‘Fifteen seconds!’

Maddy let go of the side of the perspex cylinder and began treading water. ‘Liam, you’ve g-got to go under now.’

‘I know… I know! Bleedin’ hate this bit.’

‘Maybe Sal and I should t-teach you how to swim some time?’

‘Ten seconds!’

‘Oh Jay-zus-’n’-Mary, why does time travel have to be done this way? Why did that Waldstein fella have to be so stupid as to invent bleedin’ time travel in the first place!’

‘You wanna blame someone… b-blame the Chinese what’s-his-name guy who worked it out in the first place.’

Liam nodded. ‘Aghh, well, him too!’

‘Five seconds!’ called Sal. ‘You really need to duck under now!’

Maddy held her hand above his head. ‘Need me to push you under?’

‘No! I’ll just… I’ll, ah… All right!’

Liam sucked in a lungful of air and clasped his nose with his free hand.

‘S-see you on the other side,’ she uttered as she pushed him under the water. Then sucked in air and submerged as well.

Oh Jeez… here goes.

Her first time. Her first time into the past, not counting her recruitment from 2010. She’d been too busy checking the coordinates were set right, arranging the return window time-stamp, checking Sal had pulled out the right clothes for them to wear from the old closet in the back room, making sure she remembered the details of their mission… too busy with all those things to realize how utterly terrified she was at the prospect of being pushed out of space-time, through chaos space — and God knows what that was — to emerge back into the space-time of nearly a hundred years ago.

She opened her eyes under the water and saw the foggy form of Liam’s scrawny body thrashing around in blind panic. She saw bubbles zig-zagging up around him. She could see the dim lamp on the computer desk through the tube’s scuffed plastic, the faint outline of Sal… then…