The Tea Machine by Gill McKnight

it here if it were not so deadly.
    “If the Beta launching deck is jammed with friggin’ Colossal, I suppose we’ve no other choice.” Gallo was still grumbling about the shortcut through the lab. “But anything so much as twitches, lady,” she turned and glared at Millicent. “I’m fucking popping it.”
    Good Lord, Millicent thought. Why on earth do they insist I’m one of their scientists? Surely they can see I’m not of the current timeline. And whatever is in the laboratories to make them all so jittery?

CHAPTER 8
    The laboratory was sealed tight. At first Millicent didn’t consider this strange, despite all the other doors on the deck crazily slamming open and shut. She assumed they had corroded wiring.
    “Stand back,” Sangfroid ordered her. Brash blue light flamed from the pistols she and Gallo pointed at the command panel.
    “What kind of weapon is that?” she asked when they stopped firing to examine the damage.
    “Hand laser.”
    “Fascinating,” she said. Then after a moment, she asked, “What is a laser?” But her question was drowned out by a second onslaught on the panel.
    “Wish they put this much security into all the door locks,” Gallo bellowed over the sizzle of fried wires. “Might be nice to keep a squid out for once.”
    The wiring popped and then surrendered, and the doors slid quietly open. Sangfroid and Gallo stopped firing, and in the silence that followed, Millicent mulled over Gallo’s words. “Nice to keep a squid out for once.” Did that mean… “Are you intimating there are squid locked in here?” she asked.
    Gallo and Sangfroid looked at her with growing incredulity. “It’s the lab,” Sangfroid said, unhelpfully.
    “Well, you’re the scientist,” Gallo muttered gloomily. “What else do you keep in a lab, ’cept squid?” She stared warily through the open doorway. “Don’t tell me there’re worse things than squid in there.”
    A thunderous bang echoed down the corridor behind them. Something ominous was occurring farther on up.
    “We need to get going.” Sangfroid stepped inside, laser raised. She signalled for Millicent to stay close to her. Gallo automatically took up the rear.
    “So. Where do we go?” Sangfroid asked Millicent.
    The room was a brightly lit wonderland. A perfect oasis of calm, unperturbed by the brutal battle going on outside its sterile walls. Sterile walls that were covered with hundreds of wiring panels and glowing lights. Millicent stared, awed by the glory of it all. Long, wide benches, in a shiny translucent material Millicent didn’t recognize, stretched the length of it, and complex machinery sat on the bench tops or was suspended from overhead racks. Everything looked sharp and bright and gloriously intriguing. Millicent’s fingers itched to touch.
    “Where do we go?” Sangfroid repeated in a tight voice.
    “Oh. Let’s go here.” Millicent headed directly to the first bench to examine a magnificent example of a gyroscope. “Goodness me, I’ve never seen such a small one, or so precise. Hubert was considering the possibility of a gyrocompass, you know. He hoped the new electric motors could help him create an indefinite spin. He has a rudimentary prototype assembled at the moment, but if he could only see—”
    “How the hell do we get out of here!” Sangfroid yelled. Millicent jumped back from the gyroscope as if it had burned her.
    “I have no idea,” she answered curtly.
    “But this is the lab,” Sangfroid said.
    “It’s not my lab.”
    “Not—” She looked like she might explode, and Millicent was glad there was a workbench between them.
    “Well, fuck that.” Gallo was equally aghast.
    “I have not, at any point, stated that I worked in this laboratory.” Millicent felt compelled to redefine what was quickly becoming a dictate from these two. “That was an assumption on your part entirely.”
    “What! But!” Sangfroid spluttered and then sighed heavily. “Okay. Let’s just find an exit