“Come on, Mr Araz. It’s time to wake up. I’ve got some more questions I want you to answer,” DI Benson said cheerily, as he entered the cell next morning.
His sunny disposition changed rapidly to a mood of frustration and anger as he spied the handcuffs, still attached to the metal bed frame, but now dangling limply and emptily in the direction of the floor. The ropes, too, lay discarded on the mattress. The cell was empty. Araz had gone.
Benson cursed under his breath and then called out, “Sergeant, come here quickly! What’s happened to the prisoner?”
The sergeant arrived at full speed. He looked bewildered as he surveyed the handcuffs, ropes and the empty cell.
“Don’t know, Sir,” he panted. “The prisoner was here last night. In fact, he was here this morning at 6.30am when I brought him some tea.”
Benson snarled, “Well as you can see, he’s not here now, so you’d better try to find out where he is.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s 9.30am now,” he said, “which means he could have been gone for three hours. I hope we’re not too late!”
Professor Tompkins and Zoe had arrived as Benson was talking to the sergeant. They were all now back in Benson’s office.
“Araz has gone,” Benson said, disappointment and anger evident in his voice.
“How?” asked Zoe.
“Probably transformed into something small enough to allow him to escape his bonds, crawl under the cell door and leave the station undetected,” Benson replied. “I really thought that we’d secured him sufficiently enough to prevent him changing shape.”
“I don’t think you could have done anything to stop him,” said Zoe. “It’s like trying to tie down the wind… or a ghost.”
“Any way of telling what creature he changed into?” asked the professor. “It might help if we know what we’re looking for.”
“I’ll check the station CCTV,” said Benson.
*
Twenty minutes later, Benson banged his fist on the desk in fury at what he’d just witnessed on the TV tapes. Araz hadn’t escaped by changing into some creature. He had no need to. He’d been released by a police constable. It was the same one that Benson had caught trying to steal the tape showing the monkeys ransacking cars in the compound. Benson could see that the constable had been complicit in Araz’s escape.
“We need to get to the safari park quickly,” yelled Benson. “I bet that’s where he’s gone. Come on, I’ll deal with that constable later.”
“Relax and take your time,” said Tompkins, calmly. “Zak won’t be leaving us just yet.”
“How do you know that?” asked Benson, tersely.
“Because I’ve done some calculations since we last met, and I reckon there are about four hours and fifty minutes before time gets to the point where the spaceship will reappear – that’s unless we stop it first, of course,” said the professor.
“How can you be sure of the time?” asked Benson. “Especially as I haven’t yet given you the times and dates that you asked for from my report.”
“Young Zoe gave them to me,” smiled the professor. “She had everything I needed written down in her diary. It was a momentous day for her and her school friends when they thwarted Kazzaar, so she kept a note of every detail.”
“Hmm,” said Benson, partly miffed because he’d been intending to provide the figures but hadn’t got around to it, but also glad that the professor had been able to do his calculations anyway. “So, assuming we are going to try to turn the clock forward, how many times will we have to turn it until we get to the right time and date?”
“One thousand and twenty-nine days, plus how many hours and minutes are left from the four hours and fifty minutes I told you about a few moments back,” the reply from Professor Tompkins came quickly and decisively.
“Well, that’s it then,” sighed Benson, slumping back in his chair. “We’re done for. It will take us more than four hours to manually turn the clock back that far. Zak Araz is going to get his spacecraft back and get away. He’s going to be able to carry out his original plan and we can’t stop him!”
Zoe was determined not to be defeatist. She tried to hold on to some hope. She looked at the professor and seeing no sign of anxiety or concern on his face, she asked him, “How long is it going to take?”
“Not as long as you might think with this little fellow,” Tompkins answered, taking a small object from his bag. It looked like an electric toothbrush, but without the bristled head.
“What’s that?” asked a curious DI Benson.
“A remote sensory magnetic manipulator, or RSMM for short,” said the professor.
“A what?” gasped Benson, open-mouthed. “What does it do and how does it work?”
The professor held the object between two fingers and explained, “Basically, it’s a number of electromagnets that have been programmed to work in conjunction with each other, set inside a small hand-operated drill. That may sound as if it’s something I’ve just thrown together at the last minute, but I can assure you it’s not. It’s something that my colleagues and I have been working on for a while now. We have been studying the feasibility of being able to manipulate time by way of remotely adjusting clocks. This is a prototype. It has been tested in our labs and it does work. Well, it did in our experiments – at least as far as remotely reversing or advancing hands or digital numbers on clocks.
“However, we’ve yet to go into full-scale research or production and we haven’t actually turned back time in reality, but if my theory about Zak using his technical knowledge to adjust that clock on his force field arc so that it moves time as a dimension is correct, then the RSMM should work as it gives us the capacity to turn back the digital numbers. This, in theory, should also turn back minutes, hours and years, as, if my guess is correct, Zak has connected these numbers to the dimension of time – if that makes any sense to you at all. Basically, it’s a bit hit-and-miss, but it’s all we’ve got.
“The RSMM has an inbuilt capacity to use infrared energy and I guess it works a bit like a TV remote control. It has a time clock setting, which I’ve already set based on the figures I gave you earlier. Once we get to the clock that is currently controlling Araz’s movement of time, we can use that reading to reverse what he’s done. The RSMM will stop functioning once the set time is reached, and then the time in Cristelee will be in line with the rest of Britain. Well, that’s the theory anyway.”
Tompkins smiled as he saw the doubt clouding the faces of Zoe and Benson. “Right, in simple words, all we need to do is point the RSMM at the clock and hold down the manipulating button until the set time is reached. The digital figures on the clock will rotate clockwise as the energy from the manipulator hits them. Because the clock is connected to time itself by Araz, and believe me I’ve no idea how he’s done that, time will speed forward again until we catch up with the rest of the country.”
“Nice one, Prof,” said Benson. He was smiling now, and then he added, “Are you sure it will work?”
“As sure as I can be,” said Tompkins. “And as I said, I’ve got nothing else.”
“I’ll just round up some men and then we’ll get to the safari park,” said Benson, making a move towards the door.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” asked Zoe.
Benson stopped in his tracks. “What are you saying?” he asked.
“You’ve seen at least one of your men involved in Araz’s release,” said Zoe, “and who knows how many more of them are under Araz’s hypnotic spell. How do you know who you can trust?”
“Good point, I suppose,” said Benson, nodding his head in agreement. He looked around.
“So, I guess it’s just the three of us then,” he said. “I’ll get the rangers at the park to take care of the monkeys when we get there.”
“Same problem there, I’m afraid,” said Zoe glumly. “How do you know you can trust them?”
“I don’t,” agreed Benson. He was getting irritated now. “But I need those monkeys out of the way, so I’ll have to take a chance.”