Time Riders

CHAPTER 84

1957, command ship over Washington DC

Paul Kramer sat alone in his lab. Truly alone.

Karl’s dead. All those other men, Saul, Stefan, Rudy,Dieter…

Others whose faces he could remember, if not their names.

Now I’m the last.

He looked up from his lap across the messy floor, thick with snaking cables, towards the atombomb in its frame, nestling inside the small wire cage.

There you are, my little friend.

In his hand, he held a simple toggle switch wired carelessly into the complicated device. Aloosely soldered red cable descended from it, linking the switch to his jury-rigged version ofa Waldstein field-displacement cage. His thumb rested on the tip of the toggle switch.

Kramer felt so incredibly tired. A solid week now without a moment’s sleep. Not sincehe’d had Karl killed. If he’d had the courage, he would have activated his deviceright then. Joined Karl in the hereafter moments later.

Karl’s adjutant, and several other senior invasion-force generals, had petitioned tosee him, over and over. Problems mounting up, issues that needed to be resolved, paperworkthat needed signing.

He could face none of those things right now.

And there’d be no sleep either. Because the moment his eyes closedthe nightmares came. His assassin was no longer some time-policeman from the future, but somedark, formless entity from Hell… hungrily seeking his soul, ready to drag him downthrough a rip in space-time to burn for eternity for daring to step, albeit briefly, into itsdimension.

‘Burn… for eternity,’ he muttered quietly.

His thumb toyed with the toggle switch.

Paul, it’s time.

‘You’re back,’ he said flatly. The voice had been so quiet these last fewdays. Paul thought it had abandoned him.

I never left you.

‘I thought I was going to die alone.’

No. You and I, we’ll face destiny together.

Kramer gently applied pressure to the switch.

Just a little more, Paul… anounce more pressure on this tiny little switch… and all life onthis world will be gone.

He smiled weakly. There was poetry in that — to create a new world, a new history, andthen be the one to destroy it. Like a child builds a sandcastle, then in a moment of vainglorytramples all over it.

That’s right. We achieved so much, didn’t we?

The toggle switch clicked over… and the world turned white.