"Almost everyone did. A newspaper reviewer in Saint Louis questioned my patriotism; another in Minneapolis hinted that I was the anti-Christ, and a communist tool to boot. A newspaper in Rome skewered me with the unkindcst cut of all: it printed the phrase _Traduttore Traditore_ over the review--the Translator is a Traitor." Despite himself a trace of bitterness was evident. "On my _next_ holiday I'll confine myself to something safe. I'll dig up a ten-thousand-year-old city in the Negev, or go out and rediscover Atlantis."

          They walked in silence for a space. A car sped by them toward the busy commissary.

          Chaney asked: "A personal question, Commander?"

          "Fire away, mister."

          "How did you manage your rank so young?"

          Saltus laughed. "You haven't been in service?"

          "No."

          "Blame it on _our_ damned war--the wits are calling it our Thirty Years War. Promotions come faster in wartime because men and ships are lost at an accelerated rate--and they come faster to men in the line than to men on the beach. I've always been in the line. When the Viet Nam war passed the first five years, I started moving up; when it passed ten years without softening, I moved up faster. And when it passed fifteen years--after that phony peace, that truce--I went up like a skyrocket." He looked at Chaney with sober expression. "We lost a lot of men and a lot of ships in those waters when the Chinese began shooting at us."

          Chaney nodded. "I've heard the rumors, the stories. The Israeli papers were filled with Israeli troubles, but now and then outside news was given some space."

          "You'll hear the truth someday; it will jolt you. Washington hasn't released the figures, but when they do you'll get a stiff jolt in the belly. A lot of things are kept undercover in undeclared wars. Some of the things work their way into the open after a while, but others never do." Another sidelong glance, measuring Chaney. "Do you remember when the Chinese lobbed that missile on the port city we were working? That port below Saigon?"

          "No one can forget that."

          "Well, mister, our side retaliated in kind, and the Chinese lost two railroad towns that same week--Keiyang and Yungning. Two holes in the ground, and several hundred square miles of radioactive cropland. Their missile was packing a low-yield A, it was all they could manage at the time, but we hit _them_ with two Harrys. You will please keep that under your hat until you read about it in the papers--if you ever do."

          Chaney digested the information with some alarm. "What did they do, to retaliate for _that?_"

          "Nothing--yet. But they will, mister, they will! As soon as they think we're asleep, they'll clobber us with something. And hard."

          Chaney had to agree. "I suppose you've had more than one tour of duty in the South China Sea?"

          "More than one," Saltus told him. "On my last tour, I had two good ships torpedoed under me. Not one, but two, and Chinese subs were responsible both times. Those bastards can really shoot, mister--they're good."

          "A Lieutenant Commander is equal to what?"

          "A Major. Old William and me are buddies under the skin. But don't be impressed. If it wasn't for this war I'd be just another junior grade Lieutenant."

          The desire for further conversation fell away and they walked in pensive silence to the commissary. Chaney recalled with distaste his contributions to Pentagon papers concerning the coming capabilities of the Chinese. Saltus seemed to have confirmed a part of it.

          Chaney went first through the serving line but paused for a moment at the end of it, balancing the tray to avoid spilling coffee. He searched the room.

          "Hey--there's Katrina!"

          "Where?"

          "Over there, by that far window."

          "I don't believe in waiting for an invitation."

          "Push on, push on, I'm right behind you!"

          Chaney discovered that he _had_ spilled his coffee by the time they reached her table. He had tried to move too fast, but still lost out.

          Arthur Saltus was there first. He promptly sat down in the chair nearest the young woman and transferred his breakfast dishes from the tray to the table. Saltus put his elbows on the table, peered closely at Katrina, then half turned to Chaney.

          "Isn't she lovely this morning! What would your friend Bartlett say about this?"

          Chaney noted the tiny line of disapproval above her eyes. "Her very frowns are fairer far, than the smiles of other maidens are."

          "Hear! Hear!" Saltus clapped his hands in approval, and stared back impudently at nearby diners who had turned to look. "Nosey peasants," was his loud whisper.

          Kathryn van Hise struggled to maintain her reserve. "Good morning, gentlemen, Where is the Major?"

          "Snoring," Arthur Saltus retorted. "We sneaked out to have breakfast alone with you."

          "_And_ these other two hundred characters." Chaney waved a hand at the crowded mess hall. "This is ro mantic."

          "These peasants aren't romantic," Saltus disagreed. "They lack color and Old World charm." He stared bleakly at the room. "Hey--mister, we could practice on _them_. Let's run a survey on _them_, let's find out how many of them are Republicans eating fried eggs." Snap of fingers. "Better yet--let's find out how many Republican stomachs have been ruined eating these Army eggs!"

          Katrina made a hasty sound of warning. "Be careful of your conversation in public places. Certain subjects are restricted to the briefing room."

          Chaney said: "Quick! Switch to Aramaic. These peasants will never catch on."

          Saltus began to laugh but lust as suddenly shut it off. "I only know one word." He seemed embarrassed.

          "Then don't repeat it," Chaney warned. "Katrina may have studied Aramaic--she reads everything." -

          "Hey--that's not fair."

          "I do unfair things, I retaliate in kind, Commander. Last night, I sneaked into the briefing room while you were all asleep." He turned to the young woman. "I know your secret. I know one of the alternative targets."

          "Do you, Mr. Chaney?"

          "I do, Miss van Hise. I raided the briefing room and turned it inside out--a very thorough search, indeed. I found a secret map hidden under one of the telephones--the red phone. The alternative target is the Qumran monastery. We're going back to destroy the embarrassing scrolls--rip them from their jars and burn them. There." He sat back with barely concealed amusement.

          The woman looked at him for a space, and Chaney had a sudden, intuitive torment. He felt uneasy.

          When she broke her silence, her voice was so low it would not carry to the adjoining tables.

          "You are almost right, Mr. Chaney. One of our alternatives _is_ a probe into Palestine, and you were also selected for the team because of your knowledge of that general area."

          Chaney was instantly wary. "I will have nothing to do with those scrolls. I'll not tamper with them."

          "That will not be necessary. They are not an alternate target."

          "What _is?_"

          "I don't know the correct date, sir. Research has not been successful in determining the precise time and place, but Mr. Scabrooke believes it will be a profitable alternate. It is under active study." She hesitated and dropped her gaze to the table. "The general location in Palestine is or was a site known as the Hill of Skulls."

          Chaney rocked in his chair.

          In the long silence, Arthur Saltus groped for an understanding. "Chaney, what--?" He looked to the woman, then back to the man. "Hey--let _me_ in on it!"

          Chaney said quietly: "Seabrooke has picked a very hot alternative. If we can't go up there for the survey, our team is going _back_ to film the Crucifixion."

FIVE

          Brian Chaney was the last of the four participants to return to the briefing room. He walked.

          Kathryn van Hise had offered them a ride as they quit the mess hail and Arthur Saltus promptly accepted, scrambling into the front seat of the olive green sedan to sit close beside her. Chaney preferred the exercise. Katrina turned in the seat to look back at him as the car left the parking lot, but he was unable to read her expression: it may have been disappointment--and then again it may have been exasperation.

          He suspected Katrina was losing her antipathy for him; and that was pleasing.

          The sun was already hot in the hazy June sky and Chaney would have liked to go in search of the pool, but he decided against it only because he knew better than to be tardy a second time. As a satisfying substitute, he contented himself with watching the few women who happened to pass; he approved of the sharply abbreviated skirt that was the current style and, given another opportunity, would have included a forecast in his tables--but the stodgy old Bureau was likely to dismiss the subject matter as frivolous. Skirts had been climbing steadily for many years and now they were frequently one with the delta pants: a heady delight to the roving male eye. But with predictable military conservatism, the WAC skirts were not nearly as brief as those worn by civilians.

          Happily, Katrina was a civilian.

          The massive front door of the concrete building opened easily under his pull, moving on rolamite tracks. Chaney walked into the briefing room and stopped short at sight of the Major. A furtive signal from Saltus warned him to silence.

          Major Moresby faced the wall, his back to the room and to Chaney. He stood at the far end of the long table, between the end of the table and the featureless wall with his fists knotted behind his back. The nape of his neck was flushed. Kathryn van Hise was busy picking up papers that had fallen--or been thrown--from the table.

          Chaney closed the door softly behind him and advanced to the table, inspecting a stack of papers before his own chair. His reaction was one of sharp dismay. The papers were photo-copies of his second scroll, the lesser of the two Qumran scrolls he had translated and published. There were nine sheets of paper faithfully reproducing the square Hebrew lettering of the Eschatos document from its opening line to its close. If he didn't know better, Chaney would have thought the Major was enraged at his temerity for tacking a descriptive Greek title on a Hebrew fantasy.

          "Katrina! What are we doing with _this?_"

          She finished the task of picking up the fallen pages and stacked them neatly on the table before the Major's chair.

          "They are a part of today's study, sir."

          "No!"

          "Yes, sir." The woman slipped into her own chair and waited for Chaney and the Major to sit down.

          The man did, after a moment. He glared at Chaney.

          Chaney said: "Is this another of Seabrooke's idiotic ideas?"

          "The matter is germane, Mr. Chaney."

          "That matter is _not_ germane, Miss van Hise. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Indic report, with the statistical tables, with the future surveys--nothing!"

          "Mr. Seabrooke thinks otherwise."

          Angrily: "Gilbert Seabrooke has holes in his head; his Bureau has holes in its measuring jars. Please tell him I said so. He should know better than to--" Chaney came to a full stop and glared at the young woman. "Is this _another_ reason why I was chosen for the survey team?"

          "Yes, sir. You are the only authority."

          Chaney repeated the Aramaic word, and Saltus laughed despite himself.

          She said: "Sir, Mr. Seabrooke believes it may have some slight bearing on the future survey, and we should be familiar with it. We should be familiar with every facet of the future that comes to our attention."

          "But this has nothing to _do_ with a future Chicago!"

          "It may, sir."

          "It may not! This is a fantasy, a fairy tale. It was written by a dreamer and told to his students--or to the peasants." Chaney sat down, containing his anger. "Katrina: this is a waste of time."

          Saltus broke in. "More _midrash_, mister?"

          "_Midrash_," Chaney agreed. He looked at the Major. "It has no biblical connection, Major. None whatever. This is a minor piece of prophecy fitted into a fantasy; it's the story of a man who lived twice--or of twins, the text isn't clear--who swept dragons from the sky. If the Brothers Grimm had -discovered it first, they would have published it."

          Katrina said stubbornly: "We are to study it."

          Chaney was equally stubborn. "The turn of the century is only twenty-two years away but this document is addressed to the far future, to the end of the world. It depicts the end--the last days. I called it _Eschatos_, meaning 'The End of Things.' Does Seabrooke really think the end of the world is only twenty-two years away?

          "No, sir, I'm sure he doesn't believe that, but he has instructed us to study it thoroughly in preparation for the probe. There may be a tenuous connection."

          "What tenuous connection? Where?"

          "Those references to the blinding yellow light filling the sky, for one. That may be an allusion to the war in Southeast Asia. And there were other references to a cooling climate, and a series of plagues. The dragons may have a military connotation. Mr. Seabrooke mentioned specifically your point on Armageddon, in relation to the Arab-Israeli war. There are a number of incidents, sir."

          Chaney permitted himself an audible groan.

          Saltus said: "Hoist by your own pctard, mister. I feel for you.

          Chaney knew his meaning. The reviewers and the Morcsbys of the world didn't _want_ to believe his English translation of the Revelations scroll, but it appeared to be authentic. Now, Seabrooke was making noises like he wanted to believe _Eschatos_, or was willing to believe it.

          Impatiently: "The blinding yellow light in the sky has _nothing_ to do with the Asian war. In Hebrew fiction it was a romantic promise of health, wealth, of peace and prosperity for all. The yellow light is a benign sun, spilling contentment on the earth. The old prophet was saying simply that at last the earth belonged to men, to all men, and eternal peace was at hand. Utopia. No more than that.

          "That utopia was to come _after_ the end of things, after the last days, when a brand new world under a golden sun would be given to the peoples of Israel. It is a prophecy as old as time. It has nothing to do with our war in Asia, or the color of any soldier's skin." Chaney pointed to the door. "How cold is it out there now? _This_ is swimming weather. And where are the plagues? Have you ever seen a dragon?"

          Saltus: "And where is Armageddon?"

          "The proper name is Har-Magcdon. It's a mountain in Israel, Commander, the mountain of Megiddo rising above the Plain of Esdraelon. And the prophecies are a little too late--all the prophecies. Any number of decisive battles have already happened there and vanished into history. It was a favorite locale for the old fictioneers; it had such a bloody history it was firmly fixed in the native mind, it was a good site for still another story."

          "Mister, you sure know how to throw cold water."

          "Commander, I believe in being realistic; I believe in facts, not fantasy. I believe in statistics and firmly rooted continuities, not prophecies and dreams." Chaney stabbed the copied document with his finger. "The man who wrote this was a dreamer, and something of a plagiarist. Several passages were lifted from Daniel, and there is a hint of Micah."

          "Do you think it's a fake?"

          "No, definitely not. I had to make sure of that at the beginning. The scroll was found in the usual way: by university students searching old jars, in cave Q12. It was wrapped in the usual rotting linen of a type woven at Qumran, and that linen was submitted to the carbon-14 dating process--the tests were made at the Libby Institute in Chicago. Repeated tests established an age of nineteen hundred years, plus or minus seventy, for the linen.

          "But we don't accept _that_ as proof that the scroll inside the linen is of the same age. There are other methods of dating a manuscript." He bent over the copies and placed a finger on the opening line. "This text is written with square letters and contains no vowels--none at all. It reads from right to left down the page, right to left across the scroll. Square lettering came into use about the third century before Christ; before that a more flowing script was used but afterwards a square was common.

          Chaney caught a movement from the corner of his eye. Major Moresby unbent, to peer closely at the copies.

          "The Hebrew language used at that time had only twenty-two letters, and they were all consonants. Vowels hadn't been invented, and wouldn't be for another six or seven hundred years. This text contains the twentytwo standard consonants but nowhere on the scroll--above or below the lines, or within the words, or the margins-- is there a sign to indicate where a consonant becomes a vowel. That was significant." He glanced at Moresby and discovered he had the man's close attention. "But there were other clues to work with. This scribe was familiar with the writings of Daniel, and of Micah. The text is not pure Hebrew; several Aramaic touches have slipped in--a word or a phrase having more impact than a Hebrew equivalent. The old Greek word _eschatos_ doesn't appear, but it should have. I was surprised to find it missing, for the scribe had a knowledge of Greek drama, or melodrama." Chaney made a gesture. "The earliest date was about 100 B.C. It was not written before that.

          "Setting a closing date isn't nearly as difficult, because the scribe betrays the limit of his knowledge. He was not alive and writing in 70 A.D. The text contains three direct references to a Temple, a great white Temple which appears to be the center of all important activity. There were many temples in Palestine and in the surrounding lands, but onIy one _Temple_: the holiest of holy places, the Temple of Jerusalem. In this story the Temple is still standing, still in existence, and is the center of all activity. But in history _that_ Temple stopped. The Roman armies invaded Judaea and destroyed it utterly in 70 A.D. In the course of putting down a Hebrew revolt they tore it apart to the last stone, and the Temple was no more."

          Major Moresby said: "That was foretold."

          Chaney ignored him. "So the date of composition was pinned down: not earlier than 100 B.C. and not later than 70 A.D. A satisfactory agreement with the radiocarbon tests. I'm satisfied the scroll is authentic, but the tale it tells is not--the story is pure fiction, built on symbols and myths known to the ancient Hebrews."

          Arthur Saltus eyed the copies and then the woman. "Do we have to read all this, Katrina?"

          "Yes, sir. Mr. Seabrooke has requested it."

          Chaney said: "A waste of time, Commander."

          Saltus grinned at him. "The Great White Chief has spoken, mister. I don't want to go back to that bucket in the South China Sea."

          "Indic won't have me back--they sold me to the Creat White Chief." Brian Chaney pushed the photo-copied papers aside and reached for the hefty Indic report. He opened a page at random and found himself reading figures pertaining to a West German election three years earlier.

          He remembered that election; people in his section had followed it with interest and had tried to place bets on it, without takers. Just before the report was closed and submitted to the Bureau, the National Democratic party had captured four point three percent of the popular vote--only seven-tenths of one percent short of the minimum needed to gain entrance to the Bundestag. The party had been accused of Neo-Nazism, and Chaney wondered if it had managed to overcome the Hitler image and win the necessary five percent in the last few years. In peacetime, Israeli papers would have carried the news; he would have noticed it. Perhaps they had published subsequent election news, despite their paper shortages and their domestic troubles--perhaps he had missed it. His nose had been buried in the translations for a long time. As the noses of Saltus and Moresby were buried in _Eschatos_ now. . . .

          Chaney had often wondered about the anonymous scribe who had concocted that story. The long work on the scroll had imparted the feeling of almost knowing the man, of almost reading his mind. He sometimes thought the man had been a novice practicing his art--a probationer not yet tamped into the mold, or perhaps he was a def rocked priest who had lost his office because of his nonconformity. The man had never hesitated to employ Aramaic vernacular, where Aramaic was more colorful than his native Hebrew, and he told his story with zest, with poetic freedom.

          _Eschatos_:

          The sky was blue, new, and clear of dragons (winged serpents) when the man who was two men (twins?) lived on (under?) the earth. The man who was two men was at peace with the sun and his children multiplied (the tribes or families about him grew in size with the passage of time). He was known and- welcomed in the white Temple, and may have dwelt there. His work took him frequently to distant Har-Magedon, where he was equally well known to those who lived on the mountain and those who tilled the plain below; he mingled with these peoples and instructed (counseled, guided) them in their daily lives; he was a wise man. He had a guest room (or house) with (alongside?) a mountain family and needed only to touch the tent rope (make sign) for food and water; it was supplied him without payment. (Form of repayment for his services?)

          The man who was two men labored on the mountain.

          His task (performed at unknown intervals) was an onerous one, and consisted of standing on the mountain top and sweeping the skies clean of muck (impurities, debris left over from the Creation) which tended to gather there. The mountain people were required to assist him in his work, in that they furnished him with ten _cor_ of water (nine hundred gallons) drawn from an inexhaustible well (or cistern) near the base of the mountain; and each time the job was finished in the dark and light of a single day (from one sunset to the next). This task had been put to him by the nomadic Egyptian prophet (Moses?) by more than five times the Year of Jubilee (more than two hundred and fifty years earlier); and it was a sign and a promise the prophet gave to his children, the tribes: for so long as the skies were clean the sun would remain quiet, dragons would not hover, and the bitter cold that immobilized old men would be kept in its proper place at a distance.

          The new prophet who came after the Egyptian (Aaron?) approved the pact, and it was continued; after him, Elijah approved the pact, and it was continued; and after him, Zephaniah approved the pact, and it was continued; after him, Micah approved the pact (chronological error) and it was continued. It is now. The skies were swept and the peoples prospered.

          The man who was two men was a wondrous figure. He was a son (lineal descendant) of David.

          His head was of the finest gold and his eyes were brilliant (word missing; probably gems), his breast and arms were of purest silver, his body was bronze, his legs were of iron, and his feet were of iron mixed with clay (entire description borrowed from Daniel). The man who was two men did not grow old, his age never changed, but on a day when he was working at his appointed task he was struck down by a sign. A stone was dislodged from the mountain and rolled down on him, crushing his feet and grinding the clay to dust, which blew away in the wind and he fell to earth grievously hurt. (Again, a whole incident borrowed from Daniel.) Work stopped. The mountain people carried him down to the plains people and the plains people carried him to the white Temple, where the priests and the physicians put him down in his injury (buried him?).

          The first Year of Jubilee passed, and the second (a century), but he did not appear at his place on the mountain. His room (house) was not made ready for him, for the new children had forgotten; the people did not fetch water and the well (cistern) ran low; the skies were not cleansed. Debris gathered above HarMagedon. The first dragon was seen there, and another, and they spawned in the muck until the skies were dark with their wings and loud with their thunder. A chilling cold crept over the land and there was ice on the streams. The tribes were thin (depopulated) and were hungry; they fought one another for food, and it came to pass that touching the tent rope was no more honored in the land, and kinsman and traveler alike were turned away or driven into the desert for the jackals. The messengers (9) stopped and there was no more traffic between tribes and the towns of the tribes, and the roads were covered with weed and grass.

          The elders lost the faith of their fathers and built a wall around the tribe, and then another and another, until the walls were a hundred and a hundred in number and every house was set apart from its neighbor, and families were set apart from one another. The elders caused great walls to be built and they did not traffic; the cities fell poor and made war on one another, and the sun was not quiet.

          A plague came down from the muck above Har-Magedon, a dropping from the dragons to cover the land like a foul mist before dawn. The plague was a vile sickness of the eye, of the nose, of the throat, of the head, of the heart and the soul of a man, and his skin fell; the plague did make men over into a likeness of the four beasts, and they were loathsome in their misery and their brothers fled in terror before them.

          And with this the voice of Micah cried out, saying, this was the end of the days; and the voice of Elisha cried out, saying, this was the end of the days; and the spirit and ghost of Ezekiel cried out, and was seen within the gates of the city, telling the lamentations and mourning, for this was the end of the days.

          And it was so.

          (The following line of text consisted of but a single word, an Aramaism indicating darkness, or time, or generation. It could be translated as Interregnum.)

          The man who was two men rose up from his bed (tomb?) in the underworld, and was angry at what he found in the land. He broke the earth of the Temple (emerged from his tomb below? or within?) and came forth in fury to banish the dragons from the mountain. He raised up his rod and struck the walls, bidding the families to go free and live; he gave food and comfort to the traveler and counseled him, and guided his hand to the tent rope; he bade his kinsman enter his (room? house?) and take rest; he labored without stop to undo the sore misery on the land.

          When the sun was quiet again, the man who was two men worked to refill the well (cistern) and he swept the skies clear of debris. The dragons fled from their foul nests, and the plague fled with them to another part of the world. The man turned his eye up to the Temple and there was a great, blinding yellow light filling the heavens from the rim of the world to the rim: and it was a sign and a promise from the holy prophets to the laborer that the world was made new again, and was at peace with itself. Flowers bloomed and there was fruit on the vine. The sun was quiet.

          The man who was two men rested in his earth-place (tomb?) and was content.

          Brian Chaney pulled himself from his reverie to look down the table at his companions.

          Arthur Saltus was reading the photo-copied pages in a desultory manner, his interest barely caught by the narrative. Major Moresby was scribbling in a notebook-- his only support to a retentive memory--and had gone back to the beginning of the translation to read it a second time. Chaney suspected he was hooked. Kathryn van Hise was across the table from him, sitting motionless with her fingers interlaced on the tabletop. The young woman had been surreptitiously watching him while he day-dreamed, but turned her glance down when he looked directly at her.

          Chaney wondered what she really thought of all this? Apart from her superior's opinions, apart from the stance officially adopted by the Bureau, what did _she_ think? At breakfast she had exhibited some embarrassment--it may have been alarm--at the prospect of filming the alternate target, fikning the Crucifixion, but other than that he'd found no sign of her personal beliefs or attitudes toward the future survey. She had revealed pride and triumph in the engineers' accomplishments and she was fanatically loyal to her employer--but what did _she_ think? Did she have any mental reservations?

          He failed utterly to understand Seabrooke's interest in the second scroll.

          Every scholar recognized it as _midrash_; there had been no controversy over the second scroll and had it been published alone he would have escaped the notoriety. He thought Gilbert Seabrooke something of a lunatic to even introduce it into the briefing room. There was no meat here for the survey. There was nothing in the _Eschatos_ relating to the coming probe of the turn of the century; the story was firmly rooted in the first century before Christ and did not look or hint beyond 70 A.D. Actually it didn't peer beyond its own century. It made no claim or pretense to genuine prophecy as did, say, the Book of Daniel--whose scribe pretended to be alive about five hundred years before he was born, only to betray himself by his faulty grasp of history. Gilbert Seabrooke was reading imaginary lines between the lines, grabbing at rays of yellow light and the droppings of dragons.

          One of the three telephones rang.

          Kathryn van Hise jumped from her chair to answer and the three men turned to watch her.

          The conversation was short. She listened carefully, said _Yes, sir_ three or four times, and assured the caller that the studies were proceeding at a satisfactory pace. She said _Yes, sir_ a final time and hung up the instrument. Moresby was half out of his chair in anticipation.

          Saltus said: "Well, come _on_, Katrina!"

          "The engineers have concluded their testing and the vehicle is now on operational status. Field trials will begin very soon, gentlemen. Mr. Seabrooke suggested that we take the day off as a token of celebration. He will meet us at the pool this afternoon."

          Arthur Saltus yelled, and was halfway to the door.

          Brian Chaney dropped his copy of the _Eschatos_ scroll into a wastebasket and prepared to follow him.

          He looked to the woman and said: "Last one in is a wandering Egyptian."

SIX

          Brian Chaney came up from a shallow dive and paddled to the edge of the pool; he clung to the tiled rim for a space and attempted to wipe the gentle sting of chlorine from his eyes. The sun was hot, and the air warmer than the water. Two of his companions played in the water behind him while a third--the Major--sat in the shade and stared solemnly at a chess board, waiting for anyone to come along and challenge him. The pieces were set out. The recreation area held a few others beside themselves but none seemed interested in chess.

          Chaney glanced over his shoulder at the pair playing in the water, and felt the smallest pain of jealousy. He climbed from the pool and reached for a towel.

          Gilbert Seabrooke said: "Afternoon, Chaney."

          The Director of Operations sat nearby under a gaudy beach umbrella, sipping a drink and watching the bathers. It was his first appearance.

          Chaney stretched the towel over his back and ran across the hot tiles. "Good afternoon. You're the red telephone." They shook hands.

          Seabrooke smiled briefly. "No; that's our line to the White House. Please don't pick it up and call the President." A wave of the hand extended an invitation to the other chair beneath the umbrella. "Refreshments?"

          "Not just yet, thanks." He studied the man with an open curiosity. "Has someone been carrying tales?" His glance went briefly to the woman in the water.

          Seabrooke's smooth reply attempted to erase the sting. "I receive daily reports, of course; I try to keep on top of every activity on this station. And I'm quite used to people misunderstanding my motives and actions." Again the smallest of stingy smiles. "I make it a practice to explore every possible avenue to attain whatever goal is in view. Please don't be upset .by my interest in your outside activities."

          "They have no relation to _this_ activity."

          "Perhaps, and perhaps not. But I refuse to ignore them for I am a methodical man."

          Chaney said: "And a persistent one."

          Gilbert Seabrooke was tall, thin, taut, and looked like that well-known fellow in the State Department--or perhaps it was that other fellow who sat on the Supreme Court. He wore the carefully cultivated statesman image. His hair was silver gray and parted precisely in the middle, with the ends brushed backward at a conservative angle; his eyes appeared gray, although upon closer inspection they were an icy blue-green; the lips were firm, not used to laughter, while the chin was strong and clean with no hint of a double on the neckline. He carried his body as rigidly erect as a military man, and his pipe jutted out straight to challenge the world. He was Establishment.

          Chaney had vague knowledge of his political history.

          Seabrooke had been governor of one of the Dakotas--memory refused to reveal which one--and was only narrowly defeated in his bid for a third term. The man quickly turned up in Washington after the defeat and was appointed to a post in Agriculture: his party took care of its faithful. Some years later he moved to another post in Commerce, and after several years he dropped into a policy-making office in the Bureau of Standards. Today he sat beside the pooi, directing everything on station.

          Chaney asked: "How's the battle going?"

          Which battle?

          "The one with the Senate subcommittee. I suspect they're counting the dollars and the minutes."

          The tight lips quavered, almost permitting a smile. "Eternal vigilance results in a healthy exchequer, Chaney. But I _am_ having some little difficulty with those people. Science tends to frighten those who are infrequently exposed to it, while the practitioners of science are often the most misunderstood people in the world. The project could be different if more imagination were brought into play. If our researches were directly connected to the hostilities in Asia, if they would result in practical military hardware, we would be drowning in funds." A gesture of discontent. "But we must fight for every dollar. The military people and their war command priority."

          Chaney said: "But there _is_ a connection."

          "I said this would be different if more imagination were brought into play," Seabrooke reminded him dryly. "At this point, imagination is sadly lacking; the military mind often does not recognize a practical use until that use is thrust under the nose. You may see an application and I believe I see one, but neither the Pentagon nor the Congress will recognize it for another dozen years. We must pinch pennies and depend upon the good will of the President for our continued existence."

          "Ben Franklin's rocking chair didn't catch on for the longest time," Chaney said. But he saw a military application, and hoped the military never discovered it.

          Seabrooke watched the woman in the water, following her lithe form as she raced away from Arthur Saltus.

          "I understand that you experienced some difficulty in making up your mind."

          Chaney knew his meaning. "I'm not an unduly brave man, Mr. Seabrooke. I have my share of brass and bravado when I'm standing on familiar ground, but I'm not a really brave man. I doubt that I could do what either of _those_ men do every day, in their tours of duty." A tiny fear of the future turned like a worm in his mind. "I'm not the hero type--I believe discretion is the better part of valor, I want to run while I'm still able."

          "But you stayed on in Israel uhder fire."

          "I did, but I was scared witless all the while."

          Seabrooke turned. "Do you believe Israel will be defeated? Do you believe this will end at Armageddon?"

          Flatly:          "No."

          "You don't find it suggestive--?"

          "No. That land has been a battleground for something like five thousand years--ever since the first Egyptian army marching north met the first Sumerian army marching south. Doom-criers marched with them, but don't fall into that trap."

          "But those old biblical prophets are rather severe, rather disturbing."

          "Those old prophets lived in a hard age and a hard land; they almost always lived under the boot of an invader. Those old prophets owed allegiance to a government and a religion which were at odds with every other nation within marching distance; they invited punishment by demanding independence." He repeated the warning. "Don't fall into that trap. Don't try to take those prophets out of their age and fit them into the twentieth century. They are obsolete."

          Seabrooke said: "I suppose you're right."

          "I can predict the downfall of the United States, of every government on the North American continent. Will you hang a medal on me for that?"

          Seabrooke was startled. "What do you mean?"

          "I mean that all this will be dust in ten thousand years. Name a single government, a single nation which has endured since the birth of civilization--say, five or six thousand years ago."

          Slowly:        "Yes. I see the point."

          "Nothing endures. The United States will not. If we are fortunate we may endure at least as long as Jericho."

          "I know the name, of course."

          Chaney doubted it. "Jericho is the oldest town in the world, the city half as old as time. It was built in the Natufian period, but has been razed or burned and then rebuilt so many times that only an archeologist can tell the number. But the town is still there and has been continuously inhabited for at least six thousand years. The United States should be as lucky. We _may_ endure."

          "I fervently hope so!" Seabrooke declared.

          Chaney braced him. "Then drop this _Eschatos_ nonsense and worry about something worthwhile. Worry about our violent swing to the extreme right; worry about these hippy-hunts; worry about a President who can't control his own party, much less the country."

          Seabrooke made no comment.

          Brian Chaney had pivoted in his chair and was again watching Kathryn van Hise playing in the water. Her tanned flesh, only partially enclosed in a topless swim suit, was the target of many eyes. Those transparent plastic cups some women now wore in place of a bra or a halter was only one of the many little jolts he'd known on his return to the States. Israeli styles were much more conservative and he had half forgotten the American trend after three years' absence. Chaney looked at the woman's wet body and felt something more than a twinge of jealousy; he wasn't entirely sure the cups were decent. The swing to the ultra-conservative right was bound to catch up with feminine clothing sooner or later, and then he supposed legs would be covered to the ankle and the transparent cups and blouses would be museum pieces.

          There would likely be other reactions in the coming years which would make some of _his_ forecasts obsolete; the failure to anticipate a weak Administration was already throwing parts of the Indic report open to question. His recommendation for a renewable term trial marriage would probably be ignored--the program itself might be repealed before it got started if the howls frightened Congress. The vociferous minority might easily swell to a majority.

          To move off an uncomfortable spot of dead silence, he asked casually: "The TDV is operational?"

          "Oh, yes. It has been operational since an early hour this morning. The years of planning and building and testing are done. We are ready to forge ahead."

          "What took you so long?"

          Seabrooke turned heavily to look at him. Blue-green eyes were hard. "Chaney, nine men have already died by that vehicle. Would you have cared to be the tenth?"

          Shock. "_No_."

          "No. Nor would anyone else. The engineers had to test again and again until every last doubt was erased. If any doubt had remained, the project would have been canceled and the vehicle dismantled. We would have burned the blueprints, the studies, the cuff-notes, everything. We would have wiped away every trace of the vehicle. You know the rule: two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time."

          "That's elementary."

          A curt nod. "It is so elementary that our engineers overlooked it, and nine men died when the vehicle returned to its point of origin, its precise second of launch, and attempted to occupy the same space." His voice dropped. "Chaney, the most dreadful sight I have ever seen was the crash of an airliner on a Dakota hillside. I was with a hunting party less than a mile away and watched it fall. I was among the first to reach the wreckage. There was no possibility of anyone surviving--none." Hesitation. "The explosion in our laboratory was the second worst sight. I was not there--I was in another building--but when I reached the laboratory I found a terrible repetition of that hillside catastrophe. No man, no single piece of equipment was left intact. The room was shattered. We lost the engineer traveling with the vehicle and eight others on duty in the laboratory. The vehicle returned to the exact moment, the exact millisecond of its departure and destroyed itself. It was an incredible disaster, an incredible oversight-- but it happened. Once."

          After a space, Seabrooke picked up the thread of his recital. "We learned a bitter lesson. We rebuilt the laboratory with thicker, reinforced walls and we rebuilt the vehicle; we programmed a new line of research accenting the safety factor. That factor settled itself at just sixty-one seconds, and we were satisfied."

          Chaney said: "They've been counted for me, again and again. I'll lose a minute on every trip."

          "A passenger embarking for any distant point, you, will leave at twelve o'clock, let us say, and return not sooner than sixty-one seconds after twelve. The amount of elapsed time in the field will not affect the return; if you stayed there ten years you would return sixty-one seconds _after_ you launched. If we could not be absolutely certain of that we would close shop and admit defeat."

          "Thank you," Chaney said soberly. "I like my skin. How are you protecting those men now?"

          "By reinforced walls and remote observation. The engineers work in an adjoining room but five feet of steel and concrete will separate you. They operate and observe the TDV by closed circuit television; indeed, they observe not only the operations room itself but the corridor to it and the storeroom and fallout shelter: everything on that level of basement."

          Curiously: "How do you really know the vehicle is moving? Is it displacing anything?"

          "It does not move, does not travel in the sense of passing through space. The vehicle will always remain in its original location, unless we choose to move it elsewhere. But it does operate, and in operation it displaces temporal strata just as surely as those people in the pool are displacing water by plunging into it."

          "How did you prove that?"

          "A camera was mounted in the fore of the vehicle, looking through a port into the operations room. A clock and a day-calendar hang on a wall in direct line of sight of that camera. The camera has not only photographed past hours and dates but has taken pictures of the wall _before_ the clock was placed there. We know the TDV has probed at least twelve months into the past."

          "Any effect on the monkeys?"

          "None. They are quite healthy."

          "What have you done to prevent another accident--a different kind of an accident?"

          Sharply: "Explain that."

          Chaney said carefully: "What will happen if that machine probes back into the past before the basement was dug? What will happen if it burrows into a bed of clay?"

          "That simply will not be _allowed_ to happen," was the quick reply. "The lower limit of displacement is December 30, 1941. A probe beyond that date is prohibited." The Director emptied his glass and put it aside. "Chaney, the site has been carefully researched to determine a lower limit; every phase of this operation has been researched so that nothing is left to chance. The first building on the site was a crude structure resembling a cabin. It burned to the ground in February, 1867."

          "You went back that far?"

          "We were prepared to go farther if necessary; we had access to records dating back to the Black Hawk war in 1831. A farmhouse _with_ a basement was built on the site during the summer of 1901, and remained in place until demolition in 1941 when the government acquired this land for an ordnance depot. It has since been government owned and occupied, and the site remained vacant until the laboratory was built. The engineers were very careful to locate that basement. Today the TDV floats in a sealed tank of polywater three feet above the original basement floor, in a space that could have been occupied by nothing else. We even pinpointed the former location of the furnace and the coal room."

          "And so the deadline is 1941? Why not 1901?"

          "The lower limit is December 30, 1941, well after the date of demolition. The safety factor above all."

          "I'd like to see that tank of polywater."

          "You will. It is necessary that you become quite familiar with every aspect of the operation. Have you been visiting the doctor for your physicals?"

          "Yes."

          "Have you had weapons training?"

          "No. Will _that_ be necessary?"

          Seabrooke said: "The safety factory, Chaney. It's wise to anticipate. The training may be wasted, but it's still wise to prepare yourself in every way."

          "That sounds pessimistic. Wasted in what way?"

          "Excuse me; you've been out of the country. All weapons for civilians will probably be prohibited in the near future. President Meeks favors that, you know."

          Chaney said absently: "That will please the Major. He doesn't believe civilians have enough sense to point a gun in the right direction."

          He was looking across the pool. Katrina had left the water and was now perched on the tiled rim of the opposite side, freeing her hair from the confines of a plastic cap. Arthur Saltus was as close as their two wet suits would permit, but none of the loungers about the pool were staring at him. Two other women in the water weren't drawing half the attention--but neither were they as exposed as Katrina. Military codes extended to the swimming pooi whether WACS liked it or not.

          Chaney continued to stare at the woman--and at Saltus hard by--but a part of his mind dwelt on Gilbert Seabrooke, on Seabrooke's matter-of-fact statements. He thought about the machine, the TDV. He _tried_ to think about the TDV. Every effort to visualize it was a failure. Every attempt to understand its method of operation was a similar failure--he lacked the engineering background to comprehend it. It worked: he accepted that. His own ears told him that every time they rammed through a test.

          Drawing an enormous amount of power and piloted by a remote guidance, the vehicle displaced--what? Temporal strata. Time layers. The machine didn't move through space, it didn't leave the basement tank, but it-- or the camera mounted in the nose--peered and probed into time while photographing a clock and a calendar. Soon now, it would transmit humans into tomorrow and those humans were expected to do more than merely look through the nose at a clock. (But it had also killed nine men when it doubled back on itself.) Despite an effort to control it, his skin crawled. The cold shock would not leave him.

          Chaney said shortly: "You picked a hell of a crew."

          "Why do you think so?"

          "Not an engineer in the lot--not a hard scientist in the lot. Moresby and I love each other like a cobra and a mongoose. I think I'm the mongoose. Want to try again?"

          "I know what I'm doing, Chaney. The engineers and the physical scientists will come later, when the probes demand engineers and physical scientists. When did the first geologist reach the moon? The first selenographer? _This_ survey demands your kind of man, and Moresby, and Saltus. You and Moresby were chosen because each of you is supreme in your field, and because you are natural opposites. I like to think the pair of you are delicate balances, with Saltus the neutral weight in center. And I say again, I know what I am doing."

          "Moresby thinks I'm some kind of a nut."

          "Yes. And what do you think of him?"

          Sudden glee: "_He's_ some kind of a nut."

          Seabrooke permitted himself a wintry smile. "Forgive me, but there is a measure of truth to both suppositions. The Major _also_ has a hobby which has embarrassed him."

          Chaney groaned aloud. "Those damned prophets!" He looked around at the Major. "Why doesn't he collect toy soldiers, or be the best chess player in the world?"

          "Why don't you write cookbooks?"

          Chaney glanced down at his chest. "See how neatly the blade entered between the ribs? Notice that the haft stands out straight and true? A marksman's thrust."

          Seabrooke said: "You like to read the past, while the Major prefers to read the future. I will admit yours is the more valuable vocation."

          "Another futurist. You collect futurists."

          "He places an inordinate faith in prognostication. He begins with so simple an act as reading his horoscope in the daily papers, and conducting himself accordingly. After his arrival here he admitted to Kathryn the mission was no surprise to him, because a certain horoscope had advised him to prepare himself for a momentous change in his daily affairs."

          Chaney said: "_That_ is as old as time; the earliest Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Akkadians, all were crazy about astrology. It's the most enduring religion."

          "I suppose you are familiar with the small booklets known as farmer's almanacs?"

          A nod. "I know of them."

          "Moresby buys them regularly, not only to learn how their minute prophecies may affect him but to anticipate the weather a year in advance. I will admit I have looked into that last, and the Major has a remarkable record of correlating military operations with weather conditions--when he's stationed in the United States, you understand. One would suppose the weather works for him. And on some previous military posts, he has been known to plant a garden in strict accordance with the guidelines laid down in those almanacs--phases of the moon and so forth."

          Skeptically: "Did the spinach come up?"

          The firm lips twitched and toyed with a smile, then controlled themselves. "Finally, there is his library. Moresby owns a small collection of books, perhaps forty or fifty in all, which he moves with him from post to post. Books by such people as Nostradamus, Shipton, Blavatsky, Forman, and that Cromwell woman in Washington. He has an autographed copy by someone named Guinness; he met the author at some lecture or other. I inquired into that because of the security angle but Guinness proved harmless. Just recently he added your volume to the collection."

          Chaney said: "He wasted his money."

          "Do you also believe I've wasted mine?"

          "If you were looking for prophetic visions, yes. If you were interested in a biblical curiosity, no. The future should bring some great debates on that Revelations scroll; a dozen or so applecarts have been upset."

          Seabrooke peered at him. "But do you see how I'm using Moresby?"

          "Yes. Just as you're using me."

          "Quite so. I like to think I've assembled the best possible team for the most important undertaking of the twentieth century. There are no real and solid guidelines to the future, there are only speculative studies and pseudo-speculative literature. We're making use of both, and making use of trustworthy men who are actively involved in both. One or both of you will have a solid foot on the ground when you surface twenty-two years hence. What more can we do, Chaney?"

          "You've taken hold of a wolf by the ears. You might look around for a way to let go--an escape route."

          A moment of thoughtful silence. "A wolf by the ears. Yes, I have done that. But Chaney, I have no desire to let go; I am fascinated by this thing, I will _not_ let go. This step is comparable to the very first rocket into space, the very first orbital flight, the very first man on the moon. I could not let go if I wanted to!"

          Chaney was impressed by the vehemence, the passionate eagerness. "Why don't _you_ go up to the future?"

          Seabrooke said quietly: "I tried. I volunteered, but I was pushed aside." His voice betrayed the hurt. "I was washed out in the first physical examination by a heart murmur. Once again this is comparable to space flight, Chaney. Old men, disabled men, feeble men will never know the TDV. We have been shut out."

          The man's gaze wandered back to Katrina, and Chaney joined him in the watchfulness. Her skimpy suit was beginning to dry under the June sun and some of the more interesting rubs and contours were smoothing out, losing the revealing contours beneath. Beside her, skin touching skin, Arthur Saltus monopolized her attention.

          Chaney felt that he had been shut out.

          After a while he asked a question that had been playing in the back of his mind.

          "Katrina said you had a couple of alternatives in mind, if this future probe didn't work. What alternates?" And he waited to see if the woman had reported a breakfast table conversation to the Director.

          "A confidence, Chaney?"

          "Certainly."

          "I know the President a bit better than you do."

          "I'll grant you that."

          "I know what he will not buy."

          Chaney had a premonition. "He won't buy your alternatives? Either of them?"

          "Buy them? He will be outraged by them. Shock waves will be felt all this distance from Washington." Seabrooke hit the table and his empty glass was upset. "I wanted to visit the future, see the future, _smell_ the future, but I was rejected the first day by the medics; I was shipwrecked before I got aboard and that hurt me more than I can say. The only other way left to me, Chaney, was to see that future through your eyes--your camera, your tapes, your observations and reactions. I can live in it through you and Moresby and Saltus, and I am _determined_ to do that! There is nothing else left to me.

          "To that end, I prepared two alternatives to submit to the President. I made sure each of the alternate probes would be unacceptable to him, and he would direct me to proceed with the original plan. I want the future!"

          Chaney asked: "Outrageous?"

          A short nod. "The President is a religious man; he practices his faith. He will never permit a probe to the scene of the Crucifixion with film and tape."

          "No--he won't do that." Chaney considered it. "But because of political consequences, not- religious ones. He's afraid of the people and afraid of the politicians."

          "If that be true, the second alternative would be more frightening."

          Warily:          "Where--or what?"

          "The second alternative is Dallas in November, 1963. I propose to record the Kennedy assassination in a way not done before. I propose to station a cameraman on the sixth floor of that book depository, overlooking the route; I propose to station a second cameraman in that grove atop the knoll, to settle a controversy; I propose to station a third cameraman--you--on the curb alongside the Kennedy car, at the precise point necessary to record the shots from the window or the trees. We will have an accurate filmed record of the crime, Chaney."

SEVEN

          The TDV was a keen disappointment.

          Brian Chaney knew dismay, disillusionment. Perhaps he had expected too much, perhaps he had expected a sleek machine gleaming with chrome and enamel and glass, still new from an assembly line; or perhaps he had expected a mechanical movie monster, a bulging leviathan sprouting cables like writhing tentacles and threatening to sink through the floor of its own massive weight. Perhaps he had let hisimagination run away with him.

          The vehicle was none of those things. It was a squat, half-ugly can with the numeral 2 chalked on the side. It was unromantic. It was strictly functional.

          The TDV resembled nothing more than an oversized oil drum hand-fashioned from scrap aluminum and pieces of old plastic--materials salvaged from a scrap pile for this one job. Chaney thought of a Model-T Ford he'd seen in a museum, and a rickety biplane seen in another; the two relics didn't seem capable of moving an inch. The TDV was a plastic and aluminum bucket resting in a concrete tank filled with polywater, the whole apparatus occupying a small space in a nearly bare basement room. The machine didn't seem capable of moving a minute.

          The drum was about seven feet in length, and of a circumference barely large enough to accommodate a fat man lying down; the man inside would journey through time flat on his back; he would recline fulllength on a webwork sling while grasping two handrails near his shoulders, with his feet resting on a kickbar at the bottom of the drum. A small hatch topside permitted entry and egress. The upper end of the drum had been cut away--it appeared to be an afterthought-- and the opening fitted with a transparent bubble for observing the clock and the calendar. A camera and a sealed metal cube rested in the bubble. Several electric cables, each larger than a swollen thumb, emerged from the bottom end of the vehicle and snaked across the basement floor to vanish into the wall separating the operations room from the laboratory. A stepstool rested beside the polywater tank.

          The contrivance looked as if it had been pieced together in a one-man machine shop on the backlot.

          Chaney asked: "That thing works?"

          "Most assuredly," Seabrooke replied.

          Chaney stepped over the cables and walked around the vehicle, following the invitation of an engineer. The clock and the calendar were securely fastened to a nearby wall, each protected by a clear plastic bubble. Above them--like perched and hovering vultures--were two small television cameras looking down on the basement room. A metal locker, placed near the door and securely fastened to the wall, was meant to contain their clothing. Light fixtures recessed in a high ceiling bathed the room in a cold, brilliant light. The room itself seemed chilly and strangely dry for a basement; it held a sharp smell that might be ozone, together with an unpleasant taste of disturbed dust.

          Chaney put the flat of his hand against the aluminum hull and found it cold. There was a minute discharge of static electricity against his palm.

          He asked: "How did the monkeys run it?"

          "They didn't, of course," the engineer retorted with annoyance. (Perhaps he lacked a sense of humor.) "This vehicle is designed for dual operation, Mr. Chaney. All the tests were launched from the lab, as you will be on the out-stage of the journey. We will kick you forward."

          Chaney searched that last for a double meaning.

          The engineer said: "When the vehicle is programmed for remote, it can be literally kicked to or away from its target date by depressing the kickbar beneath your feet. We will launch you forward, but you will effect your own return when the mission is completed. We recall only in an emergency."

          "I suppose it will wait up there for us?"

          "It will wait there for you. After arrival on target the vehicle will lock on point and remain there until it is released, by you or by us. The vehicle cannot move until propelled by an electrical thrust and that thrust must be continuous. The tachyon generators provide the thrust against a deflecting screen which provides the momentum. The TDV operates in an artificially created vacuum which precedes the vehicle by one millisecond, in effect creating its own time path. Am I making myself clear?

          Chaney said: "No."

          The engineer seemed pained. "Perhaps you should read a good book on tachyon deflector systems."

          "Perhaps. Where will I find one?"

          "You won't. They haven't been written."

          "But it all sounds like perpetual motion."

          "It isn't, believe me. This baby eats power."

          "I suppose you _need_ that nuclear reactor?"

          "All of it--it serves this lab alone."

          Chaney revealed his surprise. "It doesn't serve the station outside? How much does it take to kick this thing into the future?"

          "The vehicle requires five hundred thousand kilos per launch."

          Chaney and Arthur Saltus whistled in unison. Chaney said: "Is that power house protected? What about wiring? Transformers? Electrical systems are vulnerable to about everything: sleet storms, drunken drivers ramming poles, outages, one thing after another."

          "Our reactor is set in concrete, Mr. Chaney. Our conduits are underground. Our equipment is rated for at least twenty years continuous service." A wave of the hand to indicate superior judgment, superior knowledge. "You needn't concern yourself; our future planning is complete. There will be power to spare for the next five hundred years, if need be. The power _will_ be available for any launch and return."

          Brian Chaney was skeptical. "Will cables and transformers last five hundred years?"

          Again the quick annoyance. "We don't expect them to. All equipment will be replaced each twenty or twenty-five years according to a prearranged schedule. This _is_ a completely planned operating system."

          Chaney kicked at the concrete tank and hurt his toe. "Maybe the tank will leak."

          "Polywater doesn't leak. It has the consistency of thin grease, and is suspended in capillary tubes. This is ninety-nine percent of the world's supply right here." He followed Chaney's lead and kicked the tank. "No leak."

          "What does the TDV push against? That polywater?"

          The engineer looked at him as if he were an idiot. "It _floats_ on the polywater, Mr. Chaney. I _said_ the thrust against a screen, a molybdenum screen provides the momentum to displace temporal strata."

          Chaney said: "Ah! I see it now."

          "I don't," Arthur Saltus said mournfully. He stood at the nose of the vehicle with his nose pressed against the transparent bubble. "What guides this thing? I don't see a tiller or a wheel."

          The engineer gave the impression of wanting to leave the room, of wanting to hand over the instruction tour to some underling. "The vehicle is guided by a mercury proton gyroscope, Mr. Saltus." He pointed past the Commander's nose to a metal cube within the bubble, nestled alongside the camera. "That instrument. We borrowed the technique from the Navy, from their program to guide interplanetary ships in long-flight."

          Arthur Saltus seemed impressed. "Good, eh?"

          "Superior. Gyroscopes employing mercury protons are not affected by motion, shock, vibrations, or upset; they will operate through any violence short of destruction. _That_ unit will take you there and bring you back to within sixty-one seconds of your launch. Rely on it."

          Saltus said: "How?" and Major Moresby seconded him. "Explain it, please. I am interested."

          The engineer looked on Moresby as the only partly intelligent non-engineer in the room. "Sensing cells in the unit will relay back to us a continuous signal indicating your time path, Mr. Moresby. It will signal any deviation from a true line; if the vehicle wavers we will know it immediately. Our computer will interpret and correct immediately. The computer will send forward the proper corrective signals to the tachyon deflector system and restore the vehicle to its right time path, all in less than a second. You will not be aware of the deviation or the correction, of course."

          Saltus:          "Do you guarantee we'll hit the target?"

          "Within four minutes of the annual hour, Mr. Saltus. This system does not permit a tracking error greater than plus or minus four minutes per year. That is _on_ target. The Soviet couldn't do any better."

          Chaney was startled. "Do they have one?"

          "No," Gilbert Scabrooke interposed. "That was a figure of speech. We all have pride in our work."

          Seniority was all. Major Moresby made the first trial test, and then Commander Saltus.

          When his turn came, Chaney undressed and stored his clothing in the locker. The hovering presence of the engineer didn't bother him but the prying eyes of the two television cameras did. He couldn't know who was on the other side of the wall, watching him. Wearing only his shorts--the one belated concession to modesty--and standing in his bare feet on the concrete floor, Chaney fought away the impulse to bolster his waning ego by thumbing his nose at the inquisitive cameras. Gilbert Scabrooke probably wouldn't approve.

          Following instructions, he climbed into the TDV.

          Chaney wriggled through the hatch, lowered himself onto the sling-like bed, and promptly banged his head against the camera mounted inside the bubble. It hurt.

          "Damn it!"

          The engineer said reprovingly: "Please be more careful of the camera, Mr. Chaney."

          "You could hang that thing _outside_ the bucket."

          Inching lower onto the flimsy bed, he discovered that when his feet reached the kickbar there was insufficient room to turn his head without striking either the camera or the gyroscope, nor could he push out his elbows. He squinted up at the engineer in protest but the man's face disappeared from the opening as the hatch was slammed shut. Chaney had a moment of panic but fought it away; the drum was no worse than a cramped tomb--and better in one small respect: the transparent bubble admitted light from the ceiling fixtures. Still following the detailed instructions, he reached up to snug the hatch and was immediately rewarded by a blinking green bull's eye above his head. He thought that was nice.

          Chaney watched the light for a space but nothing else happened.

          Aloud: "All right, _move_ it." The sound of his voice in the closed can startled him.

          Twisting around at the expense of a strained neck muscle and another glancing blow off the camera, he peered through the bubble at the outside room but saw no one. It was supposed to be empty during a launch. He guessed that his companions were in the lab beyond the wall, watching him on the monitors as he had watched them. The sounds had been thunderously loud in there, causing acute pain to his eardrums.

          Chaney's gaze came back to the green light against the hull above his head, and discovered that a red light beside it was now blazing, blinking in the same monotonous fashion as its brother. He stared at the two lights and wondered what he was supposed to do next. Instructions hadn't gone beyond that point.

          He was aware that his knees were raised and that his legs ached; the interior of the bucket wasn't designed for a man who stood six feet four _and_ had to share the space with a camera and gyroscope. Chaney lowered his knees and stretched out full length on the webbed sling, but he had forgotten the kickbar until his bare feet struck it. The red light winked out.

          After a while someone rapped on the plastic bubble, and Chaney twisted around to see Arthur Saltus motioning for him to come out. He opened the hatch and sat up. When he was in a comfortable position, he found that he could rest his chin on the rim of the hatch and look down into the room.

          Saltus stood there grinning at him. "Well, mister, what did you think of _that?_"

          "There's more room in a Syrian coffin," Chaney retorted. "I've got bruises."

          "Sure, sure, civilian, tight quarters and everything, but what did you _think_ of it?"

          "Think of what?"

          "Well, the--" Saltus stopped to gape in disbelief. "Civilian, do you mean to sit there like an idiot and tell me you weren't watching that clock?"

          "I watched the lights; it was like Christmas time."

          "Mister, they ran you through your test. You saw _ours_, didn't you? You checked the time?"

          "Yes, I watched you."

          "Well, you jumped into the future! One hour up!"

          "The hell I did."

          "The hell you didn't, civilian. What did you think you were doing in there--taking a nap? You were supposed to watch the clock. You went up an hour, and then you kicked yourself back. That stuffy old engineer was mad--you were supposed to wait for _him_ to do it."

          "But I didn't hear anything, feel anything."

          "You _don't_ hear anything in there; just out here, on the outside looking in. Man, we heard it! Pow, pow, the airhammer. And the guy was supposed to tell you there was no sense of motion: just climb in, and climb out. Shoot an hour." Saltus made a face. "Civilian, sometimes you disappoint me."

          "Sometimes I disappoint myself," Chaney said. "I've missed the most exciting hour of my life. I guess it was exciting. I was looking at the lights and waiting for something to happen."

          "It did happen." Saltus stepped down from the stool. "Come on out of there and get dressed. We have to listen to a lecture from old windbag in the lab--and after that we inspect the ship's stores. The fallout shelter, food and water and stuff; we might have to live off the stores when we get up there to the brink of 2000. What if everything is rationed, and we don't have ration cards?"

          "We can always call Katrina and ask for some."

          "Hey--Katrina will be an old woman, have you thought of that? She'll be forty-five or fifty, maybe--I don't know how old she is now. An _old_ woman--damn!"

          Chaney grinned at his concept of ancient age. "You won't have time for dating. We have to hunt Republicans."

          "Guess not--nor the opportunity. We're not supposed to go looking for anybody when we get up there; we're not supposed to look for her or Seabrooke or even us. They're afraid we'll find _us_." He made a weary gesture. "Get your pants on. Damned lecture. I hate lectures--I always fall asleep."

          A team of engineers lectured. Major Moresby listened attentively. Chaney listened with half an ear, attention wandering to Kathryn van Hise who was seated at one side of the room. Arthur Saltus slept.

          Chaney wished the information given him had been printed on the usual mimeographed papers and passed around a table for study. That method of dissemination was the more effective for him; the information stayed with him when he could read it on a printed page and refer back to the sentence or the paragraph above to underscore a point. It was more difficult to call back a spoken reference without asking questions, which interrupted the speaker and the chain of thought and the drone which kept Saltus sleeping. The ideal way would be to set down the lecture in Aramaic or Hebrew and hand it to him to translate; _that_ would insure his undivided attention to learn the message.

          He gave one eye and one ear to the speaker.

          Target dates. Once a target date was selected and the pertinent data was at hand, computers determined the exact amount of energy needed to achieve that date and then fed the amount into the tachyon generator in one immense surge. The resulting discharge against the deflector provided momentum by displacing temporal strata ahead of the vehicle along a designated time path; the displaced strata created a vacuum into which the vehicle moved toward the target date, always under the guidance of the mercury proton gyroscope. (Chaney thought: perpetual motion.)

          The engineer said: "You can be no more than eighty-eight minutes off the designated hour of the target date, 2000. That is four minutes per year; that is to be anticipated. But there is another significant time element to be noted in the field, one that you must not forget. Fifty hours. You may spend up to fifty hours in the field on any date, but you may not exceed that amount. It is an arbitrary limit. To be sure, gentlemen, the safety of the displaced man is of first importance up to a point. Up to a point." He stared at the sleeping Saltus. "After that point the repossession of the vehicle will be of first importance."

          "I read you," Chaney told him. "We're expendable; the bucket isn't."

          "I cannot agree to that, Mr. Chaney. I prefer to say that at the expiration of fifty hours the vehicle will be recalled to enable a second man to go forward, if that is deemed advisable, to effect the recovery of the first."

          "_If_ he can be found," Chaney added.

          Flatly: "You are not to remain on target beyond the arbitrary fifty-hour limit. We have only one vehicle; we don't wish to lose it."

          "That is quite sufficient," Morcsby assured him. "We can do the job in half that time, after all."

          Upon completion of their assignment, each of them would return to the laboratory sixty-one seconds after the original launch, whether they remained on target one hour or fifty. The elapsed time in the field did not affect their return. They would be affected only by the elapsed time while _in_ the field; those few hours of natural aging could not be recaptured or neutralized of course.

          The necessities and some few of the luxuries of life were stored in the shelter: food, medicines, warm clothing, weapons, money, cameras and recorders, shortwave radios, tools. If storage batteries capable of giving service for ten or twenty years were developed in the near future, they would also be stocked for use. The radios were equipped to send and receive on both military and civilian channels; they could be powered by electricity available in the shelter or by batteries when used with a conversion unit. The shelter was fitted with lead-in wires, permitting the radios to be connected to an outside antenna, but once outside on the target minitennas built into the instruments would serve for a range of approximately fifty miles. The shelter was stocked with gasoline lanterns and stoves; a fuel tank was built into an outside wall.

          After emerging from the vehicle, each man was to close the hatch and carefully note the time and date. He was to check his watch against the wall clock for accuracy and to determine the plus-or-minus variation. Before leaving the basement area to enter his target date he was to equip himself from the stores, and note any sign of recent use of the shelter. He was forbidden to open any other door or enter any other room of the building; in particular, he was forbidden to enter the laboratory where the engineers would be preparing his return passage, and forbidden to enter the briefing room where someone might be waiting out the arrival and departure.

          He was to follow the basement corridor to the rear of the building, climb a flight of stairs and unlock the door for exit. He would be instructed where to locate the two keys necessary to turn the twin locks of the door. Only the three of them would ever use that door.

          Chaney asked: "Why?"

          "That has been designated the operations door. No other personnel are authorized to use it: field men only."

          Beyond the door was a parking lot. Automobiles would be kept there continuously for their exclusive use; they would be fueled and ready on any target date. They were cautioned not to drive a new model car until they became thoroughly familiar with the controls and handling of it. Each man would be furnished the properly dated papers for gate passage, and was to carry a reasonable sum of money sufficient to meet anticipated expenses.

          Saltus was awake. He poked at Chaney. "You can fly to Florida in fifty hours--have a swim and still get back in time. Here's your chance, civilian."

          "I can walk to Chicago in fifty," Chaney retorted.

          Their mission was to observe, film, record, verify; to gather as much data as possible on each selected date. Observations should also be made (and a permanent record left in the shelter) that would benefit the next man on his target. They were to bring in with them all exposed films and tapes but the instruments were to be stored in the shelter for the following man to use. A number of small metal discs each weighing an ounce would be placed in the vehicle before launch; the proper number of discs was to be thrown overboard before returning to compensate for the tapes and films being brought back.

          Were there any questions?

          Arthur Saltus stared at the engineer with sleepy eyes. Major Moresby said: "None at the moment, thank you." Chaney shook his head.

          Kathryn van Hise claimed their attention. "Mr. Chaney, you have another appointment with the doctor in half an hour. When you are finished there, please come to the rifle range; you really should begin weapons training.

          "I'm not going to run around Chicago shooting up the place--they have enough of that now."

          "This will be for your own protection, sir."

          Chaney opened his mouth to continue the protest, but was stopped. 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.

          He looked around at the engineers with a question, and found the two men staring at each other with blank astonishment. With a single mind they deserted the room on the run.

          Saltus said: "_Now_ what the hell?"

          "Somebody went joyriding," Chaney replied. "They'd better count the monkeys--one may be missing."

          Katrina said: "There were no tests scheduled."

          "Can that machine take off by itself?"

          "No, sir. It must be activated by human control."

          Chaney had a suspicion and glanced at his watch. The suspicion blossomed into conviction and despite himself he failed to suppress a giggle. "That was me, finishing my test. I hit that kickbar by accident just an hour ago."

          Saltus objected. "My test didn't make a noise like that. William didn't."

          Chaney showed him the watch. "You said I went up an hour. That's _now_. Did you kick yourself back?"

          "No--we waited for the engineers to pull us back."

          "But I kicked; I propelled myself from _here_, from a minute ago." He looked at the door through which the two men had run. "If that computer has registered a power loss, I did it. Do you suppose they'll take it out of my pay?"

          They were outside in the warm sunshine of a summer afternoon. The Illinois sky was dark and clouded in the far west, promising a night storm.

          Arthur Saltus looked at the storm clouds and asked: "I wonder if those engineers were sweeping bilge? Do you think they really know what they're talking about? Power surges and time paths and water that won't leak?"

          Chaney shrugged. "A hair perhaps divides the false from the true. They have the advantage."

          Saltus gave him a sharp glance. "You're borrowing again--and I think you've changed it to boot."

          "A word or two," Chaney acknowledged. "Do you recall the rest of it? The remaining three lines of the verse?"

          "No."

          Chaney repeated the verse, and Saltus said: "Yes."

          "All right, Commander. That machine down there is our Alif; the TDV is an Alif. With it, we can search for the treasure house."

          "Maybe."

          "No maybes: we _can_. We can search out _all_ the treasure houses in history. The archeologists and the historians will go crazy with joy." He followed the man's gaze to the west, where he thought he heard low thunder. "If this wasn't a political project it wouldn't be wasted on Chicago. The Smithsonian would have a different use for the vehicle."

          "Hah--I can read your mind, civilian! You wouldn't go up at all, you'd go back. You'd go scooting back to the year Zero, or some such, and watch those old scribes make scrolls. You've got a one-track mind."

          "Not so," Chaney denied. "And there was no year Zero. But you're right about one thing: I wouldn't go up. Not with all the treasure houses of history waiting to be opened, explored, cataloged. I wouldn't go up."

          "Where then, mister? Back where?"

          Chaney said dreamily: "Eridu, Larsa, Nippur, Kish, Kufah, Nineveh, Uruk . . ."

          "But those are just old--old cities, I guess."

          "Old cities, old towns, long dead and gone--as Chicago will be when its turn comes. They are the treasure houses, Commander. I want to stand on the city wall at Ur and watch the Euphrates flood; I want to know how _that_ story got into Genesis. I want to stand on the plains before Uruk and see Gilgamesh rebuild the city walls; I want to see that legendary fight with Enkidu.

          "But more, I want to stand in the forests of Kadesh and see Muwatallis turn back the Egyptian tide. I think you'd both like to see that. Muwatallis was out-manned, out-wheeled, lacking everything but guts and intelligence; he caught Ramses' army separated into four divisions and what he did to them changed the course of Western history. It happened three thousand years ago but if the Hittites _had_ lost--if Ramses had beaten Muwatallis--wc'd likely be Egyptian subjects today."

          Saltus: "I can't speak the language."

          "You would be speaking it--or some local dialect--if Ramses had won." A gesture. "But that's what _I'd_ do if I had the Alif and the freedom of choice."

          Arthur Saltus stood lost in thought, looking at the western cloudbank. The thunder was clearly heard.

          After a space he said: "I can't think of a blessed thing, mister. Not one thing I'd want to see. I may as well go up to Chicago."

          "I stand in awe before a contented man," Chaney said. "The dust bin of history is no more than that."

EIGHT

          Brian Chaney was splashing in the pool the next morning before most of the station personnel had finished their breakfasts. He swam alone, enjoying the luxury of solitude after his customary walk from the barracks. The early morning sun was blindingly bright on the water, a contrast from the night just past: the station had been raked by a severe thunderstorm during the night, and blown debris still littered the streets.

          Chaney turned on his back and filled his lungs with air, to float lazily on the surface of the pool. He was contented. His eyes closed to shut out the brightness.

          He could almost imagine himself back on the Florida beach--back to that day when he loafed at the water's edge, watching the gulls and the distant sail and doing nothing more strenuous than speculating on the inner fears of the critics and readers who had damned him and damned his translation of the Revelations scroll. Yes, and back to the day before he'd met Katrina. Chaney hadn't been aware of a personal vacuum then, but when they parted--when this mission was finished--he would be aware of one. He would miss the woman. Parting company with Katrina would hurt, and when he went back to the beach he'd be keenly aware of the new vacuum.

          He had been unnecessarily rude to her when she first approached him, and he regretted that now; he had believed her to be only another newspaper woman there to badger him. He wasn't on civilized speaking terms with newspaper people. Nor did Chaney like to admit to jealousy--a childish emotion--but Arthur Saltus had aroused in him some response suspiciously close to jealousy. Saltus had moved in and boldly taken possession of the woman, another hurt.

          But that wasn't the only hurt.

          His trigger finger was sore, stiff, and his shoulder hurt like sin; they had assured him it was a light rifle but after an hour of firing it, Chaney wholly disbelieved them. Even in his sleep the bullying figure of the Major stood over him, needling him: "Squeeze it, squeeze it, don't yank--don't jerk--squeeze it!" Chaney squeezed it and four or five times out of ten managed to hit the target. He thought that remarkable, but his companions did not. Moresby was so disgusted he tore the rifle from Chaney's grasp and put five shots through the bull's eye in the space between one breath and the next.

          The hand gun was worse. The Army model automatic seemed infinitely lighter when compared to the rifle, but because he could not use his left hand to lift and steady the barrel he missed the target eight times out of ten. The two good shots were only on the rim of the target.

          Moresby muttered: "Give the civilian a shotgun!" and stalked away.

          Arthur Saltus had taught him camera techniques.

          Chaney was familiar with the common hand cameras and with the mounted rigs used in laboratories to copy documents, but Saltus introduced him to a new world. The holograph camera was new. Saltus said that film had been relegated to the cheap cameras; the holograph instruments used a thin ribbon of embossed nylon which would withstand almost any abuse and yet deliver a recognizable picture. He scoured a nylon negative with sandpaper, then made a good print. Adequate lighting was no longer a problem; the holograph would produce a satisfactory picture taken in the rain.

          Chaney experimented with a camera strapped to his chest, with the lens peering through a buttonhole in his jacket where a button should be; there was another that fitted over his left shoulder, with the lens appearing to be a lodge emblem attached to his lapel--a remote cable ran down the inside of his coat sleeve and the plunger nestled in the palm of his hand. A fat belt buckle held a camera. A bowler hat concealed a camera. A folded newspaper was actually a motion picture camera in camouflage, and a smart looking attaché case was another. Microphones for the tape recorders--worn under the coat, or in the pocket--were buttons or emblems or tie clasps or stays tucked inside shirt collars.

          He usually managed a decent picture--it was difficult to produce a poor one with the holograph instruments, but Saltus was often dissatisfied, pointing out this or that or the other thing which would have resulted in a sharper image or a more balanced composition. Katrina was photographed hundreds of times during the practice. She appeared to endure it with patience.

          Chaney expelled a burst of air and started to sink. He flipped over on his stomach and swam under water to the edge of the pool. Grasping the tiled rim, he hauled himself out of the water and stared up in surprise at the grinning face of Arthur Saltus.

          "Morning, civilian. What's new in ancient Egypt?"

          Chaney peered past him. "Where is--?" He stopped.

          "I haven't seen her," Saltus responded. "She wasn't in the mess hall--I thought she was here with _you_."

          Chaney wiped his face with a towel. "Not here. I've had the pool to myself."

          "Hah--maybe old William is beating our time; maybe he's playing chess with her in a dark corner somewhere." Saltus grinned at that thought. "Guess what, mister?"

          "What now?"

          "I read your book last night."

          "Shall I run for cover, or stand up for a medal?"

          "No, no, not _that_ one. I'm not interested in those old scrolls. I mean the other book you gave me, the one about the desert tribes--old Abraham, and all. Damn but that man made some fine pictures!" He sat down beside Chaney. "Remember that one of the Nabataean well or cistern or whatever it was, down there at the foot of the fortress?"

          "I remember it. Well built. It served the fortress through more than one siege."

          "Sure. The guy made that one with natural lighting. No flash, no sun reflectors, nothing, just natural light; you can see the detail of the stonework and the water level. And it was on film, too--he wasn't using nylon."

          "You can determine that by examination?"

          "Well, of course! _I_ can. Listen, mister, that's good photography. That man is good."

          "Thank you. I'll tell him next time I see him."

          Saltus said: "Maybe I'll read your book someday. Just to find out why they're shooting at you."

          "It doesn't have pictures."

          "Oh, I can read all the easy words." He stretched out his legs and stared up at the underside of the gaudy beach umbrella. A spider was beginning a web between the metal braces. "This place is dead this morning."

          "What's to do? Other than a rousing game with the Major, or another session at the rifle range?"

          Saltus laughed. "Shoulder hurt? That will wear away. Say, if I could find Katrina, I'd throw her into the pool and then jump in with her--that's where the action is!"

          Chaney thought it wisest not to answer. His gaze went back to the sun-bright waters of the pool, now empty of swimmers and slowly regaining placidity. He remembered the manner in which Saltus had played there with Katrina, but the memory wasn't a pleasant one. He hadn't joined in the play because he felt self-conscious for the first time in his life, because his physique was a poor one compared to the muscular body of the Commander, because the woman seemed to prefer the younger man's company to his. That was hurtful to admit.

          Chaney caught a quick movement at the gate.

          "The Major has found us."

          Major Moresby hustled into the recreation area and strode toward the pool, seeking them. Halfway across the patio he found them beneath the umbrella and turned hard. He was breathing heavily and his face flushed with excitement.

          "Get up off your duff!" he barked at the Commander. And to Chaney: "Get your clothes on. Urgent. They want us in the briefing room now. I have a car waiting."

          "Hey--what goes?" Saltus was out of the chair.

          "We do. Somebody has made the big decision. Damn it, Chaney, move!"

          "The field trials?" Saltus demanded. "The field trials? This morning? Now?"

          "This morning, now," Moresby acknowledged. "Gilbert Seabrooke brought the decision; they roused me out of bed. We're moving up, after all!" He turned on Chaney. "Will you haul your ass out of that chair, civilian? Move it! I'm waiting, everybody is waiting, the vehicle is cranked up and waiting."

          Chaney jumped from the chair, heart pounding against his rib cage.

          Moresby: "Katrina said to use the car. You are not to waste time walking, and that is an order."

          Chaney's reflexes were slower, but he was already racing for the bath house to change. They ran with him. "I'm not walking."

          "Where are we going?" Saltus demanded breathlessly. "I mean when? _When_ in Joliet? Did you get the word?"

          "Katrina gave the word. You won't like it, Art."

          Arthur Saltus stopped abruptly in the doorway and Chaney collided with him.

          "Why won't I like it?"

          "Because it's a political thing, a damned political thing, after all! Katrina said the decision came down early this morning from the White House--from _him_. We should have expected something like that."

          Slow repeat: "Why won't I like it?"

          Moresby said with disdain: "We're going up two years to a date in November. November 6, 1980, a Thursday. The President wants to know if he'll be re-elected."

          Arthur Saltus stared in open-mouthed astonishment. After a space of disbelief he turned to Chaney.

          "What was that word again, mister? In Aramaic?"

          Brian Chaney told him.

          Brian Chaney

          Joliet, Illinois

          6 November 1980

          If we open a quarrel between the past

          and the present,

          We shall find that we have lost the future.

                                       -- Winston Churchill

NINE

          Chaney had no forewarning of something amiss.

          The red light blinked out. He reached up to unlock the hatch and throw it open. The green light went dark. Chaney grasped the two handrails and pulled himself to a sitting position, with his head and shoulders protruding through the hatchway. He was alone in the room, as he expected to be. He struggled through the hatch and climbed over the side, easing himself down the hull until his feet touched the stool. The vehicle felt icy cold. Chaney reached up to slam shut the hatch, then cast a curious glance at the monitoring cameras. He hoped those future engineers approved his obedience to the ritual.

          Chaney looked at his watch: 10:03. That was expected. He had kicked off less than a minute ago, the third and last to move up. He sought out the calendar and clock on the wall to verify the date and the time: 6 Nov 80. The clock read 7:55. A thermometer had been added to the instrument group to record outside temperature: 31 degrees F.

          Chaney hesitated, unsure of his next move. The time was not right; it should have been ten o'clock, plus or minus eight minutes. He made a mental note to tell the engineers what he thought of their guidance system.

          The first of the field trials had been launched at a few minutes past nine, with Major Moresby claiming his due. Thirty minutes later Arthur Saltus followed the Major into the future, and thirty minutes after him Chaney climbed into the bucket and was kicked off. All arrivals on target were supposed to be identical with departure times, plus or minus eight minutes. Chaney had expected to surface about ten and find the others waiting for him. They were scheduled to regroup in the fallout shelter, equip themselves, and travel to the target city in separate automobiles to effect a wider coverage of the area.

          Katrina had given each of them explicit instructions and then wished them well.

          Saltus had said: "Aren't you coming down to see us off?"

          She'd replied: "I will wait in the briefing room, sir."

          The wall clock moved to 7:56.

          Chaney abandoned his irresolution. Rounding the hull of the vehicle, he opened the locker and reached for the suit hung there only minutes before. Small surprise. His suit had been cleaned and pressed and was now hanging in a paper sheath provided by the dry cleaner. Next to his were similar packages belonging to Moresby and Saltus. His name was written across the sheath and he recognized the woman's handwriting. He was first in: seniority.

          Chaney ripped away the paper and dressed quickly, aware of the chill in the room. The white shirt he found in the locker was a new one and he looked with some interest at the wavy, patterned collar. Style, 1980. The sheath was jammed back into the locker as a mocking message.

          Leaving the vehicle room, Chaney strode down the well-lighted corridor to the fallout shelter, conscious of the cameras watching his every step. The basement, the entire building, was cloaked in silence; the lab engineers would avoid contact with him as he must avoid them--but they had the advantage: they could examine a quaint specimen from two years in the past while he could only speculate on who was on the other side of the wall. Their door was shut. Chaney pushed the shelter door open and the overhead lights flashed on in automatic response. The room was empty of life.

          Another clock above a workbench read 8:01.

          Chaney strode into the shelter to stop, turn, stare, inspect everything open to his gaze. Except for a few new objects on the workbench the room was precisely the same as he'd last seen it, a day or two before. He was expected. Three tape recorders had been removed from the stores and set out on the bench, along with an unopened box of fresh tape; two still cameras designed to be worn over the shoulder were there, together with a motion picture camera for Arthur Saltus and new film for all three instruments. Three long envelopes rested atop the cameras, and again he recognized Katrina's handwriting.

          Chaney tore his open, hoping to find a personal note, but it was curiously cool and impersonal. The envelope gave up a gate pass and identification papers bearing the date, 6 November 1980. A small photograph of his face was affixed to the identification. The brief note advised him not to carry arms off the station.

          He said aloud: "Saltus, you've shut me out!" This evidence suggested the woman had made a choice in the intervening two years--unless he was imagining things.

          Chaney prepared himself for the outside. He found a heavy coat and a rakish cap in the stores that were good fits, then armed himself with camera, recorder, nylon film and tape. He took from a money box what he thought would be an adequate supply of cash (there was a shiny new dime and several quarters bearing the date 1980; the portraits on the coins had not been changed), and a drawer yielded a pen and notebook, and a flashlight that worked. A last careful survey of the room suggested nothing else that would be useful to him, and he made ready to leave.

          A clock told 8:14.

          Chaney scrawled a quick note op the back of his torn envelope and propped it against the motion picture camera: _Arrived early for a swim. Will look for you laggards in town. Protons are perfidious_.

          He stuffed the ID papers in his pocket and quit the shelter. The corridor was as silent and empty as before. Chaney climbed the stairway to the operations door and stopped with no surprise to read a painted sign.

                    DO NOT CARRY WEAPONS BEYOND THIS DOOR. FEDERAL

                    LAW PROHIBITS THE POSSESSION OF FIREARMS

                    BY ALL EXCEPT LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS, AND

                    MILITARY PERSONNEL ON ACTIVE DUTY. DISARM

                    BEFORE EXITING.

          Chaney fitted two keys into the twin locks and shoved. A bell rang somewhere behind him. The operations door rolled easily on rolamite tracks. He stepped outside into the chill of 1980. The time was 8:19 on a bleak November morning and there was a sharp promise of snow in the air.

          He recognized one of the three automobiles parked in the lot beyond the door: it was the same car Major Moresby had driven a short while ago--or two years ago--when he hustled Chaney and Saltus from the pool to the lab. The keys were in the ignition lock. Walking to the rear of the vehicle, he stared for a moment at the red and white license plate to convince himself he _was_ where he was supposed to be: Illinois 1980. Two other automobiles parked beyond the first one appeared to be newer, but the only visible change in their design appeared to be fancy grills and wheel caps. So much for nubile taste and Detroit pandering.

          Chaney didn't enter the car immediately.

          Moving warily, half fearful of an unexpected meeting, he circled the laboratory building to reconnoiter. Nothing seemed changed. The installation was just as he remembered it: the streets and sidewalks well repaired and clean--policed daily by the troops on station--the lawns carefully tended and prepared for the approach of winter, the trees now bare of foliage. The heavy front door was closed and the familiar black and yellow fallout shelter sign still hung above it. There was no guard on duty. On an impulse, Chaney tried the front door but found it locked--and that was a commentary of some kind on the usefulness of the fallout shelter below. He continued his inspection tour all the way around again to the parking lot.

          Something _was_ changed behind the lot.