Fantom Chapter 2, part 2.

   The room started to shake, not violently, just enough to rattle the tea mugs on their hooks.  Ruth quickly found her way to the bench and sat down, holding on to a rail on the wall.  Patrick sat nearby too, while Adam and Tom remained in their seats in front of the computer and keyboard.  A progress bar had appeared on the screen, but she didn’t know what it meant.  She was too busy holding on and being suddenly scared.  
   Gradually the shaking stopped, and there was a sensation like a lift coming to a standstill.  The four of them looked at each other.  Gingerly, Ruth stood up and went to the door, wondering too late if perhaps they should have locked or bolted it for the journey.  Cautiously she opened it a fraction and peered out, Patrick behind her.
   “It worked,” she said.  “It really worked!”  
   The door opened into a dingy corridor, and seemed just one of many such doors.  It seemed deserted.  Cautiously they crept out and looked around.
   “It can’t be real,” Adam said, pointing up.  “Look, electric lights.  They wouldn’t have had them in Victorian theatres, surely?”
   Ruth shook her head.  “The Savoy was the first public building in world to be lit completely by electricity,” she said.  “Look at their shape, they look like they should be gas lamps but they’re not.”
   “We can’t go out there like this,” James said.  “We’d be noticed, we don’t exactly look like we fit in.”
   Patrick had gone back into the machine and pulled out the hamper from under the keyboard.  “Ah, I thought that’s what I saw,” he said.  He pulled out some fabric, and held up, upside down, a gentlemen’s Victorian jacket.
   “There’s loads in here,” he said.  The others came back in and played lucky dip for clothes in the basket.  Before long, instead of four fairly scruffy 21st century twenty-somethings were three fairly smartly dressed Victorian gentlemen- and a lady struggling to arrange her voluminous skirts over a wire framework that resembled, to her mind, a medieval torture device.  
   Tom had found a small drawer which, much to his surprise, contained money with dates from the early 1880’s.  
   “Whoever gave us this knew where we’d want to go,” Patrick said.
   “Are we ready then?” Tom said.  They nodded, and prepared to venture out once more.  
   The corridor was still deserted.  Trying to look as if they belonged there they followed it until they came to a door where a heavy velvet curtain covered a glass panel.  Patrick drew the curtain back a little and peeped in.
   “It’s the foyer,” he said.  “It’s packed.  They’ll never notice us, come on!”  He opened the door and they all slipped quickly inside, although not without some bustle trouble on Ruth’s part.  
   “How the heck do I fit all this dress into a seat?” she whispered a few minutes later as they found their newly-purchased seats.  They had been extreemly lucky that someone had cancelled their booking, leaving just four seats free in the gallery.  “I should have practicsed sitting down before we came out!”
   The seats themselves were quite comfortable, dark blue that contrasted pleasantly with the white and gold decoration of the theatre as they looked down at the stage.  “Not a bad view, for so high up,” Patrick said.  
   “Will Gilbert be here?” Tom whispered.
   “Don’t think so,” Ruth replied.  “He couldn’t- can’t- stand first nights.  He’ll be outside somewhere until the end.  Sullivan will be conducting though, I think.”
   “Shh,” Adam said as the lights were dimmed.
   Only this afternoon, Ruth thought, she had been at work in the twenty-first century, and now she was here, watching the first night of The Mikado!  It was unbelievable.  She enjoyed every moment of it.  And when, after the performance and a sight of the author and composer they made their way back to the machine her head was still buzzing with the music, the colours, the singing, the crowd.  She had overheard somebody on the way out saying that they didn’t see what all the fuss was about, he didn’t see why everyone thought it was so wonderful, and Ruth had taken great pleasure in thinking; ‘history will disagree with you.’
   They sat down back in the TTC, after realising they had forgotten to lock the dor, and Tom and Adam activated the Quick Return.  Once more the room shook, once more Patrick peered out into a corridor.
   “Yep, we’re back,” he said.  “Nowhere else would deliberately paint a corridor to look like an airport with depression.”
   “We’d better get changed,” Ruth said.  “At least I had, I’m not going out there in this to get laughed at.”
   Patrick put the kettle on.  “What are we going to do now?” he asked as he took off the Victorian jacket.  Ruth thought, regretfully, that it rather suited him.
   “If we tell people we’ve got a time machine they’ll think we’re mad,” Adam said.  “Or it’ll be taken away to be studied.”
   “We’ll have to keep it secret, at least for the moment,” Tom said.
   “But can we?” Ruth asked, gratefully taking a cup of tea.  
  “Good grief!” Tom said, looking at his watch.  “It’s only a few minutes after we left.  It feels so much longer.  Tiring business, time travel.”
   “We can’t do anything else tonight,” Adam said.  “I have work tomorrow.  It’ll be safe enough if we lock it, won’t it?”
   “I should think so,” Patrick said.  “It looks just like any other door.”
   “Tomorrow, though, we should try and find out a bit more about it,” Tom said.
   “And why we’ve been given it,” Ruth added.

The story continues...