Date: Sun, 8 Apr 2012 08:44:43 +0200
From: Amy Redek <adultreading@gmail.com>
Subject: Cronos. Part Three.

        This story is for persons of eighteen years or over.  All comments,
good or bad, are welcome and all will be answered.

        Part Three

     Just inside was some kind of soft rubber matting, and when she stood
on it, a soft wind blew over her with a strange odour to it. Must be some
subtle type of disinfectant Audrey thought. Also, she seemed to be
enveloped in a soft orange glow as though she herself were a lamp.

     Audrey could now see that there was more headroom inside than the
doorway suggested. From floor to ceiling was about seven foot and the walls
were curved like those of a pipe with the ceiling being flat like the
floor. A few steps ahead of her was another open doorway, but the light
that surrounded her didn't penetrate any further than that. So with her
heart pounding, she said a quick prayer and taking a deep breath, moved
forward to this other open door.

     The first surprise came as she stepped off the mat and had moved
forward two steps before she realised that her feet were not touching the
floor. Audrey stopped and looked down to see that she was nearly a foot
above the floor and still moving forward.

     She had lost gravity! Don't panic, she shouted to herself as she
started to do so. Keep calm! Keep calm! Her hands went out as though on a
tight rope, to steady herself and not bang into the sides of the short
passage.

     Don't panic was good advice as the daylight behind her also
disappeared, leaving her in this small orange halo of light. Audrey turned
her head quickly to see that the door had indeed closed behind
her. Claustrophobic panic set in as she fought the lack of gravity to get
back to the door. As she came back over the mat, her feet settled down upon
it, and lo and behold, the door suddenly opened and it became the ramp.

     Daylight flooded the entrance and Audrey fought hard to stem the tears
of relief that welled up in her eyes. She waited a few minutes for her
heart to slow down from its wild beating before attempting to move
again. Then, very tentatively, she experimented three times of moving off
the mat and returning, watching the door open and close each
time. Satisfied that her way of retreat was open, or rather, could be
opened, she smiled.

     Courage once again fortified, she moved off the mat and watched the
ramp come up and become part of the side of the craft. Suffused in her
orange glow, she turned and drifted the few steps into a circular room in
the centre of the sphere. The door hissed closed behind her, and here she
could look up and through a circular hole, could see the sky through the
transparent dome at the top. She looked round this chamber on the lowest
level and saw that there were four distinct doors, all closed, including
the one she had come through. They all looked the same, and if she was to
spin round, there was doubt as if she could pick out the right one for any
escape.

     `Think, think, think,' Audrey admonished herself, `if I could only
mark this door behind me. I can only touch dead or inanimate objects...oh
you fool.'

     Up to now, Audrey had not touched anything since entering the craft,
except the ramp and mat with her feet. If her feet could touch, so could
her fingers. She reached behind her and gave a triumphant grin as her
fingers made solid contact with the warm feeling metal of the door. Pleased
with herself, she turned round and placed her hands flat on the door. It
opened immediately to her touch, and as she stepped back, the door slid
shut again. Audrey then poked it with a finger, but it didn't open. Placing
one flat hand against it caused it to open.

     So, Audrey mused, did `they' not have fingers, or did it only open to
a more solid touch? Another unanswered question.

     `Huh! The whole thing is full of questions,' she said out loud, `let's
have some answers,' she shouted up the central hole in the ceiling. Then
another thought struck her. Can they hear me, she thought? Would they
understand what she was saying? Probably not. Besides, there shouldn't be
anyone, correction, anything here after a hundred million years.

     Would they hear if she took the helmet off? No, Audrey said to
herself, this would all disappear if I did that, or lifted the visor. But
then, if I lifted the visor and then closed it again, I would still be back
here she reasoned

     So with a trembling hand, she snapped up the visor and saw that she
was still standing before the closed door to the exit. Maybe the helmet
only works outside the spacecraft or time machine whichever it was. Without
any more hesitation, Audrey released the chinstrap and took off the helmet
and found that she was still there.

     `That's better,' she said, shaking her head and using her fingers to
open the strands of hair that had become somewhat matted with sweat. `Now
the dog can see the rabbit, or whatever the saying is.' Placing the helmet
on the floor, took out her pencil and drew a large cross on the door. Only
it didn't make a cross. It left no mark at all. Audrey tried again, but
still no sign upon the metal. Pulling out her pad, she tried the pencil on
the paper and found that it marked it perfectly, but it meant that she
couldn't leave her mark anywhere inside this machine.

     So with a shrug of her shoulders, she pushed the helmet close to the
door instead as a marker. Well I don't need it for the time being Audrey
thought and then laughed at her use of the English language. For the `time
being', meaning here at this time. But what time? Here she was, a `being'
in time. A time past and yet now. What a conundrum! But not one that she
was going to try to explain now, she thought. I've got places to go and
things to see, looking through this circular hole in the ceiling.

     It was about four feet across and it was like being in a well, looking
up to the top and the sky beyond. There appeared to be three or four floors
between her on this lowest level to the one where the dome was. But on
looking round the bare chamber, could not find any means of access to these
levels. No ladders, steps or lifts that she could see, or any other means
of hoisting the crew or whatever up this central well.

     `Think,' Audrey said to herself, think. `You're a scientist of a sort,
so use your brain and think. When I entered this thing and stepped off the
mat, I was without gravity, but I've since settled back down to the floor.'
So she gave a little jump, but found she only rose a little way of the
floor before gently settling back down.

     `Scratch that idea,' Audrey said, `keep thinking. Air is an element,
as is water and earth. Earth is solid because you can walk on it. Water is
solid, well up to a point it is. If you were to drop from a great height
onto water, it would be like slamming into a piece of concrete, because it
doesn't have time to absorb the displacement of your body weight. We also
are not fast enough to be able to skim across the surface of it either. Air
doesn't hold you up because gravity is stronger, otherwise we'd all float
off the planet. You can swim through water but humans are not built to fly
through the air like birds, but even these have to land eventually. Air can
be as solid as water sometimes, and we call it air pressure. The higher you
go the less pressure there is compared to ground level. Another kind of air
pressure is wind. That's only air moving at varying speeds and can get very
strong. Just think of what gales and hurricanes can do. But this digressing
is not getting me up to that dome.

     What if I do get up there and find that someone, or something is
waiting for me? How do I tell them that I'm harmless and only want to
talk. How do I know they can speak? They might not have vocal cords as we
have. We'd have to use hand signals, just like the cowboys when they meet
the Indians. Deaf and dumb people talk to each other with their
hands. Politicians use them to emphasis a point, and that's how policemen
on point duty direct traffic. The preacher in the pulpit raises his hands
to God when talking to him.' Audrey had lifted her hands up in the same way
as she was speaking, and suddenly felt herself, and could also see, that
she was rising up from the floor.

     `I did it!' she yelled out, and turned her hands over so that her
palms were now facing downwards, and she started to descend.

     Like a child, she played at going up and down with her hand
movements. By holding her palms inwards, she stopped in mid-air, by moving
her left hand outward, she went off in that direction. The right hand
caused the movement in that direction. The speed was slow, but constant, so
it took several seconds for her to float up to the top deck. When she
judged that her feet were level with the floor, she indicated with her
right hand and drifted over so that she could step onto the solid floor.

     By concentrating on her hand movements, Audrey hadn't looked at the
floor levels that she had passed on her way up to the dome. But there was
time for that later, on the way down were her thoughts.

     There were eight chair like structures, in pairs with some sort of
console between each pair. They were set facing outward equidistant around
the circular dome of whatever transparent material they had used. This gave
these chairs a panoramic view all round and not a seam or join to mar the
view.

     Audrey pulled out her compass and checked the bearing towards the
camp, but couldn't see anything of the clearing. Just tree tops as far as
the eye could see. She sat down in one of the chairs and leaning back, felt
it gently move beneath her. She started to rise in panic, but stopped
herself as she realised that the chair was actually moulding itself to her
body shape. Then came a gentle movement running up and down her back and
legs.

     `Wow! What wouldn't I give to have this chair back at the camp,'
Audrey exclaimed, laughing. She let herself relax and closed her eyes and
let the chair continue to give her this massage. Backache was a common
complaint in her profession and this would be the answer. She could have
dozed off to sleep it was so relaxing, but forced her eyes open and looking
between her outstretched legs, gazed out over the forest.

     `It must be wonderful to cruise through space, sitting here watching
the stars and comets and things,' Audrey mused. `You'd need some massaging
if you had to travel for that long. Then land on some planet and look out
at the forests and mountains. Mountains!'

     Audrey sat bolt upright and quickly scanned round. There was a fairly
high ridge off to her right, but the sight of the far off mountains that
she had been seeing for the last four weeks were not there.

     First this time machine. Then the sun in a different place in the sky,
and now no Andes. What on earth did the Earth really look like? This period
must be at least pre-Mesozoic Era, before the continents divided and the
dinosaurs could roam.

     As Audrey sat up, her hand touched the console between the seats, but
fortunately, she hadn't pressed any of the buttons. Looking at it made her
realise that the people of this craft did have fingers of some sort for
pushing those buttons. The console was angled so that it could be seen and
touched from a reclining position. There were six rows of seven buttons,
each row a different colour, and underneath each one, a small plate
engraved with symbols that she couldn't understand.

     Audrey didn't dare touch any for fear of setting up some reaction that
she couldn't control. Getting up from her seat, she went and checked the
other three consoles and found that they were all the same, leaving her to
believe that this craft would be operated by two persons. So whichever
angle it was travelling, they would be able to navigate in comfort.

     It was with some hesitation that Audrey walked out into the central
well, half expecting to suddenly fall down between the decks to the lower
floor. But trusting to what she had seen so far, and with hands out ready,
stepped into the void.

     She seemed to be walking on air until she reached the middle, and with
her hands out, palms facing downwards, she started to slowly sink
down. Reaching the next level below, she turned her palms inwards and
stopped moving. Then with a hand turned sideways, drifted off towards the
solid floor. Stepping out at this level, Audrey noticed that she was again
now surrounded by this orange glow, giving her illumination to see her
way. But the light faded as she moved, because large screens flickered to
life as she touched down on the floor plates. She was very pleased with
herself and proud to have mastered one of the secrets of the ship. Now to
try and learn some more from this floor was her thought.

     This level seemed cramped for space because of the eight large screens
around the walls. These were angled down because of the curvature of the
hull, and angled up to meet them, were more screens. But looking closer,
Audrey saw that three of the latter were in fact keyboards with a mini
screen built in above them, set alternately. There were two chairs on this
level that were set in a circular track that ran the whole way round in
front of these screens. Four of these screens were now lit, and Audrey
moved towards one for a closer look, and as she came close to it, the
keyboard lit up of its own accord.

     Sensors, Audrey surmised as she took a step back and watched the light
fade, then by moving forward again, it lit up. They were not conventional
keyboards as a typewriter or computer terminal. These were much bigger with
more keys, or buttons and each with its own symbol, similar to the consoles
on the upper deck. The buttons themselves were much larger than normal and
some double the size. Her eyes were drawn to the illuminated screen on the
wall that was next to this keyboard. It appeared to be a topographical
photo of what she surmised to be the immediate area, and it was duplicated
on the table type screen below as a map. But this lower one was covered in
grid lines, some of which were slightly shaded.

     Audrey's first thought was that the ship was on an exploratory
expedition, hence the map. Obviously a photo had been taken before they
landed, and was, or had been in the process of being investigated. But what
a place to pick! Here in the middle of nowhere. Why here and not some other
place to study the inhabitants.

     Then Audrey mentally kicked herself, as if this area was
inhabited. Not by people but by mammals. The questions Audrey began asking
herself were flooding into her brain so much that she wanted to sit down
and think. She walked over to the nearest chair and started to pull it
round on its rail, but it would not move. She tugged hard, but couldn't
shift it an inch. Giving up the struggle, she moved round and sat down with
some relief. The wall screen before her flickered on as her body made
contact with the seat and the keyboard gently glowed with light. When the
screen settled, it showed a wide expanse of the universe. Audrey snorted as
astronomy was not her subject. The Pole Star and the Southern Cross were
her limits in identifying and naming stars. She could name all the
horoscope signs, but it would be pure guesswork to pick out the
constellations that they were named for.

     `This isn't the screen I want,' Audrey exclaimed out loud, banging her
fist on the arm of the chair, `I want to see that one!' Pointing toward the
screen she had first stopped at. Suddenly, the chair started to move along
the rail. Audrey gripped the arms as the chair rolled on round, and the
screens flickered to life as she approached them, and faded as she went
past. Then she swore at the chair as it carried on past the screen that she
wanted.

     `That way,' she shouted, pointing back. The chair stopped, and began
to return back along the track. Audrey raised her hand, palm outward in the
usually fashion of wanting to stop something, and was surprised when it did
stop. Not quite where she wanted it, but by her various hand movements, got
the chair to move to exactly where she wanted it.

     Now she could study the screen that was displaying the map with the
grid lines upon it. The screen itself seemed to be either of a glass or
plastic type of material, probably like that of the dome. It was
illuminated from below, like an engineer or draughtsman's table. Of the
grids, some were shaded and others not, but one square was brighter than
the others. Peering closer, she saw that all the grids had symbols in the
top left hand corner, obviously designating its position.

     Looking up at the screen with the photo, she saw that on either side
there were panels with rows of buttons. The left hand panel had the most,
four across and sixteen down, like a crossword puzzle she giggled. The
panel on the right was half the size with half the number of buttons. Those
on the right hand panel that were lit, Audrey noted that they were the same
symbols in the top left hand corner of the brightly lit square on the lower
screen before her. So that panel was in relation to the map she gathered,
but not of the other, larger one. But in respect of the left hand panel, as
long as she looked at it, she couldn't work out the meaning of the lit
buttons. This panel, she believed, was an indication as to the time period.

     But on whose calendar? Earth time had been worked out that the planet
went round the sun in three hundred and sixty five and a quarter days. Also
that the Earth turned every twenty four hours as it did so.

     But we, that is, the people back in ancient times, determined that
because the sun rose in the East on a regular cycle, and set in the West
before it came up again, they called it a day. This day they split up into
twenty four equal segments and called them hours. Split again to make
minutes and then split again into seconds. Now in the modern world, they
even split that down into tenths, hundreds and even thousandths when it
comes to competitions. It sounds silly, but that's how it is.

     But what if the people, question mark on that; what if the solar
system of the builders and pilot's of this craft has more than one
sun. Then again, they might only have one sun like ours, but their planet
takes two or more of our days to go round it?

     That would mean that their concept of time would be much different
from ours, so to try and convert their time to ours would be an impossible
task. Unless you knew from what particular solar system that this craft had
come from. Then, and only then, could you start to try and work out their
time system. If that were known, then maybe she would be able to make sense
of the buttons on the left hand panel.

     But all she could do for now was to make notes as to the symbols used
on the lit up buttons. She took pages and pages of notes and drawings,
looking and checking all the other screens around on that floor level.

     When finished, Audrey realised that she was ravenously hungry, so dug
into her bag and produced her packet of sandwiches. So hungry, she took too
big a bite of her first mouthful and tried to chew and swallow at the same
time. This made her cough, and to her embarrassment, a large piece flew out
of her mouth and stuck to the wall screen in front of her.

     Coughing and swallowing the remains in her mouth, attempted to wipe
the piece off the screen. It was out of reach, but still tried to wipe it
off with her finger and then found herself rising in the air and closer to
the screen her finger was pointing at.

     `Ah ha,' she exclaimed, `that's how they reach everything!' Audrey
floated off in this non gravity space to the next screen that lit up at her
presence and saw that it was a picture of a slowly revolving planet which
she guessed was the Earth. It was only a guess, because it looked nothing
like the Earth she knew, except for its shape. Audrey watched fascinated as
the globe turned, showing that the world was imbalanced by a heavy land
mass that filled one side of the globe, and the other with water.

     This must be how it looked that long ago before the continents
divided. It must have been a cataclysmic shock to separate the land and
shift the Earth off its axis, she thought, remembering the angle of the sun
that morning. This then put a different time scale on things and her
estimate of a hundred million years must be way out by at least another
eighty, if not more.

     She floated back down to the floor and regained her seat and looked at
the grid map before her. Without conscious thought, she reached out and
touched one of the unshaded squares with her finger. It instantly lit up
bright and the one that had been lit before went shady. The buttons on the
left hand side of the upper screen changed and now read the same symbols as
the lit square. Rather than upset things too much, she re-touched that lit
square for it all to revert back to what it was before.

     This, what she had seen so far, convinced her that the people, or
whatever who built this ship, were similar to humans. They had heads, only
one obviously, and not far off in size because the helmet had fitted her
own head. Their height would be smaller as seen by the entrance door to the
craft, Notwithstanding the height between floor and ceilings of the two
levels she had looked at. They had hands, because the use of them triggered
off whatever it was that could make them rise up and down between the floor
levels, as well as fingers to direct movement and push buttons.

     They certainly had brains! The technology proved that. Eyes? Yes, but
no indication yet as to whether one, two or more. This is immensely
exciting, Audrey said to herself, mentally hugging herself. She didn't want
to hug herself literally because with her hands going around her body with
her fingers pointing, she might have put herself into one hell of a
spin. She laughed out loud at the picture that this thought conjured up.

     What about ears? Nose and mouth? Did they eat talk and hear? She
guessed that they breathed, or there would have been space suits of some
kind in the ship. So many questions ran round in her brain that she had to
shake her head to stop the thoughts, and just try and concentrate on one
thing at a time. There was too much to look at on this level that was
distracting her thoughts, so she decided to go back up to the top level and
have a massage while she finished off her sandwiches.

     Here, with the soothing motions of one of the chairs, she ate and
drank while trying to think logically. It didn't work, because as soon as
she closed her eyes, she fell asleep. Her dreams were wild and various to
start with then settled down to her inner desires. She was wearing the
helmet and went and stood in the shower with Brendan and watched him wash
himself. She liked his broad back, the muscles that he'd developed from his
rowing days, rippling beneath the skin. The thick strong thighs from his
horse riding and willing him to turn round, which he did so that she could
see his manhood. She reached out to touch and found that she was giving him
the helmet and for her to be naked under the shower. Then washing herself,
knowing he was watching her, imagining that it was his hands running over
her body instead of her own. She groaned in her sleep and stretched out,
the chair, still moulding to her body, the massage continuing.

     The scene changed to her watching two small sexless creatures in
identical helmets wandering through the forest. They didn't appear to
speak, but rather used hand gestures, pointing at things and nodding to
each other. Was it telepathy instead of speech? They stopped in a small
clearing and took off their helmets so that she could see that their heads
were slightly larger in proportion to their thin bodies. Hairless, but with
large round eyes and small holes in the middle of their faces instead of a
nose. The mouth being very small in comparison and almost no chin at all.

     Then a Brontosaurus came lumbering into the clearing just a few yards
from them. She could see the panic in their eyes as they tried to get their
helmets back on. One was knocked flat by the lumbering creature before it
had time to put the helmet on. The other had something in its hand which
she hadn't noticed before, and pointed it at the beast. It reared up and
fell over onto it left side, its head swinging round in a low arc as it hit
the ground. This head caught the small creature square in the midriff,
knocking it head over heels, the helmet it had tried to put on, flying out
of its hand to land a good fifteen feet away.

     Audrey woke up sweating and all of a tremble as she sat bolt
upright. Was that what happened, she asked herself? Or was it my
imagination making up a story to fit the fact of the helmet she had found.

     `Good Lord!' she exclaimed, looking at her watch. She saw that she had
been away from the camp for nearly eight hours, and it was time to be
getting back. The sun was low in the sky and reckoned that she might just
make it back before darkness fell. She quickly stowed the wrappers and
drinks in her bag and making sure that she'd left nothing behind, went to
the central well and gestured to go down.

     At the lowest level, she picked up the helmet and put it on and placed
her hand on the door. It silently opened and she drifted through to settle
on the rubber mat. The door opened out and down to be the ramp and daylight
flooded in to the small space. Audrey went down and checking her compass,
made off in the direction of the camp. When she was over halfway back, she
realised how silly it was to keep going on in the old time when she could
try in her own time, but because she was timing this trip, she kept the
visor down. It was still light enough to see when she entered the small
clearing and hurried on to reach the camp before full darkness fell and
reached the dead carcass of the Brontosaurus just in time.

     She noted the time on her watch and saw that she had been away for
exactly nine and a half hours as the watch showed it to be a quarter past
seven. So, taking a deep breath, she lifted the visor to note that the sun
was high in the sky and see that the boy was still cleaning the bone at the
table. She looked at her watch and gasped, for it now showed nine forty
five and nearly forty seconds.

     Audrey stumbled across to her tent and when inside, took off the
helmet and took a long drink of the last of her water. She sat down at the
small table and looked at the time she had noted down just a few minutes
ago. She then checked her watch against that of her alarm clock and saw
that they were in perfect time together. So time did not stand still as she
had first thought. Between dropping down the visor in the camp in her own
time and lifting it again when she returned, nearly forty seconds had
elapsed. The closest she could get to working this was that for every
fifteen minutes in the other world with the visor down, she lost one second
in the real world.

     So twenty four hours, either with the visor down or time spent in the
spaceship, worked out at one minute and thirty six seconds of real time.
Good Lord! I spend more than that just sitting on the loo, she mused. So to
do what I needed to do at the latrines, I could spend over two days at the
ship!

     Audrey, in spite of the couple of hours sleep she'd had in the ship,
was tired when she dragged herself out of her tent to put in a stint at the
excavation, and was glad when the lunchtime bell rang. Lunch was hurried
and she was soon back in her tent for another couple of hours sleep.
Getting up to see to the afternoon's finds, cataloguing them and typing up
her notes. She excused herself again straight after dinner, and was soon
back in bed asleep.

                                                              *