Downtiming the Night Side

RIDING THE LOOP

She had her showdown with Ginny, and it only told her that Doc had been right, as usual.

“You shouldn’t have the baby.”

“Why? What’s wrong with what I did? You and Daddy did it all the time!”

“But that was different!”

“How!”

How, indeed, did you explain such things to one raised as Ginny had been? They went around and around with it, but got nowhere. Finally, Dawn gave up, recognizing defeat. Doc and the others would have to deal with it, by force if necessary, but probably just by giving them the uptime experience they desperately needed.

They, all the children, even young Mark, would have to make their own decisions on their futures. She could not and would not do it for them.

Finally, during a walk outside, she told them she had to leave them.

“Like Daddy?” little Sarah asked worriedly.

“No, not like Daddy. I have to work for them now. I have to pay them back for all they’ve done for us.” And to us, she added silently.

“I don’t like them,” Joseph said flatly. “They took Dad away.”

“No, no! You must never think like that! Your father was a fighter in their fight, just like I was. Fighters sometimes don’t come back. Let them show you what uptime is like and what it’s like to live in it. Then maybe you’ll understand.”

“Are you not gonna come back, too, Mommie?” Cathy asked.

“I hope I am,” she told them sincerely, “but I don’t know. There are some very bad people on the other side and they’ve done some very bad things. I have to try and stop them, try to undo some of the bad they’ve done. I—your father and I—sort of accidentally helped the bad things happen. I have to put it right.”

“Why?” asked Mark.

“Well, if you know something bad’s going to happen, and you can do something about it and don’t, then you’re just as bad as the ones who did it. You let it happen when it didn’t have to.”

That more or less went over. At least she and Ron had taught some moral lessons, although she was beginning to see where they’d fallen down on the job in some respects.

It was tough to leave them, but she really had no choice. Not only did the moral lesson make sense, but, disregarding the morals of the thing, she really had no choice. In every sense of the word, they held her and the children hostage.

The plan that was worked out was both direct and clever, although they knew that there would have to be elements of improvisation. As Lind had warned, they would expect an attempt at reversal and would have some nasty surprise waiting.

She was both surprised and delighted to find that Herb could go, but the other three were team members she knew only slightly, despite the long time at the base. Nikita she knew slightly; the small, weasel-like man was not the friendly type, but he had been civil to both her and the kids. Lucia was a tough but tiny woman who looked like a born gymnast. Her dark brown skin and wooly hair bespoke a central African origin, but, of course, it was difficult to determine anyone’s true origins around here.

The fourth member was Faouma, whose name sounded vaguely Arabic but who was an enormous, Nordic-looking woman, fully six-three or better. She had a hard, permanently mean and nasty expression, and was all business.

“This has been mapped out so that each of you knows your part in the plot. The important thing is to do your assignment. Only when it’s over should you move to cover someone else. Dawn, Lucia, and I have specific things to do; Faouma and Nikita will assist as needed. Dawn? You understand the weapon?”

She nodded. “I’ve test-fired it, but with the kind of spray it gives I couldn’t miss even without the goggles.”

“Good. Remember your time schedules. It’s critical. Jump only to save your own life before we’re all out of there. Understand?”

“We’re ready,” responded Faouma. “Let’s do it.”

Just in case, all belts were set to return to an individually specified date when none of them had been in the Safe Zone in the old time and location. To return to where they were supposed to be, they would have to perform an extra setting, known only to them, on the time and location board before pressing home.

There was a certain order to it, because of relative time. Dawn and Nikita had to go first, for her initial action was crucial to the rest. Although they might miss Dawn in the scan, in the time it would take them to do their job and work down to the square, they might well be spotted by the opposition, which might then adjust its game plan.

Dawn and Nikita stood there, and on Herb’s count pressed their time controllers. Both “fell” uptime.

Dawn had half expected to become Neumann when they started with this, a personality and existence she barely remembered at all, but no longer. Neumann was Ron; she was Dawn, a nightsider. The same person could not exist in the same time period at the same time, but at this stage they were two different people entirely.

As soon as she felt solid ground and the sensations of time travel had ceased, she pulled down her goggles. At night, in this darkened position along the road, she had better vision than Nikita. She had started her watch with the others, but now could read it. It read 01:43. Nikita faded into the neighborhood, giving her backup and cover. She checked the weapon, very much like a rifle, although weighing only ounces and feeling like a child’s toy. All the settings had been perfect, but everything would be for nothing if they had made one mistake and if Marx was not, in fact, taking this route to his assignation in the square. If not, they would have to jump back no later than 01:50 and a new plan would have to be improvised.

She crouched there in the darkness, watching the road and trying to avoid the occasional oil lamps and torch lighting that smudged her vision. She checked her watch. 01:46. She began to worry that he wouldn’t come.

The worst part was, the place did not look or feel familiar. She was only vaguely aware of who Karl Marx was, and couldn’t even remember the name of the town they were in, although she’d studied its street maps with Herb. She had, she realized, come even farther than she thought down the road to individuality, and, oddly, it pleased her.

01:48 on the watch did not.

Suddenly, far off, she heard the sound of someone walking, heels hitting the brick walk. She tensed, ready to do the job. She was going to save a man’s life, she knew, even if she no longer recalled or understood who or what he’d been.

The strange footsteps grew closer, and she could clearly see now that it was a young man with a beard, dressed in a funny, old-fashioned suit. She expected, when she saw him, to know him instantly, but found that he looked no more familiar than the photo Herb had shown them. Still, if Herb’s photos were right, this was indeed Karl Marx.

He was walking very slowly, almost hesitatingly, and his manner seemed to indicate a great deal of indecision. Clearly, Marx was uncertain as to whether or not this was a smart thing to do. He stopped near her, and she froze, fearing that he’d seen her. But the stop was to suppress a yawn as best he could, rub his eyes a bit, then continue on.

She let him get about five yards beyond her position, then rose silently and, raising the rifle, pulled the trigger.

There was a feeling in the rifle like a vibrator had been turned on for a brief moment, and her vision was momentarily wiped out by a sparkling ray of light. She heard a man cry out softly, once, and then the sound of a body falling.

Nikita was by her in an instant. “Just fine,” he whispered. “He’s out for a half-hour, won’t know what hit him, and he’ll think he tripped and fell. You all right?”

She nodded. “Knocked out my glasses for a minute. It’s coming back now.”

“O.K. Help me roll him over into the grass here, so anybody coming by won’t see him right away.” They did it, although the man was quite heavy. Marx, she was relieved to see, was breathing, but in his tumble to the pavement he’d struck his head, and there was an ugly, if superficial, gash on his right forehead.

“You want to keep safety watch here instead of me?” the little man asked her. “It’s O.K. if you do. I don’t mind.”

“No, we’ll go as planned,” she told him. “I’ll be all right.” And, with that, she left him and went on down the walk toward the town.

It was an eerie wait, back in the shadows of an alleyway looking on the square. All was silence, and there was no movement except for those shadows and the noise of the multiple fountains pouring into the catch basin. In the stillness they sounded like huge waterfalls, the noise caught by the buildings and echoed back again and again.

It was a short wait compared to London, but it seemed forever in the stillness. When the church clock struck the three-quarter hour, Moosic tensed, checked his pistol for the hundredth time, and began to look for signs of another, either Sandoval or Marx. At approximately 1:50 the policeman patrolling the area walked into the square, panicking him for a moment. The cop checked all the doors facing the square, looked around, and finally made his way from the square and down a side street, but not before the clock chimed two. The minutes now crept back as the patrolman’s footsteps receded and finally died away in the distance, but there was still no sign of anyone else in the square.

Then, quite suddenly, he heard the clicking of shoes on cobblestone. Someone was coming down the same street the policeman had used to leave, coming towards the square. He tensed, praying that Marx had decided not to come after all, and waited until the oncoming figure strode into the square. He strained to catch a glimpse of the newcomer, and saw him at last, in the glow of a street lamp.

It was certainly no one he’d ever seen before. He was tall, thin, and at least in middle age, with a long and unkempt black beard and a broad-brimmed hat that concealed much of the rest of his features. He was dressed in the seedy clothes of one who was used to sleeping in his only suit. He didn’t seem armed, and he certainly didn’t have the time suit with him, if indeed he were Sandoval and not just some bum avoiding the policeman.

Moosic stood up and was about ready to go out and confront the man, when there was a sudden noise behind him. He felt a pistol at the back of his head, and quietly the man’s voice whispered, “I think you better remain where you are and not make a sound. Put the gun down, nice and quiet, on the ground. No false moves, my friend! At this range I could hardly miss.”

He did as instructed, then slowly got up as the pistol was pulled away. He turned, and saw his captor. The man was tall, lean, and dressed entirely in black, in a uniform rather similar to the one his mysterious woman in London was wearing. But this was no ordinary-looking chubby woman; this man was extremely muscular, with a strong face like a Nordic god’s, his pure blond hair neatly cut in a military trim. Behind him lurked two large black shapes that looked somehow inhuman, but whose features were impossible to determine in the near total darkness of the alley. One thing was clear, though—from the blinking little lights—all three wore belts similar to the one the woman had worn. This, then, was the true enemy.

Knowing it was hopeless, he turned again to watch the scene in the square. More footsteps now, and the seedy-looking man leaning on the lamppost stiffened, then stepped back into a doorway for a moment. In another minute, Moosic saw Marx walk nervously into the square from his right and look around. He appeared alone and unarmed.

The twin personalities inside the Neumann body converged in an emotional rage. He glanced back briefly at the mysterious blond man, and noted with the professional’s eye that his captor was looking less at him than at the scene in the square. The time agent was larger and more powerful than Neumann, but if he could just idly get one step back, just one step, that might not mean a thing. Pretending to watch what was going on in the square, he measured the distance and moves out of the comer of his eye.

Quickly he lunged around, his knee coming up and hitting the blond man squarely in the balls. The man in black cursed in pain and doubled over, dropping his strange-looking pistol. Quickly Moosic rolled, picked up his own pistol, and was out of the alley and to his right.

“Heir Marx! It’s a trap! Drop to the ground!” he shouted.

Marx was about ten feet from Sandoval, and at the noise and yell he froze and turned to look back in utter confusion. Sandoval reached into his pants and pulled out a gun, while behind Moosic, in the alley, two strange figures ran out into the light. Two figures out of nightmare.

They seemed to be almost like living statues, black all over, although they seemed to wear nothing except the time belts, their skin or whatever it was that was glistening like polished black metal. Their features were gargoyle-like, the stuff of nightmares in any age. Both had automatic rifles in their hands.

They had, however, overrun Moosic, who unhesitatingly brought up the pistol and fired at them. The strange pistol seemed to chirp rather than explode, but a tiny ball of light leaped from it and struck one of the creatures in the back. There was a scream, and the thing collapsed in pain.

At the same moment, a dark figure came up behind Sandoval. “Don’t move or you’re a dead man,” Dawn said, rifle trained on him, this time with the setting on lethal charge. The man froze, then slowly turned, looking for an opening.

At the same time, the remaining gargoyle turned to fire at Neumann, but the other man in the square, whom they’d all taken to be Marx, turned and fired a bright blue ray that enveloped the creature. The thing’s body shimmered, and then vanished, leaving only a scorch mark on the ground and an acrid, burning odor.

Taking advantage of the confusion, Sandoval turned to look directly at his captor. “Vas ist…” he began, confused, and she stopped him. She did not remember him consciously, but something came from deep inside her.

“Moosic,” she responded, and fired. He flared as had the creature, again blinding her. She smelled him, though, and dropped to the ground just in case there was any more danger.

Back in the alley, Eric Benoni started to take aim at the figure who had pretended to be Marx, but some sixth sense warned him and, instead, he quickly pressed his “Home” key and vanished.

Herb, dressed in period clothes and with a false set of whiskers, ran to the alley, but he only met Faouma there. “Missed the bastard by a hair,” she grunted and cursed.

Herb gave her a sharp look. “Neumann’s already on the run. Let’s collect our own and get the hell out of here. This was much too easy.”

Holger Neumann was in a state of panic and confusion, but he at least had seen the job done. All he wanted now was out, out and home—but would they let him?

The ancient city had become now a nightmarish place, a surreal horror whose shadows reached out and threatened him at every turn. Behind, and possibly from above him, he thought he heard the sounds of pursuit.

The central square of Trier looked eerie and threatening in the early morning hours, lit only by a few huge candles in the street lights, their flickering casting ever-changing and monstrous shadows on the cobblestones and the sides of the now dark buildings.

Moosic gave the square a professional going-over between midnight and one, noting the rounds of the local policeman. He wanted no repetition of the debacle in London. This time there would be one target and one target only, and that target would be taken out as soon as positively identified. That should not be too difficult, he thought, if he could shoot straight. He already knew the policeman, and he knew Marx, so anyone else likely to be here at two almost had to be his quarry.

The hotel door was locked, of course, at this time of night, but he’d made certain he had a key, telling the proprietor earlier that he had a very late party. He fumbled in panic with the key, finally got it in and shut the door behind him. He almost ran up the stairs until he realized that he hadn’t his room key, went back quickly and got it from behind the desk, then bounded up the stairs not caring whom he awakened. He unlocked the door and went immediately to the steamer trunk, where he’d locked the suit. Fumbling for yet another key in the darkness, he dropped it twice and had to calm himself down before he could find it again and fit it in the large brass lock.

A scratching sound caused him to turn towards the window, and in a split second he saw the horrible face of the second gargoyle framed in it, gun coming up. He picked up his own and fired, and the thing was gone. He didn’t know if he’d hit it or not.

He kicked off his shoes and got into the suit, which fit his new frame rather well. Placing the gun so he could easily pick it up again, he put on the helmet as he heard noises and shouting both in the hall and outside. The noise had apparently roused half the town.

He got the helmet on and sealed it, then adjusted the small pentometers for across-the-board zeroes, then pressed “Activate.”

Inside the helmet, a little message flashed saying, “Insufficient power.”

He cursed. The dials still said ninety-five percent power reserve. That should be more than enough to get back home! He tried again, and again the little words flashed inside the suit.

He reached up to adjust them again, and at that moment another, perhaps the same, grinning black monstrosity showed in the window. He spun the damned controls and activated.

The creature got off a shot, but where its target had been, there was suddenly nothing at all but an empty room. Behind, there were loud yells and curses and somebody shouted, “Break the door down!”

Satisfied that the proper result had been obtained, Lucia ducked back from the window and pulled off the grotesque mask she had been wearing, then moved swiftly along the ledge and around a corner, out of sight of those breaking into the room. There, before this had even started, she’d anchored her line, and now she slid down it to the street level, gave a yank, and it fell out, then neatly reeled itself into a device in her hands which she had clipped to the belt.

“All in, all in,” she heard Herb’s tinny voice on the belt communicator, which should have been the signal for her to jump back to home, but she did not. Like Herb, she felt it had been too easy.

Back in the square, Herb and Faouma ran to assist Dawn, who got up unsteadily. She could see again, although it was still somewhat dim. In the distance, they could hear footsteps running towards the square, and in a few of the upper floors of buildings facing it, lights were burning now.

Herb gestured to a dark street nearby. “Back in there, quick! We’ll jump as soon as we’re able!” The two women followed him without another word.

They got about a block from the square when a woman’s voice they had not heard before said, in the accented manner of time travelers and in English, “Freeze! Just where you are!”

They stopped, and all three fingered their guns nervously, looking for a chance.

“There are savants on all sides of you,” the woman warned. “You will drop your weapons and raise your hands—now!”

“She’s right,” Dawn whispered. “I can see two of them just ahead on either side.”

They dropped their weapons.

It was too dark for normal sight in the tiny street, but Dawn’s special vision made her out. Medium build, dark hair; good build, but an ugly face. It was one she’d never seen before. The mystery woman did, however, wear a time belt.

“Now, just unhitch your belts and let them drop; then kick them away from you,” the woman instructed. “Remember—the savants will shoot at the first sign of trouble.”

“Let ’em shoot, then,” Herb told her. “That way you don’t get the belts.” Faouma seemed in agreement. All Dawn could think of was that she would never see the kids again.

“Groak! Stun beam!” the woman ordered, and there was a loud flash of rays. Dawn, like the other two, braced for it, but when it didn’t come, she just dropped to the street anyway. The ray, of course, had blinded her again. Shots crackled in the air, and she felt half her body burn and then go numb.

Herb practically fell over her, but both he and Faouma had wasted no time in dropping, rolling, and coming up with their weapons. Rays crackled all over the tiny street, and there were sounds of stirring from inside the buildings. Suddenly, it was over, and Lucia from one side and Nikita from the other ran to them.

“You all right?” Lucia asked Herb, but he was lying on his side, fumbling with his belt.

“Everybody—jump now! Home! Don’t wait! Lucia— punch out anybody who can’t do it themselves, dead or alive!”

Somebody ran to Dawn, punched in a set of numbers, and pressed the “Home” key.

She was falling downtime.

“The plot all along,” Chung Lind commented, “was the capture of the squad’s belts, that’s clear. And in spite of knowing we were set up, we almost fell into that trap.”

“My fault,” Herb said flatly. “I just got overconfident, that’s all. They must have been on the rooftops around the square all the time. As soon as we picked an exit route, they moved to seal off the far end of that street. It was a clever setup, I got to admit. If Nicky and Lucia had obeyed orders and jumped, we’d all be happy little citizens of Prussia right now.”

“Or dead,” Faouma added. “It was doubly lucky that they were all set to stun instead of kill.”

“Not so much luck there,” Lind responded. “They could have their cake and eat it, too. Get the belts, keep the scan on tight, then come back and pick you all up in your Trier identities and take you forward on their belts. In any case, they couldn’t risk a killing beam for fear of destroying those belts. It was close.”

“You’ll never know how close,” Nicky told them. “There were two of us and four of them. When the woman gave the orders to stun, I told Lucia on the personal band we’d better move in. We just figured that they’d stun the squad, so they couldn’t bring their own weapons back up on us. We just did a wide spray and prayed for the best.”

Chung Lind sighed. “Well, enough recriminations. History is composed of a series of lucky breaks, and this one was ours. The point is, they have the capacity to stage this again and again. The next time might be different. The only way to be secure is to turn the tables on them.”

“You got a line on who that woman was?” Herb asked them all.

Everybody shrugged or shook their heads. “Never seen or heard of her before. They’ve let Benoni run a one-man show up to now,” Nicky said.

“I don’t like it,” Lind told them. “Up to now, we’ve been pretty secure, believing that they didn’t have sufficient power to mount two simultaneous teams or the expertise to handle them. Well, now we know we were wrong. Makes me worry what else we don’t know.”

Lind’s attention turned now to Dawn. “Are you O.K.?”

She nodded. “I think so. I thought we were gone for sure there, though. Half of me couldn’t move. It was like I had nothing below my stomach at all.”

“Partial stun effect,” Herb told her. “We all got it. Faouma was out cold. It wears off, though—like it did with our friend Marx.”

She looked at Lind. “It’s O.K., then?”

He nodded. “The loop’s closed. Marx will live and do his major work. I admit the irony that we just accomplished something which, in the long run, will strengthen the enemy and prolong the war, but it was necessary. We’ve bought several years of absolute time to continue our work, and time is pretty much back on its original mainline track. Everybody relax and get some rest. We’ve got a lot of work to do yet, and I want you all fresh and ready to go.”

Dawn sought out Doc and asked about the children, whom she didn’t see.

“They’re uptime, under guidance,” the physician told her. “Don’t worry about them. They’re safe and secure.”

“I—I may not even know them when they’re through this. It worries me.”

“You and I know it’s the only way. Get some rest now, and we’ll close that second loop tomorrow.”

“Uh—Doc?”

“Yes?”

“I’m worried. I—I don’t know, I just am. Killing that man back there—I wanted to do it, and I don’t really understand why.”

Kahwalini sighed and sat down beside her. “Long ago I told you that none of the people I’ve been are dead. They’re all still here, locked in my mind, a part of me in some way or another. We forget it, because we no longer feel it. They’re not separate anymore, and maybe it’s only small parts of them, but they’re there. You didn’t know him, but a little bit of Ron did, a little bit of hate born of what he’d seen that man do. Now it’s over. Mission accomplished. Now you can sleep.”

But she couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t the killing anymore, not really. She could understand at least the basics of what Doc told her, and accepted it. No, it was lying there in the permanent darkness, feeling very alone. Ron was gone, and would never be back. Any last remnants of him had been purged by the killing of Sandoval. She didn’t have to have it proved to her—she felt it. He, through her, had finally done his job, and there was no more reason for him to exist except as a memory in her mind.

Doc, however, for all her wisdom and genius, couldn’t really understand the basic problem now. Maybe Kahwalini had been somebody like her once upon a time, but, if so, it was a long time ago. Doc was strong, and smart— somebody who made things happen. She, Dawn, was not, and could never be.

The world was made up of survivors and victims, she thought glumly. She wasn’t a victim—at least, she didn’t think she was, in the sense of personality—but survivors survived in different ways. Doc, Herb, Lind, Nicky, Lucia, Faouma—they survived by being tough, by being leaders. Ron had been a leader-type, and that’s what had made him strong.

She wasn’t really strong, she knew, no matter what she’d just gone through. She’d done it because she had to, but she did have to have it forced on her. She survived through others, and that wasn’t all that bad. She survived to be a companion, a lover, to Ron. She survived for the sake of the children. She wanted to keep surviving.

Now Ron was gone, and the children were being lost to her. She couldn’t do anything more for them. When Alfie escaped, then they would try to prevent it from happening at all. Supposedly, they had a better chance of doing that because of what they were doing now, but she really didn’t try to understand it anymore.

Win or lose, the next few days would be the end of what purpose she still had, what need she could fill. No matter what happened, she would be alone then, and she couldn’t stand to be alone…

Rescuing Alfie was not as simple as it had first appeared. To start with, she had to get down to that bridge where the time suit was anchored and haul it up, and she had to do it all herself. Not one of the squad could afford to travel in this particular time frame, which was one reason why Eric had chosen it for his test.

The suit was incredibly heavy, and large even for her. Still, she remembered all the instructions, first removing the huge, bulky power pack from the rear backpack and carrying it back and letting it drop into the Thames. Time was crucial now, for once the suit’s residual power was exhausted, a matter of only a few minutes, it would cease to exist.

Quickly she snapped in the new power pack, a small and light plant similar to the ones used on the belts with framing and contacts made so that it would fit into the power pack bracket in the suit and provide the necessary juice.

It worked fine, and, as a side effect, it made the suit far lighter, although no less bulky. She wondered how she could both be somebody entirely different yet recognized as the same person by the suit, but while she’d had many explanations, she knew she’d never get it straight.

Because she was not in phase, she was not subject to assimilation and its limitations. First she reset the suit controls the way they’d instructed her, then carefully drew it to her, using an extender device to wrap around the suit, connected on both sides to her time belt. In a sense, it was an extra belt just for the suit, but controlled and managed by her belt’s microprocessor.

She activated the belt, and almost instantaneously was inside a grim and drab little room. There were bars on the windows and on the heavy oak door, which was locked from the outside. A single gas lamp, turned down to dim, lit the room, which smelled of death and dying. In a corner was a small bed, and in it a very battered and bruised figure, so tiny and helpless.

Alfie was asleep.

Quietly she detached the suit, fearful of alerting the hall wardens not far away, and brought it over to the still figure. Although feeling pressed for time, her heart went out to the kid, and she laid everything out, ready to go, before awakening him. Almost as an afterthought, she pushed the goggles up, so that he wouldn’t be faced with some strange-looking monster. She’d been blind so long it didn’t really matter, and it was simple from here on out.

“Wake up,” she said in a hushed tone, shaking him gently. He stirred, moaned a little, then said, “ ’Ho’re you? Some kind of prison nurse?”

“No,” she whispered, “and keep your voice down. Time is very short, and the amount of power required to allow me to be here without assimilation is enormous.”

He was in great pain, but much of the morphia had worn off, allowing the Moosic personality a little latitude. He mustered all his will to force himself forward, reminding himself that Sandoval had done it. “You—you are from the future.” It was a statement, not a question.

“In a way, yes. I’ve brought you something you need desperately, but you’ll have to move fast. Can you make it out of bed?”

“Oi… think so.” He tried and, with her help, got to a shaky standing position. It was then that he saw it, there on the floor. “The toime suit!” he breathed.

He sat back on the bed and she helped him into it. It was enormous for the body of Alfie Jenkins, far too large to be practical, and he said so.

“Don’t worry. Once you punch out, it’ll be O.K., and both Alfie and Ron will live. Understand?”

He nodded dully.

“The power pack is on full-charge now—I did it before coming here. And I’ve set it for the correct time and place. There is still a chance of catching Sandoval.”

“But ’istory—it’s already changed.”

“Very little. Marx would have died in a few years anyway, and all his important work was done. He was killed by a boy in the pay of anti-Communists, a boy who then escaped from gaol. That’s all the change. Now—helmet on. Check the pouch when you arrive. And remember—Sandoval’s power is nearly gone. He’s landed a hundred miles from his goal. You can beat him there. Now—seal and go!”

“But wait! Just ’ho are you?”

But the seal snapped in place and he was in silence, although nearly swimming in the suit. If he stood up, he knew he’d sink below and out of the helmet, so he didn’t try. The mysterious woman reached out and touched the suit activation switches.

Tiny Alfie, almost smothered in the enormous suit, faded out. Almost immediately her hands went to her own belt, and she pressed the “Home” key.

Now there was only one thing left to do.