Chaney eyed the space for a moment and then recognized the difference. What had been nothing more than a wide expanse of lawn two years ago was now a flower garden; the flowers were wilted with the nearness of winter and many of the dead blossoms and vines had been cleared away, but in the intervening two years someone--Katrina?--had caused a garden to be planted in an otherwise empty plot of grass.

          Chaney left a sign for Major Moresby. He placed a shiny new quarter on the concrete sill of the locked door. A moment later he turned the key in the ignition and drove off toward the main gate.

          The gatehouse was lighted on the inside and occupied by an officer and two enlisted men in the usual MP uniforms. The gate itself was shut but not locked. Beyond it, the black-topped road stretched away into the distance, aiming for the highway and the distant city. A white line had been newly painted--or repainted--down the center of the road.

          "Are you going off station, sir?"

          Chaney turned, startled by the sudden question. The officer had emerged from the gatehouse.

          He said: "I'm going into town."

          "Yes, sir. May I see your pass and identification?"

          Chaney passed over his papers. The officer read them twice and studied the photograph affixed to the ID.

          "Are you carrying weapons, sir? Are there any weapons in the car?"

          "No, to both."

          "Very good, sir. Remember that Joliet has a six o'clock curfew; you must be free of the city limits before that hour or make arrangements to stay overnight."

          "Six o'clock," Chaney repeated. "I'll remember. Is it the same in Chicago?"

          "Yes, sir." The officer stared at him. "But you can't enter Chicago from the south since the wall went up. Sir, are you going to Chicago? I will have to arrange for an armed guard."

          "No--no, I'm not going there. I was curious."

          "Very well, sir." He waved to a guard and the gate was opened. "Six o'clock, sir."

          Chaney drove away. His mind was not on the road.

          The warning indicated that a part of the Indic report had correctly called the turn: the larger cities had taken harsh steps to control the growing lawlessness, and it was likely that many of them had imposed strict dusk-to-dawn curfews. A traveler not out of town before dusk would need hotel accommodations to keep him off the streets. But the reference to the Chicago wall puzzled him. _That_ wasn't foreseen, nor recommended. A wall to separate what from what? Chicago had been a problem since the migrations from the south in the 1950s--but a wall?

          The winding private road led him to the highway. He pulled up to a stop sign and waited for a break in traffic on route 66. Across the highway, an officer in a parked state patrol car eyed his license plate and then glanced up to inspect his face. Chaney waved, and pulled into traffic. The state car did not leave its position to follow him.

          A second patrol car was parked at the outskirts of town, and Chaney noted with surprise that two men in the back seat appeared to be uniformed national guardsmen. The bayonet-tipped rifles were visible. His face and his license were given the same scrutiny and their attention moved on to the car behind him.

          He said aloud (but to himself): "Honest, fellas, _I'm_ not going to start a revolution."

          The city seemed almost normal.

          Chaney found a municipal parking lot near the middle of town and had to search for the rare empty space. He was outraged to learn it cost twenty-five cents an hour to park, and grudgingly put two of Seabrookc's quarters into the meter. A clerk sweeping the sidewalk before a shuttered store front directed him to the public library.

          He stood on the steps and waited until nine o'clock for the doors to open. Two city squad cars passed him while he waited and each of them carried a guardsman riding shotgun beside the., driver. They stared at him and the clerk with the broom and every other pedestrian.

          An attendant in the reading room said: "Good morning. The newspapers aren't ready."

          She hadn't finished the chore of rubber-stamping the library name on each of the front pages, or of placing the steel rods through the newspaper centerfolds. A hanging rack stood empty, awaiting the dailies. An upside-down headline read: JCS DENIED BAIL.

          Chaney said: "No hurry. I would like the Commerce and Agriculture yearbooks for the past two years, and the Congressional Record for six or eight weeks." He knew that Saltus and the Major would buy newspapers as soon as they reached town.

          "All the governmental publications are in aisle two, on your left. Will you need assistance?"

          "No, thanks. I know my way through them."

          He found what he wanted and settled down to read.

          The lower house of Congress was debating a tax reform bill. Chaney laughed to himself and noted the date of the Record was just three weeks before election. In some few respects the debate seemed a filibuster, with a handful of representatives from the oil and mineral states engaging in a running argument against certain of the proposals on the pious grounds that the socalled reforms would only penalize those pioneers who risk capital in the search for new resources. The gentleman from Texas reminded his colleagues that many of the southwestern fields had run dry--the oil reserves exhausted--and the Alaskan fields were yet ten years from anticipated capacity. He said the American consumer was facing a serious oil and gasoline shortage in the near future; and he got in a blow at the utility people by reminding that the hoped-for cheap power from nuclear reactors was never delivered.

          The gentleman from Oregon once injected a plea to repeal the prohibition on cutting timber, claiming that not only were outlaw lumberjacks doing it, but that foreign opportunists were flooding the market with cheap wood. The presiding officer ruled that the gentleman's remarks were not germane to the discussion at hand.

          The Senate appeared to be operating at the customary hectic pace.

          The gentleman from Delaware was discussing the intent of a resolution to improve the lot of the American Indian, by explaining that his resolution would direct the Bureau of Indian Affairs to act on a previous resolution passed in 1954, directing them to terminate government control of the Indians and return their resources to them. The gentleman complained that no worthwhile action had been taken on the 1954 resolution and the plight of the Indian was as sorry as ever; he urged his fellows to give every consideration to the new resolution, and hoped for a speedy passage.

          The sergeant-at-arms removed several people from the balcony who were disturbing the chamber.

          The gentleman from South Carolina inveighed against a phenomenon he called "an alarming tide of ignorants" now flowing from the nation's colleges into government and industry. He blamed the shameful tide on "the radical-left revamping and reduction of standard English courses by misguided professors in our institutions of higher learning," and urged a return to the more rigorous disciplines of yesteryear when every student could "read, write, and talk good American English in the tradition of their fathers."

          The gentleman from Oklahoma caused to be inserted in the Record a complete news item circulated by a press wire service, complaining that the nation's editors had either ignored it or relegated it to the back pages, which was a disservice to the war effort.

                             GRINNELL ASSESSES ARMS

          Saigon (AP): General David W. Grinnell arrived in

          Saigon Saturday to assess what progress South Asian

          Special Forces have made in assuming a bigger share

          of the fighting chores.

              Grinnell, making his third visit to the war zone in

          two years, said he was keenly interested in the course

          of the so-called Asian Citizen Program, and planned

          to talk to the fighting men in the countryside to find

          out first-hand how things were going.

              With additional American troop commitments

          pegged in part on the effectiveness of South Asian

          Special Forces (SASF), Grinnell's visit sparked

          rumors of a fresh troop build-up in the hard hit northern

          sectors. Unofficial estimates set a figure of two million

          Americans now in combat in the Asian Theater,

          which the military command refuses to confirm or deny.

          Asked about new arrivals, Grinnell said: "That is

          something the President will have to decide at the

          proper time." General Grinnell will confer with American

          military and civilian officials on all fighting fronts

          before returning to Washington next week.

          Chaney closed the record with a sense of despair and pushed the stack aside. Wanting to lose himself in less depressing but more familiar matters, he opened a copy of the current Commerce yearbook and sought out the statistical tables that were his stock in trade.

          The human lemmings hadn't changed their habits. A bellwether indicating the migration patterns from one area to another was the annual ton-miles study of interstate shipments of household goods; the family that removed together grooved together. The flow continued into California and Florida, as he had forecast, and the adjoining tables revealed corresponding increases in tonnage for consumer durabics and foodstuffs not indigenous to those states. The shipment of automobiles (assembled, new) into California had sharply decreased, and that surprised him. He had supposed that the proposal to ban automobiles in the state by 1985 would only result in an accelerated flow--a kind of hoarding--but the current figures suggested that state officials had found a way to discourage hoarding and depress the market at the same time. Prohibitive taxation, most likely. New York City should note the success of the program.

          Chaney began filling his notebook.

          The measured tolling of a bell somewhere outside the library brought him up from the book with surprise, and a flurry of aged men from the newspaper racks toward the door underscored the passage of time. It was the noon hour.

          Chaney put away the government publications and cast a speculative eye on the attendant. A girl had replaced the older woman on duty earlier. He studied her for a space and decided on an approach least likely to arouse suspicion.

          "Excuse me."

          "Yes?" The girl looked up from a copy of _Teen Spin_. Chaney consulted his notebook. "Do you remember the date of the Chicago wall? The _first_ date--the earliest beginning? I can't pin it down."

          The girl stared into the air above his head and said: "I think it was in August . . . no, no, it was the last week of July. I'm pretty sure it was the last of July." Her gaze came down to his. "We have the news magazines on file if you want me to get it for you."

          Chaney caught the hint. "Don't bother; I'll look. Where are those files?"

          She pointed behind him. "Fourth aisle, next to the windows. They may not be in chronological order."

          "I'll find them. Thank you." Her head was already bending over the magazine as he turned away.

          The Chicago wall ran down the middle of Cermak Road.

          It stretched from Burnham Park on the lakefront (where it consisted only of barbed wire), westward to Austin Avenue in Cicero (where it finally ended in another loose skein of barbed wire in a white residential neighborhood). The wall was built of cement and cinder blocks; of wrecked or stolen automobiles, burnedout shells of city buses, sabotaged police cars, looted and stripped semi-trailer trucks; of upended furniture, broken concrete, bricks, debris, garbage, excretion. Two corpses were a part of it between Ashland and Paulina Street. The barrier began going up on the night of July twenty-ninth, the third night of widespread rioting along Cermak Road; it was lengthened and reinforced every night thereafter as the idea spread until it was a fifteenmile barricade cutting a city in two.

          The black community south of Cermak Road had begun the wall at the height of the rioting, as a means of preventing the passage of police and fire vehicles. Both blacks and belligerent whites completed it. The corpses near Paulina Street had been foolish men who attempted to cross it.

          There was no traffic over the wall, nor through it, nor along the north-south arteries intersecting Cermak Road. The Dan Ryan Expressway had been dynamited at 35th Street and again at 63rd Street; the Stevenson Expressway was breached at Pulaski Road. Aerial reconnaissance reported that nearly every major street in the sector was blocked or otherwise unfit for vehicular traffic; fires raged unchecked on South Halsted, and cattle had been loosed from their pens in the stockyards. Police and Army troops patrolled the city above the wall, while black militants patrolled below it. The government made no effort to penetrate the barrier, but instead appeared to be playing a waiting game. Rail and highway traffic from the east and south was routed in a wide swing around the zone, entering the city above the wall to the west; civilian air traffic was restricted to higher elevations. Road blocks were thrown up at the Indiana line, and along Interstate 80.

          Chicago above the wall counted three hundred dead and two thousand-plus injured during the rioting and the building of the barricade. No one knew the count below the wall.

          By the second week of August, troops had encircled the affected area and had dug in for a siege; none but authorized personnel were permitted to enter and none but white refugees were permitted to leave. Incomplete figures placed the number of emerging refugees at about six hundred thousand, although that figure was well below the known white population living in the rebellious zone. Attempts were being made daily--with small success--to rescue white families believed to be still alive in the area. Penetration was not possible from the north but search parties from the western and southern boundaries made several sallies into the area, sometimes working as far north as Midway Airport. Refugees were being relocated to downstate cities in Illinois and Indiana.

          North Chicago was under martial law, with a strict dusk-to-dawn curfew. Violaters moving on the streets at night were shot on sight and identified the following day, when the bodies could be removed. South Chicago had no curfew but shootings continued day and night.

          At the end of October with the election only a week away, the northern half of the city was relatively quiet; firing across the wall under cover of darkness had fallen off to nuisance shooting, but the police and troops had been issued new orders not to fire unless fired upon. City water service into the zone continued but electricity was curtailed.

          On the Sunday morning before election, a party of about two hundred unarmed blacks had approached Army lines at Cicero Avenue and asked for sanctuary. They were turned back. Washington announced the siege was effective and was already putting an end to the rebellion. Hunger and pestilence would destroy the wall.

          Chaney strode across the room to the newspaper rack.

          Thursday morning editions confirmed their projections published the day before: President Mecks had carried all but three states and won re-election by a landslide. A local editorial applauded the victory and claimed it was earned by "the President's masterful handling of the Chicago Confrontation."

          Brian Chaney emerged from the library to stand on the steps under a cold November sun. He knew a sense of fear, of confusion--an uncertainty of where to turn. A city police cruiser passed the building, with an armed guardsman riding beside the driver.

          Chaney knew why they both stared at him.

TEN

          He wandered aimlessly along the street looking in store windows which were not boarded over, and at parked automobiles along the curb. None of the obviously newer cars were much changed from the older models parked ahead and behind; it was a personal satisfaction to see Detroit edging away from the annual model change and back to the more sensible balance of three decades ago.

          Chaney stopped by the post office to mail a postcard to an old friend at the Indiana Corporation, and found the cost had climbed to ten cents. (He also made a mental note _not_ to tell Katrina. She would probably claim he had fouled up the future.)

          A grocery store window was entirely plastered over with enormous posters proclaiming deep price cuts on every item: ten thousand and one cut-rate bargains from wall to wall. Being a curious futurist, he walked in to inspect the bargains. Apples were selling at two for a quarter, bread at forty-five cents a pound loaf, milk at ninety-nine cents a half gallon, eggs at one dollar a dozen, ground beef at a dollar and twenty-nine cents a pound. The beef was well larded with fat. He bent over the meat counter to check the price of his favorite steak and discovered it was two dollars and forty-nine cents a pound. On an impulse, he paid ninety cents for an eight-ounce box of something called Moon Capsules and found them to be vitamin-enriched candies in three flavors. The advertising copy on the back panel claimed that NASA fed the capsules to the astronauts living on the moon, for extra jump-jump-jumping power.

          The store boasted an innovation that was new to him.

          A customers' lounge was fitted out with soft chairs and a large television, and Chaney dropped into a chair to look at the colored glass eye, curious about the programming. He was quickly disappointed. The television offered him nothing but an endless series of commercials featuring the products available in the store; there was no entertainment to break their monotony. He timed the series: twenty-two commercials in forty-four minutes, before an endless tape began repeating itself.

          Only one made a lasting impression.

          A splendidly beautiful girl with glowing golden skin was stretched out nude on a pink-white cloud; a sensuous cloud of smoke or wisp formed and changed and reformed itself to caress her saffron body with loving tongues of vapor. The girl was smoking a golden cigarette. She lay in dreamy indolence, eyes closed, her thighs sometimes moving with euphoric languor in response to a kiss of cloud. There was no spoken message. At spaced intervals during the two minutes, five words were flashed across the screen beneath the nude: _Go aloft with Golden Marijane_.

          Chaney decided the girl's breasts were rather small and flat for his tastes.

          He quit the store and returned to his car, finding an overtime parking ticket fastened to the windshield. The fine was two dollars, if paid that same day. Chaney scribbled a note on a page torn from his notebook and put it inside the envelope in lieu of two dollars; the ticket was then dropped into a receptacle fastened to a nearby meter post. He thought the local police would appreciate his thought.

          That done, he wheeled out of the lot and retraced his route toward the distant station. The sunset curfew was yet some hours away but he was done with Joliet-- nearly done with 1980. It seemed much colder and inhospitable than the temperature would suggest.

          A state patrol car parked on the outskirts watched him out of town.

          The gatehouse was lighted on the inside and occupied by an officer and two military policemen; they were not the same men who had checked him out earlier in the day but the routine was the same.

          "Are you coming on station, sir?"

          Chaney looked across the hood of his car at the gate just beyond the bumper. "Yes, I thought I would."

          "May I see your pass and identification?"

          Chaney gave up the necessary papers. The officer read them twice and studied the photograph affixed to one, then raised his eyes to compare the photograph to the face.

          "You have been visiting in Joliet?"

          "Yes."

          "But not Chicago?"

          "No."

          "Did you acquire weapons while you were off-station?"

          "No."

          "Very well, sir." He waved to the guard and the gate was opened for him. "Please drive through."

          Brian Chaney drove through and steered the car to the parking lot behind the laboratory building. The other two automobiles were absent, as was the shiny quarter marker.

          He unloaded the paraphernalia from his pockets and from under his coat, only to realize with dismay that he hadn't taken a single photograph: not one fuzzy picture of a scowling policeman or an industrious sidewalk sweeper. That omission was apt to be received with something less than enthusiasm. Chaney fitted a tape cartridge into the recorder and flipped open his notebook; he thought he could easily fill two or three tapes with an oral report for Katrina and Gilbert Seabrooke. His personal shorthand was brief to the extreme-- and unreadable by anyone else--but long experience in the tank enabled him to flesh out a report that was a reasonable summary of the Commerce and Agriculture yearbooks. Facts were freely interspersed with opinions, and figures with educated guesses, until the whole resembled a statistical and footnoted survey of that which Seabrooke wanted: a solid glimpse forward.

          On the last tape he repeated all that he remembered from the pages of the Congressional Record, and after a pause asked Katrina if she knew what General Grinnell was doing now? The old boy got around a lot.

          Chaney left the gear on the seat and got out of the car to stretch his legs. He looked at the western sky to measure the coming of darkness, and guessed that he had an hour or two before sunset. His watch read 6:38 but it was two hours faster than the clock in the basement; the engineering limit of fifty hours was far away.

          The inquisitive futurist decided on a tour.

          Walking with an easy stride he followed the familiar route to the barracks but was surprised to find it dark-- padlocked. That gave him pause. The building deserted? Was he gone from this place? Moresby, Saltus, himself, gone from the station?

          This day, this hour, this _now_ was two years after the successful tests of the TDV, two years after the animals had stopped riding into time and men had taken their places; this was two years after the launching of the field trials and the scheduled launch of the Chicago survey. All that work was over and done--mission completed. Wasn't it then reasonable to assume the team was disbanded and returned to their own corners of the world? Moresby, Saltus, himself, now working elsewhere? (Perhaps he should have sent that postcard to himself at Indic.)

          Neither Gilbert Seabrooke nor Katrina had ever dropped a hint of future plans for the team; he had assumed they would be disbanded when the Chicago probe was concluded and he hadn't considered staying on. He couldn't imagine himself wanting to stay on. Well--with one reservation, of course. He _would_ entertain the idea of a probe into the opposite direction: it would be sheer delight to poke and peer and pry into old Palestine before the arrival of the Roman Tenth Legion--well before their arrival.

          He found himself on E Street.

          The recreation area appeared not to have changed at all. The post theater wasn't yet opened, its parking lot was empty. The officers' club was already brightly lit and filled with music, but the second club nearby for enlisted men was dark and silent. The pool area was closed for the winter and its gate secured by a lock. Chaney peered through the fencing but saw nothing more than a deserted patio and a canvas covering stretched over the pool. The chairs and benches together with the tables and umbrellas had been stored away, leaving nothing but memories clashing with a cold November evening.

          He turned away from the fence to begin an aimless wandering about the station. It seemed normal in every respect. Automobiles passed him, most of them going to the commissary; he was the only man on foot. The sound of an aircraft brought his head up, his eyes searching the sky. The plane was not visible--he supposed it was above the thickening cloud cover--but he could follow its passage by the sound; the craft was flying an air corridor between Chicago and St. Louis, a corridor which paralleled the railroad tracks below. In a few minutes it was gone. A drop of moisture struck his upturned face, and then another, the first few flakes of promised snow. The smell of snow had been in the air since morning.

          Chaney turned about to retrace his steps.

          Three automobiles waited side by side in the parking lot behind the lab. His companions were back, neither of them languishing in a Joliet jail--but he suspected it would be terribly easy to get into jail. Chaney lifted the hood of the nearest car and laid his hand on the motor block. He almost burned the skin from his palm. The hood was snapped shut, and he gathered up the gear from the seat of his own car.

          The twin keys were fitted into the locks of the operations door and turned. A bell rang somewhere below as the door eased open.

          "Saltus! Hello, down there--Saltus!"

          The hurtful sound hit him with near physical impact. The sound was something like a massive rubber band snapped against his eardrums, something like a hammer smashing into a block of compressed air. It struck and rebounded with a tremulous sigh. The vehicle kicked back following its time path to home base. The sound hurt.

          Chaney jumped through the door and pulled it shut behind him.

          "Saltus?"

          A sandy-haired muscular figure stepped through the open doorway of the fallout shelter below.

          "Where the hell have _you_ been, civilian?"

          Chaney went down the steps two or three at a time. Arthur Saltus waited at the bottom with a handful of film.

          "Out there--out there," Chaney retorted. "Knocking around this forsaken place, staring through the fences, sniffing at the cracks and peeping in windows. I couldn't find a spoor. I think we're gope from here, Commander--dismissed and departed, the barracks padlocked. I hope we get a decent bonus."

          "Civilian, have you been drinking?"

          "No--but I could use one. What's in the stores?"

          "You've been drinking," Saltus said flatly. "So what happened to you? We looked all over town."

          "You didn't look in the library."

          "Oh, hell! You would, and we didn't. Research stuff. What did you think of 1980, mister?"

          "I don't like it, and I'll be liking it even less when I'm living in it. That milquetoast was re-elected and the country is going to hell in a handbasket. A fortyeight state sweep! Did you see the election results?"

          "I saw them, and by this time William has passed the news to Seabrooke and Seabrooke is calling the President. He'll celebrate tonight. But _I'm_ not going to vote for him, mister--I _know_ I didn't vote for him. And if I'm living Stateside then--now--I'm going to choose one of those three states that voted for the other fellow, old What's-his-name, the actor fellow."

          "Alaska, Hawaii, and Utah."

          "What's Utah like?"

          "Dry, lonely, and glowing with radioactivity."

          "Make it Hawail. Will you go back to Florida?"

          Chaney shook his head. "I'll feel safer in Alaska."

          Quickly: "You didn't get into trouble?"

          "No, not at all; I walked softly and carried a sweet smile on my face. I was polite to a mousy librarian. I didn't sass the cops or buy any pork in a grocery store." He laughed at a memory. "But someone will have to explain a parking ticket when they trace the license number back to this station."

          Saltus looked his question.

          Chaney said: "I got a ticket for overtime parking. It was an envelope affair; I was supposed to put two dollars in the envelope and drop it in a collection box. I didn't. Commander, I struck a blow for liberty. I wrote a note."

          Saltus eyed him. "What was in the note?"

          "We shall overcome."

          Saltus tried to stifle startled laughter, but failed. After a space he said: "Seabrooke will fire you, mister!"

          "He won't have the chance. I expect to be far away when 1980 comes. Did you read the papers?"

          "Papers! We bought _all_ the papers! William grabbed up every new one he could find--and then read his horoscope first. He was down in the mouth; he said the signs were bad--negative." Saltus turned and waved toward newspapers spread out on the workbench. "I was photographing those when you came in. I'd rather copy them than read them onto a tape; I can blow the negs up to life size when we get back--larger than life, if they want them that way."

          Chaney crossed to the bench and bent over to scan a page under the camera lens. "I didn't read anything but the election results, and an editorial."

          After a moment he said excitedly: "Did you read this? China invaded Formosa--captured it!"

          Get the rest, read the rest of it, Saltus urged him. "That happened weeks ago, and _now_ there's hell to pay in Washington. Canada has formally recognized the take-over and is sponsoring a move to kick Formosa out of the United Nations--give the seat to China. There's talk of breaking off diplomatic relations and stationing troops along the Canadian border. Civilian, that will be a real mess! I don't give a damn for diplomats and diplomatic relations, but we need another hostile like we need an earthquake."

          Chaney tried to read between the lines. "China _does_ need Canadian wheat, and Ottawa _does_ like Chinese gold. That's been a thorn in Washington's side for thirty years. Are you a stamp collector?"

          "Me? No."

          "Not too many years ago, American citizens were forbidden to buy Chinese stamps from Canadian dealers; it was a crime to purchase or possess. Washington was being silly." He fell silent and finished reading the news story. "If these facts are reliable, Ottawa has made a whopping deal; they will deliver enough wheat to feed two or three Chinese provinces. The cash price wasn't made public, and that's significant--China bought more than wheat. Diplomatic recognition and Canadian support for a seat in the United Nations were probably included in the sale contract. That's smart trading, Commander."

          "They're damned good shots, too. I told you that. I hate their guts but I don't downgrade them." He flipped a newspaper page and repositioned his camera. "What time did you get in this morning? How come you were early?"

          "Arrival was at 7:55. I don't know why."

          "Old William was upset, mister. We were supposed to be first but you fouled up the line of seniority."

          Chaney said impatiently: "I can't explain it; it just happened. That gyroscope isn't as good as the engineers claimed it to be. Maybe the mercury protons need fixing, recharging or something. Did you hit the target?"

          "Dead on. William was three or four minutes off. Seabrooke won't like it, I'll bet."

          "I wasn't jumping with joy; I expected to find you and the Major waiting for me. And I wonder now what will happen on a long launch? Can those protons even _find_ 2000?"

          "If they can't, mister, you and me and old William will be wandering around in a fog without a compass; we'll just have to kick backwards and report a scrub."

          The camera was moved again and another page copied.

          "Hey--did you see the girls?"

          "Two librarians. They were sitting down."

          "Mister, you missed something good. They wear their hair in a funny way--I can't describe it--and their skirts aren't long enough to cover their sterns. Really, now, in November! Most of them wore long stockings to keep their legs warm while their sterns were freezing, and most of the time the stockings matched their lipstick: red and red, blue and blue, whatever. This year's fad, I guess. Ah, those girls!" He moved the camera and turned a page.

          "I talked to them, I took pictures of them, I coaxed a phone number, I took a blonde lovely to lunch--it only cost eight dollars for the two of us. That's not too much, everything considered. The people here are just like us, mister. They're friendly, and they speak English. That town was one sweet liberty port!"

          "But they should be like us," Chaney protested. "They're only two years away."

          "That was a joke, civilian."

          "Excuse me."

          "Didn't they have jokes in the tank?"

          "Of course they did. One of the mathematicians came up with proof that the solar system didn't exist."

          Saltus turned around to stare. "Paper proof?"

          "Yes. It filled three pages, as I recall. He said that if he faced the east and recited it aloud, everything would go _poof_."

          "Well, I hope he doesn't do that; I hope to hell he doesn't make a test run just to see if it works. I've got a special reason." Saltus studied the civilian for a long space. "Mister, do you know how to keep your mouth shut?"

          Cautiously: "Yes. Is this a confidence?"

          "You can't even tell William, or Katrina."

          Chaney was uneasy. "Does it involve me? My work?"

          "Nope--you have nothing to do with it, but I want a promise you'll keep quiet, no matter what. _I'm_ not going to report it when I go back. It's something to keep."

          "Very well. I'll keep it."

          Saltus said: "I stopped in at the courthouse and had a look at the records--the vital statistics stuff--your kind of stuff. I found what I was looking for last March, eight months ago." He grinned. "My marriage license."

          It was a kick in the stomach. "Katrina?"

          "The one and only, the fair Katrina. Mister, I'm a married man! Me, a married man, chasing the girls and even taking one to lunch. Now, how will I explain that?"

          Brian Chaney remembered the note found propped against his camera: it _had_ sounded cool, impersonal, even distant. He recalled the padlocked barracks, the emptyness, the air of desertion. He and Major Moresby were gone from this place.

          He said: "Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, be they favorable or not. John Wesley, I think."

          Chaney kept his face turned away to mask his emotions; he suspected the sharp sense of loss was reflected on his face and he didn't care to stumble through an explanation or an evasion. He put away the heavy clothing worn on the outside and then replaced the unused camera and the nylon films. The reels of tape were removed from the recorder, and the recorder put back in the stores. As an afterthought, he replaced the identification papers and the gate pass in the torn envelope--alongside Katrina's note--and propped the envelope on the bench where she would find it.

          Saltus had finished his task and was removing film from the copying camera. He had left the newspapers flung over the bench in disarray.

          Chaney gathered them up into an orderly pile. When he had finished the housekeeping chore, a right-side-up headline said: JCS DENIED BAIL.

          "Who is JCS? What did he do?"

          Saltus stared in disbelief. "Damn it, civilian, didn't you do _anything_ out there?"

          "I didn't bother with the papers."

          Incredulously: "What the hell--are you blind? Why do you think the cops were patrolling the town? Why do you think the state guards were riding shotgun?"

          "Well--because of that Chicago business. The wall."

          "Bigod!" Arthur Saltus stalked across the room to face him, suddenly impatient with his naivete. "No offense, mister, but sometimes I think you never left that ivory tower, that cloud bank in Indiana. You don't seem to know what's going on in the world--you've got your nose buried too deep in those damned old tables. Shape up, Chaney! Shape up before you get washed out." He jabbed a long index finger at the newspapers stacked on the bench. "This country is under martial law. JCS is the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Grinnell, General Brandon, Admiral Elstar, the top dogs. They tried to pull a fast one but got caught, they--that French word."

          "Which French word?"

          "For take-over."

          Chaney was stunned. "Coup."

          "_That's_ the word. Coup. They marched into the White House to arrest the President and the Vice President, they tried to take over the government at gun point. Our own government, mister! You hear about that sort of thing down in South America all the time, but now, right here in _our_ country!" Saltus stopped talking and made a visible effort to control himself. After a moment he said again: "No offense, mister. I lost my temper."

          Chaney wasn't listening. He was running across the basement room to the stacked newspapers.

          It happened not at the White House, but at the Presidential retreat at Camp David.

          A power failure blacked out the area shortly before midnight on Monday night, election eve. The President had closed his re-election campaign and flown to Camp David to rest. An emergency lighting system failed to operate and the Camp remained in darkness. Two hundred troops guarding the installation fell back upon the inner ring of defenses according to a prearranged emergency plan, and took up positions about the main buildings occupied by the President, the Vice President, and their aides. They elected not to go underground as there was no indication of enemy action. Admiral Elstar was with the Presidential party, discussing future operations in the South Asian seas.

          Thirty minutes after the blackout, Generals Grinnell and Brandon arrived by car and were admitted through the lines. At General Grinnell's command, the troops about-faced and established a ring of quarantine about the buildings; they appeared to be expecting the order. The two generals then entered the main building--with drawn weapons--and informed the President and the Vice President they were under military arrest, together with all civilians in the area. Admiral Elstar joined them and announced that the JCS were taking control of the government for an indefinite period of time; he expressed dissatisfaction with civilian mismanagement of the country and the war effort, and said the abrupt action was forced upon the Joint Chiefs. The President appeared to take the news calmly and offered no resistance; he asked the members of his party to avoid violence and cooperate with the rebellious officers.

          The civilians were herded into a large dining room and locked in. As soon as they were alone the aides brought out gas masks which had previously been concealed there; the party donned the masks and crawled under heavy dining tables to wait. Mortar fire was heard outside.

          Electric power was restored at just one o'clock. The firing stopped.

          FBI agents also wearing masks breached the door from the opposite side and informed the President the rebellion was ended. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the disloyal troops had been taken under cover of a gas barrage, by an undisclosed number of agents backed by Federal marshals. Casualties among the troops were held to a minimum. The Joint Chiefs were unharmed.

          Helicopters ferried the Presidential party back to Washington, where the President requested immediate reactivation of the TV networks to announce the news of the attempted coup and its subsequent failure. Congress was called into an emergency session, and at the request of the President declared the country under martial law. The affair was done.

          A White House spokesman admitted that the plot was known well in advance, but refused to reveal the source of the tip. He said the action was allowed to go as far as it did only to ascertain the number and the identities of the troops who supported the Joint Chiefs. The spokesman denied rumors that those troops had been nervegassed. He said the plotters were being charged with treason and were being held in separate jails; he would not disclose the locations other than to say they were dispersed away from Washington. The spokesman declined to answer questions regarding the number of FBI agents and Federal marshals involved in the action; he shrugged off unofficial reports that thousands had been mustered.

          The only reliable information known was that large numbers of them had lain in concealment about Camp David for several days prior to the action. The spokesman would say only the two groups had courageously rescued the President and his party.

          Brian Chaney was unaware that the lights dimmed and the hurtful rubber band smashed against his eardrums; he didn't hear the massive mallet smash into the block pf compressed air and then rebound with a soft, oily sigh. He didn't know that Arthur Saltus had left him until he turned around and found himself alone.

          Chaney stared around the empty shelter and shouted aloud: "Saltus!"

          There was no answer.

          He strode to the door and shouted into the corridor. "Saltus!"

          Booming echoes, and then silence. The Commander was emerging from the vehicle at home base.

          "Listen to the word from the ivory tower, Saltus! Listen to me! What do you want to bet the President didn't risk _his_ precious skin under a dining room table? What do you want to bet that he sent a double to Camp David? He's no Greatheart, no Bayard; he couldn't be certain of the outcome." Chaney stepped into the corridor.

          "_We_ tipped him off, you idiot--we passed the word. _We_ told him of the plot and of his re-election. Do you really think he has the guts to expose himself? Knowing that he would be re-elected the next day for another four-year ride? Do you think that, Saltus?"

          Monitoring cameras looked at him under bright lights.

          In the closed-off operations room, the TDV came back for him with an explosive burst of air.

          Chaney turned on his heel and walked into the shelter. The newspapers were stacked, the gear was stored away, the clothing was neatly hung on racks. He had arrived and was preparing to leave with scarcely a trace of his passage.

          The torn envelope caught his eye--the instructions from Katrina, and his identification papers, his gate pass. Cool, impersonal, distant--impassive, reserved. The wife of Arthur Saltus giving him last minute instructions for the field trial. She still lived on station; she still worked for the Bureau and the secret project--and unless the Commander had been reassigned to the war theater he was living with her.

          But the barracks were dark, padlocked.

          Brian Chaney knew the strong conviction that he was gone--that he and the Major had left the station. He didn't believe in crystal balls, in clairvoyance, hunches, precognition--Major Moresby could have all that claptrap to add to his library of phony prophets, but this one conviction was deeply fixed in his mind.

          He was not _here_ in November, 1980.

ELEVEN

          Chaney sensed a subtle change in relationships. It was nothing he could clearly identify, mark, pin down, but a shade of difference was there.

          Gilbert Seabrooke had sponsored a victory party on the night of their return, and the President telephoned from the White House to offer his congratulations on a good job well done. He spoke of an award, a medal to convey the grateful appreciation of a nation--even though the nation could not be informed of the stunning breakthrough. Brian Chaney responded with a polite _thank you_, and held his tongue. Seabrooke hovered nearby, watchful and alert.

          The party wasn't as successful as it might have been. Some indefinable element of spontaneity was missing, some elusive spark which, when struck, changes over an ordinary party into a memorable evening of pleasure. Chaney would remember the celebration, but not with heady delight. He passed over the champagne in favor of bourbon, but drank that sparingly. Major Moresby seemed withdrawn, troubled, brooding over some inner problem, and Chaney guessed he was already preoccupied with the startling power struggle which was yet two years away. Moresby had made a stiff, awkward little speech of thanks to the President, striving to assure him without words of his continued loyalty. Chaney was embarrassed for him.

          Arthur Saltus danced. He monopolized Katrina, even to the point of ignoring her whispered suggestions that he give unequal time to Chaney and the Major. Chaney didn't want to cut in. On another evening, another party before the field trials, he could have cut in as often as he dared, but now he sensed the same subtle change in Kathryn van Hise which was sensed in the others. The mountain of information brought back from Joliet, November 1980, had altered many viewpoints and the glossy overlay of the party could not conceal that alteration.

          There was a stranger at the party, the liaison agent dispatched by the Senate subcommittee. Chaney discovered the man surreptitiously watching him.

          The briefing room offered the familiar tableau.

          Major Moresby was again studying a map of the Chicago area. He used a finger to mark the several major routes and backroads between Joliet and the metropolis; the finger also traced the rail line through the Chicago suburbs to the Loop. Arthur Saltus was studying the photographs he'd brought back from Joliet. He seemed particularly pleased with a print of an attractive girl standing on a windy street corner, half watching the cameraman and half watching for a car or a bus coming along the street behind. The print revealed an expert's hand in composition and cropping, with the girl limned in sunny backlighting.

          Kathryn van Hise said: "Mr. Chaney?"

          He swung around to face her. "Yes, Miss van Hise?"

          "The engineers have given me firm assurance _that_ mistake will not happen again. They have used the time since your return to rebuild the gyroscope. The cause has been traced to a vacuum leakage but that has been repaired. The error is to be regretted, but it will not happen again."

          "But I _like_ getting there first," he protested. "That's the only way I can assert seniority."

          "It will not happen again, sir."

          "Maybe. How do they _know_ it won't?"

          Katrina studied him.

          "The next targets will each be a year apart, sir, to obtain a wider coverage. Would you care to suggest a tentative date?"

          He betrayed surprise. "We may choose?"

          "Within reason, sir. Mr. Seabrooke has invited each of you to suggest an appropriate date. The original plan of the survey must be followed, of course, but he would welcome your ideas. If you would rather not suggest a date, Mr. Seabrooke and the engineers will select one."

          Chaney looked down the table at Major Moresby.

          "WThat did you take?"

          Promptly:     "The Fourth of July, 1999."

          "Why that one?"

          "It has significance, after all!"

          "I suppose so." He turned to Saltus. "And you?"

          "My birthday, civilian: November 23rd, 2000. A nice round number, don't you think? I thought so anyway. That will be my fiftieth birthday, and I can't think of a better way to celebrate." His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. "I might take a jug with me. Live it up!"

          Chaney considered the possibilities.

          Saltus broke in. "Now, look here, mister--don't tell Seabrooke you want to visit Jericho on the longest day of summer, ten thousand years ago! _That_ will get you the boot right through the front gate. Play by the rules. How would you like to spend Christmas in 2001? New Year's Eve?"

          "No."

          "Party-pooper. Wet blanket. What do you want?"

          "I really don't care. Anything will do."

          "Pick _something_," Saltus urged.

          "Oh, just say 2000-plus. It doesn't much matter."

          Katrina said anxiously: "Mr. Chaney, is something wrong?"

          "Only that," he said, and indicated the photographs heaped on the table before Arthur Saltus, the new packets of mimeographed papers neatly stacked before each chair. "The future isn't very attractive right now."

          "Do you wish to withdraw?"

          "_No_. I'm not a quitter. When do we go up?"

          "The launch is scheduled for the day after tomorrow. You will depart at one-hour intervals."

          Chaney shuffled the papers on the table. "I suppose these will have to be studied now. We'll have to follow up."

          "Yes, sir. The information you have developed on the trials has now become a part of the survey, and it is desirable that each segment be followed to its conclusion. We wish to know the final solutions, of course, and so you must trace these new developments." She hesitated. "_Your_ role in the survey has been somewhat modified, sir."

          He was instantly wary, suspicious. "In what way?"

          "You will not go into Chicago."

          "Not-- But what the hell _am_ I supposed to do?"

          "You may visit any other city within range of your fifty-hour limit: Elgin, Aurora, Joliet, Bloomington, the city of your choice, but Chicago is now closed to you."

          He stared at the woman, knowing humiliation. "But this is ridiculous! The problem may be cleared away, all but forgotten twenty-two years from now."

          "It will not be forgotten so easily, sir. It _will_ be wise to observe every precaution. Mr. Seabrooke has decided you may not enter Chicago."

          "I'll resign--I'll quit!"

          "Yes, sir, you may do that. The Indic contract will be returned to you."

          "I _won't_ quit!" he said angrily.

          "As you wish."

          Saltus broke in. "Civilian--sit down."

          Chaney was surprised to discover himself standing. He sat down, knowing a mixture of frustration and humbled pride. He knotted his fingers together in his lap and pressed until they hurt.

          After a space he said: "I'm sorry. I apologize."

          "Apology accepted," Saltus agreed easily. "And don't let it trouble you. Seabrooke knows what he's doing--he doesn't want you naked and shivering in some Chicago jail, and he _doesn't_ want some damned fool chasing you with a gun."

          Major Moresby was eyeing him.

          "I don't quite read you, Chaney. You've got more guts than I suspected, or you're a damned fool."

          "When I lose my temper I'm a damned fool. I can't help myself." He felt Katrina watching him and turned back to her. "What am I supposed to do up there?"

          "Mr. Seabrooke wishes you to spend the greater part of your time in a library copying pertinent information. You will be equipped with a camera having a copying lens when you emerge on target; your specific assignment is to photograph those books and periodicals which are germane to the information discovered in Joliet."

          "You want me to follow the plots and the wars and the earthquakes through history. Make a copy of everything--steal a history book if I have to."

          You may purchase one, sir, and copy the pages in the room downstairs."

          "That sounds exciting. A really wild visit to the future. Why not bring back the book with me?"

          She hesitated. "I will have to ask Mr. Seabrooke. It seems reasonable, if you compensate for the weight."

          "Katrina, I want to go outside and see _something_--I don't want to spend the time in a hole."

          She said again: "You may visit any other city within range of your fifty-hour limit, sir. If it is safe."

          Morosely: "I wonder what Bloomington is like."

          "Girls!" Saltus answered. "One sweet liberty port!"

          "Have you been there?"

          "No."

          "Then what are you talking about?"

          "Just trying to cheer you up, civilian. I'm helpful that way." He picked up the photograph of the girl on the Joliet street corner and waggled it between thumb and forefinger. "Go up in the summertime. It's nicer then."

          Chaney looked at him with a particular memory in the front of his mind. Saltus caught it and actually blushed. He dropped the photograph and betrayed his fleeting guilt by sneaking a sidelong glance at Katrina.

          She said: "We hope for a thorough coverage, sir."

          "I wish I had more than fifty hours in a library. A decent research job requires several weeks, even months."

          "It may be possible to return again and again, at proper intervals of course. I will ask Mr. Seabrooke."

          Saltus: "Hey--what about that, Katrina? So what happens _after_ the survey? What do we do next?"

          "I can't give you a meaningful answer, Commander. At this point in the operation nothing beyond the Chicago probe is programmed. Nothing more could be programmed until we knew the outcome of these first two steps. A final answer cannot be made until you return from Chicago."

          "Do you _think_ we'll do something else?"

          "I would imagine that other probes will be prepared when this one is satisfactorily completed and the resultant data analyzed." But then she added a hasty postscript. "That is only my opinion, Commander. Mr. Seabrooke has said nothing of possible future operations."

          "I like your opinion, Katrina. It's better than a bucket in the South China Sea."

          Chaney asked: "What happened to the alternatives? To Jerusalem, and Dallas?"

          Moresby broke in. "What's this?"

          The young woman explained them to Moresby and Saltus. Chaney realized that only he had been told of both alternate programs, and he wondered now if he had let a cat out of the bag by mentioning them.

          Katrina said: "The alternatives are being held in abeyance; they may never be implemented." She looked at Brian Chaney and paused. "The engineers are studying a new matter related to vehicle operations; there appears to be a question whether the vehicle may operate in reverse prior to the establishment of a power source.

          "Hey--what's _that_ in English?"

          "It means I can't go back to old Jericho," Chaney told him. "No electricity back there. I _think_ she said the TDV needs power all along the line to move anywhere."

          Moresby: "But I understood you to say those test animals had been sent back a year or more?"

          "Yes, sir, that is correct, but the nuclear reactor has been operating for more than two years. The previous lower limit of the TDV was December 30, 1941, but now that may have to be drastically revised. If it is found that the vehicle may not operate prior to the establishment of its power source, the lower limit will be brought forward to an arbitrary date of two years ago. We do not wish to lose the vehicle."

          Chaney said: "One of those bright engineers should sit down to his homework--lay out a paradox graph, or map, or whatever. Katrina, if you keep this thing going, you're going to find yourself up against a wall sooner or later."

          She colored and betrayed a minute hesitation before answering him. "The Indiana Corporation has been approached on the matter, sir. Mr. Seabrooke has proposed that all our data be turned over to them for a crash study. The engineers are becoming aware of the problems."

          Saltus looked around at Chaney and said: "Sheeg!"

          Chaney grinned and thought to offer an apology to Moresby and the woman. "That's an old Aramaic word. But it expresses my feelings quite adequately." He considered the matter. "I can't decide what I would rather do: stay here and make paradoxes, or go back there and solve them."

          Saltus said: "Tough luck, civilian. I was almost ready to volunteer. _Almost_, I said. I _think_ I'd like to stand on the city wall at Larsa with you and watch the Euphrates flood; I _think_ I'd like-- What?"

          "The city wall at Ur, not Larsa."

          "Well, wherever it was. A flood, anyway, and you said it got into the Bible. You have a smooth line, you _could_ persuade me to go along." An empty gesture. "But I guess that's all washed out now--you'll never go back."

          "I don't believe the White House would authorize a probe back that far," Chaney answered. "They would see no political advantage to it, no profit to themselves."

          Major Moresby said sharply: "Chaney, you. sound like a fool!"

          "Perhaps. But if we _could_ probe backward I'd be willing to lay you money on certain political targets, but nothing at all on others. What would the map of Europe be like if Attila had been strangled in his crib?"

          "Chaney, after all!"

          He persisted. "What would the map of Europe be like if Lenin had been executed for the anti-Czarist plot, instead of his older brother? What would the map of the United States be like if George the Third had been cured of his dementia? If Robert E. Lee had died in infancy?"

          "Civilian, they sure as hell won't let you go back _anywhere_ with notions like that."

          Dryly: "I wouldn't expect a bonus for them."

          "Well, I guess not!"

          Kathryn van Hise stepped into the breach.

          "Please, gentlemen. Appointments have been made for your final physical examinations. I will call the doctor and inform him you are coming now.

          Chaney grinned and snapped his fingers. "_Now_."

          She turned. "Mr. Chaney, if you will stay behind for a moment I would like more information on your field data."

          Saltus was quickly curious. "Hey--what's this?" She paged through the pile of mimeographed papers until she found the transcript of Chaney's tape recording. "Some parts of this report need further evaluation. If you care to dictate, Mr. Chaney, I will take it in shorthand."

          He said: "Anything you need."

          "Thank you." A half turn to the others at the table. "The doctor will be waiting, gentlemen."

          Moresby and Saltus pushed back their chairs. Saltus shot Chaney a warning glance, reminding him of a promise. The reminder was answered with a confirming nod.

          The men left the briefing room.

          Brian Chaney looked across the table at Katrina in the silence they left behind. She waited quietly, her fingers laced together on the table top.

          He remembered her bare feet in the sand, the snug delta pants, the see-through blquse, the book she carried in her hand and the disapproving expression she wore on her face. He remembered the startlingly brief swim suit worn in the pool, and the way Arthur Saltus had monopolized her.

          "That was rather transparent, Katrina."

          She studied him longer, not yet ready to speak. He waited for her to offer the next word, holding in his mind the image of that first glimpse of her on the beach.

          At length: "What happened up there, Brian?"

          He blinked at the use of his given name. It was the first time she had used it.

          "Many, many things--I think we covered it all in our reports."

          Again:          "What happened up there, Brian?"

          He shook his head. "Seabrooke will have to be satisfied with the reports."

          "This is not Mr. Seabrooke's matter."

          Warily:        "I don't know what else I can tell you."

          "Something happened up there. I am aware of a departure from the norm that prevailed before the trials, and I think you are too. Something has created a disparity, a subtle disharmony which is rather difficult to define."

          "The Chicago wall, I suppose. And the JCS revolt."

          "They were shocks to us all, but what else?"

          Chaney gestured, searching for an escape route. "I found the barracks closed, locked. I think the Major and myself have left the station."

          "But not Commander Saltusr

          "He may be gone--I don't know."

          "You don't seem very sure of that."

          "I'm not sure of anything. We were forbidden to open doors, look at people, ask questions. I didn't open doors. I know only that our barracks have been closed-- and I don't think Seabrooke let us move in with him."

          "What would you have done if it was permissible to open doors?"

          Chaney grinned. "I'd go looking for you."

          "You believe I was on the station?"

          "Certainly! You wrote notes to each of us--you left final instructions for us in the room downstairs. I knew your handwriting."

          Hesitation. "Did you find similar evidence of anyone else being on station?"

          Carefully: "No. Your note was the only scrap."

          "Why has the Commander's attitude changed?"

          Chaney stared at her, almost trapped. "Has it?"

          "I think you are aware of the difference."

          "Maybe. Everybody looks at me in a new light. I'm feeling paranoiac these days."

          "Why has your attitude changed?"

          "Oh? Mine too?"

          "You are fencing with me, Brian."

          "I've told you everything I _can_ tell you, Katrina."

          Her laced fingers moved restlessly on the tabletop. "I sense certain mental reservations."

          "Sharp girl."

          "Was there some--some personal tragedy up there? Involving any one of you?"

          Promptly: "No." He smiled at the woman across the table to rob his next words of any sting. "And, Katrina-- if you are wise, if you are very wise, you won't ask any more questions. I hold certain mental reservations; I _will_ evade certain questions. Why not stop now?"

          She looked at him, frustrated and baffled.

          He said: "When this survey is completed I want to leave. I'll do whatever is necessary to complete the work when we return from the probe, but then I'm finished. I'd like to go back to Indic, if that's possible; I'd like to work on the new paradox study, if that's permissible, but I don't want to stay here. I'm finished here, Katrina."

          Quickly: "Is it because of something you found up there? Has something turned you away, Brian?"

          "Ah-- No more questions."

          "But you leave me so unsatisfied!"

          Chaney stood up and fitted the empty chair to the table. "Every thing comes to every man, if he but has the years. That sounds like Talleyrand, but I'm not sure. You have the years, Katrina. Live through just two more of them and you'll know the answers to all your questions. I wish you luck, and I'll think of you often in the tank--if they'll let me back in."

          A moment of silence, and then: "Please don't forget your doctor's appointment, Mr. Chaney."

          "I'm on my way."

          "Ask the others to be here at ten o'clock in the morning for a final briefing. We must evaluate these reports. The probe is scheduled for the day after tomorrow."

          "Are you coming downstairs to see us off?"

          "No, sir. I will wait for you here."

          Major William Theodore Moresby

          4 July 1999

          Dumah, beware!

          Someone is crying out to me from Seir,

          Watchman, how much of the night is gone?

          Watchman, how much of the night is gone?

          The watchman said:

          Morning comes, and night again too.

          If you would know more

          Come back, come back, and ask anew.

                             -- The First Book of Isaiah

TWELVE

          Moresby was methodical.

          The red light blinked out. He reached up to unlock the hatch and throw it open. The green light went dark. Moresby 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 lighted room, as he expected to be. The air was cool and smelled of ozone. Moresby struggled out of the hatch and climbed over the side; the step stool was missing as he slid down the hull to the floor. He reached up to slam shut the hatch, then quickly turned to the locker for his clothing. Two other suits belonging to Saltus and Chaney also hung there in paper sheaths waiting to be claimed. He noted the locker had collected a fine coat of dust. When he was fully dressed, he smoothed out the imaginary wrinkles in the Air Force dress uniform he had elected to wear.

          Moresby checked his watch: 10:05. He sought out the electric calendar and clock on the wall to verify the date and time: 4 July 99. The clock read 4:10, off six hours from his launching time. Temperature was an even 70 degrees.

          Moresby decided the clock was in error; he would rely on his watch. His last act before leaving the room was to direct a smart salute toward the twin lenses of the monitoring cameras. He thought that would be appreciated by those on the other side of the wall.

          Moresby strode down the corridor in eerie silence to the shelter; fine dust on the floor was kicked up by his feet. The shelter door was pushed open and the overhead lights went on in automatic response. He stared around, inspecting everything. There was no ready evidence that anyone had used the shelter in recent years; the stores were as neatly stacked as he had found them during his last inspection. Moresby lit a gasoline lantern to check its efficiency after so long a time; he watched its steady flame with satisfaction and then put it out. The supplies were dependable, after all. As an afterthought, he broke open a container of water to sample the quality: it tasted rather flat, insipid. But that was to be expected if the water had not been replaced this year. He considered that something of an oversight.

          Three yellow cartons rested on the work bench--cartons which had not been there before.

          He opened the first box and found a bullet-proof vest made from some unfamiliar nylon weave. The presence of the vests on the bench was significant. He slipped out of his military jacket only long enough to don the vest and then turned to work.

          Moresby chose a tape recorder, inserted a cartridge, tested the machine, and crisply recorded those observations made thus far: the step stool was - missing, the basement had collected dust, the water had not been refreshed, the clock-time of his arrival was off six hours and five minutes. He did not offer personal opinions on any observation. The recorder was put aside on the bench. His next act was to select a radio, connect the leads of the exterior antenna to the terminal screws on the chassis, and plug it into a wall socket. The tape recorder was moved to within easy listening distance and turned on. Moresby snapped on the radio and tuned in a military channel.

          Voice: ". . . moving around the northwest corner in a southerly direction--moving toward you. Estimated strength, twelve to fifteen men. Watch them, Corporal, they're packing mortars. Over." The sound of gunfire was loud behind the voice.

          Voice: "Roger. We've got a hole in the fence at the northwest--some bastard tried to put a truck through. It's still burning, maybe that'll stop them. Over."

          Voice: "You _must_ hold them, Corporal. I can't send you any men--we have a double red here. Out."

          The channel fell silent, closing off the firefight.

          Moresby was not given to panic or reckless haste. Feeling little surprise, he began methodically to equip himself for the target. An Army-issue automatic, together with its belt and extra ammunition, was strapped around his waist; he selected a rapid-fire rifle after examining its make and balance, then emptied several boxes of cartridges in his jacket pockets. All insignia marking him an officer were removed from his uniform, but there was little he could do now about the uniform itself.

          The stores offered him no battle helmets or liners. Moresby slung a canteen of the insipid water over his shoulder and a pack of rations across his back. He decided against the tape recorder because of its extra bulk, but reached for the radio as he studied a map of Illinois. A sudden hunch told him the skirmish would be somewhere near Chicago; the Air Force had long been worried about the defense of that city because it was the hub of railroad and highway traffic--and there was the always-threatening problem of foreign shipping traversing the Great Lakes to tie up at Chicago ports. Surveillance of that shipping had always been inadequate.

          He was reaching out to disconnect the antenna when the channel came alive.

          Voice: "Eagle One! The bandits have hit us--hit us at the northwest corner. I count twelve of them, spread out over the slope below the fence. They've got two-- damn it!--two mortars and they're lobbing them in. Over." The harsh, half-shrieking voice was punctuated by the dull thump of mortar fire.

          Voice: "Have they penetrated the fence? Over."

          Voice: "Negative--negative. That burning truck is holding them. I think they'll try some other way--blow a hole in the fence if they can. Over."

          Voice: "_Hold_ them, Corporal. They are a diversion; we have the main attack here. Out."

          Voice: "Damn it, Lieutenant--" Silence.

          Moresby reached again for the leads to sever the radio from the topside antenna, but was stopped by an idea. He switched to an alternate military channel, one of six on the instrument, and punched the send button.

          "Moresby, Air Force Intelligence, calling Chicago or the Chicago area. Come in, Chicago."

          The channel remained silent. He repeated himself, waited impatiently for the sweep hand of his watch to make a full circle, and then made a third attempt. There was no response. Another military channel was selected.

          "Moresby, Air Force Intelligence, calling Chicago or the Chicago area. Come in please."

          The radio crackled with static or small arms fire. A weak voice, dimmed by distance or a faulty power supply: "Nash here. Nash here, west of Chicago. Use caution. Come in, Moresby. Over."

          He stepped up the gain. "Major William Moresby, Air Force Intelligence on special duty. I am trying to reach Joliet or Chicago. Please advise the situation. Over."

          Voice: "Sergeant Nash, sir, Fifth Army, HQ Company. Chicago negative, repeat negative. Avoid, avoid. You can't get in there, sir--the lake is hot. Over."

          Moresby was startled. "_Hot?_ Please advise. Over."

          Voice: "Give me your serial number, sir."

          Moresby rattled it off, and repeated his question.

          Voice: "Yes, sir. The ramjets called in a Harry on the city. We're pretty certain they called it in, but the damned thing fell short and dropped into the lake off Glencoe. You can't go in anywhere there, sir. The city has been fired, and that lake water sprayed everything for miles up and down the shoreline. It's _hot_, sir. We're picking up civilian casualties coming out, but there isn't much we can do for them. Over."

          Moresby: "Did you get your troops out? Over."

          Voice: "Yes, sir. The troops have pulled back and established a new perimeter. I can't say where. Over."

          A wash of static rattled the small speaker.

          Moresby wished desperately for fuller information, but he knew better than to reveal his ignorance by asking direct questions. The request for his serial number had warned him the distant voice was suspicious, and had he stumbled over the number contact would have been lost. It suggested these radio channels were open to the enemy.

          Moresby: "Are you certain those devils called in the Harry? Over."

          Voice: "Yes, sir, reasonably certain. Border Patrol uncovered a relay station in Nuevo Leon, west of Laredo. They think they've found another one in Baja California, a big station capable of putting a signal overseas. Navy pinned down a launching complex at Tienpei. Over."

          Moresby, fuming: "Damn them! We can expect more of the same if Navy doesn't take it out quickly. Do you know the situation at Joliet? Over."

          Voice: "Negative, sir. We've had no recent reports from the south. What is your location? Be careful in your answer, sir. Over."

          Moresby took the warning. "Approximately eight miles out of Joliet. I am well protected at the moment. I've heard mortar fire but haven't been able to locate it. I think I will try for the city, Sergeant. Over."

          Voice: "Sir, we've taken a fix on you and believe we know your location. You are very well protected there. You have a strong signal. Over."

          Moresby: "I have electricity here but I will be on battery when I leave cover. Over."

          Voice: "Right, sir. If Joliet is closed to you, the O.D. suggests that you circle around to the northwest and come in here. Fifth Army HQ has been re-established west of the Naval Training Station, but you'll pass through our lines long before that point. Look for the sentries. Use care, sir. Be alert for ramjets between your position and ours. They are heavily armed. Over."

          Moresby: "Thank you, Sergeant. I'll go for the target of opportunity. Over and out."

          Moresby snapped off the radio and disconnected the leads. That done, he turned off the tape recorder and left it on the bench for his return.

          He studied the map once again, tracing the two roads which led to the highway and the alternate highway into Joliet. The enemy would be well aware of those roads, as well as the railroad, and if their action reached this far south they would have patrols out. It wouldn't be safe to use an automobile; large moving targets invited trouble.

          A last searching examination of the room gave him no other article he thought he would need. Moresby took a long drink of water from the stores and quit the shelter. The corridor was dusty and silent, yet bright under lights and the monitoring cameras. He eyed the closed doors along the passageway, wondering who was behind them--watching. Obeying orders, he didn't so much as touch a knob to learn if they were locked. The corridor ended and a flight of stairs led upward to the operations exit. The painted sign prohibiting the carrying of arms beyond the door had been defaced: a large slash of black paint was smeared from the first sentence to the last, half obliterating the words and voiding the warning. He would have ignored it in any event

          Moresby again noted the time on his watch and fitted the keys into first one lock and then the other. A bell rang below him as he pushed out into the open air.

          The northeast horizon was bright with the approaching dawn. It was ten minutes before five in the morning. The parking lot was empty.

          He knew he had made a mistake.

          The first and second sounds he heard were the booming thump of the mortar to the northwest, and a staccato tattoo of small arms fire near at hand--near the eastern gate. Moresby slammed shut the door behind him, made sure it had locked itself, and fell to the ground all in one blurring motion. The nearness of the battle was a shock. He pushed the rifle out in front of his face and crawled toward the corner of the building, searching for any moving object.

          He saw no moving thing in the space between the lab building and the nearest structure across the way. Firing was louder as he reached the corner and rounded it.

          A strong wind drove over the roof of the laboratory, blowing debris along the company street and bowing the tops of the trees planted along the thoroughfare. The wind seemed to be coming from everywhere, from every direction, moaning with a mounting intensity as it raced toward the northeast. Moresby stared that way with growing wonder and knew he'd made another mistake in guessing the coming dawn. That was not the sun. The red-orange brightness beyond the horizon was fire and the raging wind told him Chicago was being caught up in an enormous firestorm. When it grew worse, when steel melted and glass liquefied, a man would be unable to stand upright against the great inward rush of the feeding winds.

          Moresby searched the street a second time, searched the parking lot, then jumped suddenly to his feet and ran across the street to the safety of the nearest building. No shot followed him. He hugged the foundation wall, turned briefly to scan his back trail, and darted around a corner. Shrubbery offered a partial concealment. When he stopped to catch his breath and reconnoiter the open yard ahead, he discovered he had lost the military radio.

          The continued booming of the mortars worried him.

          It was easy to guess the Corporal's guard holding the northwest corner was outnumbered, and probably pinned down. The first voice on the radio said _he_ had a hell of a fight on his hands--"double red" was new terminology but quickly recognizable--down there near the gate or along the eastern perimeter, and men could not be spared for the defense of the northwestern corner. A wrong decision. Moresby thought that officer guilty of a serious error in judgment. He could hear light rifle fire at the gate--punctuated at intervals by a shotgun, suggesting civilians were involved in the skirmish--but those mortars were pounding the far corner of the station and they made a deadly difference.

          Moresby left the concealing shrubbery on the run. There had been no other activity about the laboratory, no betraying movement of invader or defender.

          He moved north and west, taking advantage of whatever cover offered itself, but occasionally sprinting along the open street to gain time--always watchfully alert for any other moving man. Moresby was painfully aware of the gap in intelligence: he didn't know the identity of the bandits, the ramjets, didn't know friend from foe save for the uniform he might be wearing. He knew better than to trust a man without uniform inside the fence: shotguns were civilian weapons. He supposed this damned thing was some civil uprising.

          The mortar fired again, followed by a second shell. If that pattern repeated itself, they were side by side working in pairs. Moresby fell into a jogging trot to hold his wind. He worried about the Chinese thrust, about the Harry called in on Chicago. Who would bring _them_ in on an American city? Who would ally himself with the Chinese?

          In a surprisingly short time he passed a series of old barracks set back from the street, and recognized one of them as the building he had lived in for a few weeks--some twenty-odd years ago. It now appeared to be in a sorry state. He jogged on without pause, following the sidewalk he'd sometimes used when returning from the mess hall. The hot wind rushed with him, overtaking him and half propelling him along his way. That fire over the horizon was feeding on the wind, on the debris being sucked into it.

          On a vagrant impulse--and because it lay in his direction--Moresby turned sharply to cut across a yard to E Street: the swimming pool was near at hand. He glanced at the sky and found it appreciably lighter: the real dawn was coming, bringing promise of a hot July day.

          Moresby gained the fence surrounding the patio and the pool and stopped running, because his breath was spent. Cautiously, rifle ready, he moved through the entranceway to probe the interior. The recreation area was deserted. Moresby walked over to the tiled rim and looked down: the pool was drained, the bottom dry and littered with debris--it had not been used this summer. He expelled a breath of disappointment. The next to last time he'd seen the pool--only a few days ago, after all, despite those twenty years--Katrina had played in the blue-green water wearing that ridiculous little suit, while Art had chased her like a hungry rooster, wanting to keep his hands on her body. A nice body, that. Art knew what he was doing. And Chaney sat on the sun deck, mooning over the woman--the civilian lacked the proper initiative; wouldn't fight for what he wanted.

          The mortars boomed again in the familiar one-two pattern. Moresby jumped, and spun around.

          Outside the patio fence he saw the automobile parked at the curb a short distance up the street, and cursed his own myopic planning. The northwest corner was a mile or more away, an agonizing distance when on foot.

          Moresby stopped in dismay at sight of the dashboard.

          The car was a small one-painted the familiar olive drab--more closely resembling the German beetle than a standard American compact, but its dash was nearly bare of ornament and instrument controls. There was no key, only a switch indicating the usual on-off positions; the vehicle had an automatic drive offering but three options: park, reverse, forward. A toggle switch for headlights, another for the windshield wipers completed the instrument cluster.

          Moresby slid in under the wheel and turned the switch on. A single idiot light blinked at him briefly and stayed out. Nothing else happened. He pushed the selector lever deeper into park, flicked the switch off and on again, but without result other than a repetitious blinking of the idiot light. Cursing the balky car, he yanked at the lever--pulling it into forward--and the car quickly shot away from the curb. Moresby fought the wheel and kicked hard on the brake, but not before the vehicle had ricocheted off the opposite curb and dealt a punishing blow to his spine. It came to a skidding stop in the middle of the street, throwing his chest against the wheel. There had been no audible sound of motor or machinery in motion.

          He stared down at the dashboard in growing wonder and realized he had an electric vehicle. Easing off on the brake, he allowed the car to gather forward momentum and seek its own speed. This time it did not appear to move as fast, and he went down gently on the accelerator. The car responded, silently and effortlessly.

          Moresby gunned it, running for the northwest fence. Behind him, the rattle of gunfire around the gate seemed to have lessened.

          The truck was still burning. A column of oily black smoke climbed into the early morning sky.

          Major Moresby abandoned the car and leaped for the ground when he was within fifty yards of the perimeter. A second hole had been torn in the fence, blasted by short mortar fire, and in his first quick scan of the area he saw the bodies of two aggressors sprawled in the same opening. They wore civilian clothing--dirty shirts and levis--and the only mark of identification visible on either corpse was a ragged yellow armband. Moresby inched toward the fence, seeking better information.

          The mortar was so near he heard the cough before the explosion. Moresby dug his face into the dirt and waited. The shell landed somewhere behind him, up slope, throwing rocks and dirt into the sky; debris pelted the back of his neck and fell on his unprotected head. He held his position, frozen to the ground and waiting stolidly for the second mortar to fire.

          It never fired.

          After a long moment he raised his head to stare down the slope beyond the ruptured fence. The slope offered poor shelter, and the enemy had paid a high price for that disadvantage: seven bodies were scattered over the terrain between the fence and a cluster of tree stumps two hundred yards below. Each of those bodies was dressed alike: street clothing, and a yellow band worn on the left arm.

          Ramjets.

          Moresby slid his gaze away to study the terrain.

          The land sloped gently away from his own position and away from the protective fence, dropping down two hundred yards before leveling off into tillable area. Flat land at the bottom looked as though it had been plowed in the spring, but no crop grew there now. A billboard stood at the base of the slope looking toward the main line of the Chicago and Mobile Southern Railroad, another five hundred yards beyond the plowed area. Thirty yards north of the billboard and five yards higher up the slope was a cluster of seven or eight tree stumps that had been uprooted from the soil and dumped to one side out of the way; the farmer had cleared his tillable area but hadn't yet burned the unwanted stumps. The wheel marks of an invading truck showed clearly on the field.

          Moresby studied the billboard and then the stumps. If he were directing the assault he would place a mortar behind each one; they were the only available cover.

          Moving cautiously, he brought up the rifle and put two quick shots through the billboard near its bottom. Another two shots followed, biting into the tall grass and weeds immediately below the board. He heard a shout, a cry of sudden pain, and saw a man leap from the weeds to run for the stumps. The bandit staggered as he ran, holding pain in his thigh.

          He was a soft target. Moresby waited, leading him.

          When the running man was, just halfway between the billboard and the nearest stump, he fired once--high, aiming for the chest. The falling body tumbled forward under its own headlong momentum and crashed to earth short of the stump.

          The cough of the mortar was a grotesque echo.

          Moresby delayed for a second--no more--and thrust his face into the dirt. There had been a furtive movement behind the stumps. The shell burst behind him, striking metal now instead of dirt, and he spun around on his belly to see the electric car disintegrate. Direct hit. Fragments rained down on him and he threw up his hands to protect his head and the back of his neck. His fingers stung.

          The rain stopped. Moresby sat up and threw an angry brace of shots at the stumps, wanting to put the fear of God into the mortarman. He fell back quickly to await the cough of the second mortar. It did not come. A stillness; other than the headlong rush of the wind and the tiny sound of sporadic firing at the main gate. Moresby felt a sudden heady elation: that back-up mortar was out of action. _One down_. Deliberately sitting up, deliberately taking aim, he emptied the rifle at the offending tree stumps. There was no answering fire, despite the target he offered. He had nothing more than a mortar to contend with--a mortar manned by a civilian. A poor goddamned civilian.

          Moresby discovered a trickle of blood on his fingers and knew the keen exuberance of battle. A shout declared his gleeful discovery. He rolled to the ground to reload his weapon and shouted again, hurling a taunt at the enemy.

          He searched the area behind the fence for the defenders, the Corporal's guard he'd picked up on the radio. They should have joined him when he opened fire down slope. His searching glance picked out three men this side of the fence, near the burning truck, but they couldn't have joined in. The empty shoes and helmet liner of a fourth man lay on the scarred ground ten yards away. He caught a flicker of movement in a shell hole--it may have been no more than the bat of an eye, or the quiver of parched lips--and found the only survivor. A bloodless face stared over the rim of the hole at him.

          Moresby scrabbled across the exposed slope and fell into the hole with the soldier.

          The man wore Corporal's stripes on his only arm and clutched at a strap which had once been attached to a radio; the remainder of each had been blown away. He didn't move when Moresby landed hard beside him and burrowed into the bloodied pit. The Corporal stared helplessly at the place where Moresby had been, at the boiling column of oily smoke rising above the truck, at the coming sun, at the sky. His head would not turn. Moresby threw away his useless rations pack and tilted the canteen to the Corporal's mouth. A bit of water trickled between his lips but the greater part of it ran down his chin and would have been lost, had Moresby not caught it in his hand and rubbed it over the man's mouth. He attempted to force more between the lips.

          The Corporal moved his head with a feeble negative gesture and Moresby stopped, knowing he was choking on the water; instead, he poured more into his open palm and bathed the Corporal's face, pulling down the wide eyelids with a wet caressing motion of his fingers. The bright and hurtful sky was shut out.

          Wind roared across the face of the slope and over the plowed field below, sweeping toward the lakefront.

          Moresby raised his eyes to study the slope and the field. A carelessly exposed foot and ankle were visible behind a tree stump. Calmly--without the haste that might impair his aim--he brought up his rifle and put a single slug into the ankle. He heard a bellowing cry of pain, and the curse directed at him. The target vanished from sight. Moresby's gaze came back to the empty shoes and helmet liner beyond the shell hole. He decided to move--knew he _had_ to move now to prevent that mortar from coming in on him.

          He fired again at the stumps to keep the mortarman down, then sprinted for the ruptured hole in the fence where the bodies of the two aggressors lay. He fell on his belly, fired another round and then jumped on all fours against the nearest body, burrowing down behind it as a shield against the mortarman. The raging wind blew over the hole.

          Moresby plucked at the bandit's shirt, tearing away the armband and bringing it up to his eyes for a careful inspection.

          It was no more than a strip of yellow cotton cloth cut from a bolt of goods, and bearing a crude black cross in India ink. There was no word, slogan, or other point of identification to establish a fealty. Black cross on yellow field. Moresby prodded his memory, wanting to fit that symbol into some known civilian niche. It had to fit into a neat little slot somewhere. His orderly mind picked and worried at the unfamiliar term: _ram jet_.

          Nothing. Neither sign nor name were known prior to the launch, prior to 1978.

          He rolled the stiffening body over on its back the better to see the face, and knew jarring shock. The black and bloodied face was still twisted in the agony of death. Two or more slugs had torn into the man's midsection, while another had ripped away his throat and showered his face with his own blood; it had not been instantaneous death. He had died in screaming misery alongside the man next to him, vainly attempting to break through the fence and take the defenders up the slope.

          Major Moresby was long used to death in the field; the manner of this man's dying didn't upset him--but the close scrutiny of his enemy jolted him as he'd not been jolted before. He suddenly understood the crude black cross etched on the yellow field, even though he'd not seen it before today. This was a civilian rebellion-- organ.zed insurrection.

          Ramjets were Negro guerrillas.

          The mortar coughed down the slope and Major Moresby burrowed in behind the body. He waited impatiently for the round to drop somewhere behind him, above him, and then by God he'd _take_ that mortar.

          The time was twenty minutes after six in the morning, 4 July 1999. The rising sun burned the horizon.

          A ramjet mortarman with a shattered ankle peered warily over a tree stump, and counted himself the victor.

          Lieutenant Commander Arthur Saltus

          23 November 2000

          Yesterday this day's madness did prepare;

          Tomorrow's silence, triumph, or despair:

          Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why;

          Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.