‘Come on, Mary,’ I said. ‘Spit it out. Where are we?’
‘We should have reversed our turns. We always turned the same way in the dark matter universe.’
‘How the hell do you mean that we turned the same way?’ said Tosh. ‘No one said anything about fucking turning being involved.’
‘Can you explain, Mary? We need to understand,’ I said, putting a hand on Tosh’s arm to suggest he should calm down.
We all freed ourselves from our harnesses but stayed in the cockpit where we could look down on the beautiful Earth, a pristine planet which was evidently not ours.
‘Okay. I’ll do my best,’ said Mary.
‘You can get us back?’ asked Bill.
‘I don’t know,’ the astrophysicist said.
Anna floated quietly and silently, probably mulling over her thoughts.
‘Mary,’ I said, ‘no one’s apportioning blame. Let’s try to see what situation now faces us and what we can do to correct what’s happened.’
‘Basically, each time we spolded, we turned the same way into the dark matter universe, turning the same way again as we came out at the other end. The only explanation I have is that we turned into a parallel universe,’ she said, timidly.
‘But that’s daft,’ said Tosh. ‘We went to Mars and back and everything was normal.’
‘Was it?’ I asked. ‘I’m not so sure about that. Had any of you ever heard of EBC before we went to Mars?’
‘What’s that?’ asked Bill.
‘The British film crew who interviewed us,’ I said. ‘Don’t you remember that I asked them why it was now English Broadcasting Corporation instead of British Broadcasting Corporation and they ignored me as if it was a frivolous question?’
‘So maybe the BBC never existed on the world we returned to,’ said Bill.
‘What the fuck?’ said Tosh. ‘You’re saying the world we returned to was the same as our own except that the BBC had always been the EBC? That’s mad!’
‘A slight change,’ said Mary. ‘Perhaps all that happened on that first trip.’
‘No, there’s more,’ said Anna, suddenly coming to life. ‘Only minor, but I borrowed my father’s car while I was in Connecticut and it was a manual shift. My father had always used automatic cars and used to get annoyed that I preferred a manual.’
We all looked at Anna in amazement. ‘Anything else?’ I asked.
‘Yes, now I come to think about it. It was my birthday, which was why I’d gone to my parents. One of my best friends, a friend from school, sent me a card signed Mike and Betty Hill.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ asked Bill.
‘She’s been married for five years to another friend, Jake Watts!’ said Anna. ‘I’d never heard of Mike Hill. I was going to ask her about it, but time ran out and I had to get back to the Kennedy Space Center and never got the chance.’
‘Yes,’ said Mary, ‘the taps – faucets to you guys – on my kitchen sink at home had changed into a mixer tap. It puzzled me at the time, and I even had my entity give me memories of the kitchen before the Mars trip and they were definitely individual taps.’
‘And you didn’t think it was strange?’ asked Bill.
‘Of course, but I assumed that my brother, who came in to water my plants while we were on Mars, had had a problem and called a plumber. It’s one of those stupid things that you intend to find out about but never do. Now I know what happened. Our two left turns on the Mars trip.’
I saw frown lines on Tosh’s brow. ‘Tosh?’ I asked.
‘Well now we know something’s gone wrong, it reminds me that I rang my parents and the number was unobtainable. I checked my address book and the number was different. I dialled it and got through fine. My address book didn’t go to Mars. Their number changed while we were away.’
‘Maybe you remembered it wrongly,’ said Bill.
‘Don’t be bloody stupid!’ Tosh said, dropping into one of his bursts of irrational anger. ‘They’ve lived in that house for fifteen years and I always rang them once or twice a week if I was on Earth. I’d never have forgotten their telephone number! The number had definitely changed.’
‘You haven’t had any similar experience, Bill?’ I asked.
‘No. Not that I’m aware of,’ he replied.
‘Mary,’ said Tosh, in hushed tones, ‘could that mean that, somewhere out there, Chi could still be alive?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mary said. ‘Possibly, I suppose.’
We all lapsed into silence, looking down at the shadow of night approaching on the mysterious and unfamiliar Earth beneath us. None of us could see any lights. Any fires or lights would have shone brightly. Humankind appeared to be completely absent.
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘we have an emergency. It isn’t an imminent threat, but we must treat it as such. We have only two tanks and one Rimor shuttle remaining. We dare not use those until we are certain we are home. We have supplies for a year on Spirit, in fact, longer than that now we don’t have Chi with us. We have plenty of water which we can make from the contents of one of the tanks and we also have an almost inexhaustible supply of oxygen – so, both pretty limitless. The nuclear power plant on Spirit will also outsee our food supply, so it’s food which will become critical first.’
‘We do have one probe remaining,’ said Anna.
‘I’ll start an inventory of supplies,’ said Bill and he left the cockpit.
‘And work out rationing,’ I shouted after him. ‘Let’s make those supplies last two years. Should be possible if we are careful from day one.’
‘How’re we going to get back?’ asked Tosh. ‘This is not the slight turn which affected us after Mars. That Earth beneath us looks completely uninhabited. It couldn’t be a time thing instead of parallel worlds, could it?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Mary. ‘You’re wondering whether this is our Earth but at some time in the past, before the pyramids were built?’
‘Yes, exactly,’ Tosh said.
‘No, I don’t think so, but I’ll work on it. Measuring the distance from Earth to the moon should confirm it one way or the other. The moon moves away from Earth at over three centimetres per annum,’ said Mary. ‘If the moon-Earth distance is roughly the same, we’ll know that it really is a parallel universe, then I’ll see what ideas I can come up with for reversing it. I’m so sorry, everyone.’
‘Well, I’m glad you’re here with us, Mary,’ said Anna. ‘You’re our best shot at getting home and our entities are sure to be able to help.’
‘Anna, you assist Mary,’ I said. ‘Get your entities involved. Work the problem. See what you can come up with.’