The Year of the Quiet Sun

TWO

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

Brian Chaney thanked him and went through the door.

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

He nodded to the men and said: “My name is Chaney. I’ve been—”

The hurtful sound stopped him, cut off his words.

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

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

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

The newcomer waited them out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Is that good?”

“That’s the best we’ll ever have.”

“Bully. What’s going on?”

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

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

“Drafted,” Chaney replied, and saw the man wince.

The young woman said quickly: “Mr. Chaney?”

He turned and found her standing. “Miss van Hise.”

“We expected you earlier, Mr. Chaney.”

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

“Sleeper?” the older man demanded. “The railroad? Why didn’t you fly in?”

Chaney felt embarrassed. “I’m afraid of planes.”

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

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

The woman said again: “Mr. Chaney, please.”

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

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

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

“A civilian?” Major Moresby asked gravely.

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

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

Saltus: “Translation: we’ve got to keep those funds rolling in.”

Moresby: “Damn it! Is politics into this thing?”

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

“You mean surveillance,” Moresby groused.

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

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

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

“Ah,” Saltus nodded. “That Chaney.”

“Mr. Chaney authored a book on the Qumran scrolls.”

Major Moresby reacted. “That Chaney?”

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

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

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

“Good for him. Was it successful?”

“It was. You may know the Vulgate.”

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

“Chaney! You aren’t comparing this poppycock of yours to the Vulgate?”

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

Kathryn van Hise said insistently: “Gentlemen.”

Three heads turned to look at her.

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

“Now?” Saltus asked. “Today?”

“We have already lost too much time. Sit down.”

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

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

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

“Bartlett is a good man to know.”

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

“They were never classified.”

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

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

“I’ll bet you know where they are.”

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

“Hey — do you think the Arabs will crack Israel?”

“No, not now. Ten, twenty years ago, they may have, but not now. I’ve seen their munitions plants.”

Saltus leaned forward. “Have they got the H-bomb?”

“Yes.”

Saltus whistled. Moresby muttered: “Armageddon.”

“Gentlemen! May I have your attention now?”

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

Saltus laughed. “You always have it, Katrina.”

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

Chaney asked: “Are we working for NASA?”

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

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

“No, sir.”

“That’s a relief. I won’t have to fly?”

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

“That’s bad. There are alternatives?”

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

Major Moresby chuckled at his discomfiture.

Chaney asked: “Do we just sit here and wait for something to happen — wait for that vehicle to work?”

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

Saltus: “Hot damn!”

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

“We’re going up there? That far?”

“I thought I had made that clear, Mr. Chaney.”

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

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

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

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

“Why?”

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

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

“But I understood you were under fire in Israel?”

“That’s different. I couldn’t stop the shelling and the work had to be done.”

“You could have quit the country.”

“No, I couldn’t do that — not until the work was done, not until the translation was finished and the book ready.”

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

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

“Did you read my dossier? All of it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ouch. Did it contain information — ah, gossip about an incident on the far side of the New Allenby Bridge?”

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

Saltus eagerly: “Hey — what’s this?”

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

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

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

“And they nabbed you? Almost shot you?”

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

Saltus: “But what happened to the woman?”

“Nothing. No time. She got away.”

“Too bad,” Saltus exclaimed.

Kathryn van Hise asked: “May we continue, please?”

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

“Yes, sir.”

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

Arthur Saltus broke in again before the woman could respond. “The monkeys haven’t complained — you shouldn’t.”

“Monkeys?”

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

“But supposing they did?”

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

Kathryn van Hise said: “Once again, please.”

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

Moresby caught his meaning and laughed.

Chaney was wary. “What am I in for?”

“You’re going up naked.” Saltus lifted his shirt to slap a bare chest. “We’re all going up naked.”

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

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

“Naked? All the way naked?”

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

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

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

THREE

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

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

“Try once more,” he begged.

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

“Him? A committee will have to make up his mind for him.”

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

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

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

Kathryn van Hise cleared her throat.

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

Chaney said: “That’s uncharacteristic of them. The military always buys two of everything, just in case.”

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

“They’re making sixty-one second tests?”

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

Brian Chaney was certain she held something back.

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

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

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

“All the tests were successful?”

She hesitated, then said: “Yes, sir.”

“You haven’t lost a monkey? Not one?”

“No, sir.”

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

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

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

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

“You’re a cad, civilian. You ripped off that veil.”

“But the maidens make that unnecessary.”

“Gentlemen, please.”

Saltus wouldn’t be stopped. “And think of our poor Katrina — back to a bureaucrat’s desk, Congress will cut off our slush funds: chop. You know how they are.”

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

“Please!”

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

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

“Now?” Saltus asked.

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

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

“Project Donaghadee?”

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

“Of course. The monument is the man.”

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

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

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

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

Moresby seemed disappointed. “Joliet.”

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

Saltus: “Walk? With cars everywhere?”

The woman frowned. “Do not attempt to steal an automobile. It may be difficult, perhaps impossible, to free you from jail. It simply wouldn’t do, Commander.”

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

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

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

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

“Unless they’ve walked out on strike.”

“Sir?”

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

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

“I have this feeling that I’ll come out — come to the surface — a thousand years older.”

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

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

Moresby interrupted. “What about those stores?”

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

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

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

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

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

“Who pays the electric bill?”

“A nuclear power station is located on the post.”

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

“I don’t know, sir.”

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

Chaney was still curious. “Does the TDV need that much power?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chaney, with surprise: “Three? Aren’t we going up together? Going to the same target?”

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

“The people up there will sneer at our clothes.”

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

“Oh? What will preoccupy them?”

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

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

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

Chaney said: “I’m on their side; I enjoy privacy.”

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

Saltus: “I will?”

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

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

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

“For how long a period of time?”

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

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

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

“We’re to report everything we find up there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I only hope Seabrooke has anticipated public reaction. He’s headed for a rift within the lute.”

“Sir?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

FOUR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I thought this was a barracks.”

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

“That other building is new.”

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

“I’d like to see that damned thing.”

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

“You have? What?”

“Promise you won’t tell Katrina? You won’t tell the man in the White House I broke security?”

“Cross my heart, spit at the moon and everything.”

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

“Back? Why?”

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

“But they seldom have titles.”

Saltus was stopped. “Why not?”

“Titles just weren’t important at the time.”

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

“Is that all?”

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

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

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

Chaney said: “Fantastic.”

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

“I’m being skeptical, sailor.”

“Spoil-sport!”

“Why would we want to copy the scrolls?”

“To be first.”

“Why that?”

Saltus stepped all the way out of the shower.

“Well — to be first, that’s all. We like to be first in everything. Where’s your patriotism, civilian?”

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

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

“I didn’t know.”

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

I remember.

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

Chaney said: “I’ve learned something new.”

“What s that?’

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

“Air Intelligence. I thought you knew.”

“I didn’t. Espionage?”

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

“Air Intelligence,” Chaney mused. “A sharpie?”

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

“I’m not likely to forget them. Top secret.”

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

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

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

“Hey — how do you like our Katrina?”

Chaney said: “Let us consider beauty a sufficient end.”

“Mister, did you swallow a copy of Bartlett?”

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

“Haakon? Who is Haakon?”

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

“Photographs five thousand years ago?”

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

“I’d like to see that. May I borrow the book?”

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

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

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

“I give up! Let’s go to breakfast.”

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

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

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

“If she will permit it. We may have to study.”

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

“I’m fascinated by them — numbers and people. The relief of a plastic stomach may cause a citizen to switch from the activist A to the more conservative B; his vote may alter the outcome of an election, and a conservative administration — local, state, or national — may stall or do nothing about a problem that needed solving yesterday. The Great Lakes problem is a problem because of just that.”

Saltus said: “Excuse me. What problem?”

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

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

“That’s no joke. It may be.”

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

“I’ve published only one book. There was no doom.”

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

“You’ve been talking about me. Idle gossiping!”

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

Chaney answered with a single word.

Saltus was interested. “I don’t know that.”

“It’s Aramaic. You know it in English.”

“Say it again — slowly — and tell me what it is.”

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

After a space: “What about those foundations?”

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

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

“An honest neutral, subject to intimidation.”

“All right, mister: intimidate this honest neutral.”

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

“I don’t want you yapping at me, Commander, so you need first to understand one word: midrash.”

“Midrash. Is that another Aramaic word?”

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

“I guess nobody told them,” Saltus said. “All right, I’ll go along with that.”

“Thank you. The public should be as generous.”

“Didn’t you tell them about midrash?”

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

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

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

Saltus was puzzled. “Well — what’s the trouble?”

“Haven’t you read the Bible?”

“No.”

“Nor the Book of Revelations?”

“I’m not much of a reader, civilian.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chaney asked: “A personal question, Commander?”

“Fire away, mister.”

“How did you manage your rank so young?”

Saltus laughed. “You haven’t been in service?”

“No.”

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

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

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

“No one can forget that.”

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

Chaney digested the information with some alarm. “What did they do, to retaliate for that?”

“Nothing — yet. But they will, mister, they will! As soon as they think we’re asleep, they’ll clobber us with something. And hard.”

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

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

“A Lieutenant Commander is equal to what?”

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

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

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

“Hey — there’s Katrina!”

“Where?”

“Over there, by that far window.”

“I don’t believe in waiting for an invitation.”

“Push on, push on, I’m right behind you!”

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

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

“Isn’t she lovely this morning! What would your friend Bartlett say about this?”

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

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

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

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

“And these other two hundred characters.” Chaney waved a hand at the crowded mess hall. “This is romantic.”

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

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

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

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

“Then don’t repeat it,” Chaney warned. “Katrina may have studied Aramaic — she reads everything.”

“Hey — that’s not fair.”

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

“Do you, Mr. Chaney?”

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

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

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

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

Chaney was instantly wary. “I will have nothing to do with those scrolls. I’ll not tamper with them.”

“That will not be necessary. They are not an alternate target.”

“What is?”

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

Chaney rocked in his chair.

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

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

FIVE

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

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

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

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

Happily, Katrina was a civilian.

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

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

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

“Katrina! What are we doing with this?”

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

“They are a part of today’s study, sir.”

“No!”

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

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

Chaney said: “Is this another of Seabrooke’s idiotic ideas?”

“The matter is germane, Mr. Chaney.”

“That matter is not germane, Miss van Hise. This has absolutely nothing to do with the Indic report, with the statistical tables, with the future surveys — nothing!”

“Mr. Seabrooke thinks otherwise.”

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

“Yes, sir. You are the only authority.”

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

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

“But this has nothing to do with a future Chicago!”

“It may, sir.”

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

Saltus broke in. “More midrash, mister?”

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

Katrina said stubbornly: “We are to study it.”

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

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

“What tenuous connection? Where?”

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

Chaney permitted himself an audible groan.

Saltus said: “Hoist by your own petard, mister. I feel for you.”

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

Impatiently: “The blinding yellow light in the sky has nothing to do with the Asian war. In Hebrew fiction it was a romantic promise of health, wealth, of peace and prosperity for all. The yellow light is a benign sun, spilling contentment on the earth. The old prophet was saying simply that at last the earth belonged to men, to all men, and eternal peace was at hand. Utopia. No more than that.

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

Saltus: “And where is Armageddon?”

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

“Mister, you sure know how to throw cold water.”

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

“Do you think it’s a fake?”

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

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

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

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

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

Major Moresby said: “That was foretold.”

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

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

“Yes, sir. Mr. Seabrooke has requested it.”

Chaney said: “A waste of time, Commander.”

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

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

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

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

Eschatos:

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

The man who was two men labored on the mountain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it was so.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One of the three telephones rang.

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

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

Saltus said: “Well, come on, Katrina!”

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

Arthur Saltus yelled, and was halfway to the door.

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

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

SIX

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

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

Gilbert Seabrooke said: “Afternoon, Chaney.”

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

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

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

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

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

“They have no relation to this activity.”

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

Chaney said: “And a persistent one.”

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

Chaney had vague knowledge of his political history.

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

Chaney asked: “How’s the battle going?”

“Which battle?”

“The one with the Senate subcommittee. I suspect they’re counting the dollars and the minutes.”

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

Chaney said: “But there is a connection.”

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

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

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

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

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

“But you stayed on in Israel under fire.”

“I did, but I was scared witless all the while.”

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

Flatly: “No.”

“You don’t find it suggestive — ?”

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

“But those old biblical prophets are rather severe, rather disturbing.”

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

Seabrooke said: “I suppose you’re right.”

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

Seabrooke was startled. “What do you mean?”

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

Slowly: “Yes. I see the point.”

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

“I know the name, of course.”

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

“I fervently hope so!” Seabrooke declared.

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

Seabrooke made no comment.

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

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

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

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

“What took you so long?”

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

Shock. “No.”

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

“That’s elementary.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How did you prove that?”

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

“Any effect on the monkeys?”

“None. They are quite healthy.”

“What have you done to prevent another accident — a different kind of an accident?”

Sharply: “Explain that.”

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

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

“You went back that far?”

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

“And so the deadline is 1941? Why not 1901?”

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

“I’d like to see that tank of polywater.”

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

“Yes.”

“Have you had weapons training?”

“No. Will that be necessary?”

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

“That sounds pessimistic. Wasted in what way?”

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

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

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

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

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

Chaney said shortly: “You picked a hell of a crew.”

“Why do you think so?”

“Not an engineer in the lot — not a hard scientist in the lot. Moresby and I love each other like a cobra and a mongoose. I think I’m the mongoose. Want to try again?”

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

“Moresby thinks I’m some kind of a nut.”

“Yes. And what do you think of him?”

Sudden glee: “He’s some kind of a nut.”

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

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

“Why don’t you write cookbooks?”

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

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

“Another futurist. You collect futurists.”

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

Chaney said: “That is as old as time; the earliest Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Akkadians, all were crazy about astrology. It’s the most enduring religion.”

“I suppose you are familiar with the small booklets known as farmer’s almanacs?”

A nod. “I know of them.”

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

Skeptically: “Did the spinach come up?”

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

Chaney said: “He wasted his money.”

“Do you also believe I’ve wasted mine?”

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

Seabrooke peered at him. “But do you see how I’m using Moresby?”

“Yes. Just as you’re using me.”

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

“You’ve taken hold of a wolf by the ears. You might look around for a way to let go — an escape route.”

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

Chaney was impressed by the vehemence, the passionate eagerness. “Why don’t you go up to the future?”

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

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

Chaney felt that he had been shut out.

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

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

“A confidence, Chaney?”

“Certainly.”

“I know the President a bit better than you do.”

“I’ll grant you that.”

“I know what he will not buy.”

Chaney had a premonition. “He won’t buy your alternatives? Either of them?”

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

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

Chaney asked: “Outrageous?”

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

“No — he won’t do that.” Chaney considered it. “But because of political consequences, not religious ones. He’s afraid of the people and afraid of the politicians.”

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

Warily: “Where — or what?”

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

SEVEN

The TDV was a keen disappointment.

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

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

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

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

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

Chaney asked: “That thing works?”

“Most assuredly,” Seabrooke replied.

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

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

He asked: “How did the monkeys run it?”

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

Chaney searched that last for a double meaning.

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

“I suppose it will wait up there for us?”

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

Chaney said: “No.”

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

“Perhaps. Where will I find one?”

“You won’t. They haven’t been written.”

“But it all sounds like perpetual motion.”

“It isn’t, believe me. This baby eats power.”

“I suppose you need that nuclear reactor?”

“All of it — it serves this lab alone.”

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

“The vehicle requires five hundred thousand kilos per launch.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What does the TDV push against? That polywater?”

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

Chaney said: “Ah! I see it now.”

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

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

Arthur Saltus seemed impressed. “Good, eh?”

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

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

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

Saltus: “Do you guarantee we’ll hit the target?”

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

Chaney was startled. “Do they have one?”

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

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

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

Following instructions, he climbed into the TDV.

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

“Damn it!”

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

“You could hang that thing outside the bucket.”

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

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

Aloud: “All right, move it.” The sound of his voice in the closed can startled him.

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

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

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

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

Saltus stood there grinning at him. “Well, mister, what did you think of that?”

“There’s more room in a Syrian coffin,” Chaney retorted. “I’ve got bruises.”

“Sure, sure, civilian, tight quarters and everything, but what did you think of it?”

“Think of what?”

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

“I watched the lights; it was like Christmas time.”

“Mister, they ran you through your test. You saw ours, didn’t you? You checked the time?”

“Yes, I watched you.”

“Well, you jumped into the future! One hour up!”

“The hell I did.”

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

“But I didn’t hear anything, feel anything.”

“You don’t hear anything in there; just out here, on the outside looking in. Man, we heard it! Pow, pow, the airhammer. And the guy was supposed to tell you there was no sense of motion: just climb in, and climb out. Shoot an hour.” Saltus made a face. “Civilian, sometimes you disappoint me.”

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

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

“We can always call Katrina and ask for some.”

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

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

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

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

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

He gave one eye and one ear to the speaker.

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

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

“I read you,” Chaney told him. “We’re expendable; the bucket isn’t.”

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

“If he can be found,” Chaney added.

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

“That is quite sufficient,” Moresby assured him. “We can do the job in half that time, after all.”

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

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

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

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

Chaney asked: “Why?”

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

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

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

“I can walk to Chicago in fifty,” Chaney retorted.

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

Were there any questions?

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

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

“I’m not going to run around Chicago shooting up the place — they have enough of that now.”

“This will be for your own protection, sir.”

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

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

Saltus said: “Now what the hell?”

“Somebody went joyriding,” Chaney replied. “They’d better count the monkeys — one may be missing.”

Katrina said: “There were no tests scheduled.”

“Can that machine take off by itself?”

“No, sir. It must be activated by human control.”

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

Saltus objected. “My test didn’t make a noise like that. William didn’t.”

Chaney showed him the watch. “You said I went up an hour. That’s now. Did you kick yourself back?”

“No — we waited for the engineers to pull us back.”

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

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

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

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

Saltus gave him a sharp glance. “You’re borrowing again — and I think you’ve changed it to boot.”

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

“No.”

Chaney repeated the verse, and Saltus said: “Yes.”

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

“Maybe.”

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

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

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

“Where then, mister? Back where?”

Chaney said dreamily: “Eridu, Larsa, Nippur, Kish, Kufah, Nineveh, Uruk…”

“But those are just old — old cities, I guess.”

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

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

Saltus: “I can’t speak the language.”

“You would be speaking it — or some local dialect — if Ramses had won.” A gesture. “But that’s what I’d do if I had the Alif and the freedom of choice.”

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

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

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

EIGHT

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

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

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

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

But that wasn’t the only hurt.

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

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

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

Arthur Saltus had taught him camera techniques.

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

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

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

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

“Morning, civilian. What’s new in ancient Egypt?”

Chaney peered past him. “Where is — ?” He stopped.

“I haven’t seen her,” Saltus responded. “She wasn’t in the mess hall — I thought she was here with you.”

Chaney wiped his face with a towel. “Not here. I’ve had the pool to myself.”

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

“What now?”

“I read your book last night.”

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

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

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

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

“You can determine that by examination?”

“Well, of course! I can. Listen, mister, that’s good photography. That man is good.”

“Thank you. I’ll tell him next time I see him.”

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

“It doesn’t have pictures.”

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

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

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

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

Chaney caught a quick movement at the gate.

“The Major has found us.”

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

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

“Hey — what goes?” Saltus was out of the chair.

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

“The field trials?” Saltus demanded. “The field trials? This morning? Now?”

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

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

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

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

“Where are we going?” Saltus demanded breathlessly. “I mean when? When in Joliet? Did you get the word?”

“Katrina gave the word. You won’t like it, Art.”

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

“Why won’t I like it?”

“Because it’s a political thing, a damned political thing, after all! Katrina said the decision came down early this morning from the White House — from him. We should have expected something like that.”

Slow repeat: “Why won’t I like it?”

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

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

“What was that word again, mister? In Aramaic?”

Brian Chaney told him.