Chapter 247: Back to Tapato

Thursday, August 19, 1971

“OW!” Izzy cried. “THAT HURT!”

That about summed up everyone’s experience with my first interdimensional travel effort. I tried sitting up, but felt dizzy. Still, I managed to look around me and started counting noses.

“Now I understand why Thesan put everyone to sleep!” I thought to myself.

“Next time, how about a little warning,” Vickie thought back to me.

“If I had known what you were doing, I would have let you use my Brume,” Rie’ka chimed in.

I noticed that Kip was already heading for the bridge. A few minutes later, he stuck out his arm and gave me a thumb’s up sign.

“Are we okay?” I thought to him.

“Everything seems to be functioning normally. Captain Tab is just coming around.”

“What’s the date?” I asked.

“Just a minute. Captain Tab is on the radio now...”

The wait seemed like hours but it was really only minutes. Still, I found myself holding my breath.

” ... August 19^th, 1971” Kip thought excitedly.

“Whew!” I said as I wiped the sweat from my forehead. “We made it!”

It turned out that we ended up only fifty miles or so southeast of the main island of Tapato. Sailing northeast at fifteen knots, we should be there in three hours or so.

Captain Tab was amazed at the condition of his ship now. He said that it seemed to run like new. Of course, the fact that I had given him his ship back, along with a promise of five million US dollars when we reached Tapato, made him an extremely happy ship’s captain, even with the loss of the Towed Array Sonar.

Since we had some time, I sit down with Barbara and had a serious discussion. The end result was that she decided to stay with her father for now. She assured me that it was not because of Larry, although she felt the time had come for a serious discussion with him as well, but she just felt that her father needed her skills to get back on his feet right now. I left the door open for her and she promised she would come to see me as soon as things settled down for them.

It was something of a party atmosphere on the ship as the girls all hurried around cleaning up their quarters and gathering their things while talking excitedly. I finally gathered everyone around and explained the dangers of talking about what we had experienced with anyone outside the family. I figured that a family council would be convened shortly after we returned, despite any official festivities going on.

Our arrival back to Tapato, wasn’t what I expected, even after being gone for almost two weeks.

As we approached the harbor, we were notified to divert to Hafu, Tapato’s second most populous island, some sixteen nautical miles northeast of Manatiku, where Kalani’s Residence was located. From there we would have to take the water taxi to Hikitia, and then ground transportation to the Imperial Hotel and the Royal Residence. Kalani left word that the family would see us there.