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lucky. It had blazed right into Columbus Circle, was hit by several other boats and was now being bashed around in traffic near the circle’s central hub, where a statue of Columbus and perhaps six feet of column base were all that now divided this new, broader roundabout. The Professor and Samantha looked at each other with pale faces. A decision had to be made, fast.
    “Here,” The Professor shoved all of his money, about two hundred and thirty-four dollars, into the cabbie’s hand. “Take us to the steps of the Natural History Museum and forget you ever saw us.”
    The cabbie looked around, checked his mirrors and quickly ascertained that no police seemed to have arrived yet, and no one seemed to have noticed that their taxi-boat had been the source of all the excitement. He smiled and closed his fist on the money.
    “You got it, Mac,” he replied, pulling a sharp left onto Sixty-first street and then another onto Central Park West. At first they crept a little slowly, trying to blend in, but quickly picked up the pace. Samantha held Polly low in her lap, trying to hide the wet dog from any passing police. She was very nervous; Samantha wasn’t accustomed to breaking the law in any sort of way, and she felt bad for the owner of the ‘stolen’ boat and the other boats that had been involved in crashes, and she prayed that no one had been hurt by the actions of her usually smarter dog. The Professor, though also quite nervous, seemed to sense Samantha’s unease and attempted to be a soothing adult voice to her frightened adolescent ears.
    “It’ll be all right, Samantha,” he said, whispering. “Remember, we’re trying to make sure that none
of this ever happens. Though I admit this would seem to be a small setback.”
    “A small setback!!? Professor, we’re outlaws here now!”
    “Yes, well, we’re banking on the hope that no one saw us, or can really pinpoint the source of the runaway boat.” He paused, looking at the cabbie, “And so is our friend here.”
    The cabbie appeared calm, reached Seventy-seventh street, swung a quick U-turn as no oncoming boat traffic was evident and pulled alongside the museum steps, settling into a little cove that the water had created beneath the statue of a mounted Teddy Roosevelt. The fugitive trio hopped out, looked at their driver with very serious expressions and received a slight smile in return, the cabbie holding up the last of The Professor’s cash and miming zipping his mouth shut with a zipper. The Professor nodded and the driver eased back into Manhattan boat traffic, waving a last goodbye.
    “Leaping Lozenges!” The Professor blurted out after a long moment of silence, wiping his sweaty brow with a sleeve. “Have you got a leash
for that monster!?”
    Samantha smiled slightly and nodded sheepishly, pulling Polly’s leash out of her backpack. Polly sat with hunched shoulders and looked as best she could like a dog who was very sorry, and certainly hadn’t meant
to be bad.

Polly sat calmly in the corner of Professor Smythe’s basement office as Samantha eyed her. It was hard not to be angry at the little Boston terrier for all the chaos she had managed to cause in this strange alternate timeline, but she was after all just a dog. Samantha made a mental note to always keep her on the leash anytime they ventured out again into this bizarre, otherworldly New York. At least it seemed like their chaotic activity had gone unnoticed; it had been a day and a half since the boat had gone charging, driverless, into Columbus Circle traffic. They had made themselves beds in the office out of fourteenth century Peruvian blankets, neither she nor The Professor being confident that their homes were still where they had left them back in the ‘correct’ timeline. Professor Smythe had assured Samantha that he was allowed to be at the museum at any time and frequently worked entire nights there. Whether or not this was true, or at least familiar to the museum guards