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17
You're Going To Shoot Me?
Mimi
"Whodidthat?"Blackshouted. Grumpy had pulled his gun free of the holster but didn't know which of us to aim it at yet.
"No one," Bryan replied, sounding strained.
"Close it! Close it!"
"We're still a plane away," Bryan assured him, which clearly meant diddly-squat to Black.
"No one can see us," I told the overseer.
"I don't care! Close the fucking door!"
"No need to get your panties in a wad," Bryan said, and started to unbuckle his seatbelt in order to get up and close the door as commanded.
"What are you doing? Sit down!" Black yelled.
Bryan hesitated because now Grumpy had found a target and was aiming the pistol at his chest. Raising his hands slowly, Fawkes said, "You asked me to close the hatch."
"Do it from your seat while buckled in," Black ordered.
"It's a manual door," Bryan told him, speaking slowly. "Do you see the wheel? That needs to be spun to open and close it."
"Who spun it open?" Black demanded.
"None of us," Bryan replied steadily. I wasn't sure if he was feeling steady right then, but he was doing a fine job of portraying it.
"Someone must have!"
"We were all seated," Bryan explained, as if to an upset child. "Buckled in," he added.
"Did you see one of them move?" Black asked Grumpy.
"I don't think so," Grumpy replied.
"Did something happen to Time to make us miss it?" Black asked tentatively.
I thought perhaps somethinghadhappened to Time, but it hadn't been to cover any movements by us.
"Maybe?" Grumpy asked him back.
Bryan shook his head. "Nothin' like that happened," he said cajolingly.
"Sit down in your chair, Dr Fawkes!" Black screeched. "Keep your gun on him while he buckles back up," he instructed Grumpy. "I'll close the door."
He didn't sound too keen about that. His chair was the farthest from the hatch and he eyed the distance between them warily. When he started trying to unbuckle, I noticed his hands were shaking. The trembling was so strong, it took several tries and several minutes for him to free himself and by the time he did it, he was almost in tears.
The tension in the module was thick enough to cut with a knife. Or the bullet Grumpy was close to firing. I alternately watched Grumpy fingering the trigger on his pistol and Black staggering toward the hatch, not sure which would explode first.
Black reached the exit and, sucking in massive breaths of air, he steeled himself to look outside. All he'd see was 1966 Star City, but no people or moving objects; just those that were inanimate. It's how we hid from sight when we first arrived at a new time. In theory, we could do everything we needed to do from the safety of an obscured Orion, and no contemporary would be any the wiser.
That was how it usually went.
But as Black leaned out to see where the hatch had got to, the Orion shifted planes on us.
