The Adolescence of Time (audio story): Difference between revisions

|enem                  = [[The Wyrm]]

The [[pterodactyl]] [[Tektekachuan|Padra Tektekachuan]] repairs [[Bernice Summerfield's Time Ring|a Time Ring]], inside of which [[the Wyrm]] now lives, and sends it sixty-five million years into the future to find and bring back its former mistress, [[Bernice Summerfield|Benny]]. It instead travels to [[Peter Summerfield|Peter]] and pulls him back in [[time]], but he is able to fight it enough to deviate from the course and he is instead found by [[Celethua|Madra Celethua]], who summons the [[diplomacy|diplomat]] [[Ixotta]] to help given his initial distress. Peter suspects that he was pulled back by a malevolent will which is now blocking the ring from taking him back to the [[27th century]].  

The pterodactyl [[colony]] is on a [[rock]] floating in the [[Earth]]'s [[sky]], held above the [[poison]]ous [[the Cloud|Cloud]] by the [[Wildfield]]s, psychic forces released from the Earth when it was hit by [[Briggs's freighter|an object]]. Celethua and Ixotta privately discuss the possibility that Peter has been brought back by the [[Wyrmcaller]]s as a [[sacrifice]] to the Wyrm or as part of a [[revenge]] plot and Celethua believes that he could be their saviour. Peter, overhearing them, agrees to help and Ixotta takes him on a [[mulo]] after giving him one of her people's telepathic pendants to wear on his head as they do. During the [[flight]], Ixotta warns Peter not to use words that the pterodactyls cannot understand as it hurts them and confuses the mulo.

Ixotta takes Peter to her home of [[Kahathli]], a [[sky colony]] in the [[Farm Belt]], and introduces him to [[Chulcullum|Padra Chulcullum]], whom Peter cannot understand due to him having been born before the Cloud's formation and thus unaffected by the Wildfields. The Wyrmcallers attack the colony and Peter gets everybody to fight them using the mulos as [[weapon]]s, despite the concept of [[battle]] being alien to the pterodactyls, who interpret the Wyrmcallers' attacks as [[weather]]. Realising that the Wyrmcallers are following him, he flies through the Cloud to the Wyrmcallers' colony to draw them away and threatens to drop the Time Ring into [[lava]], believing that that is what they want. He is wrong, however, and tells Ixotta to flee whilst he is captured.

Tektekachuan orders Peter to be fed to the Wyrm in the [[Crucible of the Ring]] even when he learns that he is not Benny, but the sky colonies attack and Peter manages to get away, albeit without the Ring which he dropped in the lava when he was captured. Despite Tektekachuan's warnings, he opens a pipe which releases the voice of the Wyrm, a liquid, and damages the area, causing Tektekachuan to fall. Peter is surprised to be saved by a mulo-riding Benny, who recovered the Time Ring from the rock in the future and used it to travel back to save him, and runs whilst she draws off the Wyrmcallers. He encounters part of the Wyrm, a lump of the strange liquid with a mouth, and realises that it is not actually dangerous; the real danger is when people listen to its cries of hunger.

Accepting that he is the one who has caused all of the deaths, Peter walks into the lava and uses the liquid to return to his own time, not caring about the reason that the Wyrm wanted his mother. Benny too leaves prehistoric Earth. With the Farm Belt destroyed, the pterodactyls start having to hunt [[animal]]s beneath the Cloud and, needing a way to bring themselves all back together, build a [[statue]] of Peter with an inscription reading "Peter the Summerfield, abomination and destroyer".

* [[The Wyrm]] was released from within [[Earth]] by the [[asteroid]] impact that drove the [[dinosaur]]s extinct.

* The Wyrm's effect on the winged reptiles is similar to the transformation of [[human]]s into [[Primord]]s when exposed to [[Stahlman's ooze]]. ([[TV]]: ''[[Inferno (TV story)|Inferno]]'')