Read The Escape for Free Online Page A

his warm clothing. I "Why couldn't these trespassers pick the summer side? Or at least springside?" he muttered. "Would that be too much to ask?" 44 Since he had lived alone for the past sixteen years of his Real Time, no one answered him.
    He tossed his pack into his bedroom transport booth, and punched in passage to the closest Time Station. His only hope was that he could make this mission quick.
    The inside of the building was even warmer than outside. Torres brushed hair off her ridged forehead and wondered how she had ever felt cold.
    Kim gasped beside her. Neelix, mercifully, was silent. The orange-suited man who had brought them here herded them together as if they were Romulan sheep.
    He didn't have to. All three of them had stopped once they came through the door.
    The building was unlike what Torres had expected, although if anyone had asked her what she had expected, she would have been unable to answer. She had not expected the teeming mass of people. So many people, in fact, that they had ceased being individuals and had become a sea of color and sound, moving back and forth like waves. Concentrating on the people was too overwhelming. She concentrated on the building instead. The man had brought them into a huge hall with staircases on its north and south faces. The ceiling was twice as high as the ceilings in Voyager, and it was a sparkly white. After a moment, she realized that what she had taken as sparkles were actually tiny lights embedded into the ceiling tiles. The white motif went throughout the building with limited success. Once 45 the white reached shoulder height of these odd people, dirt and smudges marred it. Tiny drawings covered the floor. At first Torres thought the drawings graffiti. Then she realized that they were diagrams leading the first-time traveler to the booths that clustered together in various segments of the huge hall.
    "Transport booths," Kim said, his voice hushed slightly in awe. He was looking in the same direction as Torres was.
    She nodded. The transporters were encased by clear walls, and serviced only one person at a time.
    But it was clear they operated on the same principle as the' unit in Voyager. All the booths were painted in bright colors and had signs over them. One person entered on one side, while another would leave from a different side. They would hesitate only as they entered, pausing to punch in a quick code on a panel on the outside, before stepping inside and vanishing. Torres was very impressed, especially considering how many thousands and thousands of these building remains Voyager had seen during their scans from space.
    Some of the booths had short lines waiting to get in. Others were empty. Torres guessed that each booth went to transporter booths in a certain area of the planet.
    The people who used the booths had purposeful but blank expressions on their faces. Torres recognized the look. She had used it herself when taking the same route day after day. Almost everyone using the booths carried a small case. Some people were with families. Others alone. Torres had seen this exact scene hundreds of times throughout the Federation.
    This was a 46 transportation facility. Some of the people were going to or from work, others were traveling on vacation or business. Only outside the doors of this terminal weren't shuttles to take the travelers into orbit or to another part of the planet. Outside these doors was a huge field of ships that seemed to travel in time. That meant all these people were commuting through time in some fashion or another. She had no idea how the society worked, how it dealt with all the time paradoxes, or even why it would risk such difficulties. She wanted to find out.
    Neelix had apparently seen enough. He bounced on his feet, catching the attention of the man in orange. "Are you taking us home?" The man looked at Neelix as if he were a small bug.
    "I'm taking you to the Mean Time Control for this Period." "Period?" Torres