious, isn't it? To win a war against the technologically most advanced civilization on this planet, they would have to come from a different solar system."
"You are right, of course," Brianna Vercours confirmed.
I felt as if I had been struck upon the head, hard.
"So this is it," I breathed. "This is where it ends. Our Cities, our world, everything we built and everything we worked for, is being destroyed."
"Well yes, that's one way to look at it," the woman grimly replied. "Everything you have said is true, of course. We have prepared a final surprise for them, though. One that will cripple and temporarily incapacitate their spaceship and slow them down in their attempt at conquest."
Suddenly, I was overcome by grief.
"Don't do that," I implored. "You cannot do that. Don't sacrifice yourselves to save the world."
Ms Vercours raised an eyebrow. "Sacrifice ourselves? What exactly are you talking about?"
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A / N : Okay, so we have got another small cliffhanger here. Looks like I can't help myself when it comes to ending chapters with one of those, lately. Hope you don't mind too much :-)
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