Keep Smiling - Don't Look Down

In which Nate experiences another episode during which time becomes somewhat dilated and he learns something rather surprising.


As I fell away from the Uchronie, my flailing safety harness caught on one damaged edge of the Wells Tippler cylinder and swung me towards its razor sharp edges on the other side. I raised my boots to protect myself and they thudded against the shiny torn metal.

I had succeeded in avoiding injury but now I hung suspended beneath the slowly rotating cylinder. With each grinding revolution the damaged brass edges threatened to chop through my safety harness and send me tumbling earthwards.

As I swung there, helplessly, I saw that the whole of the underside of the Uchronie had been peppered with bullet holes during the Stuka attack. That explained the holes in my safety harness and the line of holes that I had seen along the top of the Wells Tippler cylinder. I knew that my fraying leather straps wouldn’t hold much longer but I was determined that this was not going to be the end of my adventure aboard this wondrous sky ship.

Slowly, painfully, I hauled myself up until I secured two good handholds on the ragged metal above my head. My flight gloves protected my hands from the sharp, ice cold, brass and, as I hung there, I was able to look around and take stock of my rather precarious situation.

Wraiths of mist raced around me in a white circle. Night followed day followed night, like a flapping bat’s wing as the sun and moon blinked across the sky all around me. The twinkling succession of darkness and light was painful to my eyes, even with my tinted goggles and I wondered how long it could last here.

During the intermittent darkness’s, I saw the moon spin through her phases amid the faint traces of the circling stars. I felt a strange sensation of relief that my current situation was different from the mirror world where all the stars had disappeared.

I pondered whose hour it was in this strange place and, as the brass sun reared like a streak of fire forming a golden arch in the firmament, I wondered how I was going to extricate myself from this dilemma.

As I hung there, the flickering sky began to dissolve in front of my eyes and, amidst what sounded like rippling wind chimes, Lolly’s beautiful face appeared inside the blurred, golden, arcade.

‘Oh, I do like your flowers Nate.’ she said in a curiously distorted, echoing, voice. ‘Mauve is such an unusual colour. I believe it symbolises fantastic dreams… do you have fantastic dreams Nate? Do you…?’

I remembered these as being the first words she had said to me but, although I tried to reply, my voice would not work and no sounds came from my mouth.

‘Oh Nate, do hurry up.’ she said, holding her gloved hand out to me. ‘You’ll lose me if I go round into the...’

I reached towards this vision of loveliness but her sweetly smiling face suddenly shimmered and tumbled away. I had the peculiar impression that I was falling with her and yet, somehow, I remained hanging in the same place. It was an excessively unpleasant feeling, like the sensation one has when riding a theme park rollercoaster in a helpless headlong ride. I constantly felt the horrible anticipation of an imminent disaster although the interstices of the mist all around were slipping through me as though I myself was a vapour.

Far beneath me, the landscape among the snow capped mountain peaks was fuzzy and vague as well. I now realised that the changing colours that I had first noted were the passing seasons. As the cylinder rotated, summer green was followed by shades of autumn brown that turned snow white before the colourful burst of an all too brief spring.

My head swam as it tried to take in all these strange sights and my eyes searched for something solid to focus on and hold on to. Wave after wave of nausea poured through me as I clung to the torn metal for dear life.

As the days and the seasons continued to swirl around me, these unpleasant sensations merged into a kind of hysterical exhilaration and I had the strangest feeling that it was I who was unreal and that there was no need to hold on any longer. Perhaps this was all just a fantastic dream...
My brain went numb as the freezing cold mists of time swirled through me.

Then a certain dread that I was about to fall to my death took complete possession of me and, in a flash of golden sunlight, I caught a brief glimpse of the safety line that Doctor Mentor had dropped just before I fell.

It appeared to be dangling just a few centimetres above my head but, when I reached up for it, my fingers spaghettified around the rope. They were stretched thin by the enormous tidal forces of the intense time space continuum swirling inside the cylinder and I had no control over their movement or direction.

Then I heard another voice.

It was Wayne.

I wondered what this vision would have to say to me until I realised that it really was Wayne. Doctor Mentor was lowering him down through the Wells Tippler tube on his safety harness.

‘Grab ‘old of the safety line, mate.’ shouted the strangely elongated Wayne, his voice echoing and distorting in the swirling mists. ‘Doc Mentor can only keep this boom tube open for anuvver sixty seconds.’

‘I can’t reach it.’ I shouted, ‘My fingers just distort in the gravitational field and I can’t get hold of it.’

‘Your safety ‘arness was damaged in the Stuka attack.’ shouted Wayne, pushing the rope further down the cylinder. ‘You’re lucky you ain’t a goner.’

‘I know.’ I said, grabbing at the rope with the numb, threadlike fingers of my left hand. ‘I can’t hold on much longer. I’m terrified that I’m going to fall.’

‘Don’t worry about falling.’ shouted Wayne. ‘It’s ‘itting the ground that’ll kill you, mate.’

‘This is not the time for making bad jokes.’ shouted Doctor Mentor in a slow voice distorting on a wave of fade from high above us. ‘Nate is in very grave danger. If he falls into that white hole he will be lost in time. He could be thrown out anywhere; we have no control over where he goes.’

‘Stay there!’ shouted Wayne, grabbing the safety rope and tying it round his own waist. ‘Unless you wanna end up lost in time or splattered on the landscape… stay there.’

‘If you insist!’ I said, hanging on grimly. ‘I was planning to go for a pleasant summer stroll... or perhaps… a bracing winter hike.’

‘That’s the spirit.’ said Wayne, lowering himself towards me. ‘Keep smiling mate, don’t look down. I’m coming to get you.’

‘No Wayne stop!’ I shouted. You’ll get dragged into this whirlpool as well and we’ll both end up falling.’

‘Don’t bother me.’ shouted Wayne, lowering the safety rope until it was right in front of my face. ‘I’ve got me chute, I can ‘it the silk whenever I want.’

Holding on with one hand I looped the safety rope under my arms and tried to tie a decent knot using one hand with frozen fingers.

‘Wayne… you don’t have the code for your One Time Pad.’ screeched the misshapen Doctor Mentor, straining to hold the combined weight of both of us on the safety rope. ‘If you fall… you have no way of getting back to the Uchronie.’

‘Tell me wot it is then.’ shouted Wayne, struggling to untangle my harness from the torn metal so he could pull me up and through the cylinder.

‘Nate has the code.’ shouted the malformed Doctor Mentor, wedging one warped leg against the raised edge of the cylinder to stop himself from falling in.

‘No I haven’t!’ I cried, as Wayne finally got my harness loose. ‘No one’s given me any code.’

‘It’s on the…’

The distorted doctor’s next words were lost as Wayne and I were suddenly whirled around on the end of the safety rope. With an almighty thud, we crashed in to the other side of the Wells Tippler cylinder amid a freezing winter snowstorm. When we stopped swinging Wayne was above me, his feet almost standing on my head.

‘Aaargh! I’m getting cut in half.’ shouted Wayne, as my weight pulled the safety rope tight around his waist.

I found a fingerhold on the smooth metal and tried to pull myself up. Our combined weight was crushing Doctor Mentor’s delicate metal fingers.

‘I can’t hold on.’ I shouted, as my own numb fingers slipped off the frozen metal. ‘Wayne! Save yourself !’
‘I’m at the end of my rope as well.’ shouted Wayne. ‘Just ‘ang on a mo.’

But I couldn’t hold on any longer and I had to let go.

‘I’m not leavin’ you.’ shouted Wayne, twisting free and swinging down on the rope. ‘You’ll end up in cloud cuckoo land.’

‘I think I’m there already.’ I said, watching him stretch spaghetti thin in the freezing mists as he reached down for me.

Surely he would snap in two.

‘Never abandon a mate.’ shouted Wayne, lowering himself closer and closer. ‘I’m not going to let you fall into crazy melty land. We ain’t finished wiv that game of cards yet and you owe me money.’

‘You’ll pull Doctor Mentor in as well.’ I shouted, looking up into the swirling cylinder.

‘Don’t you worry, I’ll make sure I look after Doc Mentor.’ shouted the elongated Wayne. ‘Doctor Mentor’s my ‘alf brother.’

‘What?’ I gasped. ‘I thought you didn’t like Doctor Mentor.’

‘Just a bit of banter we ‘ave.’ said Wayne. ‘Like DeBlanc says, we’re all one big ‘appy family aboard the Uchronie. The Doc’s me ‘alf brother on me dad’s side.’

Doctor Mentor was shouting to us but I couldn‘t hear what he was saying.

I tried to pull myself up but there was nowhere I could get a grip on the smooth insides of the slowly rotating cylinder. There was no point in Wayne falling as well, but I knew that he would… unless I did something quickly.

It was time for me to take action.

I reached up and pulled Wayne’s knife from the sheath strapped to his leg.

I was freezing, blinded by the snow and the flickering strobe light of night and day racing past.

I couldn’t feel my fingers anymore.

Blindly I hacked at the rope with the knife.

I had to.

‘Don’t do it!’ shouted Wayne, trying to stop me. ‘Doctor Mentor…Get Corporal Price … He’ll be able to pull us up.’

‘There’s no time. Corporal Price is miles away!’ I shouted, as several strands of the cord separated. ‘I’m cutting the rope. The weight of two fully laden crewmen is too much… even for Corporal Price!’

‘Stop.’ shouted Wayne, unable to reach me. ‘Don’t do it mate!’

But, before I could finish cutting through the rope, Doctor Mentor’s metal hand separated from the rest of the arm and flew past us.

‘NOOOooo!’ cried Wayne, as we tumbled out of the cylinder into the swirling sky.

The Uchronie disappeared into the mists above us and we fell for a very long time.

Next Episode: There must be some kind of way out of this.