Timeline

36:50:22

In the control room, one of the technicians at the monitors said, "We're getting field bucks."

"Oh, really? That's good news," Gordon said.

"Why?" Stern said.

"It means," Gordon said, "that someone is headed back in the next two hours. Undoubtedly your friends."

"So they will get the Professor and be back here within two hours?"

"Yes, that's exactly-" Gordon broke off, staring at the undulating image on the monitor. A little undulating surface, with a spike that stuck up. "Is that it?"

"Yes," the technician said.

"But the amplitude's much too large," Gordon said.

"Yes. And the interval's getting shorter. Fast. "You mean someone is coming back now?"

"Yeah. Soon, it looks like."

Stern glanced at his watch. The team had been gone only a few minutes. They couldn't have recovered the Professor so quickly.

"What does that mean?" Stern asked him.

"I don't know," Gordon said. The truth was, he didn't like this development at all. "They must be having some sort of trouble."

"What kind of trouble?"

"This soon, it's probably mechanical. Maybe a transcription error."

Stern said, "What's a transcription error?"

The technician said, "I'm calculating an arrival in twenty minutes fifty-seven seconds." He was measuring the field strengths, and the pulse intervals.

"How many are coming back?" Gordon said. "All of them?"

"No," the technician said. "Just one."