Footprints in the Snow

by Cassie Miles

  “I still don’t trust her,” the captain said. “Make sure you don’t let that broad out of your sight.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  That was an order Luke fully intended to obey.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Shana’s plain bedroom in the main house at Camp Hale offered zero opportunity for vanity. There wasn’t even a mirror. Still, she dressed carefully in her new slacks and blouse. After wearing heavy boots, her little black flats felt light as air and feminine. She smoothed the creases in her slacks, wondering how anybody in this era managed to look neat without wrinkle-free fabrics, and she wished for some kind of jewelry to brighten her appearance.

  If she’d known before the snowstorm that she was about to time travel, she would have arranged her backpack more carefully—definitely would have brought along a change of underwear. Now she had to make do.

  Digging through her pack and the pockets of her ski jacket, she hoped to find a stray pair of earrings. Cubic zirconia would be nice. In this era, everybody would think they were diamonds. All she found was the collection of rocks she’d picked up before the blizzard—a couple of crystals and the small shard of green trinite.

  There was a jaunty tap on her door before Luke stepped inside. When he turned toward her, she was surprised to see him grinning—even more surprised when he embraced her and kissed her on the mouth with a casual intimacy.

  “What are you up to?” she asked.

  “Something I should have done the minute Fermi arrived.” He brought her to the window and opened the blinds. “Look.”

  Within her field of vision were five armed guards facing the forested area two hundred yards away. Other G.I.’s in their white ski uniforms patrolled on snowshoes closer to the trees. The air of desertion that hung over Camp Hale had been replaced by a parade of activity. She even spotted three men riding homely mules with their long ears sticking straight up. “Mules?”

  “Officially, we’re a cavalry unit,” he said. “Mules handle the terrain better than horses.”

  “What’s all the excitement about?”

  “Captain Hughes gave me permission to handle security, and that’s what I’m doing. I rousted the troops from their bunks and gave each and every one of those dogfaces an assignment.”

  “Nice work,” she said.

  “The way I figure, there are only four spies, and I’ve got over sixty men at my disposal. That ought to be enough manpower to stop them.”

  “Why didn’t Captain Hughes do this before?”

  “He’s worn out, just putting in his time and waiting for the war to be over.” He paused. His enthusiasm dimmed. “The captain isn’t like those guys who can’t stop twitching, guys with shell shock. But he’s not right in the head.”

  “Where I come from, we call that post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s a clinical diagnosis. Was Hughes in battle?”

  “He was wounded in the D-day invasion and sent back home. He hasn’t actually been with the 10th for very long, but he’s from Colorado and knows how to ski, so he ended up here.”

  “Where he doesn’t really care what’s happening.”

  “That’s about the size of it,” he said. “I’ve got to admit that I was feeling the same way myself. Tired to the bone. Sick of dragging myself through a war that seemed like it would go on forever. Hopeless.”

  “Obviously,” she said as she glanced out the window again, “you’ve gotten your act together.”

  “Because of you.”

  When she looked up at him, she saw energy and vitality radiating as bright as a new star. She warmed herself in his heat, glad that she’d been a part of his healing process.

  Reaching over to take his hand, she dropped the stones she’d been holding. Luke stooped to pick them up. He turned the glistening trinite to catch the light. “What is this?”

  “A rock that I shouldn’t have found in Colorado,” she said. “I’m hoping Dr. Fermi might have some idea why it was here.”

  “Let’s find out.” He leaned close and gave her a little peck on the cheek. “Fermi has been asking to see you.”

  She followed him through the corridors of the main house to the central conference room with the blackboards. Dr. Fermi and Dr. Douglas—who had asked to be called Dougie—stood at the window, staring out. The instant Fermi saw her, his expression brightened. He rushed toward her and kissed both of her cheeks. The first words out of his mouth were a compliment on her new outfit, and she thanked him. Dr. Fermi knew how to treat a lady.

  He turned his attention to business. “Your work on the ore analysis was excellent, Shana. The purity is not as high as I had hoped, but the uranium is—”

  “Tuballoy,” Dougie reminded. “It’s called tuballoy.”

  “Of course.” Dr. Fermi turned back to her. “Now I must ask your expert opinion on which of these three mines will be most useful for our purposes.”

  Shana was delighted to put her skills to work. This is what she did for a living, analyzing mining probabilities. “We’ll need to balance the purity of the tuballoy—” she smiled at Dougie “—with the depth of the vein and prior records of production.”

  “Technically,” Dougie said, “we are only cleared to purchase vanadium so we will also need analysis on that by-product.”

  “Of course.” Dougie’s reference to the code name for uranium and the fake purchase of the vanadium alloy reminded her of the need for secrecy surrounding the Manhattan Project. “I hope you gentlemen aren’t too disappointed with the results of my geological analysis.”

  “My true sadness is being under guard,” Fermi said as he glanced toward Luke. “While in Colorado, I had hoped to go skiing.”

  “The snow isn’t much good,” Luke said. “If we have another warm day, it’ll be nothing but mush.”

  “But I see storm clouds moving in.” He pointed toward the window. “We could have another blizzard.”

  Another blizzard? Shana moved to the window. She’d been preoccupied with watching the activity on the ground and hadn’t noticed the dark clouds gathering to the north. The first blizzard had brought her here to 1945. Would a second blizzard return her to her own millennium? It was imperative to find out.

  She turned to Dougie whose expression was morose. “This is off the subject, Dougie, but do you remember before when we were talking about time travel?”

  “I remember,” Dougie said.

  Behind her back, she heard Luke clear his throat loudly, reminding her that this topic was taboo. But she had to find out. “You suggested that there might be an emotional or psychological basis for time travel. Something Einstein said.”

  Though he nodded, his forehead pulled into a frown. “No one can deny the existence of time passing, but the measurement of time in minutes, hours, months and years is created by man.”

  “So, it’s all in the perception,” she said.

  “Correct,” he said. “I perceive, based on visual evidence, that you are here. What if there is a higher sense than vision?”

  “An interdimensional perception,” she said.

  Not being a theoretical physicist, it was difficult to wrap her mind around these concepts. Did time and space really exist? Or were they a construct of man’s sensory perception?

  She had a much simpler idea. “If our perceptions are based on our sensory evidence, could time and space also be based on emotion?”

  “It’s possible.”

  Dr. Dougie went to the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk and began writing a mathematical formula. His hieroglyphic scribbles made very little sense to Shana. “What are you doing?”

  “A perceptual analysis based on the speed of light.”

  “Too complicated,” Fermi said. “Emotion cannot be quantified. We have no measurement for hate or revenge.”

  Luke stepped forward. “The war could be a measurement. Hundreds of thousands have been killed.”

  “That is evidence,” Fermi said. “But how can it be measured? It has been said that the power of
love can move mountains. But where is the quantifiable proof? The facts? We cannot measure this power in the laboratory.”

  “Einstein has a theory about the relativity of time and emotion,” Dougie said. “Here’s the simple explanation. If you touch a hot stove and are burned, time slows down. You see the stove, feel the pain, your body reacts. You may cry out. You may rush to get treatment. Each second seems like an hour.”

  Shana nodded. “I know exactly what you mean. I was once in a fender bender where I saw the guy who hit my car coming toward me. I knew we’d crash, and everything went into slow motion.”

  “Compare that intensity to an event without emotional content. Perhaps listening to a boring lecture. The minutes pass like hours.”

  “So the intensity of the emotion alters my perception of time,” she concluded.

  She automatically looked toward Luke. When they were together, time flew. Yet, every minute was precious. She would always treasure the images she had of him. His voice would always echo in her ears. “An intense love might be powerful enough to cause time travel.”

  “Not scientifically,” Dougie said.

  The science didn’t really matter to her. In her heart and her mind, Shana knew that she’d been drawn back through time to be with Luke. He was her destiny, being with him was a stronger need, a stronger perception than fact or mathematical reality.

  She wished she could tell Dr. Fermi and his colleague about her own journey through time, wished she could assure him that his own experiment with atomic energy would produce the desired results.

  Digging into the pocket of her slacks, she pulled out the small green shard and held it so he could see. “I found this specimen in a mine shaft in this area. It’s trinite.”

  “Very beautiful,” Dr. Fermi said.

  She knew that trinite had been produced in great quantity after the first test of the atomic bomb in Alamogordo that would take place in a few months’ time. The intense heat of the explosion literally created the stone. Fermi would have been there. He would have seen trinite scattered across the earth in shimmering green shards.

  “This stone,” she said, “isn’t found in this area. Which means that someone must have brought it here.”

  His eyebrows lifted as though he were expecting a revelation. “It is a most unusual stone.”

  “I have a feeling that you’re going to see a lot of trinite,” she said. “And when you do, think of me. And the power of love.”

  “Bella e brillante,” he said. “And also mysterious. What secrets do you hold, Shana Parisi?”

  She grinned. “Not as many as you might think.”

  The most profound explanations were often the simplest. She’d come back in time because of desperately strong, absolutely immeasurable emotions. Because of Luke. He filled the emptiness in her soul and gave her the fantasy she’d always dreamed about but never believed in until now.

  He was her time. Her reality. Her destiny.

  AFTER THREE HOURS in the conference room listening to Shana and the two scientists discuss geology results, Luke sprawled across the narrow bed in Shana’s room and groaned, “It felt like we were locked up in that room for a hundred years.”

  “Relativity of time and emotion,” she said brightly as she went to the window and carefully peeked out. “The less intense the emotion, the slower time passes.”

  “Right.” He wasn’t much concerned about her time travel theories. The important thing was that she was here now and she was safe. “I have a theory of my own.”

  “About time travel?”

  “About the Russian spies.” He’d done a lot of thinking while being bored this afternoon. “We’ve already figured out that the Russians had prior knowledge of Fermi’s plan to visit Camp Hale. We know that an insider set these wheels in motion. I’m thinking Dr. Dougie might be our traitor.”

  “Why?”

  “He made a stink about being protected.”

  “So did Dr. Fermi,” she pointed out. “Neither one of them likes being sequestered inside.”

  “What about the other scientist? The one who wasn’t around this afternoon.”

  “Dr. Schultz?” She shook her head. “He’s even more introverted than Dougie. I don’t see him as a spy.”

  “Somebody on the inside betrayed Fermi.”

  “They won’t get him now,” she said firmly. “You’ve done everything to keep him safe.”

  Luke silently congratulated himself. According to hourly reports from guards on duty, there had been no sign of snipers in the forest. No disturbance from anywhere in Camp Hale. The closest they came to excitement this afternoon was when one of the mules took off after a couple of elk and threw his rider. There were plenty of yuks about that incident.

  Shana was probably right. As long as he kept security at a high level, Fermi would be safe until tomorrow when the plane arrived from Denver to take him back to New Mexico. And then what would happen? He wanted to take the rest of the week off. Before he shipped out, he wanted to spend every free moment with Shana.

  Bella e brilliante. She stood at the edge of her window where the fading light of dusk shone gently upon her features. Her stillness intrigued him. Her natural beauty never failed to excite him.

  It was hard to believe that such a fine woman had taken a shine to him. Though much of her personal history remained a mystery, he could tell that she’d been brought up well. Her training and expertise in geology was obvious. He wouldn’t be surprised to find out that she really was the daughter of an ambassador. Someone important. Someone with class.

  She brushed a strand of black hair off her forehead. A soft sigh pushed through her full lips. Beautiful! If he didn’t leave her bedroom right now, he’d be tempted to make love to her in spite of the lack of privacy. Even though her bedroom was in a separate wing from the others, there were too many G.I.’s running to him with their reports.

  “It looks cold out there,” she said.

  All afternoon, the storm clouds had been thickening. It was winter’s last gasp. “I’ll keep you warm.”

  “I like that promise.”

  Oh man! If he stayed here one more minute, he wouldn’t be able to resist her. Luke hauled himself off the bed. “I’m going to tour the perimeter before dinner. Make sure everybody is in their place before nightfall.”

  “Great idea,” she said. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Whoa, there. You can’t go outside. You need protection as much as Fermi.”

  “I’ll be okay. At least for today. The bad guys aren’t going to hurt me before tomorrow. That’s when I’m supposed to deliver Dr. Fermi.” She made a twirling motion with her hand. “Turn around and look the other way while I get changed.”

  It was a little late for modesty. He’d already seen her naked. His intimate knowledge of her body could fill an encyclopedia. “You don’t need to change clothes because you’re not coming with me.”

  “I won’t get in the way.” She started unbuttoning her blouse, revealing the silky skin above her breasts. “I don’t like the idea of you parading around in front of the bad guys. Remember, they’re after you.”

  “Maybe.”

  “There’s no maybe about it. They came after us on the pass with guns blazing.”

  She shot a challenging glance in his direction as she slipped off her blouse. The curve of her shoulders was sheer perfection. Before he had a chance to admire the rest of her sexy body, she thrust her arms into her long-sleeved uniform shirt, and the olive drab swallowed her up. She wiggled out of her trousers and threw on the baggy fatigue pants.

  He repeated, “You aren’t coming with me.”

  “It seems to me that dusk is the worst possible time for you to step outside. Everything is gray and shadowy.”

  He agreed. If he’d been planning an attack, this was the time of day he’d choose. At the end of their watch, the guards were tired. Visibility was poor. “Nighttime won’t be much better. That blanket of clouds is going to hide the moonlight. Not to
mention that it could start snowing at any minute.”

  “Where I come from, we have meteorologists who predict the weather.”

  “We’ve got weathermen.” And it didn’t take a scientist to tell him the snow was coming. He could see the threat. He could feel it in his bones.

  She brushed past him on the way to the bed where she sat to pull on her socks and boots. “The only way you’re going to stop me from coming with you is to stay here. Inside. In safety.”

  “That’s not my job.”

  “I will not sit back and watch while you put yourself in danger.”

  “I’m not in danger.”

  “Really?” Her sarcasm was evident. “I’ll bet you’re protecting Martin and Henry.”

  Actually, he was. He’d taken the threat seriously enough to remove Martin and Henry from the regular rotation of guard duty. He’d also moved them from their barracks into the main house. “The boys are safe. They’re sacked out right next door to Fermi.”

  “Aha! That means you acknowledge there’s a threat.”

  “Damn right. That’s why I have the entire base on alert.”

  As he watched her tighten the laces on her boots, his frustration mounted. In the army, the chain of command was crystal clear and there was no disputing your orders. But when a man was dealing with a woman? Hell, he might as well just give up and let her have her way.

  She bounced to her feet. “Ready.”

  “Too bad you changed,” he drawled. “I’ve decided to stay here with you.”

  Though crestfallen, she gave a brisk nod. “Good choice.”

  He couldn’t keep his hands off her for one more minute. As he reached out for her, he heard noise from the hall. The sounds of a disturbance inside the house.

  Duty called. His reaction was immediate. Luke slung his Garand rifle over his shoulder and loosened his handgun from the holster.

  He ran down the hall to the right angle corner. The floor plan of the main house was a horseshoe. In the center were the conference rooms and offices. The two wings were bedrooms. The guard who was supposed to be stationed at this juncture was gone from his post. “Damn.”