Okay, here's part 2. It hasn't been checked for errors, but i don't have time right now. I'll come back later and fix it if anyone spots anything.
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How I Spent My Christmas Vacation: 2/?
by Nan Smith
Previously:
There came the sound of a heavy body hitting the door through which the three persons had just entered, and wood splintered. Tempus seized Lois by the arm and thrust her toward the time machine. "Get in!"
Faced with the muzzle of his weapon jammed into her ribs, Lois obeyed. The familiar whine of the machine's power began.
Clark moved. In an instant, he had reached the rear of the time machine and grasped a piece of protruding metal. Then the temporal field closed around him and he was forced to stay where he was, clutching onto the thing with one hand as the formless haze of the time stream swirled lazily past.
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And now, Part 2:
Clark lost track of how long he hung on to the rear of the time machine. He wasn't really sure if time had any meaning in this strange place, but eventually it seemed as if they were slowing down. Then, with a suddenness that left him momentarily disoriented, they burst into reality again, fifty feet in the air, and Clark heard a scream as Tempus hurled Lois free of the craft.
Instinctively, Clark released his hold. Perhaps it was his imagination, or perhaps it was a lingering effect of being so near to the edge of the time field, but his movements seemed painfully slow. Free of the machine at last, he dived after Lois as she hit the water with a massive splash. He barely noticed when the time machine popped into nothingness over his head.
He struck the water in a dive and plunged beneath the surface. The lingering slowness was vanishing. He no longer felt as if he were swimming through glue. He could see Lois in the water some twenty feet away. She had stopped her descent and was kicking her way upward.
She was treading water when he surfaced. She eyed him warily, but he made no attempt to come closer. Well aware that after the events of the last few minutes, she was certainly going to regard him with deep suspicion, he turned his head, taking in their position.
No land in any direction. Tempus had apparently dropped them in some very large body of water. and judging by the salt they were in the ocean, very far from land. The water was moderately warm; they must be either in tropical latitudes or in a warm current of some sort.
A splash brought his attention back to Lois. She was engaged in removing her jogging shoes. As he watched, she tied the laces together and slung the footwear around her neck. She still hadn't taken her eyes off of him.
"Uh ... hi," he said, somewhat lamely.
She didn't answer. He tried again. "Are you all right?"
She glanced around, apparently really taking in their situation for the first time, but her attention returned quickly to him. "Who are you?"
He decided to evade the question for the moment. "I was in the warehouse when those guys brought you in," he said. "I heard you call him Mr. Temple. Do you know who he is?"
"Do you?"
He resisted the urge to shrug. "Sort of. His name isn't Temple. It's Tempus. He's a criminal."
"I figured that part out," she said. "What were you doing there ... and how did we get here?"
"I saw him haul you into that machine of his," Clark said. "I tried to get to you before he started it up, but I'm afraid I didn't quite make it."
She was staring at him. "What were you doing there?"
Clark shrugged. "I was looking for you."
Again the wary look. "Why?"
"I'd had information you were in danger. My name is Clark Kent."
She studied him, still with that wary expression, but seemed to shelve the obvious follow-up questions for the moment. "How did we get here?"
"If I told you, I don't think you'd believe me," he said. "That machine of his is something straight out of Star Trek."
"Try me."
"Later. I think we'd better get out of here." Clark glanced down into the water. If they were indeed in the tropics as he suspected, the shark population in the vicinity could be considerably more concentrated than in more northern climes and he was hearing suspicious noises below, still some way off but growing nearer.
"I'm all for that," she said. "I just don't have any idea *how*. There's no sign of land anywhere."
"I can get us out of here, but you'll have to let me get closer to you. I promise, no funny stuff."
She wiped water from her eyes. "What are you -- some kind of cop or something, or are you just a nut?"
"Actually," he said, "I'm a reporter like you." He turned his head. There was motion somewhere beneath them now, and a glance into the watery depths revealed an eight-foot predator shape moving rapidly toward them, drawn by the splashing they were producing. "I really don't have the time to explain," he said. "There's a shark coming to investigate us." Without allowing her time to protest or ask how he knew, he moved toward her through the water and grasped her about the waist. Her instinctive protest was cut off in a strangled gasp as he rose straight up until they hovered twenty feet in the air. Beneath them a long, fishlike shape with a mouthful of teeth broke the surface and fell back.
Her instinctive attempt to escape ceased suddenly. He saw her looking down as the shark disappeared under the water again.
"Great White," he said offhandedly. "It was attracted by the splashing. To a shark, that's an indication of a wounded fish or sea mammal."
She looked back at him, and he could see that her cheeks were definitely pale, but she was looking from his face to the slowly rolling water below them, and then back to his face again. Slowly, she raised a hand and waved it over his head.
"No wires," he said, helpfully. "Besides, what would I fasten them to?"
"What the hell *are* you?" she whispered.
"Well," he said, "back in Metropolis, they call me Superman."
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The ocean went on for miles. Tempus must have taken Lois right into the middle of the ocean, just to make sure that, even with the famous Lane luck, she wouldn't have a chance to make it back to shore. Clark was in no real hurry to reach land anyhow. He was doing something that he'd almost lost hope of ever doing again -- flying with Lois Lane held securely in his arms, and this time it was a Lois Lane who was free; the Lois Lane of his own universe; the Lois that was meant for *him*.
Of course, she didn't know that, or anything else about him, and telling her that would almost certainly come across the wrong way. If he had learned anything about her from the other Lois and from what he had been told of her by others, Lois Lane depended on no one, and the very thought of anyone -- or anything, even Fate itself -- directing the course of her life was likely to cause her to declare war. No, he was going to have to go about this with extreme caution. Still, just the fact that he could plan a campaign to win her for his own was a heady feeling. Yesterday at this time, he couldn't have imagined the possibility of anything like it. Finally, *finally* his one real chance at happiness had arrived, and he wasn't going to do anything to risk it. It was too important.
Speaking of time, that was another problem. Where -- and when -- the heck were they? Tempus had jumped into time to escape the Brazzaville police and to kidnap Lois. They could have emerged in any year. He hoped that Wells had managed to escape the police raid or they might be marooned here for longer than they wanted. Hopefully the temporal beacon that still resided in his back pocket was still working and would allow the little man to track them, but of course he couldn't count on being found at once.
He glanced at Lois. She was staring down at the waves rushing below them, trying to look blase about the whole business, but he could hear her pulse still racing, although it had slowed somewhat from ten minutes before. Still, if he knew anything about Lois Lane, it wouldn't be long before she started asking questions. He'd better be ready to answer them -- as directly and truthfully as possible.
As he had expected, after a few minutes she pulled her attention from the water and asked, "Do you have the time now?"
"Huh?"
"To explain."
He glanced down. "I guess so."
"So, who are you, Clark Kent-Superman, and why were you looking for me? -- and how did you manage to turn up when you did? And what the *devil* was that machine?"
"Well ... maybe it would help if I started at the beginning -- wherever that is," he said. Where was the beginning, after all, when time travel was involved? "For starters, that machine was a time travel device, and Tempus is a time-traveler."
"Yeah, right. And I'm the editor of the Daily Planet."
"I said you wouldn't believe it," he said mildly. "Think about it for a minute, though. How did we get out of that warehouse in Brazzaville into the middle of the ocean in such a short time, without flying over a lot of territory?"
She was silent for a long moment. "I guess you've got a point," she finally admitted, somewhat grudgingly. "What about you, though? Are you a time traveler too? I'd say you must be, if you've got some kind of anti-gravity device or something on you."
"Well," he said, "I guess I am in a way, but I don't have a time travel machine, and I definitely don't have an anti-gravity device on me."
"Right! Like you can fly under your own power."
"Actually, I can," he said with a smile. "I'm only from four years in your future, and we haven't invented anti-gravity yet. It's just that I'm not from Earth."
"An alien, too?" she said. "You're right. This is straight out of Star Trek."
"No, but it's almost as fantastic," he said. "I'm really not from Earth. I'm from a planet called Krypton that blew up when I was a baby. My parents apparently sent me to Earth because I look like a human and could fit in. And I came back in time to find you and save your life. In my time, everyone thinks you're dead -- killed in the Congo."
"I would have been," she said. "I guess I should say thanks, anyway."
"Don't strain yourself," he said dryly.
"I don't mean it like that," she protested. "This is just a lot to take in. I guess I have to accept the stuff about time travel, since I saw this Tempus guy's time machine in person. But why would you come back to save me? You don't even know me!"
"Well, I don't understand all of it, either," he said, "but would you like to suspend belief for a bit and hear the Reader's Digest version?"
She cocked her head, looking at him measuringly. "All right, go ahead."
"Okay. Tempus is a criminal from a couple of centuries in the future. From what I've gathered, the time that he comes from is kind of a Utopia. It has little or no crime or violence. Tempus is kind of a misfit. He wants to destroy that future and produce one that he's happier in, so he came back to attack the source: the people ultimately responsible for it."
"Don't tell me. I'm one of them?"
"Exactly."
"So you came back to save me?"
He nodded. "Herb -- my time-traveling companion -- has been hunting for you for some time, because without you the future is apparently pretty much a mess a hundred years or so down the line. We knew you disappeared in the Congo in 1993. Anyhow, he showed up this afternoon with the information that he'd discovered what had happened to you and that we had to go back and undo it, or else."
"So you did."
"Yeah. So far. Now we have to find out where we are, and hope Herb can locate us."
"What do you mean?"
"When Tempus kidnapped you, he ducked into whatever dimension he uses to time travel in. I have no idea where we came out -- or maybe I should say 'when' we came out."
"You mean we're *lost*?"
"Maybe, maybe not. I'm carrying a beacon that Herb can use to track me."
"Then he can find us?"
"I hope so. It's probably waterproof. The only thing that worries me is that he was in the warehouse with me when it got raided. I hope the police don't find him -- or if they do, that he can talk them out of arresting him. If he can't, then it may be a while before he can come get us."
"But if he can go anywhere in time, it shouldn't matter how long he's locked up," Lois said with surprising practicality. "He should be able to come to whenever we are without it seeming long to us."
"I sure hope so," Clark said. "I'm not very experienced with this time traveling stuff. I was thinking that if they keep him too long, someone's going to find his time machine, and then we could be in real trouble."
"Oh." Lois glanced around. "Do you have any idea where we are -- except that we're over ocean?"
"I think we're in tropical waters," Clark said. "Other than that, we'll find out when we reach land."
Lois pointed. "Is that land?"
He followed her pointing finger, a little surprised that she had noticed before he had. "It's an island. Let's take a look."
He poured on the speed and the ocean became a blur under them. A few seconds later, they were hovering over a very small, very tropical island.
But not uninhabited. Scanning it with his enhanced vision, he could see grass huts and brown-skinned people wearing clothing that obviously hadn't come from Saks Fifth Avenue or any other retail outfit that he knew of. What there was of it. And these people obviously had never heard of a prohibition on the killing of endangered species of birds or anything else ...
"Oh boy," he said.
"What?"
"That island. It's inhabited by what looks like Polynesian Islanders. Primitive ones."
"How can you tell?" she asked.
"The grass huts, spears and animal skins kind of gave it away," he said.
"No, I mean how can you see anything? All I see is a bunch of green stuff."
""Oh. X-ray vision and telescopic vision. I told you I'm not from Earth."
""Really?" She stared at him with wide eyes. "What else can you do?"
"Well, I'm a lot stronger than a normal human man, and pretty fast. I can hear very well, and -- well, a lot of things. I'll tell you later. The question is, what should we do now?"
"Do you know what island that is?" she asked.
He shrugged. "No. Just one of a hundred little islands in this area. I think we're in the South Pacific, though."
"Well, if you know that, then you should know which way to go to get us to the States," Lois said.
"If there even *is* a United States at this time in history," Clark said. "All right; the States it is. If we wait for Herb in Metropolis -- or where Metropolis should be --he can probably find us without too much trouble."
"Assuming he does find us, of course," Lois said. "I don't suppose you have the stuff you need to build a time machine, do you?"
He shook his head regretfully. "I'm afraid not."
"That's what I was afraid of," Lois said. She sighed. "Oh well. At least I'm alive, and that's a lot better than the alternative."
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tbc
