And then the fork she’d thrown had frozen even further down the corridor.
There was only one conclusion she could draw from these two events and it made Penny shiver.
The slow-time bubble was growing—expanding further into the ship—and she was right in its path.
Just as she had this thought, a strand of her long, chestnut hair, which had gotten loose from the bun at the nape of her neck, tickled her face. Penny reached up instinctively to swipe it away but as her hand moved upward from her waist to her face, it froze suddenly in the air right in front of her.
Penny stared in horror at her frozen hand. It didn’t feel any different but when she tried to move it, it refused to obey her. She couldn’t wiggle her fingers—couldn’t even twitch them. It was as though her hand had suddenly become disconnected from the rest of her body, even though it was still attached.
It is disconnected, whispered a little voice in her head. It’s in a different time than the rest of you. And if you don’t get out of here, Penny, you’re going to be stuck the same way Rive and Y’lla are. And who knows if anyone will ever find you, or even if they do, if they’ll be able to save you? After all, how do you save someone from a temporal anomaly?
You could be trapped here forever.
This last thought galvanized her into action. She yanked the arm of her affected hand backwards with all her might. To her relief, the hand began to work again at once but the fact that the invisible time bubble was so close to her freaked Penny out. It was expanding quickly, like poison gas she couldn’t see—she had to get away from it before it caught her!
Her eyes darted to the side door of the shuttle. It was on the corridor, aft of the cockpit, and it was located just a few feet behind her. Could she get to it before the time bubble enveloped and froze her?
Penny didn’t know but she was about to find out.
Seven
Normally Penny would have taken plenty of supplies and armed herself to the teeth before setting off into a strange spaceport which was known to be dangerous—especially for a woman alone. But there was no time to grab any of the food cubes in the well stocked cupboard or one of the blasters kept in the emergency locker. There wasn’t time to do anything but dive for the door and pray she would make it out in time…literally.
Penny raced for the door, threw the latch, and shoved the door open.
Only it wouldn’t open all the way. Halfway through its arc, the metal door froze in place and wouldn’t budge an inch further.
She knew what that meant—it was trapped in the slow-time bubble too!
Taking a deep breath, she squeezed out the narrow opening and jumped to the metal floor below from the high shuttle opening. The landing jarred her from head to foot—her teeth clicked together hard and the bones in her hips and knees protested the harsh landing.
But Penny knew she couldn’t waste time resting. She moved warily and quickly away from the long-range shuttle, backing away from the cockpit end of it, where she knew the temporal anomaly was.
Luckily, Rive had parked in the docking bay in such a way that the nose of the ship was towards the far end of the Hell’s Gate station. If he hadn’t, Penny would have been stuck in an ever-shrinking bubble of normal time, waiting for the slow-time bubble to engulf her.
But as it was, she was able to back away in the direction of the main part of the long station. After a moment, she turned and fled.
Penny wasn’t sure how far she ran. The docking bay they had landed in was almost empty, with only a few ships parked in the vast, open area and no people in sight. Her heavy boots, meant for the snowy climate of Yown Beta, echoed on the metal floor plates with a dull, empty sounding thud, thud, thud, and she met no one at all as she fled from the time bubble engulfing the long-range shuttle.
At last, though, she could run no more. Heart pounding and the breath tearing in her throat, Penny stopped and bent over, hands on her knees. She panted for a while, trying to get her breath back, and was finally able to straighten up and look around.
She found herself outside the