BROOKLYN, NEW YORK
The New York City police captain wore civilian clothing as he always did when meeting with his financial partners. The large man was sitting in the back room of Kellum’s bakery, a shop that used to be owned by his family in what seemed like a million lifetimes ago. Now it belonged to the man he was there to meet. The precinct captain was in serious debt to the man known around legitimate police officers as the “Bolshevik.” Alexi Doshnikov had originally agreed to finance a failing bakery in a run-down section of Brooklyn—a bakery whose livelihood was threatened not by economic downturn, but by its resurgence. The fashion was now to buy, renovate, and then sell to the highest bidder for homes and businesses that once made Brooklyn work. It had taken an unsavory alliance for Captain Kellum’s family to keep their business. An alliance with the Butcher, and the bill was coming due big time. The captain had managed to save his family from being run out of their home and business, but the cost of that was his soul.
He poured himself a glass of cold milk and then sat and waited by the stainless-steel table. As he did he removed the thirty-eight snub-nosed revolver from his ankle holster and then placed it on the shiny tabletop. He sipped his milk and waited.
He heard the back door open and the footsteps approach from behind him. He was tempted to finger the loaded weapon on the gleaming tabletop but instead took another swallow of cold milk and waited.
“It seems you caused my brothers in blue in Manhattan to work a little overtime tonight in the East River,” Kellum said as he placed the glass down. He heard the refrigerator open and then close. The man known as Mr. Jones sat next to the captain and poured himself a glass of milk. He held the glass up in a toast and then drank deeply. The Russian smiled and smacked his lips.
“There were times a few years back something as simple as a cold glass of milk was nearly impossible for my family to grasp. Everything our region had in dairy was sent straight to Moscow and the rich bastards that ran things back then. We were lucky if we were allowed to keep the cow manure from the very dairy herds we tended to night and day.” He drank again and watched the police captain. He set the glass down.
“We all have our hard-luck tales. It was no picnic growing up here either. Our stories aren’t that much different.”
The Russian eyed Kellum and then smiled. “Someday I will explain to you the difference, my friend.”
Kellum didn’t care for the smile.
“Now, as to the aerial mishap you mentioned with that business helicopter, tragic.”
Kellum watched the man closely, knowing he had ordered the assassinations of the entire board of directors for Mendelsohn’s company. However, he didn’t want the mobster to know just how much of this he really knew or was guessing at—it wasn’t healthy. He decided he would leave it alone.
The captain reached into his breast pocket and brought out a small notebook and opened it. “Your four missing men? Well, we just found two of them. They were fished out of the water near Coney Island two hours ago. Single tap to the head for each. I suspect we will find the other two in the same mint condition.”
Doshnikov capped the bottle of milk and then looked Kellum over. He shrugged his shoulders. “No loss. If they were foolish enough to get taken out by the federal authorities, they’re not meant to be in my employ.”
“Well, there is a funny little wrinkle there on two fronts, Mr. Jones,” Kellum said as he thumbed through a few pages from his notes. “It seems whoever is occupying those buildings in the navy yard are not the federal authorities. I can’t get one single thread on who and why they are there. But I have been told by my superiors that it is none of my concern. The second matter is that you may have a sort of resurgence on your hands.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?” the Russian asked, bemused.
“One of my C.I.’s in the neighborhood says the buzz on the streets is that your men were taken out not by these strangers in the navy yard, but by the Gambinos. And that, my friend, means you have a growing problem if they moved on your men, for whatever reason. I would say they showed very little respect.” The police captain closed his small notepad and raised the glass of milk to his lips and made a silent, but mockingly irritating return toast.
“Gambinos.” The Russian mobster smirked, his disdain for the Italians showing clearly on his face. “Your confidential informant should have told you that the Gambinos and all of those old men that call themselves the mob are nothing but ghosts from the past. Tales to scare little children at night.” He eyed the captain as he finished his glass of milk. His look was one of fury for the briefest of moments, and then the facial features relaxed once more and he smirked. “Please, you know as well as I do that all the New York families are dying off one old man at a time and the men who will replace them are morons.” He smiled and slapped the captain on the shoulder. “Besides, with what I have been working on the Gambinos can have Brooklyn after tonight. I’ll be moving on to far greener pastures, as the Cossacks used to say.”
Kellum just raised his brows. “And just how many people will be killed to get you to those greener pastures, comrade?”
The Russian laughed at the captain’s little barb. “Possibly just a few of those people your police force cannot identify now occupying those buildings at the navy yard, maybe a few others, but then again the latter of those have died before, or at least should have … so no great loss.”
Kellum saw that the man was wild-eyed with some scheme that seemed to make him oblivious to the dangerous situation he had entered into with the Gambino family and whoever those people were that had taken over the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
“Now about this request of yours, I don’t—”
“It was not a request.”
The smile was gone and the black eyes told Captain Kellum that the man was truly on the edge of sanity.
“Your order for me and my men to seal off that end of the navy yard from all observers, well, it will all depend on—”
“You. It’s that simple. At two a.m. not one person is to be allowed into the navy yard. Interference for three uninterrupted hours. No one in, or out.”
“Look, I can’t control the damn fire department, the federal authorities, or whoever those people are who have credentials that would scare Comrade Stalin.”
“Three hours and the building and the business you are now sitting in is yours for your family to do with as they please. Your obligation to my organization will be complete as will your loan debt. All cleared for a mere three hours of work. Not even Comrade Stalin could be so generous.”
Kellum heard what he said but could not believe it. Russians never allowed any agreement to lapse. That was the difference with the Russians over the American mob—there was truly no getting out from under their dirty thumbs.
“Three hours. I can give you that.”
“Then I can give you your family’s livelihood back with a significant real estate investment to boot.”
Kellum stood and buttoned his sport coat and retrieved the pistol from where it had been prominently displayed. “Just what in the hell is so important about three hours?” he asked as he turned to face the smaller man.
The Russian smiled again and then stopped at the back door. Amid the smell of baked bread and muffins, he said, “That’s the time it will take for me to become the richest man in the world—legitimately. Imagine, me, legitimate.” He laughed and then left.
Kellum had a bad taste in his mouth as he took a deep breath and then suddenly flung his empty milk glass against the door as it closed. It was then that the police captain swore that if he could he would find some way to go back in time and change how he saved his family business.
But he knew there was no such thing as a time machine, much to his regret.
BROOKLYN NAVY YARD
As Jason Ryan and Will Mendenhall secured the electric rolling supply trailer that would accompany the team into the doorway, Ryan turned and looked at Mendenhall. He sat heavily on a large plastic crate that contained a lasing system invented to protect a perimeter in the field.
“I’m sorry, I guess I screwed not only me, but you in the process.”
Mendenhall placed a rolled tent onto the small trailer and then sighed. Mendenhall sat down heavily next to Ryan.
“Look, you did nothing that Jack or Carl wouldn’t have done. How many times would the authorities have thrown both of those nut jobs into jail for the things they’ve pulled off?” Mendenhall slapped Ryan on the back. “No, you got the job done and that’s just what the colonel looks for.”
“Then why would—”
“Because I need you two here. The odds against us pulling this H. G. Wells crap off is just about a billion to one and I don’t care what Albert Einstein Mendelsohn in there says.”
Both men turned and saw Collins as he stood in the shadows watching them. He finally stepped into the light with a small case and placed it on the trailer. Ryan stood and faced his commander. Mendenhall pursed his lips and waited.
“Then why are you even attempting it?” Ryan asked, braving another confrontation.
“Why did you allow Charlie in on Morales’s prison extraction?” Jack leaned against the trailer and looked up into the foggy night. “Why did you go back after Will in Chato’s Crawl when you knew the Destroyer was in those tunnels? Hell, for that matter, why didn’t you return to naval aviation after the board of inquiry cleared you in the incident over the Pacific?”
“Because Will and Charlie are friends; I know what they can do. As for naval aviation, I found out I care for the people at Group and didn’t want to leave.”
Jack smiled and looked at Ryan and Mendenhall. “That is why I’m going. I have a friend out there somewhere who’s lost and I intend to try to bring him home. No matter how crappy the odds.”
“Then why are you pissed at me?” Ryan asked, wanting the truth.
“Your performance during the prison break was outstanding. You took the people you trusted, and as things do with good people, it worked out. I wasn’t mad at you, I was mad at me because I saw myself in you and our shortcomings. We truly respect, admire, and trust the friends we have around us and that is why I am going after Carl. I sat back and allowed others to seal his fate. The fate he encountered doing what he did when any one of a thousand men could have done the same. When you take this department over, and someday you will because I saw what you are capable of, you’ll know what you have to do at the most horrific of times—protect the people under you. I don’t intend to lose one more person on my watch if I can at all help it. So, you stay, I go.”
“But you just said that friendship—”
“You stay, I go. Someday you’ll understand, Jason, believe me.” He smiled and then slapped Mendenhall on the back on his way by. “I figure if the worst happens, I could be leaving the department in far less capable hands than yours and Will’s.”
The two watched Jack vanish into the fog. “I absolutely hate his object lessons.”
Will Mendenhall had to agree.
* * *
On the large monitor situated above the dimensional collider, as Jenks liked calling the doorway, was a strange graphic supplied by Europa and Morales. It was a multiplaned series of levels. They undulated, changed positions, and then re-formed. In between these colored planes a single line of light emerged, vanished, and then appeared on another multicolored level. Morales had explained that each line represented what Europa was reading as dimensional planes. She was able to track the light source as it split among different forms of atoms that made up the universe. Differing atomic structure that could only be seen by Europa and her wide sweeping band of sound waves. The signal reached out, penetrated, and then wormed into another level searching for its sister signal on the escape pod. The doorway had been searching and listening for the better part of two hours with no return bounce of the pulsating rescue beacon.
“Hell, I don’t know,” Jenks said louder than he wanted to. The noise of the open doorway made communication without headsets impossible. He found it hard to communicate with Virginia sitting right next to him. “Morales and that damnable computer are speaking a language never taught at MIT or the navy. Give a call out to Stephen Hawking or Einstein, maybe they can explain this differing planes of existence crap. I sure as hell can’t. I see a bunch of lines and then another bunch of lines and I only have Europa’s calculations that it’s even feasible for us to locate that beacon.”
“My God, how many different planes of existence can there be?” Virginia asked, mostly to herself as she studied the animation on the screen. It looked like a sewing needle as it thread from one line to the next, sometimes up and then down.
“Just think of it as a universe that has expanded beyond the control of its creator. With no more universe, it has to expand in some direction. Same space, multilevels of that space. It’s trapped in a way. Without the dimensional planes our universe would die.”
Both Virginia and Jenks turned to see Moira Mendelsohn sitting in her chair, watching the undulating lines on the monitor. He adjusted the small mic on her headset. “If only I had had access to this marvelous machine you call Europa, oh, what I could have done.”
They saw the wonder in the old scientist’s face as she studied the graph on the monitor.
“And just what would you have done?” Jenks asked as he removed the cold cigar and looked from the Traveler to Virginia with worry.
A faraway look came into the gray eyes of Moira. “I could have maybe—”
“We have a bounce back!” A technician said excitedly into his mic.
“Yes, confirmed at zero two ten hundred hours and forty-six seconds we have a return signal. Muted, but sustained. A little weak, but it’s there,” called out a female voice on all receivers.
On the overhead speaker and over the noise created by the false wind of the doorway, they heard it: the steady beeping of Everett’s transponder. Smiles were exchanged all around the technical area at the surreal spectacle of the windblown doorway and the haunting signal that pulsed through the air.
Moira looked at the monitor and there it was. Sandwiched between a red line and a green. The monitor changed views and a series of numbers started to be placed on the screen by Europa, who was calculating longitude and latitude of the signal. The amazing Blue Ice system of Europa started to use her NASA and European Space Agencies star charts and her own time and distance tables to calculate where and when the signal originated. She accomplished this by using strength of signal versus known star positioning and then she figured the closest area by mere inches as to the location of the pod. Finally the coordinates appeared and steadied. All eyes went to the second monitor and the view of the computer center in Nevada. Morales was there and he was smiling.
“The odds just went down … it’s Antarctica calling back. She’s calling collect, but she is calling!”
A cheer erupted and even Niles Compton smiled through his discomfort, and then he realized that the science fiction of the past had become a sudden reality. Most stomachs in the room rolled as they realized what a potential world changer this could become.
The Einstein-theorized time machine became operational at 0210 hours and forty-six seconds.
The presidential protection clock was still running. And that was one thing the machine could not control.
* * *
Jenks tried his best to inventory the team’s supplies and at the same time avoid the accusing eyes of Virginia as she glared at him from the sealed-off area where the extraction team prepared. The master chief finally huffed and then removed the cold cigar stub and returned the look.
“You’re the one who brought me into this historical menagerie, and now that I might get a boo-boo you want me to back out?”
“You’re too damned old for this crap and you know it,” Virginia said as she picked up a case of MREs and handed it to a questioning Jenks.
“So you want me to stay behind with the broads and the geeks and let you go in my place?”
“I am more capable of getting the doorway in Antarctica up and running far better and faster than you.”
“Well, that dog just won’t hunt, Slim. Call me all the names you want, but I will not let someone who I care”—Jenks stumbled—“I won’t stay behind and let you go in my place. I don’t care if it’s what you call, ‘not very PC,’ but you can go to hell.” He angrily placed the stub of cigar into his mouth and then reached past Virginia for the illuminating signal devices and plopped it hard onto the trailer transport. “I suppose you have a retort or whatever you eggheads make for an argument?”
Virginia was silent as she stared into the eyes of the graying master chief. She nodded just once and remained quiet.
“I’m sorry I was too much of a caveman to make it work with us, Slim,” Jenks said as he kicked at an invisible object and then angrily tossed the dead cigar away.
The assistant director was taken back by the hastily worded comment. The master chief lowered his eyes and then reached quickly for the next set of signal devices that were wrapped heavily in the manufacturer’s packaging. Virginia placed a thin fingered hand on Jenks’s own, stilling his movement. He looked into her green eyes and held them for as long as he dared.
“After all of the degrees I have gathered, the accumulated knowledge of centuries, I have come to one immutable fact of life, Harold, and that is that you are allowed two great loves in the span of one’s life. We just happened to be two people who loved not only each other but also the work we do. No ones’ fault, but the love is still there regardless.”
“I … I…” Jenks stalled.
“When you get back to this dimension, we’ll have to make a choice, Harold.”
“But—”
Virginia leaned over and kissed the gruff old master chief.
Jenks watched as Virginia turned away but then hesitated.
“Besides, I want to see if you can follow the directions on the doorway’s instruction manual. I personally think you’ll be like a father trying to put his son’s bike together on Christmas Eve.” Virginia waggled her fingers behind her in farewell as she left hurriedly.
“Damn, she always has to have the last word.”
The master chief continued to load the transport but at least for the time being the gruff old engineer was smiling.
* * *
“Will we have any problem maintaining a locking signal on the beacon until the doorway is constructed in the past?” Niles asked for the second time. He was showing his doubts and concerns in the past twenty minutes by grilling everyone in the conference room. Asking the same questions over and over to the very same people.
Virginia looked at Niles and simply shook her head as her thoughts remained on the master chief and his age. This mission was not for him and she knew it. SEAL instructor or not, he was just too old and too damn stubborn to admit that fact. Morales answered for her when she remained mute.
“The signal as of this moment is very strong.”
“Target area—they aren’t going to be put down in the water or released twenty thousand feet into the air, are they?” Niles asked as he was furiously writing down notes.
Morales again spoke up from Nevada. “The comp center has pinpointed the exact location and according to the British geological survey of 2014 it’s right on the edge of the newly named Durnsford Sea, approximately six hundred and twenty feet from the suspected edge of the inland shore. We’ll compensate by a mile east of the sea; that should be a safe guess as to a landing area. Equipment and men will be prepared for a mis-landing regardless. Heady, especially since the sea level landing is at this moment two miles below the surface of the ice. Europa says she can do it plus or minus one millimeter in height.”
On the large monitor Europa was projecting the star chart used to determine the exact time and location of the jump. Niles reached out and struck the button that activated the installed holographic system. Around the conference table the room illuminated with a ceiling full of star constellations. They revolved, stopped, and revolved again as Europa triple-checked her own figures. It was like the Event Group was sneaking a peak at the supercomputer’s arithmetic. The stars would expand outward from the time they suspected Everett had disappeared into the wormhole until they settled into their current position. Again and again Europa ran her model and she came up with the same results.
“Europa knows that lives are on the line,” Morales volunteered from the desert.
“Excuse me?” Niles said with a jolt, looking from the simulation and into the large monitor.
“Europa has learned the hard lesson of human loss. It had never been explained to her that her work could possibly send men and women to their deaths. I have since explained it to her. She knows what’s on the line now; she never did before.”
Niles thought that their new personnel move might have come a little too hastily as he listened. It was Alice who reached out with her hand and placed it on top of Niles’s and stilled him from questioning the new computer genius too harshly. He relented and moved on.
“Now, where is my missing geological specialist and our little Anya Korvesky?”
Coincidentally timed, a moment later the door opened and standing there were the two missing women. Sarah’s eyes went to Jack and then to Niles as she started to apologize for her sudden departure. She had several items in her hand as Anya accompanied her inside the conference room. They all noticed the way both Sarah and Anya made eye contact with Moira before sitting down.
“You know we are desperately short on time and you decide to take off without so much as a good-bye. You broke protocol by shutting down your cell phones’ geo locator. If you think we—”
Sarah cut Niles short. “I think we should get the entire story from Madam Mendelsohn about just how many people know about the existence of the doorway.”
Niles looked from Sarah toward the Traveler. He refrained from saying anything more about broken procedures as he studied the old woman. He didn’t have to broach the subject of security to a woman who had understood the need for it since 1942.
Sarah slid the disturbing charcoal drawings she had found inside the incinerator to the middle of the table. Charlie Ellenshaw stood and spread them out so all could see. Before Charlie realized it his hand moved quickly away after seeing the drawings in their half-incinerated state.
Niles raised one of the drawings and examined it. The depiction of children inside a concentration camp was vivid, unlike most camp drawings Niles had ever seen before inside the Holocaust museums. The detail was as if the artist was picturing the scene from memory. The one problem with that was the dates were handwritten by the artist in the lower right-hand corner.
“Nineteen seventy-one,” Niles said aloud.
“Nineteen sixty-seven here,” Charlie said as he was unable to touch the drawings again.
The images were stark and black. Children crying. Other children being led away to their deaths made most wince at the scenes all done in very disturbing charcoal. Anya turned away, knowing that this was her heritage being shown to her by the memory of some child who had lived through the nightmare.
It was Jack Collins who stood and turned the pictures over on the tabletop. Jack was one of those soldiers who found anything concerning the holocaust far beyond the imagination of a professional American soldier. The images always made him furious as to how a modern society or soldier could ever allow that to happen.
“How many did you bring back, Moira?” Anya asked. “How many children did you smuggle out when you couldn’t find your brother?”
Moira smiled as she looked at the faces around her. “All that I could. I know I changed the destinies of so many, but then again, Albert Einstein never had to look into the eyes of children on their way to mass slaughter. Yes, hundreds.” She braved the shocked looks of those around her. She saw no meanness in those looks, but one of awe and understanding … to a point.
Niles swallowed and calmed his scientific wariness at her actions but it was then that he realized the Event Group was about to attempt the same thing, on a smaller scale perhaps, but no less guilty of changing the destiny of one of their own.
At that moment an Air Force sergeant walked in and gave Niles a message and then made his way out. Compton read the note and then his good eye found the Traveler.
“This is from our contact in the FBI. It seems your entire board of directors has had a mishap over the East River tonight. They were all killed.”
Moira stared at Niles for the briefest of moments, not really understanding.
“How many of your board of directors were children of the Holocaust?” Virginia Pollock asked.
Moira didn’t have to answer as all of them saw it in her face. She lowered her head.
“They all grew up at your privately funded orphanage, didn’t they?” Sarah asked.
“Yes.” She looked up and the briefest of sad smiles crossed her lips. “Can you imagine the magic they believed brought them out of those camps? We intercepted the largest contingents from transports, but most had already seen the insides of smaller camps, so they knew for the most part what the Nazis had in store for them. As I said, most were very, very bright.”
“Now some of those brightest are dead. Perhaps you better enlighten us as to why and who would want that,” Jack said as he waved Ryan over and told him quietly to make sure the outside watch was aware of the situation. Ryan quietly left.
“I don’t know who this could be. The board always had complete autonomy to act in the best interest of the children and their security.”
“We’re not real big believers in coincidence,” Niles said as he turned to Jack. “Colonel, I’ll leave it up to you for a go, no go. This was clearly an assassination at a very inopportune moment in our plans. This could bring those other sister agencies charging in and I don’t think the president can stop the avalanche.”
Collins looked at Moira and decided she didn’t know anything more than what she had said. The only thing Jack figured her guilty for was being human enough to save kids from a fate worse than what history had planned for them.
“Master Chief, Henri, Charlie, I can’t order you to go.”
“I didn’t bust my ass building that thing and then nearly come to blows with Slim, er, uh, Dr. Pollock here, not to go. I figure whoever is out there threatening this thing is going to act regardless if we go or not,” Jenks said as he avoided the stark eyes of Virginia.
Ellenshaw looked up from the table and then slid the glasses back up on his nose. He looked directly at Niles. “I have to go.”
“If this is the only way I can get out from under the thumb of this Group, what choice do I have?” Farbeaux said as he shook his head at Ellenshaw and his weak answer to a life-or-death question.
“If it’s a question of volunteers, I don’t—” Sarah started to say but Niles cut her off as he examined the clock on the wall.
“It’s not. Dr. Morales, is Europa ready?”
Sarah angrily looked from Niles to Jack, who just shook his head, angry that once more she tried to bully her way onto the team. He was going to have to put her in the same drifting lifeboat as Ryan.
“Okay, Jack, get your team ready, we go in thirty.”
The meeting broke up with the individual departments crowding around Jack, Henri, and Charlie as they sent a myriad of intelligence on ancient Antarctica their way. No one approached Jenks as he stood with Virginia. Instead of barraging him with warnings she simply placed a hand on his broad chest and patted him lightly.
“Keep an open mind out there, Harold.”
“I’ll just be another old fossil where we’re going, Slim. Besides, my carcass is too tough for anything to chew on for too long. I’ll just wait them out.”
“Listen, animal life back then is probably a little more patient than any current species.”
Jenks winked and then looked over at Collins, who was shaking hands with Niles.
“Good luck, Colonel. Bring him back if you can, but lose no one else, or this whole thing is for nothing.”
Collins nodded. He had no intention of losing anyone else. He turned and he faced a smiling Henri. He half turned to Compton as he was about to say that he couldn’t guarantee all of them were coming back, but just smiled back at Farbeaux instead.
“Jack, er, uh, Colonel?”
Collins and Farbeaux stopped and turned and saw Sarah standing with Anya.
“You two are on my shit list … again,” he said as he eyed McIntire exclusively. “Now, I have given orders to Ryan to beef up outside security. Since you two don’t seem to perform a duty around here, and have time to saunter off on a Nancy Drew mystery tour, you will be assigned a post by the commander. We’re a little shorthanded. I hope it’s not too boring for you amateur sleuths.”
Sarah fumed but turned and left with a stuttering Will Mendenhall close behind.
Anya stood her ground. “Thank you for doing this, Colonel.”
Jack stared at her before edging past the former Israeli agent. “I’m not doing it for you, Anya.”
Henri smiled at the dark-haired woman and nodded. “Complicated, isn’t he?” Farbeaux left the office.
The activity inside the newly and hastily renovated conference room slowly drizzled to nothing until only Alice Hamilton and Niles were left inside. Compton looked up into the large monitor and saw Xavier Morales looking at them. The activity around the computer genius was bustling as the comp center made ready for the dimensional shift of the doorway. Niles reached out and studied one of the disturbing pictures in charcoal. He let it slide through his fingers. Alice remained silent as she knew the director was debating something in his thoughts. It was these meanderings that etched a sad crevice of doubt on his lined face.
“A morality play is at work.”
Compton and Alice both looked up at Morales, who continued to see them from Nevada.
“The right to change one’s destiny. I suspect that is what the director is concerned with.”
Niles shook his head. “You would have liked Pete Golding,” he said with a small but sad smile. “You’re a lot like him.” He then looked over at Alice. “Only far less timid about voicing his opinions of my psyche.”
Morales smiled. He knew some thought him far-thinking beyond his years, but he knew it was nothing more than a young man’s exuberance in experiencing everything he could inside of his limited and paralyzed world.
“Sorry, but you never asked my opinion. I thought I would voice one.”
“Voice it, everyone’s opinion is valued here,” Alice said as she was curious as to what someone so young could think about the changing of destinies.
“Morally, I think we’re wrong. Just because we have the power to change things, do we have that right? Don’t we learn from the harsh realities thrust upon us through adversity? I believe deep down that we could very well lose our humanity if we allow this as a viable practice beyond this one experiment. When I saw what those children had survived through those horrible pictures, I, like most in the room there or inside the comp center here, wanted to save them all. We have the power as I said, we could go back and stop it from ever happening. Colonel Collins seems like he would be more than capable of going back and placing a bullet into that maniac Hitler’s computer, simply avoid it all. But what will we have learned from that barbaric little man? After all, we have the power to do that, don’t we—the very power to change the world forever.”
“Thank you, Doctor. What would you do in my place?” Niles asked as he slowly stood and with the help of Alice limped to the large observation window and the active scene below.
“I’m easy, Director Compton, my world consists of this chair and my work. I would go in a split second if I could, morality play or not. I would go and get our man. That is why I disqualify myself from the problem of morality plays and leave it in your capable hands.”
“Yes,” Niles said as he glanced up at the monitor before returning his good eye to the rush of personnel on the floor below, “you’ll fit in nicely round here.” Niles turned and limped from the room.
“I will?” Morales said as Alice gathered her paperwork. She paused and looked at the monitor.
“Yes, you fit in because you, like everyone else in our Group, would do anything to get into the field.”
“He’s right on that point.”
Alice smiled. “Thus the morality play in full bloom, Dr. Morales.”
“What do you mean?”
Alice placed her paperwork in her case and then looked up one last time. “Pete Golding was killed in the field, but Niles knows he cannot save him, even if he could. He’s not lost, Carl Everett is. Morality plays are a little more hellish and real than you thought, aren’t they, Doctor?”
Xavier Morales watched Alice Hamilton leave. He now understood better just why the director of Department 5656 had slumped shoulders—he had the weight of all world history upon them.
* * *
Jack checked out Henri’s suit and helmet. Charlie was already wearing his and Jenks looked him over.
“Now don’t worry here, Nerdly, if we walk into a pocket of methane or somethin’ as delectable as that, your environment monitor in your sleeve there won’t allow your helmet to unlock. The colonel issued you this.” He held up a nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol and slammed it home into a holster that stretched across Ellenshaw’s back and covered the front of his jumpsuit. “Guess he doesn’t relish the thought of a nerd with an M-4. You have extra ammo in the packs. Just remember to point it at anyone but me.”
“Got it,” Ellenshaw said as he was tempted to pull the weapon and examine it, but saw the master chief looking at him to see if he would make that kind of stupid decision.
Jack turned and made sure the packs were secured properly to the trailer and then checked if the four-wheeled John Deere tracked vehicle was ready. The rugged all-terrain vehicle was pulling six of the five-by-five trailers. The secondary doorway was safely ensconced in shrink wrap and boxed inside of protective polyurethane containers. The power source was bolted to the second trailer. If they lost any one part of either the doorway of the portable power storage unit they wouldn’t be coming back from this little jaunt. The rest of the team was issued tents, camping gear, signal devices, and defensive measures that were top of the line. Altogether they were taking over a ton and a half of supplies with them. Jack then adjusted his helmet as the sliding door started to rise and they heard the spinning doorway for the first time. The light changed inside the ready room as the door exposed the Wellsian Doorway. Each man looked at the miracle of quantum physics and were frozen to the spot for a moment.
The last thing Jack thought about before entering the large chamber was the fact that he had left Sarah behind and his angry last words to her rang in his memory. He wished he had said good-bye but he just couldn’t face seeing those eyes and their accusing glint. Everyone would sit this one out. He looked at Charlie Ellenshaw, the only member of the team who was there for purely psychological reasons—he had to save Carl for the simple fact he hadn’t been able to save his best friend Pete Golding. He hoped this would help the old cryptozoologist to return to the Charlie they knew and loved.
The loudspeaker came to life.
“Return signal is holding strong. Doorway is at fifty percent power and is also holding at nominal levels. The Los Angeles is reporting her reactor board is in the green.”
In front of Jack, Jenks, Henri, and Charlie, the Wellsian Doorway spun in its revolving arc and the colors were brilliant as they reflected off their visored helmets. The activity of personnel heated up as technicians started to clear the platform floor.
“Time till displacement, ten minutes and counting.”