by Allen Steele
“You can’t do it, I’m tellin’ ya. It can’t be done. I’ve read the same books, too, y’know, and I’m tellin’ ya it’s impossible. Nobody can do it. Nobody has the technology . . .”
“I’m not talkin’ ’bout now, dammit. I’m talkin’ ’bout sometime in the future. Couple’a hundred thousand years from now, thass what I’m . . . that’s what I’m tryin’ to get at, y’know.”
“Somebody from the future, coming back here for a visit. That it?” Murphy had read a lot of science fiction when he was a kid, and time travel was a big subject in those stories. He even had a few beat-up old Ace Doubles stashed away in his attic, although he’d never admit that to these guys. Science fiction wasn’t well respected at OPS, unless it was The X-Files.
“Thass it.” Harry nodded vigorously. “Thass what I’m talkin”bout. Somebody from the future comin’ back here for a visit.”
“Can’t be done,” Kent insisted. “Not in a hundred million years.”
“Yeah, well, maybe not,” Murphy said, “but just for the sake of argument, okay. Le’s pretend someone from the future . . .”
“Not just someone.” Harry reached for the half-empty pitcher, sloshed some more beer into his mug. “A lotta someones . . . a lot of people, comin’ back from the . . . y’know, the future.”
“Yeah, right, okay.” Kent eyed the pitcher with avarice; as soon as Harry put it down, he picked it up and poured much of the rest into his own mug, leaving a half inch at the bottom of the pitcher. “Simon sez le’s pretend. So where are they?”
“Tha’s it. Tha’s the’ point. Tha’s what summa the phizachists . . . phizzakists . . .”
“Physicists,” Murphy said. “What I am. I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I . . .”
Harry ignored him. “If you can go back in time in the future, come back to here . . .” He jabbed a finger against the table. “. . . then where are they? That’s what one of the Brits . . . the guy in the wheelchair, whassisname . . .”
“Hawking.”
“Right, Hawking. Anyway, that’s what he says . . . if time travel is possible, then where’re the time travellers?”
“Yeah, but didn’t somebody say that about aliens?” Kent raised an eyebrow; for an instant, he almost looked sober again. “That other guy . . . whatchamacallit, the Italian, Fermi . . . once said the same thing about aliens. Luggit what we do now . . . look for aliens!”
Murphy was about to add that, out of all the UFO sightings and abductions he had investigated in ten years with the OPS, he had yet to find one which panned out in terms of hard evidence. He had interviewed dozens of people who claimed to be have been taken aboard extraterrestrial spacecraft, and he’d collected enough out-of-focus photos of disc-shaped objects to fill a file cabinet, yet after a decade of government service, he had never found an alien or an alien spacecraft. He let it pass, though; this was not the time or place to be questioning his agency’s mission or methods, nor were these the people to whom he should be expressing his doubts.
“Not the same thing, man. Not the same thing.” Although there was still some beer left in his mug, Harry reached for the pitcher, but Kent snagged it first. “If’n there was time travellers, they’d sway . . . stay hidden. Nobody would know they were there. They’d do it for their own good. Right?”
Kent barked laughter as he poured the last dregs into his mug. “Yeah, sure. Like we got people from the future all ’round us now . . .”
“Well, shit, we might.” Harry turned toward some guys seated nearby. “Hey, any of you fuggers from the future?”
They glared at him, but said nothing. Cindy was wiping tables and putting up chairs; she shot them a dark look. It was getting close to last call; she didn’t seem to be happy to have garrulous drunks harassing her last remaining customers. “You wanna cool it?” Kent murmured. “Geez, I didn’t meanta make it a federal case . . .”
“Hey, it is a federal case, man! Thass what we do, izzn’it? I say we bust this place for acceptin’ time travellers withoutta . . . withoutta . . . fuck, I dunno, a green card?”
Harry reached into his suit pocket, pulled out his badge holder with the OPS seal engraved on its leatherette cover, started to push back his chair. That was enough for Murphy; he grabbed Harry’s wrist before he could stand up. “Hey, hey, take it easy . . .”
Harry started to pull his hand free, but Murphy hung on. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Cindy giving the bartender a discreet hand signal; they were about a second away from being thrown out. “Calm down,” he murmured. “Keep this up and we’re going to land in jail.”
Harry glowered at him, and for a moment Murphy wondered if he was going to throw a punch. Then he grinned and dropped back into his chair. The badge folder slipped from his hand and fell onto the table. “Shit, man . . . I was just kidding, thass all. Jus’ makin’ a point, y’know.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Murphy relaxed, pulled his hand away. “I know. You’re just kidding.”
“Thass right. Y’know an’ I know . . . ain’ no such thing as . . . geez, whatchamacallit . . .”
“I know, I know. We got the point . . .”
And that was it. Murphy hung around long enough to make sure that Harry had a cab ride and that he wouldn’t cause any more trouble, then he pulled on his parka and headed for the door, pausing at the bar to guiltily slip a five-spot into Cindy’s tip glass. The sidewalk was empty; the night frigid and silent. Pale exhaust fumes from the waiting taxi lingered above the curb like pallid ghosts; he climbed in, gave the driver directions to his place in Arlington, then settled back against the duct-taped seat and gazed out the frosted windows as they passed the floodlighted dome of the Capitol Building.
Time travel. Jesus. What a stupid idea.
Thursday, May 6, 1937: 7:04 P.M.
The leviathan descended from the slate gray sky. At first it was a silver ovoid, but as it turned northeast, it gradually expanded in size and shape, taking on the dimensions of a vast pumpkin seed. As the drone of its four diesel engines reached the crowd gathered in the New Jersey meadow, Navy seamen in white caps jogged toward an iron mooring mast positioned in the center of the landing field. Everyone else stared up at the behemoth as it cruised six hundred feet overhead, its great shadow passing across their faces as it began making a sharp turn to the west. Now they could clearly see the swastikas on its vertical stabilizers, the Olympic rings on the fuselage above the passenger windows, and—above its control gondola, just aft of its blunt prow, painted in enormous Gothic letters—the giant’s name.
Within the airship, passengers stood at titled cellon windows on A Deck’s promenade, watching as the Hindenburg made its final approach to Lakehurst Naval Air Station. They were arriving thirteen hours late, because of high headwinds over the Atlantic and an additional delay while a thunderstorm swept out to sea, but few people cared; during the last few hours, they had gazed down upon the spire of the Empire State Building, caused a Dodgers game to grind to a halt as they passed over Ebbets Field, and watched whitecaps breaking on the Jersey shore. Stewards had already carried their baggage to the gangway stairs aft of the staterooms, where it now lay piled beneath the bronze bust of Marshal von Hindenburg. It had been a wonderful trip: three days aboard the world’s largest and most glamorous airship, a flying hotel where mornings began with breakfast in the dining room and evenings ended with brandy and cigars in the smoking room.
Now the voyage was over, though, and everyone wanted to get their feet on the ground again. For the Americans, it was homecoming; in a few minutes, they’d be reunited with family and friends waiting for them at the aerodrome. For the sixty-one crew members, it was the Hindenburg’s seventh flight to the United States, the first this year. For a couple of German Jews, it was escape from the harsh regime that had taken control of their native country. For three Luftwaffe intelligence officers posing as tourists, it was a temporary layover in a decadent nation of mongrels.
For the passengers listed on the manifest
as John and Emma Pannes, it was the beginning of the final countdown.
Franc Lu raised a hand from the promenade rail to his spectacles, gently tapped their wire frame as if absently adjusting them. A readout appeared on the inside of the right lens: 19:11:31/—13:41(?)
“Thirteen minutes,” he murmured.
Lea Oschner said nothing, but gripped the rail a little harder. Around them, passengers were chatting, laughing, pointing at baffled cows in the pastures far below. The airship’s faint shadow was larger now, and moving closer; according to history, the Hindenburg would drop to 120 meters as it turned eastward again, heading back toward the mooring mast. The passenger decks were soundproof, so they couldn’t hear the engines, but Captain Pruss should now be ordering the engines reduced to idle-ahead; in another minute, they would be reversed to brake the airship for its docking maneuver.
“Relax,” he whispered. “Nothing’s going to happen yet.”
Lea forced a smile, but furtively clasped the back of his hand. Everyone around them was having a wonderful time; it was important that she and Franc appear just as carefree. They were John and Emma Pannes, from Manhasset, Long Island. John Pannes was the passenger manager for Hamburg-American German Lloyd Lines, the company that was the American representative for the Zeppelin airship fleet. Emma Pannes, fifteen years younger than her husband, was originally from Illinois. She had followed John’s job from Philadelphia to New York, and now they were returning from another business trip to Germany.
Nice, quiet, middle-aged people who wouldn’t be at all nervous about being aboard the Hindenburg despite the fact that thirteen . . . no, make that twelve . . . minutes from now, they were destined to die.
Yet John and Emma Pannes wouldn’t perish in the coming inferno. In fact, they were very much alive, well, and living somewhere in the twenty-fourth century. The CRC advance team had quietly abducted them while they were walking from their hotel to the opera on the evening of May 2, 1937, and delivered them safely to its safe house outside Frankfurt; by now they should have been picked up by the Miranda and transported to A.D. 2314. Franc hoped that the real John Pannes wouldn’t object too strongly to being kidnapped; given the alternative, though, he rather doubted that he would, once the facts were explained to him and his wife.
Now Franc was a sixty-year-old American businessman, and Lea was forty-five instead of twenty-nine. Their appearance had been altered so convincingly that, two nights earlier, they were able to share a table in the salon with the Pannes’ old friend, Ernst Lehmann, the dirigible captain who was aboard the Hindenburg to observe Captain Pruss on his first transatlantic flight. They had dinner with Lehmann without the captain noticing any difference, yet they carefully remained aloof during most of the trip, preferring to stay in their cabin. The less interaction they had with the passengers and crew, the less chance of them inadvertently influencing history.
There had been a close moment yesterday, though, when they’d joined a tour of the ship.
The tour was necessary. John and Emma had toured the airship, so they had to follow the course of history. Yet, more importantly, it gave the researchers an opportunity to fulfill the primary objective of their mission: delivering an eyewitness account of the Hindenburg’s last voyage, and documenting the reason why the LZ-129 had been destroyed. So while the passengers marched single file along the keel catwalk, gaping at the vast hydrogen cells within the giant duraluminum rings, Franc and Lea paused now and then to stick adhesive divots, each no larger than the rivets they resembled, to girders and conduits. They had artfully scattered the divots everywhere aboard the airship; the divots transmitted sights and sounds to the recorders concealed within Franc’s cigarette case and Lea’s makeup compact, both of which had evaded discovery by the Gestapo agents who inspected everything carried aboard the Hindenburg by its passengers before they left the Frankfurter Hof the morning of the flight. Of course, the Nazis had been searching for a bomb, not for surveillance equipment so microscopic that it could be hidden within commonplace items of the early twentieth century.
The incident occurred when the tour reached the airship’s stern, just below the place where the bomb was carefully sewn into the canvas liner beneath Cell Number 4. Kurt Ruediger, the ship’s doctor who was conducting the tour, had paused to point out the landing-gear well in the lower vertical stabilizer when they heard footfalls descending a ladder above them. A few seconds later, a rigger appeared from the darkness, stepping off the ladder to head forward toward the nose.
When he came into the half-light cast by the electric lamps strung along the catwalk, Franc and Lea recognized him at once: Eric Spehl, whom history would cast as the man who had planted the bomb that would destroy the Hindenburg. He didn’t look much like a saboteur, although he was within sight of the tiny package he had hidden in the gas cell while the ship was hangared at Friedrichshafen. Indeed, he seemed little more than an overworked rigger: a tall, blond man in drab cotton coveralls and rubber-soled shoes. As the passengers stepped aside to let him pass, though, Lea hesitated on the narrow catwalk. The necklace around her throat held a nanocam; this was her only chance to record Spehl’s image.
The heel of her left shoe caught on the aluminum-mesh floor, though, and she tripped and staggered backward, her hands blindly groping for the railing. The airship’s taut canvas skin lay only thirty feet below the catwalk; past that was a three-hundred-meter plummet into the frigid waters of the North Atlantic. Franc reached out to catch her, but Spehl was closer. He grabbed her by the shoulders and steadied her, then he smiled politely and said something about being careful, Fraulein. Then he turned and walked away.
A small occurrence, over and done within a few seconds, yet the significance of such incidents had long been a matter of debate within the Chronospace Research Centre. Some researchers argued that worldlines were so rigid that even the slightest disturbance could have vast ramifications; look what had almost happened when the CRC placed someone in a parking lot behind a high fence near Dealy Plaza in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Others contended that chronospace was more flexible than anyone believed; minor accidents were allowable during expeditions because history was already in motion. It didn’t matter how many butterflies one crushed underfoot during the Pleistocene; the dinosaurs would die anyway.
Nonetheless, once Franc and Lea returned to their cabin, they had quietly fretted over whether the incident would cause a paradox. Yet history apparently hadn’t been disturbed. Monitoring the airship from their cabin the following morning, as the Hindenburg approached the American coast, they watched as Spehl walked down the keel catwalk, furtively looked either way, then climbed the ladder to Cell Number 4. The divot Franc placed at the bottom of the ladder couldn’t make him out in the visible spectrum, but his thermographic image showed him clinging to the ladder beneath the cell as he set the photographer’s timer that would send an electric current from two dry-cell batteries into a small phosphorous charge.
At 7:25 P.M. local, plus an indeterminate number of seconds, 203,760 cubic meters of hydrogen would be ignited. Thirty-seven seconds later, the Hindenburg would hit the ground as 241 tons of flaming mass.
Now the mighty airship was slowing down. Through the promenade windows, they saw the crackerbox shape of the hangar, the skeletal mooring mast surrounded by tiny figures in white caps. Franc tapped his glasses again: 19:17:31/–08.29(?) In a few seconds, the aft water ballast tanks would be released, the bowlines dropped.
It wasn’t the next eight minutes that bothered him, though; it was the thirty-seven-plus seconds that would follow the explosion. He and Lea had had little trouble getting aboard the Hindenburg. Now they had to see if they could get off again.
Thursday, May 5, 1937: 7:21 P.M.
One of the most interesting things about the early 20th century, Vasili Metz concluded, was the way Earth looked from space.
It wasn’t just the relative smallness of its cities, or the clarity of the skies above them, or the subtle differences of the c
oastlines. It was surprising to see New York City when its skyline was new and not half-submerged, but even that was to be expected. This was his third mission as the Oberon’s pilot, and he had become accustomed to such changes. What struck him as unreal was the emptiness of near-Earth space. No powersats, no colonies, no shuttles. Chronos Station was nowhere to be seen. There wasn’t even any space debris; the first satellite wouldn’t be launched for forty years, and another thirty years would pass before free-falling junk would pose a navigational hazard.
On the other hand, it would be another ten years before anyone ever reported having seen a flying saucer. And it would remain that way if he had any say in the matter.
For the past three days, after a brief visit to Earth to drop off Lu and Oschner within Frankfurt, then a suborbital jaunt to deposit Tom Hoffman in New Jersey, Metz had held station in geosynchronous orbit above the Garden State. Except for when he monitored the Miranda’s departure, when it opened the wormhole that would send the support team, plus two nice people named John and Emma Pannes, back to Chronos Station, he had been almost alone.
Three hours earlier, Oberon had descended to a new orbit 289 kilometers above New Jersey, and Metz had suddenly become quite busy. Maintaining the proper balance between the timeship’s negmass drive and Earth’s gravity, while simultaneously compensating for the planet’s rotation, was difficult enough; he also had to remain in contact with Hoffman. With no comsats available to assist them, and Tom unable to throw up a transceiver dish, they had to relay on old-fashioned ELF bands that wouldn’t likely be intercepted by ham radio operators of this period.
“Oberon, this is Lakehurst Base.” Hoffman’s voice came over Metz’s headset. “Do you copy? Over.”
Metz prodded his throat mike. “We copy, Lakehurst. What’s the mission status?”