Tales From the Spaceport Bar

by George H. Scithers

  Such things could have upset - indeed seriously deranged - anyone less heroic, resourceful, dependable, etc. than Frank Mihalik.

  GEORGE ALEC EFFINGER

  THE BIRD OF TIME

  Hartstein's journey to the past was a present. A graduation gift from fond grandparents before he embarked on his chosen career in the doughnut industry.

  Of course things had moved on a lot since that famous day back in 1996 when the first time-traveller, the heroic Frank Mihalik, had made his pioneering, not altogether bug-free backwards flip. Now time-tourism was pretty much routine, if pricey.

  Still there were one or two things the Agency kept quiet about. Such as that 2% of their customers didn't make it back. Such as that the 'past' was acutally a patchy, not to say tacky, collection of the person-in-the-street's idea of the past.

  In particular they never said there was a war going on.

  A time war between the Agency and the Temporary Underground. A war of time shifts and ambush, of future assaults on the past and sudden destabilising mathematical coups. A war when you could get killed at any point on the space/time continuum.

  Hartstein was setting out on a bigger adventure than he'd dreamed or - or paid for.

  HODDER AND STOUGHTON PAPERBACKS