Time seemed to slow down. A thousand memories chased through John’s mind. Thoughts of his parents and friends, home: all the things he would never see again.
The moment seemed to stretch.
John had heard before that people in terrible danger often reported later that their entire lives had flashed before their eyes. He hadn’t expected that the experience would take so long, though.
He clenched his teeth, waiting for the mauling he was sure would begin at any moment.
“John! John! Are you all right?” It was Emmie’s voice, shouting from a distance.
An unbelievable sight met his eyes as they blinked open: the Goran and Subo were moving backward.
Adrenalin surged through him. Surely the beasts were only readying themselves for a fresh attack.
“Cowards!” he yelled, swinging the laser-horn. “Come on, let’s finish this.”
Still, the creatures moved away. John frowned. There was something odd about their movements. The way they were backing off looked like someone had pressed rewind on an old video player.
Kaal landed by his side. “It’s okay,” the Derrilian said gently, dodging to avoid the weapon John was still whipping around dangerously. “You can put that down now. I think I fixed it.”
“W-what?” John stared at his friend, unable to grasp what he was hearing. Every part of him was ready for a fight to the death: his death.
“Please,” the big Derrilian said, “drop it. Seriously, before you take someone’s eye out or something.”
Unwilling to let go of his only weapon, John’s fingers stayed clenched around it, though he stopped waving it around.
“Wait a second. What are you saying?” John demanded.
Emmie waded over to join them. “It’s over,” she panted. “Kaal did it. Thanks to you.” She flung her arms around him, sobbing. “I thought you were going to die.”
At last, John dropped the laser-horn. Returning Emmie’s fierce hug, he looked over her head at Kaal. “I-I d-don’t understand,” he stammered.
“Look around,” Kaal said.
John turned his head.
The Goran had backed into the battle and now appeared to be bringing a Subo back to life. As its pincers touched the Subo, its enemy’s wounds closed. The Subo looked healthier with every moment and was now thrashing wildly. Bursts of light erupted from blackened holes in the Goran’s shell and disappeared back into the tip of its laser-horn, leaving the Goran untouched.
John looked the other way.
The Subo that had attacked them seemed to be performing some kind of dance. John watched as it flopped backward through the mud. It turned, roaring at the place by the Omega-bots’ force field where John had been standing a few moments earlier, then continued its backward shuffle. It was still for a moment, then reared up, snapping at an invisible opponent.
Behind the force field, John could see Hyperspace High students leaping in the air with joy.
John glanced down.
Water, too, was flowing in reverse. His eyes followed it. The stasis cube was beginning to reform. Subo and Goran were skittering backward across the ice, lines of warriors hurling themselves away from one another to take up their original positions.
Explosions became implosions, fiery blossoms closing with a strange roar that was suddenly silenced.
“How?” John asked.
Kaal held up the Comet Creative. “Simple,” he said. “Although not that simple, even if I say so myself. At first I thought the device must be an anti-stasis emitter that reverses the polarity of the suspension particles at a quantum level, but it turns out that actually, it’s more sophisticated than that. It sends out a highly charged temporal field that attaches itself to anything with a stasis signature. . . . ”
John listened as Kaal reeled off technical information that meant nothing to him. “Any chance you can repeat all that in words I might actually understand?” he cut in when the Derrilian took a breath.
Kaal grinned. “The Comet Creative created a time field that took the stasis cube and everything in it back to a moment just before it was created, thirty thousand years ago,” he explained. “Whoever made it disabled the function that would allow it to be reversed. Once I knew what it was, it was a pretty easy repair job.”
“Pretty easy?” John gaped. “A pretty easy repair job? Where did you learn to do something like that?”
“Hyperspace High is the best school in the galaxy,” Kaal said, shrugging.
“So how come we’re not going backward too?” asked Emmie, watching in fascination as water ran up the sides of the stasis cube. It was quieter now. Only a few Goran and Subo were making their reverse battle cries. The rest had disappeared under ice. The water was rapidly disappearing.
“We weren’t in the cube,” Kaal replied. “The field only interfered with anything that was originally held in stasis.”
“I’m not sure I understand,” John said, shaking his head.
Kaal slapped him on the shoulder. “Well,” he said, grinning. “If you didn’t fall asleep in classes all the time, you’d —”
He didn’t make it to the end of the sentence. The three friends were suddenly mobbed by the rest of the class.
“Chang-do’s Holy Bath Tub! Are you guys all right?” yelled Lishtig. “I thought you were goners for sure.”
“That Goran had its claws right round your neck, John,” Werril bellowed in his ear. “Right round your neck. I couldn’t even look.”
“You were brilliant,” Queelin shouted over the yells of relief and congratulations. “The way you took on both of those horrible things? That was so —”
“Hey, it was Kaal who fixed everything,” John interrupted.
“Well, I wouldn’t have been able to fix anything if Emmie hadn’t rescued me from the water,” Kaal replied, looking embarrassed.
A loud electronic voice interrupted the excitement. “Visit terminated. Return to the space dock and leave the planet immediately.”
The class looked around. They were surrounded by Omega-bots.
John broke the silence. After the terrors he had just experienced, the menacing droids of Archivus Major didn’t seem all that frightening. “Actually, that’s the best idea I’ve heard all day,” he said. “Plus, Ms. Vartexia should be waking up right about now.”
“Thank goodness she wasn’t here,” said Emmie. “She’d have had a double heart attack.”
As the class began walking back to the Shuttletube, escorted by what looked like a hundred Omega-bots, John noticed a fleck of red in the mud. He bent to pick it up.
“What’s that?” asked Kaal, leaning over his shoulder for a better look.
“Piece of the Goran’s claw I broke off,” John told him, turning it between his fingers. “It didn’t make it back into the stasis cube.”
“Nice souvenir.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.” John tucked it into his pocket.
* * *
“Goodness me!” screeched Ms. Vartexia, as she opened her eyes to see the entire class peering at her. “What time is it? Did I miss breakfast?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Bareon cheerfully. “Lunch, too.”
The Hyperspace History teacher looked aghast. “You mean I’ve been asleep half the day?” she blurted. “How on Elvar did that happen? Where have you all been? Why did no one wake me? What are those Omega-bots doing here?”
“One question at a time,” replied Bareon soothingly. “Everyone is fine. We tried to wake you but you must have eaten too much Elvian spaghetti last night.”
Hiding at the back of the group with Kaal and Emmie, so that the teacher couldn’t see their torn, mud-stained clothing, John grinned. Bareon had cleverly avoided Ms. Vartexia’s questions about the Omega-bots by reminding her of her own mistake.
He watched as the Elvian’s face turned green.
“Too much spaghetti? Oh no, it can’t have been that. I only had —”
“Four bowls,” Queenlin supplied.
Ms. Vartexia flushed an even deeper green.
That’s an Elvian blush, John guessed.
“I don’t know what came over me. Well, perhaps we should all head back to Hyperspace High before something awful happens. I am sorry, you must have had a terribly boring morning.”
“Yes, Ms. Vartexia,” the class chorused.