“What? What about him?”
“Who?”
“The professor — there!” Jack pointed at the professor who was still on the ground next to him. “Professor, are you OK?” Jack asked, trying to pull him to his feet.
“Come on, there’s no time — just leave him,” Angus said.
“I can’t!”
Angus rolled his eyes. The professor rose shakily to his feet, ashen faced.
“Right — he’s fine — so let’s get on with it,” Angus said.
“Why?” Jack asked.
“What do you mean, why?” Angus said desperately. “There’s no time to explain. You are in great danger. We all are. I’ve been sent to rescue you.”
They heard the Rector shouting. “Make safe your weapon. There is no escape. We will not harm you. Give yourself up.”
Angus screamed back, “Everyone stay where you are!” And as if to make the point, he opened up again with his machine gun, spraying the stone wall of the castle accommodation block with bullets and smashing a number of windows in the process. As the gun fired, Angus reeled backwards with the force and the nose of the barrel veered upwards dispatching rounds in a random pattern up the side of the old building.
“Put that thing down before you kill someone,” Jack said desperately.
Angus ignored him. He lowered the gun and looked into his own time phone, which hung around his neck.
“No! The signal’s going… I was told this might happen… it’s over.”
“What do you mean?”
“We can’t time travel out. We’ll have to run for it! Come on!” And to make his point, he unceremoniously poked the smoking barrel of his gun at Jack.
“Hey! Watch where you’re pointing that thing.”
Angus pleaded with his friend, “I’m telling you, stay here and we’re finished. Trust me. There’s a lot you don’t know.”
In the background, they heard the Rector’s voice again, booming orders.
“The others should be here by now to help me. But something must have happened. We’ve got to get out of here.” Angus was starting to panic. He knew something that Jack didn’t. If they could escape, maybe there would be some time to think.
“How?” Jack said.
“You’re the brain box. You tell me. I’ve never been here before.”
“There’s only one way down. And that’s on the cable car,” the professor said.
“Well let’s move.”
Jack had the layout of the castle in his head and they were soon racing up the other side of the courtyard to the cable-car. Angus waited briefly at the bottom of the stairs and fired some final rounds randomly into the courtyard to deter any immediate pursuit. The red cable car was waiting snugly in its arrival gantry. Jack opened the door to the small control room directly behind the gantry. There was an array of switches, gears and dials. They were labelled in German and they all looked dead. The boys turned to the professor.
“Well, Professor?”
“I am a scientist not a cable-car operator,” the professor said pompously. Then he surveyed the control room and smiled mischievously back at the boys, “Which means, for me, it won’t be that difficult.” He manoeuvred himself in front of the main control panel. “I have always found that, in the case of technical difficulty, the best thing to do is to press the biggest button you can find…” The professor poked an index finger at a large green button and then, reading a few of the other labels, made a number of further adjustments. A bell rang above them and he pressed another button. The machinery sprang into life.
The professor jumped up in excitement, “Let’s go!”
They moved across to where the cable car waited. The professor slid open the door and they piled in. He inspected the control panel inside the cable car.
“Here goes!” Suddenly, the car moved away from the gantry and began its descent into the valley below. The castle was soon receding into the distance.
“What happens when we get to the bottom?” Angus said.
“They’ll telephone down… someone will be waiting for us there.”
“Unless we can find some way out,” the professor said.
Angus laughed, “Be serious, we’re suspended several hundred metres up in the air.”
The professor moved over to the large metal bench at one end of the car. It had a small hatch in the side. He slid open the cover.
“Just as I thought. Nothing overlooked.”
They peered into the chest. There was a medical kit, a tool bag, some harnesses and an array of other equipment. But there was also rope. Lots of rope.
Angus said, “Well that’s a fat lot of good. What are we supposed to do — suspend it from the bottom of the cable car and abseil down…?”
Jack and the professor looked at each other, and then Jack said quietly, “Angus, I think that’s exactly what the professor has in mind.”
Angus turned white, “No way. There is no way that I am climbing out of this sardine can and dangling myself on the end of a bit of thread two hundred metres up in the air… I’ve already risked my life to time travel back a hundred years to rescue you…”
Jack smiled at him slyly, “Not scared are you?”
The professor was already unloading the rope from the chest.
“Is it going to be long enough?”
“Should be. Otherwise someone has made a stupid mistake.”
“How do we get down it?”
“Here,” the professor handed Jack a small metal object. “It’s a friction device. One end attaches to you. The other to the rope.” The professor was busy securing an end of the rope to the anchor point inside the car. He leaned over and slid free the bolts on the trapdoor, which was built flush into the floor of the car.
“Stand to the side and hold on!” the professor said. And with that, he released the trapdoor and flipped it over on its hinges so it landed with a crash on the inside of the car. There was now a large square hole in the floor of the car. Cold mountain air blasted up through this gap as their descent continued. Jack stole a glance through the hole — far down, a landscape of firs, rock and alpine grass flitted silently past as the cable car floated downwards.
Angus was staring out of the front window, “I think you’d better hurry, Professor.”
They looked up and spotted the cause of Angus’s concern. Soon they would be at the mid-point of their journey. Still quite far below, but approaching fast, was the return cable car — making its way up the other cable to the castle just as their own cabin descended. Even at this distance, the trio could make out a number of figures eyeing them from the on-coming car.
“What do we do now?”
“We keep going. What can they do?”
“They can shoot us for a start,” Angus said.
The professor dropped the rope through the trapdoor. It rapidly uncoiled and trailed freely from the cabin until it started to drag along the ground way below.
The other cable car was approaching them rapidly. The professor looked towards it. He was working something out in his head.
“Let’s get ready,” he said.
They attached the friction devices to sections of the rope, ready for descent.
“Angus — you go first.” He pointed at the gun, “And you’ll need to leave that thing.”
“Great. Just as I was beginning to enjoy myself.”
The professor showed them how the friction devices worked. That bit seemed straightforward. The problem was going to be launching into the abyss in the first place.
