The Taurids of Encke

By David Dryden

You wake up to a strange, eerie morning, and the day seems out of kilter with all your clocks. You see your friends trapped behind an invisible barrier that seems impenetrable, and they cannot see you, hear you or be heard.
The story is about the rescue of just a few of the many ensnared in the grip of a different time. It relives he catastrophic consequences of the event while the world watches.
Victor, a Spitfire pilot, encountered this phenomenon during a dogfight during World War II. Both the British and the Third Reich are fanatical to possess its potentiality. Because of this, Victors fiance inevitably becomes embroiled in espionage and murder and mysteriously disappears from his life.
The chronicles of the story adventure through the bowels of the earth and the depths of outer space.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Sep 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491877821

David Dryden

David Dryden, ... I'm still trying to figure out how to best use this space. Let's see! I've learned up to a university bachelors with honours, although learning about life is about much more than what they supposedly teach you at school. I was raised in a christian home, accepted the christian faith in my late teens, and after getting more intense being a christian, I rejected Jesus and the new testament after looking into this messiah claims. So right now, I'd probably be classed as a "God-fearer." I've considered a wide range of subjects relating to what a person believes and lives, like atheism, subjectivism, evolution, statism, scientism, biblical criticism and I've interacted with many people of various worldviews to get an idea of how people think these days. I also have some knowledge of Biblical Hebrew and New Testament Greek. I love sharing ideas, learning something and sharing it with others so that they can test what I say. So teaching or debating or discussing are great pasttimes for me. Music has been an important part of my life since I was young, being able to play and teach a variety of instruments. My family is one of the most important aspects of my life, and I hope I can be a good man so that I can be a good husband and father. Nice to meet you, if you choose to read this.

Book preview

Prologue

T HIS IS A STORY ABOUT AN event when time suddenly took a step back for hundreds of thousands of people who live on the spine of England. A cosmic medium, which is a factual phenomenon, consisting of a mass of diverse astral elements unknown to man, is attracted to a unique geological feature and becomes resident along this stretch of land. It sears a fissure in time through the infrastructure, homes, and the wilderness that it has taken to. For the populace occupied therein, a different time to the rest of the world begins.

The origin host to this assembly of media is a comet called Encke, whose elliptical orbit in our solar system comes just within view of a sharp human eye every thousand days or so. Frenchman Pierrier Méchain first discovered the comet Encke in 1786, but it was named after Johann Franz Encke, a German who found that it was a periodic comet in 1819. He calculated its orbit and announced that it was the shortest of those passing through our solar system.

The next perihelion of Encke will be 21 November 2013, and it will become visible to us regular stargazers more often than the more well-known Halley’s Comet.

The media are commonly known as Taurids. There are two, the Northern and the Southern, which travel in pairs. In this story, their combination creates the recipe for time dilation.

Its effect causes devastation, immense confusion, and suffering. However, the Taurids of Encke are not partial to destruction but in fact are idle in nature and can only linger at the will of magnetic forces and solar winds, hazardous only to those who are blindly dynamic, not malevolent, and sometimes even intimate. Nevertheless, they separate people in time, who then struggle to find a way to be reunited.

Spitfire pilot Victor Ignatowsky was the first to encounter the phenomenon during the Second World War, and he miraculously managed to survive the first incredible incident. Because of this, he became a leading authority on the effects of the Taurids of Encke.

For the first time in the history of mankind there was a real prospect of time manipulation. For Adolf Hitler this was a prophecy written in the skies that had come to fruition, and he was determined to learn, exclusively, the secrets that this invisible force possessed, at the same killing the threat to his plans for world supremacy.

Rosie, Victor’s fiancée, becomes unwittingly embroiled in the claws of espionage, which takes the story through to the modern day.

Throughout Victor’s longevity, he investigates the three yearly visitations of the Taurids of Encke wherever they linger a while, which involves him in fantastic and incredible adventures in an air balloon over the sea and later as a dilated time advisor to a team at NASA endeavouring to rescue a crippled Russian cosmonaut in a space capsule in outer space.

The chronicle unfolds with the veteran pilot’s experience and ingenuity as he tries to liberate his new friends who are trapped inside this accretion of cosmic energy contained within the Taurids of Encke; and in the process, the mystery of a lost love is resolved.

Chapter 1

Thursday, 3 October 1940

The Dogfight

P ILOT OFFICER IGNAT OWSKI, AN ACE Polish Spitfire pilot, had dispatched two Luftwaffe Messerschmitt Bf 109s. He was just beginning to breathe again when he heard the rat-a-tat-tat behind him and tracer bullets appeared over the cockpit, the bullets churning up a patch of foam in the water a hundred yards ahead. It was then that he decided to employ the automatic boost cut-out, a device giving maximum power from the engine for use in an emergency. He pushed the lever down and felt the surge of power from the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine in front pull him into his seat as the aircraft accelerated.

Twisting and dipping his wings as nimbly a ballerina, he managed to keep clear of the Hun bullets, the wing tips nearly hitting the water several times while doing so.

One of the 109s had evidently snuck to one side and came diving in at him from the beam. He turned towards it and gave his attacker the last of his ammunition and a view of the beads of sweat on his cold brow and his equally soft upper lip, perfectly shaven. He thought his attacker went straight in, for as he drew away with his superior speed, he could see only two Messerschmitts behind him. Depleted, he realised that all he could do to escape their vengeance was to outrun them; even without the automatic boost he would have 5 miles per hour on his pursuer’s 355 miles per hour, but continued use of the power surge would burn out his engine, and then he would surely be done for, so he disengaged it. He swept left and right like a frightened fox, trying to feign and search for a gap, and this way he could keep his eye on his baying pursuers and try to outguess their manoeuvres.

Slowly the distance between them increased. The occasional tracer would dart up past him; he sweated another bead or two at the thought of one finding his rectum. Not soon enough was he safe from the range of their flack, but it continued to be a battle of minds. The weather was clear, and he remained in their sight. If he continued blinding his foe by heading into the morning sun, he would be sliding away from home and depleting fuel, eventually ending up in enemy territory!

He reckoned that the Kraut duo would work as a team and anticipate his need to turn west. One would follow him, and the other would head west to intercept him. Of course, they might just give up and go straight home, but he wouldn’t have.

The ceiling for his Supermarine Spitfire was 34,700 feet; the Me 109E was 33,792 feet. He accelerated his rate of climb. That thousand feet finesse might be just enough to make it too difficult for them to continue to track him. There was, by good fortune, also about four-eighths of cumulus nimbus on the way up, perhaps enough to lose visual contact. The additional thirteen points of octane that the Air Ministry changed to was also improving the fox’s chances. Onwards and upwards… At seven and eight thousand feet, they were still visual; at nine thousand feet, he could only see one of the hounds now. Yes, he had guessed right. One had split, hoping to later pop alongside his starboard and riddle him. He passed through the tendrils of white spun candyfloss—sweet. The cold was numbing, but passing ten thousand feet, something else was, his mind: oxygen, or rather the lack of it. He almost forgot to clip the mask back up to his face, but at this point, his faculties had started to cease as a rapid shuttering of blackness separated reality from his motor senses while fumbling with the turn-on valve. The oxygen arrived too late to for him to maintain consciousness.

The lifeless pilot officer was slumped in his seat, but the single propeller icon continued to climb, for how long it was difficult to know, but soon, due to thinning air, the Merlin engine failed to receive the compensating choke that it needed, and eventually he started to descend, at first flying in a horizontal altitude. Then as the air thickened again, his air speed reduced even further, until it reached stalling speed—a point where aerodynamics demanded forward thrust which was not there, air flow over the wings stopped, and they became nothing more than a pivot for gravity to attract the heaviest end of this flying poise, and the aircraft with an unresponsive pilot dipped into a forward dive. The flaps still being in position for ascent helped reduce the steepness of the dive. But after a while, the aircraft began to shudder and shake, and his body throbbed and buffeted against the joystick. He was decelerating at a frightening rate! Not unlike when he slammed the brakes on his Austin Nippy 1935, trying to overtake a complete line of military escort vehicles and a truckload of soldiers on the A1; failing to make it, the soldiers had cheered and laughed and jeered down at him from the back of the truck for another five miles. The braking continued like hitting a dodgem car in front repeatedly with full impact, and consequently he was being revived by the jolting against his chest, pumping the life-giving flow of oxygen from his mask back into his lungs. In his log, should he ever write it up, he thought he might estimate that less than forty-five seconds had elapsed after passing out.

Totally disorientated and confused, the first thing that registered on coming round was the absolute silence: the engine had stopped. But more than that, there was no sound of wind flowing over the fuselage. He had either landed… or he was dead.

He tried to reignite the Merlin—nothing. He could see from his starboard side the distinct outline of The Wash. The cumulus nimbus was just above him, and he estimated that he was around nine thousand feet. On moving his head around to make out these observations, he wondered if somehow he had strained his neck and was deafened! The props had completely stopped. He could see two of the three of them clearly as a twisted V in front of him. They were bent back towards him, useless like dried and twisted sycamore seeds. As if heavily drugged, though his mind was clear enough, he strained to extend his arm and pushed the starter again. Nothing. Just a dull click.

He tried to shake his head to clear the volume he felt around him. It felt as if he were in the dense water of the Dead Sea, and it made him nauseous. Every movement he made took much more effort than normal. He had never had to use extra muscles to lower his arm before, except when treading water face-to-face with Rosie in the pool last week; gravity normally did the job.

Smiling as always, Rosie looked at him in a sepia haze; the curled photo was still wedged behind the lip of the altimeter on the right. Victor had developed a habit of wearing a leather glove only on his right hand. He would dress that hand first and often just carry the other glove. He tugged to remove it, and what normally took a split second became a struggle. He slowly pulled at each finger in turn and prised it off, stretching out his hand to hold her. Gently, as if in a dream world, his fingers grasped his fiancée. A three—quarter softened profile, she was looking at him sideways, almost seductively, as he held her in both hands. Was he ever going to really hold her again?

The shiny photographic paper didn’t recoil instantly as expected; it slowly and deliberately returned to its memorised curled state. As he watched this in slow motion, he noticed that the glove hadn’t dropped down. It seemed to be supported by thick air. He began to wonder if this was an outer space weightless experience. Perhaps he had flown beyond the earth’s gravitational pull, which would mean he was in orbit and might explain the engine not working without air. It was ludicrous, but at this moment it essentially gave a rationale as to why he wasn’t plummeting to the land of hope and glory.

A few seconds turned into a minute and then two, and he began to feel increasingly hot, sweat clinging hotly to him. He needed to remove his mask and goggles to allow some ventilation onto his face. He forced the goggles off his eyes only to discover that there was no relief. The atmosphere was oppressive and unbearable, and it stung his eyeballs. The oxygen mask definitely had to stay put.

Summing up his predicament was bewildering. He was alive, but he wouldn’t bet on it. He was in his Spitfire, which had stalled, and there was little chance of restarting without the dolly, which was where he wanted to be, back on the airfield. No point anyway, as those props had had it. He could hardly move, and he wasn’t sure if the plane was gliding or sailing. However, he could sense that there was slight downward movement. And some gravity still existed, for his glove had gradually floated down too. Could his altimeter be trusted? It seemed stuck at 8,250 feet.

Rosie was now tucked in next to his heart. Time to jump!

He soon became accustomed to this difficulty in moving, and he pulled the canopy release cord, expecting it to fly back easily, but it wouldn’t budge. Had he missed something? This was the new bulletproof glass canopy with which his squadron had been fitted. Contained within a step from the abyss of panic, he swallowed a measure of calm. He cursed himself for not attending the after refit demonstration that the ground crew had called, but Rosie had wanted to show him something that went with the silk stockings he’d given her. His fingertips felt the canopy budge a sixteenth He pushed and pulled harder, and the canopy finally gave, slowly and surely sliding back, and instead of the usual hollow sounding sigh it groaned obstinately.

His already confused state became almost total on discovering that the atmosphere outside was the same as inside, and he chuckled nervously, which sounded to him as if he had a head cold. The world out there was calm and tranquil; maybe he was dead after all. He gingerly rose up in a slow-motion movement onto the seat, stretching the umbilical cord of his mask to its limit, and stood erect, unsure of what his intentions were. For a few moments, he felt like a god, with complete serenity and power. Pilot Officer Victor Ignatowski, born 1 December 1915, started to sing a Polish nursery rhyme his family used to sing at Passover:

Wlazł kotek na płotek i mruga,

i mruga,

ładna to piosenka niedługa,

niedługa.

Nie długa, nie krótka, lecz w sam raz,

lecz w sam raz.

Zaspiewaj koteczku jeszcze raz,

jeszcze raz.

A kitten sits on the fence and he blinks,

And he blinks.

It’s a very pretty song, and it’s not long,

It’s not long.

Not long and not short, but just right,

But just right.

Come on, little kitten, sing again,

Sing again.

The deadened sound of his own voice intrigued him: it was muted, without feedback from echoes and no escape of vocal vibration. Only the alternating bellow of his breathing through his rubber oxygen mask cone accompanied him; his voice was doubly stifled. His hymn seemed barred from reaching the gods.

Halfway through his second recital, the floating carriage suddenly dropped like a stone and made his heart leap in terror. He was detached from his chariot of Spitfire, and his mask ripped away from his face; still connected by the tube it streamed and flapped about perpendicular from the cockpit. Time to part company anyway. He managed to kick himself clear. The parachute unfurled abruptly, and the harness was hauled securely into his groin. The young pilot looked around to see where his refuge had gone; it was gliding silently away, bereft of its best friend.

Then a petrifying sense of nakedness hit him. Where were the 109s? The sun spotlighted the gigantic white silk globe above him, and the limelight from the sea below reflected on his ashen face… until he collided into his own wet shadow.

He released the chute, but the tendrils of imagery and feelings that swarmed his mind wouldn’t part so easily. The appalling trials he’d left his mother and father to face filled him with shame, and guilt still clung to him like a leech ever since he’d left Poland. And now he was bereft of his capability of rectifying his compunction.

Victor’s mother, father, and sister were constantly on his mind. Receiving news from them had stopped over a year ago. He wanted to disbelieve the horrific stories, but he was constantly hearing about atrocities occurring since the invasion of Poland from his fellow country airmen. He hated to think that the Nazis might have eventually singled out his father, despite his skills as a doctor, as unsuitable for work. As rumoured, anyone with any sort of disability was filtered to extermination.

However, he thought his mother, Amy, might survive because of her ability to speak English and Polish, and she had picked up enough German to protect his sister and herself. Victor had already trained as a pilot in the Polish Air force when his family were together.

A bright yellow survival raft had caught his eye when he dropped into the uninviting seawater below, and now as he laboured clumsily in his waterlogged garb, he hoped that the direction was exact. Victor floated in the sea, cold of course, but he wasn’t sure how cold. Within the hour, he would be too exhausted to swim, and he’d be dead in three.

Chapter 2

Saturday, 5 October 1940

The Report

THIS REPORT, IGNATOWSKI… CAN I just go over it with you, old chap? You seem to have added a few things that are not in your log.

Squadron Leader Earl would normally interview his pilots while at ease in his chair, scratching a bit more varnish off the edge of his desk with the sole of one or both of his shoes, but this time he sat squarely behind it. He looked up at the pilot officer and noticed his swollen eyes, which had gone down considerably during his brief recovery from exposure in hospital.

Anyway, how are you feeling? You were very lucky you were spotted and picked up before that storm picked up. He shuffled the papers on his desk nervously, anxious to deal with the task in hand. Now, can you explain in your own words what happened? We have to give a good reason why ten thousand pounds worth of kit was ditched in the North Sea.

"Those are my words, sir. They are all fact. I tried to describe the events as clearly as possible, as and how they happened. It’s true the log isn’t quite as detailed. I was economic with the specifics, because I, well, I didn’t know whether to elucidate the finer details or even how to!" The Polish officer spoke with near perfect English. In fact, his grammar and vocabulary could probably shame some of his comrade pilots who were mostly of the Oxford and Cambridge erudite.

To his good friends and comrades, Victor was fondly known as Iggy. His squadron leader and the indigenous pilots hadn’t yet ceased their tendency of distancing themselves from these foreigners and were still calling him Ignatowski, rarely by his first name, Victor. It was the same with the hundreds of other Polish pilots that fled from Poland to France as Hitler invaded. Then they were also forced out of France, abandoning many Morane-Saulnier M.S. 406 fighter planes to Hitler, not a great sacrifice considering they couldn’t outfly the German Messersmicht. This practice of flying an inferior aircraft had both a positive and a negative effect on the Polish pilots’ flying skills.

The young Poles were being trained by the RAF to fly the most advanced fighter plane in the world: the Spitfire. Victor became indispensable, not only as a cracking pilot but because the Polish intake didn’t understand a word of English. Despite this shortcoming, the Poles demonstrated a unique aptitude for shooting down the enemy, but they weren’t given that opportunity until their English speaking came up to scratch. Victor helped close that communication gap. As history unfolded, despite being highly praised by fighter command and by William Stonechurch himself for their soaring Nazi score for outflying and outshooting their British counterpart, the Polish would never receive the public recognition they deserved for indisputably winning the Battle of Britain, for fear of upsetting Stalin when he became an ally.

Earl continued in an irritated tone, unsure of whether his edgy feeling was caused by the report or some unconsciously deep-seated bigotry for foreigners, or simply the fact that he hadn’t had a cup of tea yet. Now let’s see. While you were trying to shake off the two Jerrys, you blacked out and the Merlin stalled!

Yes, sir, at about ten thousand feet.

The Merlin engine stalled at ten thousand… They won’t like that! You were gliding for how long? He didn’t wait for a response. While you were paralysed, you recited a poem to give you a sense of time! Earl’s intonation progressively rose unbelievingly.

Well, sir, I wasn’t really paralysed…

You were weightless, then! What the bloody hell did you think you were, bloody Flash Gordon?

The pilot officer had known this was coming. Virtually, sir, yes.

You thought you were virtually Flash Gordon?

No, sir, that’s not what I meant.

You know that any object that is falling freely is relatively weightless!

Yes, sir, but I wasn’t falling.

Rubbish. You were falling at the same speed as the Supermarine, God dammit, giving you the sensation that you were weightless!

The interrogation heated up quicker than the squadron leader had intended. Victor was wondering why so many of the English were so obtuse.

I understand the concept of Newton’s law, Sir. There is no explanation for the sensations I experienced. There was no air resistance at all, no wind, nothing but absolute silence… and I could tell that I hadn’t gone deaf, because I could hear my own voice. Deafened people can’t hear their own voices, can they, sir?

"I’ve no idea, son, but I think you’re confusing reality with a dream you had when you were unconscious. That’s what I think!" Earl rubbed the palm of his hand hard on his face and finished by straightening his handlebar moustache. Then he stood up.

Look, Victor, are you going to stand by this? Because I promise you, you won’t hear the last of this from me, the chaps, or fighter command. And as for the Air Ministry, they’ll love it! I can’t afford to lose a pilot while he goes off to London telling pie in the sky stories!

You want me to lie, then, sir?

No, no, no, Earl lied three times.

If I leave stuff out, sir, it might be important and mean something to someone who could explain what had happened. Ignatowski was relaxed and composed, and he spoke with one hand in a soothing but pleading way, the other respectfully at ease behind his back.

"I just want you to know what’s in store if you submit this… this interpretation! Now go take it with you and give it back to me in the morning." Earl lowered his gaze and fisted the document towards Ignatowski’s face.

The pilot took it, replaced his cap, and saluted his superior officer, who nodded tight-lipped in acknowledgement.

Fucking idiot, each muttered to himself just as the closing door separated them.

Chapter 3

Saturday, 10 November 2001

The Dinner Party

R ICHARD THE PRINTER, HANDED HIS host John, a specialist in MRI Technology, a good bottle of wine—good by reason that his wife, Betty the housewife, had said it was quite expensive.

He appeared to be a little dull this evening, despite the fact that it was his thirtieth birthday dinner party. The disposition of the dark—jowled guest of honour had become increasingly stolid over the passing months as Betty’s pregnant belly increased in size, although this unnerving prospect wasn’t the only reasons for his malaise. However, after two glasses of cheap Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon, which was opened well before they had arrived, he became more convivial; and by the time John managed to extract the stubborn cork from the good French, he had also done the same with some of the printer’s mind-numbing anecdotes about the printing business.

I didn’t get where I am today by being ‘stationary’! Richard parodied.

Martha, an agency nurse and John’s wife, would have liked to have added at least one more adjective—boring, dreary, or lethargic—but she avoided their usual banter for the sake of her best friend, Betty, who was having a bit of a time with her husband.

Richard used to be extremely active, but these days it was difficult to get much of a rise from him; he had become quite wrapped up in himself, moody and disinterested. Skiing, potholing, paragliding, and sub-aqua diving were things of the past. Now the occasional round of golf alone was all he could muster.

After glass three, and two puffs of a badly made joint, they all stared at him in disbelief when the conversation arrived, predictably you might say, at the subject of suicide. But strangely enough, he declared that he could never understand the reason for anyone to commit this dreadful act, under any circumstances.

Oh, come on, Dick, John argued. Surely you could see why someone would top himself: a broken marriage, bankruptcy, someone discovering an embarrassing secret about him… There are hundreds of reasons.

Dick became uneasy, took another deep crackling inhale, and laughed nervously, his long delicate fingers spread out like a leaf of the plant he was smoking. No, it’s a ridiculous thing to do. The tone had changed suddenly. There is no earthly reason why any sane person would kill himself! he said emphatically, itching to close the subject.

"Well, that’s the point. They are insane. Ha!" John, in need of a haircut, laughed, flicking his mop wildly.

Listening with consternation, Martha halted her sip from her wineglass, leaned over the breakfast bar, and frowned at John surreptitiously. A Shirley Temple tress fell over her mouth as she shushed him and then she blew at the irritating lock. Betty had evidently confided something to Martha, and John guessed that Dick was sensitive about the argument, so the skeleton was duly left walled up.

Betty and Martha were friends throughout middle and secondary school. Martha always called in for Betty on the way to school, despite the fact that Martha’s house was geographically nearer to St Cuthbert’s.

Betty’s parents’ old terraced house was always warm and inviting, full of activity, and the table always seemed to have fresh and inviting food dancing on it for the taking. On a cold morning, a coal fire would be leaping happily up the small chimney. Martha would be at liberty to have a bit of homemade current loaf and tea for breakfast, but she always took less than what she wanted, pretending that she had already had breakfast, when really she had never bothered. In fact, she made it a point to get out of her house before her older sisters stirred, slamming the recoiling door repeatedly until the latch caught its keeper, the vibrations signalling her sisters to emerge but leaving their dry bread and watery jam cold, inert, and undisturbed. Martha’s end of terrace house didn’t stir again until the evening as there was very little work to be had for her mammy and daddy.

Betty stood up and again diluted her half glass of white wine with Perrier. She really wanted to pour oil on troubled water, but the bubbles continued to pass up through the pee-coloured liquid belligerently, and so the would-be Stepford wife snapped out of her pensiveness and said gaily, John, tell us about the research you’re doing for your PhD. Usually her interaction with John was fuelled by his gibes about her assiduousness, sense of God, and these days, her quickly growing tummy. Her gravelly voice resounded to the kitchen area with forced jollity.

Martha called back from her food preparation, buoyantly. Yes, John. I don’t understand it myself, but it’s really interesting!

John shouted through to her, pretending to be disparaged. You don’t understand, but it’s really interesting. Ha! What a compliment!

Nurse Martha checked over her candlelit table and took up a glass of wine that had been standing there shimmering reflectively. Her fingertips, protected by topaz-coloured shields, disturbed the plimsoll line of condensation on the tall tulip glass. You know what I mean, I understand, but you know, it’s difficult to understand!

Dick was glad to move away from the talk about suicide; this was his personal issue which was beyond his own rationale, and a place where he still wasn’t able to go. "I know what you mean, Martha." He looked at John to get on with the story.

John, the atomic particle specialist, didn’t need further encouragement. Yes, well, I came across some inexplicable anomalies when checking the MRIs. I went from one hospital to another and had to recalibrate the settings on my instruments constantly. It was very exasperating and time consuming. At first I thought it was because of a faulty connection in my equipment.

Got trouble with your equipment, aye? Martha told me about your bad connections, Bet gibed.

Oh, shuddup, you, John said jokily and continued. I changed the equipment, so it wasn’t that. Anyway, once calibrated, it should stay constant. I mean, we are talking about very sophisticated tackle I carry around.

Bet giggled again, and Martha laughed from the kitchen.

I’m going to belt you two in a minute! Look, it’s a state-of-the—art caesium atomic clock! John composed himself yet again. "You see, I’m trying to collate data from all of the MRIs around Yorkshire to one central computer, and if it works the scheme could be extended throughout the country. Just think of the constant travelling it will save!

Anyway, I was doing this for about a year, and then I noticed that sometimes the synchronisation was okay and other times not. The caesium timepiece that I take around with me became a different time to the master clock in York! At first I thought there was a virus due to a bad download. He paused to top up his glass and Dick’s. I’ve been taking measurements all over the country. It’s easy enough to do, as I have to travel because of the job, but it’s extremely difficult to prove and explain why there are such differences!

Richard had recently developed an aptitude for listening and showing interest in a conversation because it absolved him from having to talk too much himself. He would question and enthral, stifling his disinterest by nodding and smiling convincingly at the right moments; so John felt in his element, although now the self-employed printer had actually started to show quiet interest and was beginning to get back into a convivial mode.

Wasn’t it just because of the move away from the Greenwich meridian?

Well, no, the time here is the same as in China. The Greenwich meridian and all the time zones are man-made, so we can imagine the state of a day in different countries. You know, day, night, lunchtime…

Dick said, Yes, yes, of course. He nodded pensively. But how much time difference are you talking about, anyway?"

Sixty! John left them wondering.

"Sixty what? Seconds?

Nanoseconds!

Betty chortled. What’s a nanny second?

It’s the time it takes for your grandmother to knit a stitch! Martha shouted from the kitchen.

Or your second nanny, he he!

It’s a billionth of a second! Look you two, if you’re not going to take me seriously!

Martha tiptoed through and wiggled her still tacky fingers at him. She then hooked her arms around him and kissed his neck. I’m sorry, sweetie pie. Kiss-kiss!

I’ll do more than that! John dug his fingers into her armpits, making her scream. She retaliated by wiping her fingers on his nose and face. He grabbed her wrists and they made a truce with a kiss, but he wiped his sticky nose on hers in a final parry.

Now where was I? John said, taking from the beautifully laid table a carefully folded red serviette in the shape of a flower, using it to wipe his face.

Nanny second! Martha shouted in retreat.

"Thank you, dear! John smiled happily and enunciated: A nan-‘oh’-second is one billionth of a second… The only other occasion when a spur clock became naturally different from the master clock was when it was put into a Concorde and flown round the world. Then the spur clock arrived nanoseconds behind the master clock. That experiment proved Einstein’s theory of relativity, which calculated that time goes slower while travelling at great speeds."

Yes, that’s right, Dick confirmed. It’s a proven fact. I saw a documentary about that a while ago. But how is it relevant here on earth between Grimsby and York?

John tried to explain. One nanosecond is like one second is to thirty-two years. So we have in question about thirty nanoseconds—that is, one second to about a year. Losing one second every year might not seem very much, but in fact it is quite significant, and nobody has been travelling at any great speeds!

Dick looked at John more seriously now and asked, Are you saying that people in Grantham will be one second younger than those in Spitalgate in a year? Why, that’s over a minute in a lifetime!

Yes, quite! What I have discovered is so bizarre that everyone will think that there is a logical and unimportant explanation or that I’m completely wrong! And not only that… The reading changed by as little as thirty miles between east and west.

Dick and Betty stared at him with jaws loose, trying to assemble the meaning and significance of what he had discovered.

Of course, it’s impossible to know how long it’s been going on, John added.

Dick’s wife leaned against the kitchen doorjamb while watching Martha and to some extent helping to prepare food, but mostly pondering. It’s funny you should say that, she said. My uncle lives in Grantham, and he seems to take a long time answering the phone.

What, a whole minute? Dick extorted, shaking his head in disbelief at her stupidity.

Yes. Well, no, but he is so frustrating! Bet said lamely. You take after him!

John prolonged the interruption. Probably old age!

No, I think he’s always been like that. Betty wondered again. John went on, unperturbed. Just to demonstrate the amount of travelling at almost the speed of light… He paused to realign his thoughts. I say ‘almost’ because nothing travels as fast as the speed of light, or so we are led to believe.

In his mind, John always played the devil’s advocate with Einstein’s theory of relativity. It seemed to him that everyone had based all quantum physics on Einstein’s theory; and his measurements and calculations had become universally sanctified, checked by both like—minded scientists and those trying to disprove him. All of whom in the end have had to bow to his genius because they couldn’t come up with anything better. But John always had in the back of his mind: What if there was another quintessence which was either yet undiscovered or a fundamental nature that was never entered into Einstein’s calculations, a substance that conducted faster than photons and neutrons, perhaps? A fanciful idea maybe, but that was John. Einstein didn’t know everything. There was another fact that John frequently contemplated: There are at least five million undiscovered species on Earth alone. These thoughts fuelled his moments of egotistical contemplation, which he usually kept to himself.

Not wishing to distract from the present line of conversation, he continued.

"Saturn, which is in our solar system, is about eighty light minutes away, and the nearest star from our solar system is Proxima Centauri, which is four point two light years away. If you travelled there and back, you would return about six years younger."

How much younger if you just went to Saturn, then? Dick queried.

Ooh, about four hours, John figured. But it’s not a case of becoming younger but having a longer life contracted into a shorter period. It’s a bit like paying seventy-five pence for a pound ride on a roundabout. Everyone else pays the pound, but you end up richer for the same ride. Something like that!

Bet wasn’t really following, but she made a point. What if what you’ve discovered is just a phenomenon, like the aurora borealis? You know, just accept it!

John eyeballed the ceiling as Martha arrived with a dish of steaming new potatoes decorated with a sprig of parsley and melting knobs of butter. She made space for it next to a large steamed salmon coated with gossamer thin cucumber scales.

The word phenomenon does not melt with John; he says it’s a cop-out word, Martha said, as the sound of the dish clunked on the table.

Oh, but this butter is melting, though! Dick moved uninvited to the table.

Betty, the aurora borealis has a scientific explanation, but this hasn’t… yet. It would make an enormous contribution to the study of astrophysics if I could simply find out why this is happening. John showed her his empty palm as if longing for it to be filled with evidence.

"Do you know why the sky lights up all different colours, Richard?" Betty asked.

Er, not really. Ions in the atmosphere I think.

Of course, John was happy to elucidate. Yes, that’s right. They’re particles driven by solar winds and the earth’s magnetism. The sun’s effect on atoms swirling about makes them appear as a different colour at different heights.

Richard looked at Betty knowingly, giving her a smug look.

Soon Martha proudly began to enjoy her efforts and relax. As she sipped the wine, condensation pooled round her thumb against the glass and dripped onto her cleavage. Dick watched the cool bead make a trace down towards her deep contour until stroked away by four shiny dark nails. His eyes relished her soft skin regaining its fullness, leaving a wet satin smear. He found his wife’s best friend physically attractive, with an intellect he admired, but there was indifference between them, and thus they never managed to further their superficial friendship. He made no secret to Martha that he wished Bet was more refined and well read to suit his position. He also resented her Yorkshire accent, but there was more to it than just that.

She looked up to see him coolly avert his eyes and close them for a second as if taking a mental photograph or perhaps bringing to mind again the question he had for John.

Apart from the computer having a glitch, John, what is the significance? What could possibly result in knowing if there is a different reading between Grimsby and York?

"It’s not a case of if any more. I personally am positive there is. The question really is why!" Shaking a potato on the end of his fork, he went on.

"Did you know that during the time interval it takes light to travel from the sun to the earth, the sun and the earth keep in touch with each other almost instantaneously? In fact, every mass in the universe communicates with all other masses in the universe in a time