Beside Kendra, the second time machine, the one that Bina went back through, begins to whir and an LED light on the side turns on as the paradox compensation circuit clicks on.



God dang it! This plan is never going to work!

She'd even asked Three about it, after she'd calmed down and they'd started talking. She told them about their Chronological Resting Position and their impending time limit, and Bina and Kendra had told Three about Piotyr.

As she and Bina had been making an awkward hash of saying goodbye to each other, Kendra had reached out toward the screen and asked, "Wait, does time travel negate momentum?"



"What?", Three had said.

"Time travel! When you go through a portal, it's like you're falling, really far, but you don't splatter. You can fall thousands of feet but it doesn't hurt. Does it negate existing momentum? Like, if you were going really fast and-"

"Oh, you mean the hallucinations? No, I think they're some kind of attempt by your brain to retroactively fill in what happened while you're in transit. It can't of course, we're not designed for four dimensional travel, so you perceive yourself as having fallen, or swam, or whatever. It's sort of a metaphor. It's not real."

That doesn't gel with her and Bina's experience just recently. She'd hit the Bad Dog with a hammer in the middle of a time jump, but explaining that would take too long, and raise awkward questions.

"Crap!", said Kendra. "So you have full conservation of momentum between gates?"

"I think so," said Three. "I drove a truck through one once. The truck didn't suddenly stop or anything."

"Like Portal!", said Bina.

"Yeah," said Three, "Just like that, sort of… well OK, a little bit like Portal. The perception of movement is an illusion. It's all in your head."

Crap, Kendra had thought. If Three was right, her best plan for rescuing Elizabeth just got a lot more complicated.