Trolley to Yesterday (6 page)

Johnny was silent. Fergie's plan bothered him—it was too much like high-school vandalism, slashing tires and stuff like that. On the other hand, he knew that they had to do something to stop the professor from going on his disastrous mission. At last he heaved a deep sigh and pushed his chair back. "Oh, okay!" he said as he shoved himself out of his chair. "Let's go over there and see what we can do. But remember that my key won't fit his front door lock anymore. And I'll bet you the front door and the back door are both fastened up tighter than a drum."

"I'll bet they are," said Fergie with a knowing smile. "But I wasn't gonna try to get in through the doors. There's four or five cellar windows over there, an' probably one of 'em is loose. Let's go see."

Johnny frowned doubtfully, but he followed Fergie out into the front hall. From the dining room came the sound of the baseball game that Grampa was listening to. Gramma was upstairs. Closing the front door softly behind them, the boys trotted across the porch, down the steps, and across the street. Without hesitating they ran around to the rear of the professor's house and plunged into the wet bushes that grew close to the stone foundation. Kneeling down, Fergie began to push at one of the cobwebbed cellar windows. It was stuck tight, and immediately Johnny's heart sank. But Fergie did not give in easily. He moved along to the second window and gave it a hard bang with the heel of his hand. With a squeak and a rattle it swung inward.

"See?" Fergie whispered. "What'd I tell you? Now get down on your hands and knees and follow me."

Johnny wanted to complain about the muddy ground that would get his pants all dirty, but he knew that Fergie would make fun of him, so he said nothing. He watched as his friend turned over onto his belly and slid feet first in through the narrow opening. Johnny hesitated—he really didn't like what they were doing.

"Come on!" Fergie called in a loud whisper. "What're you waitin' for? Christmas?"

With a deep sigh Johnny took off his glasses and put them into the holder in his shirt pocket. Carefully he lowered himself over the worn sill of the cellar window. It was pitch black down below, and when his feet hit, Johnny felt loose objects rolling around under him. Then he remembered—this was the window that led to the coal bin.

"Lots of nice dirty coal," said Fergie with a giggle. "Your gramma will love the way you look when you get back home."

Johnny winced, but he followed Fergie out of the coal bin and past the looming shadow of the furnace. Gradually their eyes got used to the darkness, and they moved across the cellar floor toward the tunnel. They could see a pale gleam coming from the archway. They knew that something was up.

"Wait!"
Fergie whispered, and he put his hand on Johnny's chest. "We have to go really slow from here on."

Tiptoeing softly the boys made their way toward the glimmering brick passageway. They plastered their bodies against the rough wall and inched slowly along, sideways. The light at the far end grew brighter, and they could see the little red-and-green trolley car sitting on its rusty tracks. The shadow of a head bobbed behind the dusty windows, and in an instant the boys knew that their worst fears were true. The professor was getting ready to take the trolley on a trip back through time.

As they stood motionless, watching, an electrical hum filled the tunnel. The car shimmered like something seen through a rain-spattered window. There wasn't time to decide what to do. Both boys bolted forward and ran toward the little gilded balcony on the rear of the car. The humming rose to an ear-splitting screech as the boys clattered up the metal steps and threw themselves, facedown, on the ridged steel platform. A howling wind sprang up, and the car shook violently. The trolley lurched forward, and Johnny clutched frantically at the floor, trying to get a handhold. A babble of confused voices filled his ears, and he felt as if his body was turning to sand, falling to pieces.
Oh, no... oh, no... oh, no...
he kept saying, over and over, and he hoped that he would lose consciousness. But he didn't, and the roaring, jolting ride went on.

 

 

 

CHAPTER SIX

 

 

The trolley finally stopped. Johnny felt scared and sick to his stomach, and his body was bruised because he had been thrown around during the ride. He had slammed against the trolley's rear door, and he had rolled over Fergie, who clung for dear life to the railing on the steel platform. As the two boys slowly picked themselves up, they felt a clammy, clinging chill, and they looked out at a drifting white mist that hung about the car. Where were they? In outer space somewhere? Or ...

The rear door of the trolley opened, and the professor peered out. His face was deathly pale, and he was obviously much too frightened to be angry. The boys stared in wonder at him because he was wearing a long brown robe with a hood and, tied around his waist, a white braided rope. He wasn't wearing his glasses. After staring blearily at the boys for a few seconds, he reached inside the robe, pulled out his glasses, and put them on.

"Good merciful heavens, I
thought
so!" he muttered as he put his hand over his face. "Are you two completely, utterly out of your
minds?
By all rights you should have been swept away into the X dimension or some such place. But I see that God takes care of idiots, and here you are!" He took his hand away from his face and glowered at the boys. "Why on earth did you come? Don't you know that it was a very dangerous thing to do?"

Johnny stared stubbornly back at the professor. "We didn't care," he said firmly. "Fergie and I thought you might run off and do something crazy, and... well, we just didn't want you to get hurt. Did we, Fergie?"

Fergie shook his head. Like Johnny he was not at all ashamed of what he had done. But he was scared.

The professor was genuinely touched. His eyes filled with tears, but then he pulled himself together,
harrumphed,
and tried to look dignified. "Gentlemen," he said in a strained voice, "I... I don't quite know what to say. It was good of you to be concerned about me, but... well, you know what a reasonable, restrained person I am. I would never do anything that would endanger my life."

Sure you wouldn't! thought Fergie, but he said nothing. Johnny began to glance nervously at the eerie, swirling mist.

"Where are we?" he asked in an awestruck voice.

"Where?" said the professor with a faint smile. "Well, out here you are between times, in the void, and if you step off this platform into the mist you won't be seen again, I promise you. But the trolley is hovering next to Leander's Tower, and once again we are ready to enter the long-lost world of 1453. By the way, in case you were wondering why I had my glasses off, I was trying to see if I could get along without them—they didn't have eyeglasses in the fifteenth century. Of course, I could use contact lenses, but I'm deathly afraid that I'll fall asleep with them on and suffer eye damage. I'm just running on, as usual: Come inside, and we can go out the side door as we did the other time. We won't stay long—just a couple of minutes."

Fergie and Johnny followed the professor through the door into the lighted interior of the car. Immediately both of them stopped and stared at a large bundle that lay on the floor between the rows of seats. There was the rubber life raft, and stuck under the straps that bound it was the professor's Knights of Columbus sword. On top of the heap lay an old, scuffed, black leather valise.

The professor's face got red. "I... I'll bet you're wondering what all this paraphernalia is for, aren't you?" he asked nervously.

Fergie grinned. "No, prof, as a matter of fact, we
weren't
wondering! We saw you buy that raft downtown and we figured you were gettin' ready to make your move soon. We were gonna try and stop you—that's why we jumped on the trolley. You can't fool us—we can read you like a book!"

The professor coughed and glanced hurriedly away. "Well?" he said brusquely. "What on earth did you expect me to do? Eh? I've been thinking about Constantinople night and day ever since I found this ridiculous Time Trolley, and I just couldn't give up if there's even a tiny chance that I could save those poor people in the church."

Johnny's eyes grew wide "But professor!" he said in a puzzled tone. "What were you gonna do? I mean, you couldn't fight off the Turkish army all by yourself."

The professor's face got redder. He folded his arms and stared at the floor. "If you must know," he said quietly, "I was going to pretend to be an Angel of Light. Remember the legend I told you about? The people of Constantinople believed that an angel would come down into the great Church of the Holy Wisdom and drive away the enemy, even if the city walls had been battered down and all hope seemed to be gone. I know I don't look much like an angel, but... well, let me show you."

The professor bent down and undid the snaps on the black valise. He reached in and pulled out an odd-looking pistol. It had a stubby, tube-shaped barrel with a wide mouth. Johnny had seen guns like this in the movies, and he knew instantly that it was a flare pistol. Soldiers used them to signal their friends when they were in trouble. They fired the flares into the air, and the flares burst with a white or colored light, like Fourth of July skyrockets.

"I have a box of white flares in the valise," said the professor as he turned the gun over in his hands. "Normally they're set to explode at a great height, but I have shortened the fuses on these, so they will explode inside the dome of the church where the people will be hiding. I got the height of the dome from an architecture book that I have in my library. There'll be a flash of light, and some people will get their hair singed, but it ought to frighten the dickens out of the Turks.
That
is what I plan to do. The big problem will be getting into the city and getting back in one piece." He paused and looked hopefully at the two boys. "Do you think it would work?" he asked.

Johnny's eyes filled with tears. He knew that the professor was trying to do something fine and noble, but he felt that the plan was utterly, totally crazy. "Professor!" he pleaded, grabbing the old man's arms,
"please
don't do this! The raft will sink, or something awful that you don't expect will happen, and you'll get killed!"

Fergie clenched his fists and glared at the professor, who glared right back at him. Fergie was ready to wrestle the old man to the floor if he had to, and for a moment it looked as if there would be a fight. Then the professor laughed and tossed the flare pistol back into the valise. With a helpless sigh he sat down on the raft and folded his arms. "I hate to admit it," he said sadly, "but you boys are probably right. My plan is one that depends on everything going absolutely right, and any plan like that is a bad one. I'd probably wind up being captured and impaled by the Turks."

"Impaled!" said Johnny. "What's that?"

The professor winced. "Oh, it's just a charming punishment that the Turks used in the old days. They drove a sharpened stake through your body and left you to die in the hot sun."

Johnny was silent. Fergie hummed a bit and wound his watch, and the professor twiddled the tassels on the cord around his waist. After a long pause he adjusted his glasses and coughed nervously. Then he stood up and rubbed his hands impatiently.
"Well!"
he said, glancing from one boy to the other. "As long as we're here, we ought to go out and have a look at Constantinople from the windows of Leander's Tower. I promise you, on my solemn word of honor, that I will not do anything but look."

Johnny hesitated, but when he glanced at Fergie, he saw that he was raring to go. Silently the two boys lined up behind the professor at the side door of the trolley. He pulled the emergency cord and the doors hissed open. Then he reached into the folds of his robe and pulled out a small leather bag that hung from his neck by a piece of rawhide. Reaching inside, the professor plucked out the brass pipe tamper, and he used it to part the invisible veil that hung outside the trolley doors. Quickly the three stepped through.

Night lay over Leander's Tower. A streak of moonlight hovered on the rough stone floor of the room where the three travelers stood, and beyond the narrow windows they could see dark rippling water. The professor strode to one of the tall openings and stuck his head out. There was no glass in the window, so he was able to lean far out and look around. For a moment he was silent, but then—quite suddenly—he let out a loud exclamation. As the boys watched in astonishment, he turned on his heel and marched back to the veiled doorway that led to the trolley. Using the tamper he plunged through and disappeared. A few minutes later he came charging back with his valise and sword. Throwing the sheathed sword down on the floor beside him, he un-snapped the top of the valise and took out a large old-fashioned set of binoculars.

"I'm really worried," muttered the professor as he twiddled the adjusting wheel of the binoculars and used them to peer out the window. "There's a lot of activity on that shore over there. I really can't see a great deal in the dark, but there are torches flaring over on the far shore, and I think there are ships moving back and forth in the water. Lots of ships. That should not be, if we are here on March 30. But if one of the gears in that time machine has slipped, then—"

The professor's speech was interrupted by loud sounds that came from below. Yells and loud commands in a foreign language, and the heavy tramp of feet. Over in one corner of the tower room was a spiral staircase leading down. Torchlight flickered on the steps, and before anyone could move, a huge bearded man came vaulting up into the room. The man's face was ugly and scarred, and one of his eyes stared blankly off in the wrong direction. He wore a turban and a steel breastplate, and in his right hand he carried a long, curved sword. Behind him on the steps stood a grim-looking soldier who wore a pointed bronze helmet and carried a smoking, sputtering torch. The man with the turban began yelling at the professor and the boys in a strange language. They could not understand what he said, but the general meaning seemed clear: They were in the hands of the enemy, and they were in deep deep trouble.