Book of Miracles IX

The landing was astonishingly fast and rather bumpy.  I'm used to commercial pilots landings, where there is plenty of notice, plenty of time for the cabin crew to stop you doing anything fun, and then frequently a delay while air-traffic control try to work out who you are and why you're in their airspace.  I keep promising myself not to fly Penguin Airlines anymore, but they have far and away the best in-flight service going.  This landing seemed to be over in no time.  One minutes the Captain was shouting "Incoming!" over the intercom and the next minute we'd tilted noticeably forward and I found myself gripping the arms of my seat as a precaution.  James looked terrified, I've already noted that Isabella's face is virtually impossible to read and Irene looked – well, serene.
The plane braked hard and I think we were all flung forward as much as our lap-straps would allow.
"I had a few modifications made to the plane," said Isabella in response to James's panic-stricken look.  "Technically it's not air-worthy any more, but as I think you can see, we're a little ahead of most of the aerospace technicians out there.  The plane jerked again, and stopped.
"Ah, I think we've landed," said Isabella.  "Irene, could you get the doors, please?"
"Cabin-crew are cross, check!" said Irene smartly, and I knew it wasn't quite the usual statement that comes over the intercom during landing procedures, but I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it.
James wasn't moving, just sat very still and appeared to be holding his breath.  His skin was a bit paler than usual, and I thought I could see sweat on his forehead.
"James?" I said, unbuckling.
"Ah," said Irene, throwing a heavy-looking bar on the door and swinging it open.  "The air-sickness bags are in the seat pocket on his left."  Of course, I looked on my left first and found only an in-flight magazine that looked to have been 'borrowed' from a dentist's waiting room.  The air-sickness bags were in the other pocket, and James looked fractionally grateful when I put one in his hand and another on his lap.
"While your chauffeur recomposes himself," said Isabella, coming up behind me and taking my elbow, "let me show you the airfield.  Irene will make sure he comes down off the plane after us, and I've realised that this will save us the hassle of hiring a driver."  We walked to the door, and I saw that a flight of wheeled aluminium stairs had appeared outside the plane.  I stepped on to them, and started to turn as I heard Isabella shout something, then the stairs wobbled violently and I lost my balance, and bounced down the stairs.  Well, at least half-way.  After that, I just woke up and found myself at the bottom and assumed that gravity had taken me there regardless.
"Boss?"  James was shaking my shoulder and I was immediately grateful I'd not broken my neck.  My head rolled from side to side with the force of his efforts to wake me.
"James, stop that," I said.  I'd bitten my tongue and could taste the iron of blood in my mouth, and my words were slightly thickened and muffled by it.  "James, STOP THAT."
"Boss," he said, standing up and backing off a bit.  "You fell down the stairs.  I was...." He looked sheepish, and I sat up carefully, checking for the wrong kind of pain.  I hurt, but mostly in a bruised and battered kind of way, not unlike after a training session with James.
"You were indisposed," I said.  "And it wouldn't matter anyway, I don't know what happened at the top there."
"You stepped onto an unsecured set of mobile stairs," said Isabella appearing from behind me.  She was carrying my shoes in one hand.  "I tried to stop you, which made things worse because you turned around, away from the safety rail.  For a minute I thought you were going to go over the edge."  She handed me my shoes.
"Thank-you," I said automatically.  "Why did we go to the doors if the stairs weren't secured?"
"We had to leave the plane somehow," said Isabella, her voice flat, the way it gets when she doesn't want me to think that she thinks she's talking to an idiot.  "And you weren't supposed to go down the stairs until I said it was safe to do so.  This isn't a commercial flight, you know?  We don't wrap you in cotton-wool, we expect a little bit of common-sense from you."  She turned away, and then back again.  "I really hope this was just a one-off," she said.  "The Book of Miracles is not safe in any way at all, and it really is quite dangerous just to get to it.  I'd rather not go at all if you're just going to die on the way."
I put my shoes on, wondering how they'd come off, and then a thought struck me.  I pressed the release in the heel, and nothing fell out of the bottom of it.  The GPS device was gone.

Prison Dilemma

I could hear Briana shouting my name, though it seemed to be a long way away.  I started to turn to see if I could see her, and maybe reply, but the alien looked down at something it was holding, did something with its face that might have been a frown, and pushed at a dent on a small metal box.  The box hummed and I got a blast of the aniseed smell again, and suddenly Briana didn't seem very important any more.
"What time is it?" said the alien, its head warping and distorting.  Nearby two other aliens seemed to be having a conversation in a different language, and instead of their whole head changing shape they would lean in close to each other and ripples and waves would spread over their skin instead.  I thought I ought to be interested, but I just couldn't muster the energy.
"Earth time?"  My wrist seemed heavy, but I carried on trying to lift it up anyway to look at my watch.
"No...." The alien seemed confused, and I finally pulled by wrist to where I could see my watch.  Somewhere, someone was shouting my name.
"It's about half-past five," I said, though the time was meaningless to me.  Somewhere, so far away that the distance was measured by how long it took the fastest moving thing in the universe to get there, it was half-past five.  I had no idea what happened at that time of day that it had been considered worth giving a name to.
"I was hoping that you could tell me if R'th'gabose had happened yet?"  He clicked the apostrophes and I wondered if there was some hard surface in his throat to help generate such sharp sounds.
"What a Rutherford hose?" I said.  The stars in the constellations looked like they were moving.
Another alien leaned in and ripples and whorls chased each other across his head in rapid, ever-changing, merging patterns.  My interrogator's head responded, and his greyness lightened slightly.
"We are waiting for the ones who want to kill us to leave," he suddenly said, speaking quickly.  "When they are gone we would like your help to return to our world.  It will be easy, and we can then help you."
"Wha–" I started, and then everything turned inside out and squashed back down again and I was being hugged by Briana.  In my hand, the steel straw had run and melted like ice-cream on a hot day and was puddled around my feet.  Neither my hand nor feet were hurt.
"Do you think they were telling the truth?" said Briana after I told her what had happened.  "It sounds very strange to me.  Perhaps they're all prisoners somehow?"
"I... it could be, I mean, they could be."  I was still feeling slightly confused.  "But they're still part of the people who disappeared.  I suppose we have to try and talk to them somehow."
"But suppose they're the reason that all the rest of them disappeared," said Briana.  "Then we'd probably be next on their list of people to kill."
"How can we know that from one of them just talking to me?  You're sounding hysterical, Bri.  What's wrong?"
She didn't answer me at first, instead she held up an oddly shaped skull with a hole in one side.
"There's thousands of them in the hill," she said.  "I think the hill might just be some kind of heaped up mass grave."
"Suicide?" I offered, but I didn't believe it either.
"So what do we do?"
"We pass it back up the chain of command," I said.  "If we can get back to the Guinevere."
We both looked out at the sea of metal straws, all of which might be capable of taking us back to that other world, the place that seemed to be at right-angles to this one, that filled the area between us, the landing ship, and the mountains.
"Yeah," said Briana.  "So, fancy your chances building a boat, or shall we go mountaineering?"