Indian Rocks Beach, Florida

          7 June 1978

          The kind of prophet these people want

          is a windbag and a liar,

          Prophesying a future of wine and spirits.

                             -- The Book of Micah

ONE

          The leggy girl was both alpha and omega: the two embodied in the same compact bundle. The operation began when she confronted him on a Florida beach, breaking his euphoria; it ended when he found her sign on a grave marker, hard by a Nabataean cistern. The leap between those two points was enormous.

          Brian Chaney was aware of only a third symbol when he discovered her: she was wearing a hip-length summer blouse over delta pants. No more than that--and a faint expression of disapproval--was evident.

          Chaney intended to make short work of her.

          When he realized the girl was coming at him, coming for him, he felt dismay and wished he'd had time to run for it. When he saw the object she carried--and its bright red dustjacket couldn't be missed--he was tempted to jump from the beach chair and run anyway. She was another tormentor. The furies had been hounding him since he left Tel Aviv--since the book was published-- hounding him and crying heresy in voices hoarse with indignation. String up the traitor! they cried. Burn the infidel!

          He watched the approach, already resenting her.

          He had been idling in the sun, half dozing and half watching a mail Jeep make box deliveries along the beach road when she suddenly appeared in his line of sight: The beach had been deserted except for himself, the Jeep, and the hungry gulls; the inland tourists with their loud transistor radios wouldn't be along for another several weeks. The girl walked purposefully along the shoulder of the road until she was nearly opposite him, then quickly wheeled and stepped across a narrow band of weedy grass onto the sand. She paused only long enough to pull off her shoes, then came across the beach at him.

          When she was near, he threw away his earlier supposition: she was a leggy, disapproving woman, not a girl. He guessed her age at twenty-five because she looked twenty; she wasn't very tall nor very solid--no more than a hundred pounds. A troublesome woman.

          Chaney deliberately turned in his chair to watch the raging surf, hoping the woman would about-face. She carried the red-jacketed book clutched in hand as though it were a purse, and tried unsuccessfully to hide her disapprobation. She might be a scout from one of those damned TV shows.

          He liked the sea. The tide was coming in and there had been a storm on the water the night before; now, the whitecaps boomed in to break on the beach only a dozen feet away, hurling spray into his face. He liked that; he liked the feel of stinging spray on his skin. He liked being outdoors under a hot sun, after too many months at desk and bench. Israel had a lovely climate but it did nothing for a man working indoors. If these intruders would only let him alone, if they would allow him another week or two on the beach, he'd be willing to end his holiday and go back to work in the tank--the dusty, fusty tank with its quota of dusty, fusty wizards making jokes about sunburns and back tans.

          The leggy woman halted beside him.

          "Mr. Brian Chaney."

          He said: "No. Now run along."

          "Mr. Chaney, my name is Kathryn van Hise. Forgive the intrusion. I am with the Bureau of Standards."

          Chaney blinked his surprise at the novelty and turned away from the whitecaps. He stared at her legs, at the form-fitting delta pants, at the tease-transparent blouse wriggling in an off-shore breeze, and looked up finally at her face against the sunshine-hot Florida sky. Her nearness revealed more She was small in stature--size eight, at a guess--and light of weight, giving the impression of being both quick and alert. Her skin was well tanned, telling her good use of the early summer sun, and it nicely complimented her eyes and hair. The eyes were one attractive shade of brown and the hair was another. Her face bore only a hint of cosmetics. There were no rings on her fingers.

          He said skeptically: "_That's_ a novel approach."

          "I beg your pardon?"

          "Usually, you're from the Chicago _Daily News_, or the Denver _Post_, or the Bloomington _Bulletin_. Sometimes you're from a TV talk show. You want a statement, or a denial, or an apology. I like your imagination, but you don't get one."

          "I am not a newspaper person, Mr. Chaney. I _am_ a research supervisor with the Bureau of Standards, and I am here for a definite purpose. A serious purpose."

          "No statement, no denial, and certainly not an apology. What purpose?"

          "To offer you a position in a new program."

          "I have a job. New programs every day. Sometimes we have new programs running out of our ears."

          "The Bureau is quite serious, Mr. Chaney."

          "The Bureau of Standards," he mused. "The _government_ Bureau of Standards, of course--the one in Washington, cluttered with top-heavy bureaucrats speaking strange dialects. That would be a fate worse than death. I worked for them once and I don't want to again, ever." But the wind-whipped blouse was an eye-puller.

          She said: "You completed a study for the Bureau three years ago, before taking leave to write."

          "Does the Bureau have a complaint about my book? Short weight? Pages missing? Too much fat in the text? Have I defrauded the consumers? Are they going to sue? Now _that_ would cap everything."

          "Please be serious, Mr. Chaney."

          "No--not today, not tomorrow, not this week and maybe not the next. I've been run through the mill but now I'm on vacation. I earned it. Go away, please."

          The woman stubbornly held ground.

          After a while, Chaney's attention drifted back from a prolonged study of the racing whitecaps and settled on the bare feet firmly embedded in the sand near his chair. A fragrant perfume was worn somewhere beneath the blouse. He searched for the precise source, for the spot where it had kissed her skin. It was difficult to ignore his visitor when she stood so close. Her legs and the delta pants earned one more inspection. She certainly wore her skin and that tantalizing clothing well.

          Chaney squinted up at her face against the sky. The brown eyes were direct, penetrating, attractive.

          "Dress like yours is prohibited in Israel--did you know that? Most of the women are in uniform and the high command worries about male morale. Delta lost." Chaney conveyed his regret with a gesture. "Are you serious?"

          "Yes, sir."

          "The Bureau wants a biblical translator?"

          "No, sir. The Bureau wants a demographer, one who is experienced in both lab and field work." She paused. "And certain other prerequisites, of course."

          "A demographer!"

          "Yes, sir. _You_."

          "But the woods are full of demographers."

          "Not quite, Mr. Chaney. You were selected."

          "Why? Why me? What other prerequisites?"

          "You have a background of stability, of constancy and resolution; you have demonstrated your ability to withstand pressures. You are well adjusted mentally and your physical stamina is beyond question. Other than your biblical research, you have specialized in socio-political studies and have earned a reputation as an extrapolative statistician. You are the definition of the term, futurist. You authored that lengthy study for the Bureau. You have a security clearance. You were selected."

          Chaney turned with astonishment and stared. "Does the Bureau know I also chase women? Of all colors?"

          "Yes, sir. That fact was noted in your dossier, but it wasn't considered a detriment."

          "Please thank the good gray Bureau for me. I _do_ appreciate the paternal indulgence."

          "There is no need to be sarcastic, Mr. Chaney. You have a well-balanced computer profile. Mr. Seabrooke has described you as an ideal futurist."

          "I'm _ever_ so grateful. Who is Seabrooke?"

          "Gilbert Seabrooke is our Director of Operations. He personally selected you from a narrow field of candidates."

          "I'm not a candidate; I volunteered for nothing."

          "This is a top secret project of some importance, sir. The candidates were not consulted in advance."

          "That's why we're all so happy about it." Chaney indicated the book in her hand. "You're _not_ interested in my hobby? In that? The Bureau doesn't expect me to deny my translation of the Revelations scroll?"

          The faint expression of disapproval again crossed her face but was thrust aside. "No, sir. The Bureau is unhappy with your work, with the resultant notoriety, and Mr. Seabrooke wishes you _hadn't_ published it--but he believes the public will have forgotten by the time you have surfaced again."

          Emphatically: "_I'm_ not going undergound."

          "Sir?"

          "Tell Mr. Seabrooke I'm not interested. I do very well without him and his Bureau. I have a job."

          "Yes, sir. With the new project."

          "No, sir, with the Indiana Corporation. It's called Indic, for short, and it's a think-tank. I'm a genius--does your computer know that, Miss van Hise? Indic has a hundied or so captive geniuses like me sitting around solving problems for know-nothings. It's a living."

          "I am familiar with the Indiana Corporation."

          "You should be. We did that job for your people three years ago and scared the hell out of them--and then we submitted a bill which unb,alanced their budget. We've done work for State, for Agriculture, for the Pentagon. I _hate_ Pentagon work. Those people are in a hell of a rut. I wish they'd climb off the Chinese back and find some other enemy to study and outwit." He dropped back into the beach chair and returned his attention to the surf. "I have a job waiting; I rather like it. I'm going back to jt when I get tired of sitting here doing nothing--tired of loafing. Find yourself another demographer."

          "No, sir. Indic has assigned you to the Bureau."

          Chaney came out of the chair like a rocket. He towered over the diminutive woman.

          "They have not!"

          "They have, Mr. Chaney."

          "They wouldn't do that without my consent."

          "I'm sorry, but they have.

          Insistently: "They _can't_. I have a contract."

          "The Bureau has purchased your contract, sir."

          Chaney was dumbfounded. He gaped at the woman.

          She removed a folded letter from the pages of the book and handed it to him to read. The letter was couched in stiff corporate language, it was signed, and it bore the great seal of the Indiana Corporation. It transferred the balance of term of employment of Brian Chaney from the private corporation to the public agency, then generously arranged to share with him on an equal basis the financial consideration paid for the transfer. It wished him well. It politely mentioned his book. It was very final.

          The waiting woman did not understand the single Aramaic word hurled down the Florida beach.

          The waves were crashing around his knees, spraying his chest and face. Brian Chaney turned in the surf and looked back at the woman standing on the beach.

          He said: "There are only two buses a day. You'll miss the last one if you don't hurry."

          "I have not completed my instructions, Mr. Chaney."

          "I'd be pleased to give you certain instructions."

          Kathryn van Hise stood her ground without answer. The gulls came swooping back, only to take flight again.

          Chaney shouted his frustration. "_Why?_"

          "The special project needs your special skills."

          "_Why?_"

          "To survey and map the future; you are a futurist."

          "I'm not a surveyor--I'm not a cartographer."

          "Those were figures of speech, sir."

          "I don't _have_ to honor that contract. I can break it, I can turn black-leg and go to work for the Chinese. What will the Pentagon do _then_, Miss van Hise?"

          "Your computer profile indicated that you would honor it, sir. It also indicated your present annoyance. The Pentagon knows nothing of this project."

          "Annoyance! I can also give that computer explicit instructions, but they would be as hard to obey as yours. Why don't you go home? Tell them I refused. Rebelled."

          "When I have finished, sir."

          "Then finish up, damn it, and get along!"

          "Yes, sir." She moved closer to him to avoid raising her voice and permitting the gulls to overhear top secret information. "The first phase of the operation began shortly after Indic submitted its report three years ago, and continued all the while you were studying in Israel. As the author of that report, you were considered one of the most likely persons to participate in the next phase, the field implementations. Expertise. The Bureau is now ready to move into the field, and has recruited a select team to conduct field operations. You will be a member of that team, and then participate in the final report. Mr. Seabrooke expects to submit it to the White House; he is counting on your enthusiastic support."

          "Bully for Seabrooke; he shanghais me and then expects my enthusiastic support. What implementations?"

          "A survey of the future."

          "We've already done that. Read the Indic report."

          "A physical survey of the future."

          Brian Chaney looked at her for a long moment with unconcealed amusement and then turned back to the sea. A red and white sail was beating across the Culf in the middle distance and the tacking fascinated him.

          He said: "I suppose some nutty genius somewhere has really invented a tachyon generator, eh? A generator and deflector and optical train that works? The genius can peer through a little telescope and observe the future?"

          The woman spoke quietly. "The engineers at Westinghouse have built a TDV, sir. It is undergoing tests at the present time."

          "Never heard of it." Chaney shaded his eyes against the sun the better to watch the bright sail. "_V_ is for vehicle, I suppose? Well--that's better than a little telescope. What is the _TD?_"

          "Time Displacement. An engineering term." There was a peculiar note of satisfaction in her voice.

          Brian Chaney dropped his hand and turned all the way around in the water to stare down at the woman. He felt as if he'd been hit.

          "_Time_ Displacement Vehicle?"

          "Yes, sir." The satisfaction became triumph.

          "It can't work!"

          "The vehicle is in test operation."

          "I don't, believe it."

          "You may see it for yourself, sir."

          "It's _there?_ It's sitting there in your lab?"

          "Yes, sir."

          "Operating?"

          "Yes, sir."

          "I'll be damned. What are you going to do with it?"

          "Implement our new program, Mr. Chaney. The Indic report has become an integral part of the program in that it offered several hard guidelines for a survey of the future. We are now ready to initiate the second phase, the field explorations. Do you see the possibilities, sir?"

          "You're going to get _in_ that thing, that vehicle, and go somewhere? Go into the future?"

          "No, sir. _You_ are; the team will."

          Chaney was shocked. "Don't be an idiot! The team can do what they damned please, but I'm not going anywhere. I didn't volunteer for your program; I wasn't a willing candidate; I oppose peonage on humanitarian grounds."

          He quit the surf and stalked back to the beach chair, not caring if the woman followed him. Gulls shrieked their annoyance at his passage. Chaney dropped into the chair with another muttered imprecation of stiffnecked bureaucrats, a scurrilous declaration couched in Hebraic terms the woman wouldn't understand. It commented on her employer's relations with jackasses and Philistines.

          TDV. A furious stimulant to the imagination.

          The gulls, the tide, the salt spray, the descending sun were all ignored while his racing imagination toyed with the information she had given him. He saw the possibilities--some of them--and began to appreciate the interest his Indic report had aroused in those people possessing the vehicle. A man could peer forward-- no, leap forward into the future and check out his theories, his projections of events to come. A man could see for himself the validity of a forewarning, the eventual result of a prefiguration, the final course of a trend. Would sixteen-year-olds marry and vote? Would city and county governments be abolished, relinquishing authority to local state districts? Would the Eastern seaboard complex break down and fail to support life?

          TDV. A vehicle to determine answers.

          Chaney said aloud: "I'm not interested. Find another demographer, Miss van Hise. I object to being ambushed and sold across the river."

          A man could inspect--personally inspect--the Great Lakes to determine if they had been saved or if the Lake Reconstruction program had come too late. A man could study the census figures for a hundred years to come and then compare them to the present tables and projections to find the honesty of those projections. A man could discover if the recently inaugurated trialmarriage program was a success or failure--and learn first-hand what effect it was having on the birth rate, if any. It would be good to know the validity of earlier predictions concerning the population shifts and the expected concentration of human mass along the central waterways. A man could--

          Chaney said aloud: "Give the team my regards, Miss van Hise. And tell them to watch out for traffic cops. I'll read about their adventures in the newspapers."

          Kathryn van Hise had left him.

          He saw her tracks in the sand, glanced up and saw her putting on the shoes near the weedy border of the beach. The delta pants stretched with her as she bent over. The mail Jeep was again visible in the distance, now coming toward him and servicing the boxes on the other side of the beach road. The interview had been completed in less than an hour.

          Chaney felt the weight of the book in his lap. He hadn't been aware of the woman placing it there.

          The legend on the red dustjacket was as familiar as the back of his hand. _From the Qumran Caves: Past, Present, and Future_. The line of type next below omitted the word _by_ and read only: _Dr. Brian Chaney_. The bright jacket was an abomination created by the sales department over the inert body of a conservative editor; it was designed to appeal to the lunatic fringe. He detested it. Despite his careful explanations, despite his scholarly translation of a suspect scroll, the book had stirred up twice the storm he'd expected and aroused the ire of righteous citizens everywhere. String up the blasphemer!

          A small card protruded from the middle pages.

          Chaney opened the volume with curiosity and found a calling card with her name imprinted on one side, and the address of a government laboratory in Illinois written on the other. He supposed that the ten fifty-dollar bills tucked between the pages represented travel money. Or a shameless bribe added to the blouse, the pants, and the perfume worn on her breast.

          "I'm not going!" he shouted after the woman. "The computer lied--I'm a charlatan. The Bureau can go play with its weights!"

          She didn't turn around, didn't look back.

          "That woman is too damned sure of herself."

          Elwood National Research Station

          Joliet, Illinois

          12 June 1978

          A hair perhaps divides the false and true;

          Yes, and a single Alif were the clue

          (could you but find it) to the treasure-house,

          And peradventure to the Master too.

                                       -- Omar Khayyam

TWO

          Two steps ahead, the military policeman who had escorted him from the front gate opened a door and said: "This is your briefing room, sir."

          Brian Chaney thanked him and went through the door.

          He found the young woman critically eyeing him, assessing him, expecting him. Two men in the room were playing cards. An oversized steel table--the standard government issue--was positioned in the center of the room under bright lights. Three bulky brown envelopes were stacked on the table near the woman, while the men and their time-killing game occupied the far end of it. Kathryn van Hise had been watching the door as it opened, anticipating him, but only now did the players glance up from their game to look at the newcomer.

          He nodded to the men and said: "My name is Chaney. I've been--"

          The hurtful sound stopped him, cut off his words.

          The sound was something like a massive rubber band snapped against his eardrums, something like a hammer or a mallet smashing into a block of compressed air. It made a noise of impact, followed by a reluctant sigh as if the hammer was rebounding in slow motion through an oily fluid. The sound hurt. The lights dimmed.

          The three people in the briefing room were staring at something behind him, above him.

          Chaney spun around but found nothing more than a wall clock above the door. They were watching the red sweep hand. He turned back to the trio with a question on his lips, but the woman made a little motion to silence him. She and her male companions continued to watch, the clock with a fixed intensity.

          The newcomer waited them out.

          He saw nothing in the room to cause the sound, nothing to explain their concentrated interest; there was only the usual furniture of a government-appointed briefing room and the four people who now occupied it. The walls were bare of maps, and that was a bit unusual; there were three telephones of different colors on a stand near the door, and that was a bit unusual; but otherwise it was no more than a windowless, guarded briefing room located on an equally well-guarded military reservation forty-five minutes by armored train from Chicago.

          He had entered through the customary guarded gate of a restricted installation encompassing about five square miles, had been examined and identified with the customary thoroughness of military personnel, and had been escorted to the room with no explanation and little delay. Massive outer doors on a structure that appeared earthquake-proof stirred his wonder. There were several widely scattered buildings on the tract--but none as substantial as thi8 one--which led him to believe it had once been a munitions factory. Now, the presence of a number of people of both sexes moving about the grounds suggested a less hazardous installation. No outward hint or sign indicated the present activity, and Chaney wondered if knowledge of the vehicle was shared with station personnel.

          He held his silence, again studying the woman. She was sitting down, and he mentally speculated on the length of the skirt she was wearing today, as compared to the delta pants of the beach.

          The younger of the two men suddenly pointed to the clock. "Hold onto your hat, mister!"

          Chaney glanced at the clock then back to the speaker. He judged the fellow at about thirty, only a few years younger than himself, but having the same lanky height. He was sandy haired, muscular, and something about the set of his eyes suggested a seafarer; the skin was deeply bronzed, as opposed to the girl's new tan, and now his open mouth revealed a silver filling in a front tooth. Like his companions, he was dressed in casual summer clothing, his sportshirt half unbuttoned down the front. His finger pointed at the clock dropped, as if in signal.

          The reluctant sigh of the hammer or the mallet plowing sluggishly through a fluid filled the room, and Chaney wanted to cover his ears. Again the unseen hammer smashed into compressed air, the rubber band struck his eardrums, and there was a final, anticlimactic pop.

          "There you are," the younger man said. "The same old sixty-one." He glanced at Chaney and added what appeared to be an explanation. "Sixty-one seconds, mister.

          "Is that good?"

          "That's the best we'll ever have."

          "Bully. What's going on?"

          "Testing. Testing, testing, testing, over and over again. Even the monkeys are getting tired of it." He shot a quick glance at Kathryn van Hise, as if to ask: _Does he know?_

          The other card player studied Chaney with some reserve, wanting to fit him into some convenient slot. He was an older man. "Your name is Chaney," he repeated dourly. "And you've been--what?"

          "Drafted," Chaney replied, and saw the man wince.

          The young woman said quickly: "Mr. Chaney?"

          He turned and found her standing. "Miss van Hise."

          "We expected you earlier, Mr. Chaney."

          "You expected too much. I had to wait for a few days for sleeper reservations, and I laid over in Chicago to visit old friends. I wasn't eager to leave the beach, Miss van Hise."

          "Sleeper?" the older man demanded. "The _railroad?_ Why didn't you fly in?"

          Chaney felt embarrassed. "I'm afraid of planes."

          The sandy-haired man exploded in howling laughter and pointed an explanatory finger at his dour companion. "Air Force," he said to Chaney. "Born in the air and flies by the seat of his pants." He slapped the table and the cards jumped, but no one shared his high humor. "You're off to a fine start, mister!"

          "Must I hold a candle to my shame?" Chaney asked.

          The woman said again: "Mr. Chaney, please."

          He gave her his attention, and she introduced him to the card players.

          Major William Theodore Moresby was the disapproving Air Force career man, now in his middle forties, whose receding hairline accented his rather large and penetrating gray-green eyes. The ridge of his nose was sharp, bony, and had once been broken. There was the suspicion of a double chin, and another suspicion of a building paunch beneath the summer shirt he wore outside his trousers. Major Moresby had no humor, and he shook hands with the tardy newcomer with the air of a man shaking hands with a draft dodger newly returned from Canada.

          The younger man with the bronzed muscular frame and the prominent dental work was Lieutenant Commander Arthur Saltus. He congratulated Chaney on having the good sense of being reluctant to leave the sea, and said he'd been Navy since he was fifteen years old. Lied about his age, and furnished forged papers to underscore the lie. Even in the windowless room his eyes were set against the bright sunlight on the water. He was likable.

          "A civilian?" Major Moresby asked gravely.

          "Someone has to stay home and pay the taxes," Chaney responded in the same tone.

          The young woman broke in quickly, diplomatically. "Official policy, Major. Our directive was to establish a balanced team." She glanced apologetically at Chaney. "Some people in the Senate were unhappy with the early NASA policy of selecting only military personnel for the orbital missions, and so _we_ were directed to recruit a more balanced crew to--to avert a possible future inquiry. The Bureau is mindful of Congressional judgments."

          Saltus: "Translation: we've got to keep those funds rolling in."

          Moresby: "Damn it! Is politics into this thing?"

          "Yes, sir, I'm afraid so. The Senate subcommittee overseeing our project has posted an agent here to maintain liaison. it is to be regretted, sir, but some few of them profess to see a parallel to the old Manhattan project, and so they insisted on continuous liaison."

          "You mean surveillance," Moresby groused.

          "Oh, cheer up, William." Arthur Saltus had picked up the scattered cards and was noisily shuffling the deck. "This one civilian won't hurt us; we outnumber him two to one, and look at the rank he _hasn't_ got. Tailend of the team, last man in the bucket, and we'll make him do the writing." He turned back to the civiiian. "What do you do, Chaney? Astronomer? Cartographer? Something?"

          "Something," Chaney answered easily. "Researcher, translator, statistician, a little of this and that."

          Kathryn van Hise said: "Mr. Chaney authored the Indic report."

          "Ah," Saltus nodded. "_That_ Chaney."

          "Mr. Chaney authored a book on the Qumran scrolls."

          Major Moresby reacted. "_That_ Chaney?"

          Brian Chaney said: "Mr. Chaney will walk out of here in high pique and blow up the building. He objects to being the bug under the microscope."

          Arthur Saltus stared at him with round eyes. "I've heard about you, mister! William has your book. They want to hang you up by your thumbs."

          Chaney said amiably: "That happens every now and then. St. Jerome upset the Church with _his_ radical translation in the fifth century, and they were intent on stretching more than his thumbs before somebody quieted them down. He produced a new Latin translation of the Old Testament, but his critics didn't exactly cheer him. No matter--his work outlived them. Their names are forgotten."

          "Good for him. Was it successful?"

          "It was. You may know the Vulgate."

          Saltus seemed vaguely familiar with the name, but the Major was reddened and fuming.

          "Chaney! You aren't comparing this poppycock of yours to the Vulgate?"

          "No, sir," Chaney said softly to placate the man. He now knew the Major's religion, and knew the man had read his book with loose attention. "I'm pointing out that after fifteen centuries the radical is accepted as the norm. My translation of the Revelations only seems radical now. I may have the same luck, but I don't cxpect to be canonized."

          Kathryn van Hise said insistently: "_Gentlemen_."

          Three heads turned to look at her.

          "Please sit down, gentlemen. We really should get started on this work."

          "Now?" Saltus asked. "Today?"

          "We have already lost too much time. Sit down."

          When they were seated, the irrepressible Arthur Saltus turned in his chair. "She's a hard taskmaster, mister. A martinet, a despot--but she's trim for all of that. A really shipshape civilian, not an ordinary government girl. We call her Katrina--she's Dutch, you know."

          "Agreed," Chaney said. He remembered the transparent blouse and the delta pants, and nodded to her in a manner that might be the beginning of a bow. "I treasure a daily beauty in my life." The young woman colored.

          "To the point!" Saltus declared. "I'm beginning to have ideas about you, civilian researcher. I thought I recognized that first one you pulled, that candle thing."

          "Bartlett is a good man to know."

          "Look, now, about your book, about those scrolls you translated. How did you ever get them declassified?"

          "They were never classified."

          Saltus showed his disbelief. "Oh, they had to be! The government over there wouldn't want them out."

          "Not so. There was no secrecy involved; the documents were there to read. The Israeli government kept ownership of them, of course, and now the scrolls have been sent to another place for safekeeping for the duration of the war, but that's the extent of it." He glanced covertly at the Major. The man was listening in sullen silence. "It would be a tragedy if they were destroyed by the shelling."

          "I'll bet you know where they are."

          "Yes, but that's the only secret concerning them. When the war is over they'll be brought out and put on display again."

          "Hey--do you think the Arabs will crack Israel?"

          "No, not now. Ten, twenty years ago, they may have, but not now. I've seen their munitions plants."

          Saltus leaned forward. "_Have_ they got the H-bomb?"

          "Yes."

          Saltus whistled. Moresby muttered: "Armageddon."

          "Gentlemen! May I have your attention _now?_"

          Kathryn van Hise was sitting straight in her chair, her hands resting on the brown envelopes. Her fingers were interlaced and the thumbs rose to make a pointed steeple.

          Saltus laughed. "You always have it, Katrina."

          Her responding frown was a quick and fleeting thing. "I am your briefing officer. My task is to prepare you for a mission which has no precedent in history, but one that is very near culmination. It is desirable that the project now go forward with all reasonable speed. I must insist that we begin preparations at once."

          Chaney asked: "Are we working for NASA?"

          "No, sir. You are directly employed by the Bureau of Standards and will not be identified with any other agency or department. The nature of the work will not be made public, of course. The White House insists on that."

          He knew a measure of relief when she answered the next question, but it was of short duration. "You're not going to put us into orbit? We won't have to do this work on moon, or somewhere?"

          No, sir.

          "That's a relief. I won't have to fly?"

          She said carefully: "I cannot reassure you on that point, sir. If we fail to attain our primary objective, the secondary targets may involve flying."

          "That's bad. There _are_ alternatives?"

          "Yes, sir. Two alternatives have been planned, if for any reason we cannot accomplish the first objective."

          Major Moresby chuckled at his discomfiture.

          Chaney asked: "Do we just sit here and wait for something to happen--wait for that vehicle to work?"

          "No, sir. I will help you to prepare yourself, on the assurance that something _will_ happen. The testing is nearly completed and we expect the conclusion at any time. When it _is_ completed, all of you will then acquaint yourselves with vehicle operation; and when _that_ is done a field trial will be arranged. Following a successful field trial, the actual survey will get underway. We are most optimistic that each phase of the operation will be concluded in good order and in the shortest possible time." She paused to lend emphasis to her next statement. "The first objective will be a broad political and demographic survey of the near future; we wish to learn the political stability of that future and the well-being of the general populace. We may be able to contribute to both by having advance knowledge of their problems. Toward that end you will study and map the central United States at the turn of the century, at about the year 2000."

          Saltus:          "Hot damn!"

          Chaney felt a recurrence of the initial shock he'd known on the beach; this wasn't to be an academic study.

          "We're going up there? That far?"

          "I thought I had made that clear, Mr. Chaney."

          "Not _that_ clear," he said with some embarrassment and confusion. "The wind was blowing on the beach--my mind was on other things." Hasty side glances at Saltus and the Major offered little comfort: one was grinning at him and the other was contemptuous. "I had supposed my role was to be a passive one: laying out the guidelines, preparing the surveys and the like. I had supposed you were using instruments for the actual probe--" But he realized how lame that sounded.

          "No, sir. Each of you will go forward to conduct the survey. You _will_ employ certain instruments in the field, but the human element is necessary."

          Moresby may have thought to needle him. "Seniority will apply, after all. We will move up in the proper order. Myself first, then Art, and then you."

          "We expect to launch the survey within three weeks, given the completion of the testing schedule." Her voice may have held a trace of amusement at his expense. "It may be sooner if your training program can be completed sooner. A physical examination is scheduled for later this afternoon, Mr. Chaney; the others have already had theirs. The examinations will continue at the rate of two per week until the survey vehicle is actually launched."

          "Why?"

          "For your protection and ours, sir. If a serious defect exists we must know it now."

          He said weakly: "I have the heart of a chicken."

          "But I understood you were under fire in Israel?"

          "That's different. I couldn't stop the shelling and the work had to be done."

          "You could have quit the country."

          "No, I couldn't do that--not until the work was done, not until the translation was finished and the book ready."

          Kathryn van Hise tapped her fingers together and only looked at him. She thought that was answer enough.

          Chaney recalled something she had said on the beach, something she had quoted or inferred from his dossier. Or perhaps it was that damned computer profile rattling off his supposed resolution and stability. He had a quick suspicion.

          "Did you read my dossier? All of it?"

          "Yes, sir."

          "_Ouch_. Did it contain information--ah, gossip about an incident on the far side of the New Allenby Bridge?"

          "I believe the Jordanian government contributed a certain amount of information on the incident, sir. It was obtained through the Swiss Legation in Amman, of course. I understand you suffered a rather severe beating."

          Saltus eagerly: "Hey--what's this?"

          Chaney said: "Don't believe everything you read. I was damned near shot for a spy in Jordan, but that Moslem woman wasn't wearing a veil. Mark that--no veiL It's supposed to make all the difference in the world."

          Saltus: "But what has the woman to do with a spy?"

          "They thought I was a Zionist spy," Chaney explained. "The woman without a veil was only a pleasant interlude--well, she was supposed to be a pleasant interlude. But it didn't turn out that way."

          "And they nabbed you? Almost shot you?"

          "And beat the hell out of me. Arabs don't play by the same rules we do. They use garrotes and daggers."

          Saltus:          "But what happened to the woman?"

          "Nothing. No time. She got away."

          "Too _bad_," Saltus exclaimed.

          Kathryn van Hise asked: "May we continue, please?"

          Chaney thought he detected a touch of color in her cheeks. "We're going up," he said with finality.

          "Yes, sir."

          He wished he were back on the beach. "Is it safe?"

          Arthur Saltus broke in again before the woman could respond. "The monkeys haven't complained--you shouldn't."

          "Monkeys?"

          "The test monkeys, civilian. The critters have been riding that damned machine for weeks, up, back, sideways. But they haven't filed any complaints--not in writing."

          "But supposing they did?"

          Airily: "Oh, in that event, William and I would wave our seniority rights to you. _You_ could go riding off somewhere to investigate their complaints, find out the trouble. The taxpayers deserve _some_ breaks."

          Kathryn van Hise said: "Once again, _please_."

          "Sure, Katrina," Saltus said easily. "But I think you should tell this civilian what he's in for."

          Moresby caught his meaning and laughed.

          Chaney was wary. "What am I in for?"

          You' re going up naked. Saltus lifted his shirt to slap a bare chest. "We're all going up naked."

          Chaney stared at him, searching for the point of the joke, and belatedly realized it was no joke. He turned on the woman and found the flush had returned to her face.

          She said: "It's a matter of weight, Mr. Chaney. The machine must propel itself and you into the future, which is an operation requiring a tremendous amount of electrical energy. The engineers have advised us that total weight is a critical matter, that nothing but the passenger must be put forward or returned. They insist upon minimum weight.

          "Naked? All the way naked?"

          Saltus: "Naked as a jaybird, civilian. We'll save ten, fifteen, twenty pounds of excess weight. They demand it. You wouldn't want to upset those engineers, would you? Not with your life riding in their hands? They're sensitive chaps, you know--we have to humor them."

          Chaney struggled to retain his sense of humor. "What happens when we reach the future, when we reach 2000?"

          Again the woman attempted a reply but again Saltus cut her off. "Oh, Katrina has thought of everything. Your old Indic report said future people will wear less clothing, so Katrina will supply us with the proper papers. We're going up there as licensed nudists."

THREE

          Brian Chaney said: "I wish I knew what was going on here." His voice carried an undertone of complaint.

          "I have been trying to tell you for the past hour, Mr. Chaney."

          "Try once more," he begged.

          Kathryn van Hise studied him. "I said on the beach that Westinghouse engineers have built a TDV. The vehicle was built here, in this building, under a research contract with the Bureau of Standards. The work has gone forward in utmost secrecy, of course, with a Congressional group--a Subcommittee--supplying direct funds and maintaining a close supervision over the project. We operate with the full knowledge of, and responsibility to the White House. The President will make the final choice of objectives."

          "_Him?_ A committee will have to make up his mind for him."

          Her expression was one of pronounced disapproval and he guessed that he'd touched a sore spot--guessed that her loyalty to the man was motivated by political choice as much as by present occupation.

          "The President is _always_ kept informed of our daily progress, Mr. Chaney. As was his predecessor." The woman seemed belligerent. "His predecessor created this project by an Executive order three years ago, and we continue to operate today only with the consent and approval of the new President. I am sure you are aware of the political facts of life."

          Ruefully: "Oh, I'm aware. The Indic report failed to anticipate a weak President. It was written and submitted during the administration of a strong one, and was based on the assumption that man would continue in office for two full terms. Our mistake; we didn't anticipate his death. But this new man has to be nudged off the dime--every dime, every day. He lacks initiative, lacks drive." A side glance told Chaney that the Major had agreed with him on one point. Moresby was absently nodding concurrence.

          Kathryn van Hise cleared her throat.

          "To proceed. An experimental laboratory is located in another part of this building, beneath us, and the testing of the vehicle has been underway for some time. When the testing had reached a stage which indicated eventual success, the survey field team was recruited. Major Moresby, Commander Saltus, and you were each the first choices in your respective fields, and the only ones contacted. As yet there is no back-up team."

          Chaney said: "That's uncharacteristic of them. The military always buys two of everything, just in case."

          "This is _not_ a military operation, and their superiors were _not_ informed why Major Moresby and Commander Saltus were transferred to this station. But I would think a back-up team will be recruited in time, and perhaps the military establishment will be informed of our operations." She folded her hands, regaining composure. "The engineers will explain the vehicle and its operation to you; I am not well enough informed to offer a lucid explanation. I understand only that an intense vacuum is created when the vehicle is operated, and the sound you heard was the result of an implosion of air into that vacuum."

          "They're making sixty-one second tests?"

          "No, sir. The tests may be of any duration; the longest to date has probed twelve months into the past, and the shortest only one day. Those sixty-one seconds represent a necessary margin of safety for the passenger; the passenger may not return to his exact moment of departure, but will instead return sixty-one seconds after his departure regardless of the amount of elapsed time spent in the field." But she seemed troubled by something not put into words.

          Brian Chaney was certain she held something back.

          She said: "At the present time, the laboratory is employing monkeys and mice as test passengers. When that phase is completed, each of you will embark on a test to familiarize yourself with the vehicle. You will depart singly, of course, because of the smallness of the vehicle. The engineers will explain the problems of mass and volume being propelled by means of a vacuum."

          Chaney said: "I see the point. I wouldn't like it very well if I came back from a survey and landed on top of myself. But why sixty-one?"

          "That figure is something of a laboratory fluke. The engineers were intent on a minimum of sixty seconds, but, when the vehicle returned at sixty-one on two successive tests they locked it down there, so to speak."

          "All the tests were successful?"

          She hesitated, then said: "Yes, sir."

          "You haven't lost a monkey? Not one?"

          "No, sir."

          But his suspicions were not quieted. "What would happen if the tests weren't successful? What if one should still fail, after all this?"

          "In that event, the project would be cancelled and each of you will be returned to your stations. _You_ would be free to return to Indiana, if you chose."

          "I'll be fired!" Arthur Saltus declared. "Back to that bucket in the South China Sea: diesel oil and brine."

          "Back to the Florida beach," Chaney told him. "And beauteous maidens in delicious undress."

          "You're a cad, civilian. You ripped off that veil."

          "But the maidens make that unnecessary."

          "Gentlemen, _please_."

          Saltus wouldn't be stopped. "And think of our poor Katrina--back to a bureaucrat's desk, Congress will cut off our slush funds: _chop_. You know how they are."

          "Tightfisted, except for their pet rivers and harbors. So I suppose we must carry on for her sake, naked and shivering, up to the brink of 2000." Chaney was bemused. "What will the coming generation think of us?"

          "_Please!_"

          Chaney folded his arms and looked at her. "I still think someone has made a mistake, Miss van Hise. I have no military skifis and I'm seldom able to distinguish a nut from a bolt; I can't imagine why you would want me for a field survey--despite what you say--but you'll find me a fairly complacent draftee if you promise no more jolts. Are you holding back anything else?"

          Her brown eyes locked with his, showing a first hint of anger. Chaney grinned, hoping to erase that. Her glance abruptly dropped away, and she slid the bulky envelopes across the table to the three men.

          "Now?" Saltus asked.

          "You may open them now. This is our primary tarfield." get area, together with all necessary data to enter the

          Brian Chaney undid the clasp and pulled out a thick sheaf of mimeographed papers and several folded maps. His glance went back to the face of the envelope. A code name was typed there, under the ubiquitous _Top Secret_ rubber stamp. He read it a second time and looked up.

          "Project Donaghadee?"

          "Yes, sir. Mr. Donaghadee is the Director of the Bureau of Standards."

          "Of course. The monument is the man."

          Chaney opened the map on the top of the pile and turned it about so that north was at the top, to read the name of the first city to catch his eye: Joliet. It was a map of the north central section of the United States with Chicago placed precisely in the center, and showing great chunks of those states surrounding the metropolitan area: Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the eastern tip of Iowa. Elwood Station was indicated by a red box just south of Joliet. He noted that the map had been prepared by Army cartographers and was stamped Top Secret. Except for the red box it was identical to gasoline station maps.

          The second map was a large one of Illinois alone and now the extra size revealed Elwood Station to be about eight miles south of Joliet, adjacent to an old route marked Alternate 66. The third map was equally large: a detailed plan of Will County with Joliet located nearly in the center of it. On this map, Elwood Station was a great red box of about five square miles, with several individual houses and buildings identified by a numbered key. The station had two private service roads opening onto the highway. The main line of the Chicago & Mobile Southern Railroad passed within hailing distance of the military reservation, and a spur of that railroad branched off to enter the enclosure.

          The Major looked up from his scrutiny of the maps. "Katrina. The field trials will be here on station?"

          "Only in part, sir. If you find the station normal when you surface, you will proceed to Joliet in transportation which will be provided. Always keep your safety in mind."

          Moresby seemed disappointed. "Joliet."

          "That city will be the limit of the trials, sir. The risk must not be underestimated. However, the actual survey will be conducted in Chicago and its suburbs if the field trials prove satisfactory. Please study the maps carefully and memorize at least two escape routes; you may be forced to walk in the event of a motor breakdown."

          Saltus: "Walk? With cars everywhere?"

          The woman frowned. "Do _not_ attempt to steal an automobile. It may be difficult, perhaps impossible, to free you from jail. It simply wouldn't do, Commander."

          "Naked and forlorn in a Joliet jail," Chaney mumbled. "I believe there is a state penitentiary there."

          She eyed him narrowly. "I think that little joke has gone far enough, Mr. Chaney. You will be clothed in the field, of course; you will dress for the field trial and later for the full survey, but each time you must disrobe before returning in the vehicle. You will find an adequate supply of clothing, tools, and instruments awaiting you at each point of arrival. And the laboratory will be continuously manned, of course; engineers will always be expecting your arrival and will assist in the transits."

          "I thought he was pulling my leg," Chaney admitted. "But how will you manage the clothing and the engineers--how will you have it and them up there waiting for us?"

          "That has already been arranged, sir. A fallout shelter and storage depot is located below us, adjacent to the laboratory. It is stocked with everything you may possibly need for any season of the year, together with weapons and provisions. Our program requires that the laboratory and the vehicle be continuously manned for an indefinite period; a hundred or more years, if necessary. All times of arrival in the future will be known to those future engineers, of course. It has been arranged."

          "Unless they've walked out on strike."

          "Sir?"

          "Your long-range planning is subject to the same uncertainties as my projections--one fluke, one chance event may knock everything askew. The Indic report failed to allow for a weak Administration replacing a strong one, and if that report was placed before me today I wouldn't sign it; the variable casts doubt on the validity of the whole. We can only hope the engineers will still be on the job tomorrow, and will still be using standard time."

          "Mr. Chaney, the Bureau's long-range planning is more thorough than that, It is solidly grounded and has been designed for permanency. I would remind you that the primary target area is only twenty-two years distant."

          "I have this feeling that I'll come out--come to the surface--a thousand years older."

          "I am sure you will make do, sir. Our team is notable for individual self-reliance."

          "Which properly puts me in my place, Miss van Hise."

          Moresby interrupted. "What about those stores?"

          "Yes, sir. The shelter is stocked with necessities: motion picture cameras, tape recorders, radios, weapons and weapons detectors, hand radar, and so forth. There is money and gems and medical supplies. Materials such as film, tape, ammunition and clothing will be restocked at intervals to insure fresh or modern supplies."

          Major Moresby said: "I'll be damned!" and fell silent for a moment of admiration. "It makes good sense, after all. We'll draw what we need from the stores to cover the target, and replace the remainder before coming back."

          "Yes, sir. No part of the supplies may be carried back with you, except tapes and film exposed in the field. The engineers will instruct you on how to compensate for that small extra weight. Do not bring back the recorders and cameras, and you are expressly forbidden to bring back any personal souvenir such as coins or currency. But you may photograph the money if you wish."

          "Those engineers have an answer for everything," Chaney observed. "They must work around the clock."

          "Our project has been working around the clock for the past three years, sir."

          "Who pays the electric bill?"

          "A nuclear power station is located on the post."

          He was quickly interested. "Their own reactor? How much power does it generate?"

          "I don't know, sir."

          "I know," Saltus said. "Commonwealth-Edison has a new one up near Chicago putting out eight hundred thousand kilowatts. Big thing--I've seen it, and I've seen ours. They look like steel light bulbs turned upside down."

          Chaney was still curious. "Does the TDV _need_ that much power?"

          "I couldn't say, sir." She changed the subject by calling attention to the sheaf of mimeographed papers taken from the envelopes. "We have time this afternoon to begin on these reports."

          The first sheet bore the stylized imprint of the Indiana Corporation, and Chaney quickly recognized his own work. He gave the woman an amused glance but she avoided his eyes; another glance down the table revealed his companions staring at the massive report with anticipated boredom.

          The next page plunged immediately into the subject matter by offering long columns of statistics underscored by footnotes: the first few columns were solidly rooted in the census figures of 1970, while the following columns on the following pages were his projections going forward to 2050. Chaney recalled the fun and the sweat that had gone into the work--and the very shaky limb on which he perched as he worked toward the farthest date.

          _Births_: legitimate and otherwise, predicted annually by race and by geographical area (down sharply along the Atlantic seaboard below Boston, and the southern states except Florida; figures did not include unpredictable number of laboratory-hospital births by artificial means; figures did not include unpredictable number of abnormal births in Nevada and Utah due to accumulation of radioactive fallout).

          _Deaths_: with separate figures for murders and known suicides, projected annually by age groups (suicides increasing at predictable rate below age thirty; females outliving males by twelve point three years by year 2000; anticipated life-expectancy increased one point nine years by year 2050; figures did not include infant mortalities in Nevada-Utah fallout area; figures did not include infant mortalities in laboratory-hospital artificial births).

          _Marriages and trial marriages_: with subsequent divorces and annulments forecast on an annual basis after 1980, first full year of trial marriage decree (trial marriages not appreciably contributing to the birth rate except in Alabama and Mississippi, but tending to increase the murder and suicide rate, and contributing to the slow decline of long-term marriages). _Footnote_: renewable term trial marriage recommended; i.e., a second year of trial be granted upon application by both parties.

          _Incidence of crime_: detailed projections in twenty categories, separated by states having and not having the death penalty (murder and robbery up sharply, but rape down by a significant percentage due to trial marriages and lowered legal age of all marriages).

          _Probable voter registrations and profiles_: gradual emergence of enduring three-party system after 1980 (with registrations divided unevenly among three major and one minor party; black voters concentrated in one major and the minor party; pronounced swing to the conservative right in two white major parties during the next decade, with conservative Administrations probable until year 2000, plus or minus four years).

          _Total population by the turn of the century_: based upon the foregoing, three hundred and forty million people in the forty-eight contiguous states and an additional ten million in the three remaining states (the northern tier of plains states projected as consistent annual losers but with Alaska up significantly; Manhattan Island reaching point of saturation within two years, California by 1990, Florida by 2010). _Footnote_: recommended that immigration to Manhattan Island, California, and Florida be forbidden by law, and that monetary inducements be offered to relocate in middle states having low densities of population.

          Brian Chaney felt a certain unease about some of his conclusions.

          Trial marriages could be expected to increase at a phenomenal rate once their popularity caught on, but with the trial term limited to one year he fully expected both the murder and suicide rates to climb; the murders were apt to be crimes of passion committed by the female because of the probability of losing her shortterm husband to another short-term wife, while the suicides were predicted for the same reason. The recommended two-year renewable term would tend to dampen the possibility of either violent act.

          A certain amount of joy-riding was to be expected in trial marriages, but he was gambling they would contribute almost nothing to the birth rate. Nor did he believe that another pill--the new pill--would affect his projections. Chaney held a low opinion of the recently introduced KH3-B pill, and refused to believe it had any restorative powers; he clung to the belief that man was alloted a normal three score and fifteen, and the projected increase of one point nine years by 2050 would be attributed to the eradication of diseases--not to pills and nostrums purportedly having the power to restore mental and physical vigor to the aged. The patients _might_ live six months longer than their normal spans because they were buoyed by euphoria, but six months would not affect a mass of statistics.

          Great population shifts had been earlier predicted and borne out, with the emphasis of change along the natural waterways. The greater densities of population--by 2050--would lie along five clearly defined areas: the Atlantic seaboard, the Pacific seaboard, the Gulf Coast from Tampa to Brownsville, the southern shores of all the Great Lakes, and the full lengths of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. But he knew serious misgivings about those Lakes belts. The water levels in the Lakes had been rising steadily since the beginning of the twentieth century, and the coming flooding and erosion--combined with heavier populations--would create problems of catastrophic proportions in those areas.

          Major Moresby broke the silence. "We will be expected to confirm all this, after all."

          "Yes, sir. Careful observations are desired for each of the three target dates, but the greater amount of work will fall upon Mr. Chaney. His projections will need to be verthed or modified."

          Chaney, with surprise: "Three? Aren't we going up together? Going to the same target?"

          "No, sir, that would be wasteful. The schedule calls for three individual surveys on carefully separated dates, each at least a year apart to obtain a better overall view. You will each travel separately to your predetermined date."

          "The people up there will sneer at our clothes."

          "The people up there should be too preoccupied to notice you, unless you call attention to yourself."

          "Oh? What will preoccupy them?"

          "They will be preoccupied with themselves and their problems. You haven't spent much time in American cities of late, have you, Mr. Chaney? Didn't you notice that the trains you rode into and out of Chicago were armored trains?"

          "Yes, I noticed that. The Israeli newspapers did publish _some_ American news. I read about the curfews. The people of the future won't notice our cameras and recorders?"

          "We _sincerely_ hope not. All would be undone if the present demand for privacy is projected into the turn of the century, if that present demand is intensified."

          Chaney said: "I'm on their side; I enjoy privacy."

          The woman continued. "And of course, we don't know what status your instruments may have at that future date, we don't know if cameras and recorders will be permissible in public, nor can we guess at the efficiency of the police. You may be handicapped." She glanced at Saltus. "The Commander will teach you to work surreptitiously."

          Saltus: "I will?"

          "Yes, sir. You must devise a technique for completing that part of the assignment without discovery. The cameras are very small, but you must find a way to conceal them and still operate them properly."

          "Katrina, do you really think it'll be illegal to take a picture of a pretty girl on a street corner?"

          "We do not know the future, Commander; the survey will inform us what is and is not legal. But whatever the technique, you must photograph a number of objects and persons for a period of time without others being aware of what you are doing."

          "For how long a period of time?"

          "For as long as possible; for as long as you are in the field and your supply of film lasts, The emphasis is on depth, Commander. A survey in depth, to determine the accuracy of the Indic projections. Ideally, you would be in the field several days and expose every roll of film and every reel of tape you are carrying; you would record every object of major interest you might see, and as many lesser objects as time allowed. You would penetrate the field safely, accomplish all objectives, and withdraw without haste at a time of your choosing." A shadow of a smile. "But more realistically, the ideal is seldom attained. Therefore you will go in, record all you are able, and retreat when it becomes necessary. We will hope for the maximum and have to be content with the minimum."

          Chaney turned in the chair. "You make this sound like a dangerous thing."

          "It could be dangerous, Mr. Chaney. What you will be doing has never before been done. We can offer you no firm guidelines for procedure, field technique, or your own safety. We will equip you as best we can, brief you to the fullest extent of our present knowledge, and send you in on your own."

          "We're to report _everything_ we find up there?"

          "Yes, sir."

          "I only hope Seabrooke has anticipated public reaction. He's headed for a rift within the lute."

          "Sir?"

          "I suspect he's headed for trouble. A large part of the public will raise unholy hell when they find out about the TDV--when they find out what lies twenty years ahead of them. There's - something in that Indic report to scare everybody."

          Kathryn van Hise shook her head. "The public will not be informed, Mr. Chaney. This project and our future programs are and will remain secret; the tapes and films will be restricted and the missions will not be publicized. Please remember that all of you have security clearances and are under oath and penalty. Keep silent. President Meeks has ruled that knowledge of this operation is not in the public interest."

          Chaney said: "Secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster."

          Saltus opened his mouth to laugh when the engineers pushed their rig into a vacuum. The lights dimmed.

          The massive rubber band snapped painfully against their eardrums; or it may have been a mallet, or a hammer, driven under cruel pressure into a block of compressed air. The thing made a noise of impact, then sighed as if it rebounded in slow motion through thick liquid. The sound hurt. Three faces turned together to watch the clock.

          Chaney contented himself with watching their faces rather than the clock. He guessed another monkey was riding the vehicle into somewhere, somewhen. Perhaps the animal bore a label: _Restricted_ and was under orders not to talk. The President had ruled his trip was not in the public interest.

FOUR

          Brian Chaney awoke with the guilty feeling that he was tardy again. The Major would never forgive him.

          He sat on the side of the bed and listened carefully for tell-tale sounds within the building, but none were audible. The station seemed unusually quiet. His room was a small one, a single unit sparsely furnished, in a double row of identical rooms fitted into a former army barracks. The partitions were thin and appeared to have been cheaply and hastily erected; the ceiling was less than three feet above his head--and he was a tall man. Larger common rooms at either end of the only corridor contained the showers and toilets, The place bore an unmistakable military stamp, as though troops had moved out the day before he moved in.

          Perhaps they had done just that; perhaps troops were now riding those armored trains serving Chicago and Saint Louis. Without armored siding, a passenger train seldom could traverse Chicago's south side without every window in every car being broken by stones or gunfire.

          Chaney opened his door and peered into the corridor. It was empty, but recognizable sounds from the two rooms opposite his brought a measure of relief. In one of the rooms someone was opening and closing bureau drawers in frustrated search of something; in the other room the occupant was snoring. Chaney picked up a towel and his shaving kit and went to the showers. The snoring was audible all the way down the corridor.

          The cold water was _cold_ but the hot water was only a few degrees warmer--barely enough to feel a difference. Chaney came out of the shower, wrapped a towel about his middle and began rubbing lather on his face.

          "Stop!" Arthur Saltus was in the doorway, pointing an accusatory finger. "Put down the razor, civilian."

          Startled, Chaney dropped the razor into the bowl of tepid water. "Good morning, Commander." He recovered his wits and the razor to begin the shave. "Why?"

          "Secret orders came in the middle of the night," Saltus declared. "All the people of the future wear long beards, like old Abe Lincoln. We must be in character."

          "Nudists with bushy beards," Chaney commented. "That must be quite a sight." He kept on shaving.

          "Well, you bit hard yesterday, civilian." Saltus put an exploratory hand under the shower and turned on the water. He had anticipated the result. "This hasn't changed since boot camp," he told Chaney. "Every barracks is allotted ten gallons of hot water. The first man in uses it all."

          "I _thought_ this was a barracks."

          "This building? It must have been at one time or another, but the station wasn't always a military post. I spotted that coming in. Katrina said it was built as an ordnance plant in 1941--you know, during _that_ war." He stepped under the shower. "That was--what? Thirtyseven years ago? Time flies and the mice have been at work."

          "That other building is new."

          "The lab building is brand new. Katrina said it was built to house that noisy machine--built to last forever. Reinforced concrete all the way down; a basement, and a sub-basement, and other things. The vehicle is down there somewhere hauling monkeys back and forth."

          "I'd like to _see_ that damned thing."

          "You and me together, civilian. You and me and the Major." His head popped out of the shower and his voice dropped to a stage whisper. "But I've got it figured."

          "You have? What?"

          "Promise you won't tell Katrina? You won't tell the man in the White House I broke security?"

          "Cross my heart, spit at the moon and everything."

          "All right: all this is a plot, a trick to be ahead of everybody else. Katrina has been misleading us, We're not going up to the turn of the century--we're going back down, back into history!"

          "Back? Why?"

          "We're going back two thousand years, civilian. To grab those old scrolls of yours, pirate them, as if they _were_ classified or something. We're going to sneak in there some dark night, find a batch of them in some cave or other and copy them. Photograph them. _That's_ why we're using cameras. And meanwhile, you'll be using a recorder, making tapes of the location and the like. Maybe you could unroll a parchment or two and read off the titles, so we'll know if we have anything important."

          "But they seldom have titles."

          Saltus was stopped. "Why not?"

          "Titles just weren't important at the time."

          "Well--no matter; we'll make do, we'll just copy everything we can find and sort them out later. And when we're finished we'll put everything back the way we found it and make our escape." Saltus snapped his fingers to indicate a job well done and went back into the shower.

          "Is that all?"

          "That's enough for us--we've scooped the world! And a long time afterward--you know, whatever year it was--some shepherd will stumble into the cave and find them in the usual way. Nobody but us will be the wiser."

          Chaney wiped his face dry. "How do we get into the Palestine of two thousand years ago? Cross the Atlantic in a canoe?"

          "No, no, we don't ride backwards _first_, civilian--not here, not in Illinois. If we did that we'd have to fight our way though Indians! Look, now: the Bureau of Standards will ship the vehicle over there in a couple of weeks, after we've had our field trials. They'll pack it in a box marked _Agricultural Machinery_, or some such thing, and smuggle it in like everybody else does. How do you think the Egyptians got that baby bomb into Israel? By sending it parcel post?"

          Chaney said: "Fantastic."

          A face emerged from the shower. "Are you being disagreeable, civilian?"

          "I'm being skeptical, sailor."

          "Spoil-sport!"

          "Why would we want to copy the scrolls?"

          "To be first."

          "Why that?"

          Saltus stepped all the way out of the shower.

          "Well--to be _first_, that's all. We like to be first in everything. Where's your patriotism, civilian?"

          "I carry it in my pocket. How do we copy the scrolls in the dark, in a cave?"

          "Now that's my department! Infra-red equipment, of course. Don't fret about the technical end, mister. I'm an old cameraman, you know."

          "I didn't know."

          "Well, I _was_ a cameraman, a working cameraman, when I was an EM. Do you remember the Gemini flights about thirteen or fourteen years ago?"

          I remember.

          "I was right there on deck, mister. Photographer's apprentice, stationed on the _Wasp_ when the flights began; I manned the deck cameras on some of those early flights in 1964, but when the last one splashed down in 1966, I was riding the choppers out to meet them," A disparaging wave of the hand. "Now, would you believe it, I'm riding a desk. Operations officer." His face mirrored his dissatisfaction. "I'd rather be behind the camera; the enlisted men have the fun with that job."

          Chaney said: "I've learned something new."

          "What s that?'

          "Why you and I were brought in here. I map and structure the future; you will film it. What's the Major's specialty?"

          "Air Intelligence. I thought you knew."

          "I didn't. Espionage?"

          "No, no--he's another desk man, and he hates it as much as I do. Old William is a brain: interrogation and interpretation. He briefs the pilots before they fly out, tells them where to find the targets, what is concealing them, and what is defending them; and then he quizzes the hell out of them when they come back to learn what they saw, where they saw it, how it behaved, how it smelled, and what was new firing at them."

          "Air Intelligence," Chaney mused. "A sharpie?"

          "You can bet your last tax dollar, civilian. Do you remember those maps Katrina gave us yesterday?"

          "I'm not likely to forget them. Top secret."

          "Read that literally for the Major: he memorized them. Mister, if you could show him another map today with one small Illinois town shifted a quarter of an inch away from yesterday's location, old William would put his long finger on the spot and say, 'This town has moved.' He's _good_." Saltus was grinning with high humor. "The enemy can't hide a water tank or a missile launcher or an ammo bunker from him--not from _him_."

          Chaney nodded his wonder. "Do you see what kind of team Katrina is putting together? What kind the mystery man Seabrooke has recruited? I wish I knew what they really expect us to find up there."

          Arthur Saltus left his room and crossed the corridor to stand at Chaney's door, dressed for a summer day.

          "Hey--how do you like our Katrina?"

          Chaney said: "Let us consider beauty a sufficient end."

          "Mister, did you swallow a copy of Bartlett?"

          A grin. "I like to prowl through old cultures, old times. Bartlett and Haakon are my favorites; each in his way offers a rich storehouse, a treasury."

          "Haakon? Who is Haakon?"

          "A latter-day Viking; he was born too late. Haakon wrote _Pax Abrahamitica_, a history of the desert tribes. I would say it was more of a treasury than a history: maps, photographs, and text telling one everything he would want to know about the tribes five to seven thousand years ago."

          "Photographs five thousand years ago?"

          "No; photographs of the remains of tribal life five thousand years ago: Byzantine dams, Nabataean wells, old Negev water courses still holding water, still serving the people who live there today. The Nabataeans built things to _last_. Their wells are water-tight today; they're still used by the Bedouin. Several good photographs of them."

          "I'd like to see that. May I borrow the book?"

          Chaney nodded. "I have it with me." He stared at a closed door and listened to the snores. "Wake him up?"

          "No! Not if we have to live in the same room with him all day. He's a bear when he's routed out of his cave before he's ready--and he doesn't eat breakfast. He says he thinks and fights well on an empty stomach."

          Chaney said: "The company is Spartan; see all their wounds on the front."

          "I give up! Let's go to breakfast."

          They quit the converted barracks and struck off along the narrow concrete sidewalk, walking north toward the commissary. A jeep and a staff car moved along the street, while in the middle distance a cluster of civilian cars were parked about a large building housing the commissary. They were the only ones who walked.

          Chaney asked: "This is swimming weather. Is there a pool here?"

          "There has to be--Katrina didn't get that beautiful tan under a sun lamp. I think it's over that way--over on E Street, near the Officers' Club. Want to try it this afternoon?"

          "If she will permit it. We may have to study."

          "I'm already tired of that! I don't _care_ how many million voters with plastic stomachs affiliated with Party _A_ will be living in Chicago twenty years from now. Mister, how can you spend years playing with numbers?"

          "I'm fascinated by them--numbers and people. The relief of a plastic stomach may cause a citizen to switch from the activist _A_ to the more conservative _B_; his vote may alter the outcome of an election, and a conservative administration--local, state, or national--may stall or do nothing about a problem that needed solving yesterday. The Great Lakes problem _is_ a problem because of just that."

          Saltus said: "Excuse me. What problem?"

          "You've been away. The Lakes are at their highest levels in history; they're flooding out ten thousand miles of shoreline. The average annual precipitation in the Lakes watersheds has been steadily increasing for the past eighty years and the high water is causing damage. Those summer houses have been toppling into the Lakes for years as the water eroded the bluffs; in a very short while more than summer houses will topple in. Beaches are gone, private docks are going, low land is becoming marshes. Sad thing, Commander."

          "Hey--when we go into Chicago on the survey, maybe we should look to see if Michigan Avenue is underwater."

          "That's no joke. It may be."

          "Oh, doom, doom, doom!" Saltus declared. "Your books and tables are always crying doom."

          "I've published only one book. There was no doom."

          "William said it was poppycock. I haven't read it, I'm not much of a reader, mister, but he looked down his nose, And Katrina said the newspapers gave you hell."

          "You've been talking about me. Idle gossiping!"

          "Hey--you were two or three days late coming in, remember? We had to talk about something, so we talked about you, mostly--curiosity about one tame civilian on a military team. Katrina knew all about you; I guess she read your dossier forward and backward. She said you were in trouble--trouble with your company, with reviewers and scholars and churches and--oh, everybody." Saltus gave his walking companion a slanted glance. "Old William said you were bent on destroying the foundations of Christianity. You must have done _something_, mister. Did you chip away at the foundation?"

          Chaney answered with a single word.

          Saltus was interested. "I don't know that."

          "It's Aramaic. You know it in English."

          "Say it again--slowly--and tell me what it is."

          Chaney repeated it, and Saltus turned it on his tongue, delighted with the sound and the fresh delivery of an old transitive verb. "Hey--I like that!" He walked on, repeating the word just above his breath.

          After a space: "What about those foundations?"

          "I translated two scrolls into English and caused them to be published," Chaney said with resignation. "I could have saved my time, or spent my holiday digging up buried cities. One man in ten read the book slowly and carefully and understood what I had done--the other nine began yapping before they finished the first half."

          His companion was ready with a quick grin. "William yapped, and Katrina seemed scandalized, but I guess Gilbert Seabrooke read it slowly: Katrina said the Bureau was embarrassed, but Seabrooke stood up for you. Now _me_, I haven't read it and I probably won't, so where does that put me?"

          "An honest neutral, subject to intimidation."

          "All right, mister: intimidate this honest neutral."

          Chaney looked down at the commissary, guessing at the remaining distance. He intended to be short; the subject was painful since a university press had published the book and a misunderstanding public had taken it up.

          "I don't want you yapping at me, Commander, so you need first to understand one word: _midrash_."

          "_Midrash_. Is that another Aramaic word?"

          "No--it's Hebraic, and it means fiction, religious fiction. Compare it to whatever modern parallel you like: historical fiction, soap opera, detective stories, fantasy; the ancient Hebrews liked their _midrash_. It was their favorite kind of fantasy; they liked to use biblical events and personages in their fiction--call it bible-opera if you like. Scholars have long been aware of that; they know _midrash_ when they find it, but the general public hardly seems to know it exists. The public tends to believe that everything written two thousand years ago was sacred, the work of one saint or another."

          "I guess nobody told them," Saltus said. "All right, I'll go along with that."

          "Thank you. The public should be as generous."

          "Didn't you tell them about _midrash?_"

          "Certainly. I spent twelve pages of the introduction explaining the term and its general background; I pointed out that it was a commonplace thing, that the old Hebrews frequently employed religious or heroic fiction as a means of putting across the message. Times were hard, the land was almost always under the heel of an oppressor, and they desperately wanted freedom--they wanted the messiah that had been promised for the past several hundred years."

          "Ah--there's your mistake, civilian! Who wants to waste twelve pages gnawing on the bone to get at the marrow?" He glanced around at Chaney and saw his pained expression. "Excuse me, mister. I'm not much of a reader--and I guess they weren't either."

          Chaney said: "Both my scrolls were _midrash_, and both used variations of that same theme: some heroic figure was coming to rid the land of the oppressor, to free the people from their ills and starvations, to show them the door to a brand new life and happy times forever after, The first scroll was the longer of the two with greater detail and more explicit promises; it foretold wars and pestilence, of signs in the heavens, of invaders from foreign lands, of widespread death, and finally of the coming of the messiah who would bring eternal peace to the world. I thought it was a great work."

          Saltus was puzzled. "Well--what's the trouble?"

          "Haven't you read the Bible?"

          "No."

          "Nor the Book of Revelations?"

          "I'm not much of a reader, civilian."

          "The first scroll was an orginal copy of the Book of Revelations--original, in that it was written at least a hundred years earlier than the book included in the Bible. And it was presented as fiction. That's why Major Moresby is angry with me. Moresby--and people like him--don't _want_ the book to be a hundred years older than believed; they don't _want_ it to be revealed as fiction. They can't accept the idea that the story was first written by some Qumran priest or scribe, and circulated around the country to entertain or inspire the populace. Major Moresby doesn't _want_ the book to be _midrash_."

          Saltus whistled. "I should think not! He takes all that seriously, mister. He believes in prophecies."

          "I don't," Chaney said. "I'm skeptical, but I'm quite willing to let others believe if they so choose. I said nothing in the book to undermine their beliefs; I offered no opinions of my own. But I _did_ show that the first Revelations scroll was written at the Qumran school, and that it was buried in a cave a hundred years or more before the present book was written--or copied-- and included in the Bible. I offered indisputable proof that the book in the Christian Bible was not only a later copy, but that it had been altered from the original. The two versions didn't match; the seams showed. Whoever wrote the second version deleted several passages from the first and inserted new chapters more in keeping with _his_ times. In short, he modernized it and made it more acceptable to his priest, his king, his people. His only failing was that he was a poor editor--or a poor seamstress--and his seams were visible. He did a poor job of rewriting."

          Saltus said: "And old William went up in smoke. He blamed you for everything."