Time Jumpers Episode 12: The Time Twister

The crew of Cygnus has fled the Coethi homeworld across time streams and come to a world they have seen before…the ocean planet Storm, third world in the Sigma Albeth system. The Coethi are moving in force through this system; they’re still around despite the time jumpers’ belief that the sun of their homeworld had destroyed them in the distant past. But the crew has a bigger problem as they touch down on a windswept island…Evelyn M’Bela is dead.
In the very midst of a memorial service for their fallen comrade, the time jumpers are interrupted by the appearance of two Seomish on the beach. They sense that M’Bela may still be alive and through awkward translations, offer to take M’Bela’s body to a place of healing, called the Pillars of Shooki. Eventually, Captain Dringoth relents and assigns Alicia Yang to go with her.
What follows is one of the most extraordinary adventures the time jumpers have ever faced. The healing process involves letting M’Bela be ‘swallowed’ by a dragon-like beast called a seamother. Inside the beast, M’Bela regains consciousness but must fight for her life to scramble out of the creature. In time, she succeeds but when she and Yang are taken back to the island, they find themselves in the midst of a skirmish between the crew of Cygnus and the Seomish, who are desperately trying to stop the operation of the repaired Time Twister, the sound of which is devastating their world.
Only a desperate and startling tactic by newly-revived M’Bela stops the skirmish. An uneasy truce develops which is interrupted by a trio of jumpships coming to their rescue. The time jumpers’ commanding officer is among their rescuers. TACTRON congratulates Dringoth on sweeping Coethi out of the system for there is now no evidence they were ever there; perhaps their original time stream was disrupted, as Dringoth tried to do. Negotiations with the Seomish follow and a sort of modus vivendi is worked out…the Twister will be repaired, then powered down and safed in sleep mode, to be attended by a new crew to be assigned.
As the time jumpers depart Storm, there is every hope that more cultural visits will follow and relations between the Seomish and the Umans formalized. But after the jumpships have left, the Seomish discover that the Coethi bots that once infected Evelyn M’Bela’s head have survived. And now they are replicating like crazy.
Final episode in the Time Jumpers serial.