The Escape Read Online Free PDF

white. "You all right?" she asked. "Ghosts," he said. "Look at all the ghosts. I told you this place was haunted." "I doubt those are ghosts," B'Elanna said.
    "Mr. Kim?" Kim nodded. "They are very real.
    Everything here is real." He sounded as if he had hoped he was dreaming. No such luck.
    TW-O men and a woman, all wearing bright green smocks over purple pantaloons, stopped in front of a ship three down. They were talking and laughing. The woman had silver hair piled over a meter above her head. One of the men motioned at it. She nodded and took the hair off, revealing a head of black hair closely cut to her scalp. Then she tucked the silver wig under her arm and climbed the boarding ramp to the ship. The men followed her.
    "Clearly the ship took us somewhere," B'Elanna said. "And it used a method faster than any we know. Kim, find out where, and how far away from Voyager we are.
    Kim silently did as he was told, his handsome face a 36 picture of concentration. B'Elanna wiped a bead of sweat off her neck. Ten minutes ago she was wishing she had worn a coat; now she wished she had on her lighter uniform.
    "The surrounding star positions are the same," Kim said. He sounded uncertain. "Sort of." "'Sort or?," Torres asked.. "Can you be a little more specific than "sort or?" He glanced up at her. She recognized the look. She had seen it on his face when they were walking through the Ocampa settlement underground, soon after they had been forced to come to the Delta Quadrant. He was still new enough to space travel to find most things unbelievable. A drawback some days. A benefit others. She waited, uncertain which it would be this time. "I want to say I'm looking at the same stars as I was before we got onto the ship. We're still in the Delta Quadrant, but-was "Mr. Kim," Torres said, "I don't need an astronomy lesson. I asked you to define 'sort of." Define it. This is not an essay exam. This isn't even an exam.
    It's a simple question." "But the answer's not that simple. The stars are exactly where they should be, if they were younger. It's as if-was He stopped, apparently unable to fini sh.
    B'Elanna understood. She didn't want to, but she thought she understood. She quickly used her own tricorder to do the figuring as Kim did the same.
    Within a few seconds she had the answer.
    "Three hundred and ten thousand years," she said softly. 37 "What?" Neelix said. He had taken his hands off the door and was wringing them together. "Three hundred and ten thousand years what?" The edge of panic in his voice echoed the feeling in B'Elanna's stomach.
    She decided to ignore that feeling. It would get in her way. She made her voice as calm as Tavok's. She was beginning to understand how the Vulcan and the captain managed to sound relaxed even under stress. "We've jumped into the past of this planet by three hundred and ten thousand years," she said.
    "That's not possible," Neelix said. He moved away from her until his back hit the frame of the ship. Then he tugged on the flamboyant shirt he wore. "Frankly, if it's all the same to you, I would prefer to believe in ghosts. Yes. Let's make all these people ghosts. Ghosts are a much better idea than time travel, don't you agree"...ea@.
    Torres wasn't sure if she did agree.
    Now that she was getting past her shock, she was finding this situation fascinating. She was slowly starting to understand just a part of what this huge facility was and she was growingcomv, very impressed.
    These ships were time shuttles.
    All these people around them were traveling through time as if it were commonplace. And from the looks of this station, it was. Somehow they had boarded a working shuttle in the far, dead future and got sent here, to this time.
    "I'm afraid that we have to rule out the ghosts, Neelix, and accept time travel. It's our only chance to get back home," Torres said. She turned to KirLike "We 38 I THE ESCAPE had to have done something to trigger this ship to jump. We need to find that trigger."