Sheep in Space

The alien ship was called the Celestial Wanderer, which Clive thought was a bit much for what was essentially a flying room with too many buttons. But it was impressive — the walls shifted colour when you touched them, the floors were warm, and everything hummed with an energy that made Clive's wool tingle.

They gave him a badge. It materialised on his chest — holographic, glowing, reading "Dr. Clive E. Sheep: Earth Physicist Extraordinaire."

"I'm not a physicist," Clive said.

"Your wormhole calculations suggest otherwise," the captain replied. The captain had antennae that glowed when she was thinking, which was constantly. "Please, take the helm."

The helm was a semicircle of controls that made the submarine's bridge look like a toy dashboard. Screens everywhere, showing star maps and energy readings and things Clive couldn't begin to identify. The crew watched him expectantly.

Clive touched a panel. The ship moved. Not violently — smoothly, like it was reading his mind. Or possibly his hooves.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"Away from the Bureau," the captain said. "Beyond that, we trust your judgment."

Clive didn't trust his judgment. His judgment had led him to open an emergency exit at thirty thousand feet. But the ship was moving, and the stars were sliding past the windows, and for the first time in his life, Clive felt like he was going somewhere on purpose. Even if the purpose was "away."

They passed things Clive didn't have words for. A nebula that looked like spilled paint. A binary star system where two suns orbited each other in a slow, endless dance. A space station shaped like a wheel, spinning in the void, its windows glowing with warm light.

"Beautiful," Clive murmured.

"You should see the Andromeda Drift," one of the crew said. "Clouds of gas that sing when ships pass through them."

"Clouds that sing?"

"In frequencies most species can't hear. But wool-based lifeforms might."

Clive filed that away under "things I never expected to learn."

The peace lasted until Clive leaned on a lever he shouldn't have leaned on. The ship lurched. The stars outside stretched into lines. The crew grabbed whatever was nearest.

"What did you do?" the captain asked, her antennae flashing red.

"Leaned," Clive said.

"You've engaged the temporal drive! The coordinates are—" She checked the readings. Her antennae went from red to a colour Clive had never seen before. "You've activated a time vortex."

The ship was already inside it. Through the windows, Clive saw time itself — not as a concept, but as a thing you could watch. Dinosaurs. Castles. Cities that hadn't been built yet. Everything, all at once, rushing past like the universe was flipping through its own photo album.

"We need to stabilise!" the captain shouted. "Dr. Sheep, the controls!"

Clive looked at the controls. He had no idea what any of them did. He'd never had any idea what any controls did. Every vehicle he'd ever operated — forklift, plane, jeep, submarine, spaceship — he'd driven by pure, catastrophic improvisation.

So he improvised.

He pressed things. Turned things. Pulled things. The vortex shuddered, flickered, and — impossibly — began to slow.

"It's working!" the crew cheered.

"Of course it is," Clive said, his hooves shaking so badly the controls were rattling.

The vortex spat them out. The ship tumbled, righted itself, and came to a stop. Outside the windows: sand. Endless, golden sand, and in the distance, something massive and triangular, half-built, crawling with tiny figures.

"Where are we?" Clive asked.

The captain checked the readings. "Earth. Approximately 2500 BCE."

Clive stared at the pyramid. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me."