by Allen Steele
He paused to heave a deep sigh. “That’s what happened to the angels. First they began to explore chronospace, and then they began to change history. They caused paradoxes which eventually destroyed not only their own home world, but also those of all the worlds within their dominium, until virtually none of their kind were left. The handful that remain alive have taken it upon themselves to make sure that this sort of thing never happens again.”
“So they’re . . . what? Time policemen?” Metz was skeptical. “Who appointed them?”
Murphy raised his shoulders in an empty shrug. “If you want to call them that, sure. They seem to see themselves as sentries. As for who appointed them . . . I guess you could say they appointed themselves.” He smiled slightly. “Maybe you can argue with that idea, but I don’t think they’d listen.”
“Well, if they’re listening right now, I’ve got two words for them . . .”
“Metz, just shut up, all right?” Franc glared at Vasili until he pointedly turned away, then he turned back to Murphy. “So they see themselves as sentries. You mean they monitor other races who are capable of time travel?”
“Exactly, yes. When they detect disturbances in spacetime, they investigate the source, and if it turns out that they’re being caused by the creation of artificial wormholes, then they observe the race that constructed them to see if they’re using them to travel back in time. If that’s the case, and if they believe that race is acting irresponsibly then they . . . well, they intervene.”
“That explains the other sightings.” Lea hugged her knees as she stared into the fire. “The angels other CRC expeditions reported . . . those were angels observing us, trying to determine what we were doing.” She looked at Murphy. “We’ve seen them before, but we didn’t know what they were.”
“So now you know.” Murphy picked his cap, pulled it back on his head. “When you went back to 1937, you caused a paradox that changed history and created a new worldline, and when you crashed in 1998, you caused yet another paradox which compounded the mistake. . . .
“Which, in turn, led to humankind developing time travel two hundred years earlier than it originally had,” Lea finished.
“Right, and the angels couldn’t let that happen. They . . .” Murphy closed his eyes, his mouth pursing in concentration. “They say that . . . a race that values free will as strongly as we do . . . cannot be allowed to pursue time travel. We simply aren’t mature enough to understand the full consequences of our actions. This was why we had to be stopped.”
“Even at the cost of our world,” Franc said softly.
“Yes. Better the destruction of one world than many others.” When he raised his head once more, there were tears at the corners of his eyes. “They waited until we tested Herbert, and then they obliterated the Moon. Most of the human race perished virtually overnight when its larger fragments rained down on Earth. The survivors held on for a few more years, but by then the global climate had been damaged beyond the point of recovery. I’m . . . I’m the only person from my time to survive, and that’s only because the . . . I can’t call them angels, sorry . . . they brought me here, to tell you these things.”
“And that’s it?” Metz swung around to face him. “That’s all? ‘Hey, we blew up the Moon and killed everyone on your planet . . . sorry, but it’s your fault’?” He gestured to the nearby bluff. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t pitch you over.”
“It’s not his fault!” Franc scrambled to his feet.
“Stop it, both of you!” Lea yelled. “Vasili, he didn’t . . . !”
“No,” Murphy said quietly. “He’s right. It is my fault.”
Remaining seated on the ground, he gazed into the amber coals. “I shouldn’t have kept that piece of paper,” he continued, “but I did, and I shouldn’t have let myself be forced into telling anyone else where I thought it came from, but I did, and I shouldn’t have spent the next twenty-six years developing Herbert, but . . .”
He let out his breath, wiped tears from his face with the back of his hand. “Well, you know the rest. Maybe you guys made a mistake in 1937, but five billion people died because of mine.” He nodded toward the desolate valley spread out below them. “The folks who lived down there used to be my neighbors. Believe me, I’m tempted to jump myself. If it wasn’t because of . . .”
He stopped, listening for a few moments, then he looked up at them again. “But the aliens didn’t bring me here just to fill you in. They say this is just a warning . . .”
“A what?” Metz demanded.
“Yeah, I know . . . some warning, huh?” Murphy smiled bitterly. “But they say that we can still undo everything, if we’re willing to do so.”
He clambered to his feet, brushed off the back of his trousers. “I’m not hearing any more voices, but I think I can figure out the rest. This is only one worldline, right? That means there’s others. Other possible futures, I mean.” He glanced in the direction of the Oberon, then looked at Franc. “If I’m not mistaken, then that thing can still go back in time, right?”
“Sure. Of course it can,” Franc said. “It’s a little damaged, but it’s still flightworthy.” He turned toward Metz. “You can finish the repairs, can’t you?”
The pilot slowly let out his breath, scratched the back of his head. “Well, I don’t have . . .” Then he nodded. “Sure, I can do it. Give me a few hours, and we’ll be ready to go. What are you getting at, Lu?”
Franc didn’t reply at once. Stepping away from the fire, he looked at the obscene rings rising above the distant mountains. The last light of day was upon them, the cold wind beginning to rise once more.
“We made a mistake back there,” he said at last. “Now we’re going to undo it.”
Thursday, May 6, 1937: 6:43 P .M.
Twilight was settling upon the New Jersey coast, the last light of day gilding the breakers as they crashed against the beach. A pair of children building a sand castle at the edge of the surf heard the growl of engines just before an immense shadow passed over them. Looking up, they gaped in astonishment, then leaped to their feet and screamed in delight as a great silver ellipse cruised overhead.
The Hindenburg had been following the Jersey shoreline for nearly three hours now, its arrival at Lakehurst Naval Air Station delayed until weather conditions at the landing field improved. Yet now, just as the giant airship was approaching the town of Forked River, its radio operator received word that visibility was up to five miles and the winds had fallen to twenty knots. Captain Pruss told the pilots to set course for Lakehurst.
On the beach far below, one of the children watching the LZ-129 noticed a brief shimmer in the air just above the dirigible’s upper fin. Mystified, he raised a hand to shade his eyes against the sun, yet as the enormous craft slowed to make a northwest turn, the odd illusion was lost to sight. The boy decided his eyes were playing tricks; he grinned as the zeppelin gradually swung around. One day, he silently swore to himself, he was going to ride in one of those things. . . .
“We’re almost in position,” Metz’s voice murmured in Franc’s headset. “Ready back there?”
Sitting in the open airlock hatch, his feet dangling over empty space, Franc watched as the Hindenburg grew steadily closer. Although invisible, the Oberon still cast a shadow across the dirigible; the timeship hovered barely thirty meters above the airship, and now he could clearly see the ribbing beneath its taut canvas skin.
“Ready,” he said. The palms of his hands were slick with sweat; he wiped them across his trousers, and tried not to think too much about what he was about to do. “Just get me above the aft flue vents.”
The Hindenburg swelled in size. Now he couldn’t see the ground anymore, only a vast expanse of silver-painted fabric. There was a limit to how close Metz could dare to bring the Oberon before the electromagnetic field of its negmass drive began to interfere with the dirigible’s diesel engines, yet he also had to take advantage of those few precious minutes over the town of Forked
River when the airship made its turn toward Lakehurst, during which time it would be moving just slowly enough for Franc to safely board her.
At least, so he hoped. . . .
“Ready for the ladder?” Murphy squatted on the other side of the hatch, clutching a floor bracket as he held onto a rolled-up fire ladder with the other. The ladder, along with the crowbar Franc had slipped into his belt, had come from the ruins of a hardware store just outside Amherst. Franc nodded, and Murphy tossed the ladder through the hatch. Its stainless-steel links rattled as it fell, then it snapped tight against the bracket.
Murphy leaned over the hatch and peered downward, then looked up again. “You’re about five feet short,” he shouted, trying to make himself heard over the keening whistle of the wind. “Can we get any closer?”
Franc glanced over his shoulder at Lea. Squatting on the deck behind him, her face pale, she shook her head. He looked down just as the rectangular slotted panels of the flues came into sight. They were almost on top of the airship. He reached forward, grabbed the top rung of the ladder
“I’m over the vents!” Metz yelled. “Go now!”
He felt Lea’s hand on his shoulder, as if she was trying to hold him back. Yet he couldn’t allow himself the luxury of hesitation. Franc sucked in his breath, then gently pushed himself off the deck and through the hatch.
There was a terrifying instant when, as he put his weight on the ladder, the rungs gave a few centimeters of slack. He fell backward, yet he held on, and then the ladder took his weight and stopped his plunge. The wind ripped at his clothes and threatened to tear him off; he felt a surge of panic, and for a few moments all he wanted to do was cling to the rungs until Lea and Murphy hauled him back to safety. . . .
“Franc, you can do this.” Lea’s voice was calm presence in his headset. “You can do this. Don’t look down. Just take it one step at a time, and don’t look down.”
“Right . . . okay.” Franc carefully lowered his right foot, blindly searched for the next rung down until the toe of his shoe found it. He reluctantly released his hand from the top rung, then reached down to grab the one below it. “Got it.”
“That’s it,” Lea gently coaxed him onward. “You’re doing fine. Now the next rung . . .”
Step by step, one rung at a time, Franc made his way down the ladder. It seemed to get easier the farther down he went; although he dared not look down, he could hear the roar of the Hindenburg’s engines from far below. He glanced up, and almost laughed at what he saw: a square-shaped hole in the cloudy sky, with Murphy and Lea staring down at him. Incredibly, they were nearly twenty meters away.
“You’re almost there,” Lea said. “C’mon, you can do it. . . .”
‘Franc, you’re going to have to hurry.” Metz’s voice came over the comlink. “They’ve completed the turnaround, and they’re throttling up the engines.”
Now the ladder was swaying like a pendulum. Metz was trying to keep up with the Hindenburg. Disregarding Lea’s admonition, Franc looked down. Six more rungs to go, but the bottom of the ladder was still two meters above the top of the dirigible. Worse, the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer was less than thirty meters away. If the ladder swung any closer to it, he would be hurled against the huge fin.
“Franc, hurry!”
No time. Franc scrambled down the remaining rungs, until his feet had nowhere left to go. He took a deep breath, hesitated for a second, then released the ladder.
Much to his surprise, he managed to land on all fours. The envelope sagged beneath him, the rough canvas burning the palms of his hands. The slipstream threatened to grab his body and pitch him over the side. Franc flattened himself against the envelope, then began to crawl forward on his stomach, making his way toward the twin flue vents rising from the top of the airship.
The hinged wooden cover of the left vent was frozen shut. Still hugging the airship, he pulled the crowbar out of his belt and shoved the narrow end forward, wedging it between its cover’s lower slats. Bracing his feet against a rib and rising on his knees as high as he dared, he leaned against the crowbar, putting his weight upon it. The cover creaked in protest, then popped open, exposing the dark shaft below it.
Franc tucked the crowbar back into his belt, then crawled to the open flue, straightening up just long enough to swing his legs over the opening. As anticipated, the shaft’s interior was lined with ladder rungs. He swung himself over the side, relieved to get out of the wind.
“Okay, I’m in.” He glanced at the Rolex watch he had borrowed from Murphy; it read 6:55. “By my reckoning, I’ve got thirty minutes.”
“You don’t have that long,” Metz said.
“I know. Hang on as long as you can.”
The flue shafts were designed to vent hot air from the airship’s interior, but the Hindenburg’s riggers also used them to inspect and repair the hydrogen gas cells. As Franc hastily climbed down the narrow shaft, he listened for sounds from the catwalk below. He heard no one, but that was to be expected; the crewmen would be at their landing stations by now, either in the airship’s nose or in the small auxiliary control compartment located in the bottom of the lower stabilizer.
The shaft intersected the middle catwalk leading through the axial center of the ship. Franc carefully opened the hatch, peered first one way and then another, before creeping out onto the triangular gangway. All around him, enormous gas cells made of hand-stitched lengths of sheep gut gently groaned like the lungs of a leviathan, held in place by skeletal duraluminum rings and weblike strands of cable. Franc jogged down the catwalk, heading for the stern. He prayed that his footsteps wouldn’t be heard by anyone below, yet there wasn’t enough time for stealth.
He found the narrow ladder leading upward along the side of Cell Number Four. Somewhere up there was the place where the rigger had hidden his bomb. He dug into his trouser pocket, found the miniature electromagnetic sensor Metz had given him. It came from Oberon’s repair kit; Vasili used it to detect faulty wiring, and now Franc hoped that it would help him pinpoint the location of the explosive device concealed within the hydrogen cell.
Yet he didn’t need the sensor after all. Halfway up the ladder, he heard the gentle rustle of loose fabric. Clutching the sensor between his teeth, Franc scaled the last few rungs until he found the place where Spehl had used a knife to slice open the canvas outer envelope of the cell. He had stitched shut the opening, but the flap had come loose; as Franc gently prized it open, he found the bomb taped within.
It was a crude device: a small cotton bag filled with phosphorus, with wires leading into it from four flashlight batteries, which in turn were rigged to a Swiss nautical watch. “I’ve found it,” Franc said as he carefully inspected the bomb.
“You’ve got nineteen minutes.” Metz’s voice was terse. “Franc . . .”
“Shut up. I’m working.” Disarming the bomb without knowing exactly what he was doing would probably be a lethal mistake, but that wasn’t his intention. Peering closer at the watch face, he observed that its bevel was set at eight o’clock. The bevel must be the timer; when the minute hand touched its red index, the positive and negative wires connected to them would touch, and an electrical charge would be sent into the phosphorus charge. He reached into the gas bag and, ever so carefully, turned the bevel counterclockwise until the index rested above 7:25.
He slowly let out his breath. Regardless of his reasons for doing so, he had just condemned thirty-five people to death. On the other side of the airship, he and Lea would be standing on the Deck A promenade, watching through the windows as the Hindenburg coasted across New Jersey farmland toward Lakehurst. This time, though, they would get what they had come here for . . .
“Okay, it’s set,” he said as he closed the flap.
“Hindenburg’s dropping altitude,” Metz said. “I can’t stay here much longer.”
Franc checked his own watch: 7:07. Only eighteen minutes left. He swore under his breath as he began to scurry back down the ladder. E
ighteen minutes. Perhaps there was marginally enough time for him to get back to the flue vent and climb back up to the top of the airship before the bomb went off, yet if he tried to board the Oberon while it was within sight of the airfield, it was almost certain that someone on the ground would spot him. Although the timeship was cloaked, he wasn’t; eyewitnesses would later report, and newsreel cameras would verify, the strange sight of a man climbing a ladder into thin air.
“Get out here,” he said. “I’ll find another way off.”
“Are you out of your . . . ?”
“Don’t argue. I’ll signal when I get away. You can pick me up somewhere else.” He was at the bottom of the ladder now. He looked both ways, but no one else was on the catwalk. “Signing off now. If you don’t hear from me again . . . well, get Lea to figure it out. She’ll know what to do.”
Metz was saying something, but Franc didn’t have time to listen. He pulled off the headset and shoved it in his pocket, then began jogging down the catwalk, heading for the bow.
When the Hindenburg crashed, it went down fast. Thirty-seven seconds after the explosion, it was . . . would become . . . a flaming heap of collapsing metal. Although the stern hit ground first, most the survivors had been in the front of the ship, save for a handful of crewmen stationed in the lower rudder who managed to escape before they were burned or crushed to death. So his best chance of survival was to reach the lower decks at the front of the ship. However, he couldn’t allow himself to be seen in the passenger compartments, and too many crewmen would be in their quarters behind B Deck.
If he correctly remembered the ship’s layout, though, there was an airshaft between Cells Twelve and Thirteen which led down the lower catwalk forward of B Deck, just aft of the freight and mail rooms behind the control car. Two cargo hatches were located there; if he could get that far, he might be able to hide just long enough to wait out the explosion.