The famous Volzstrang Equations predicted that the same Timewave that had traveled back through time would produce an equal and opposite rebound wave. Thus, theoretically, all he had to do was hitch a ride on this future-facing wave, Shadow cure in hand, and bam!
He was the savior of the world.
Of course, there was a flip side to all this.
If he could not find a way back to his capsule or was in some other way prevented, or marooned in the past, he would then bury the Shadow-cure inside a special box they had provided him with. The box had a special transponder built into it, and would be easily detectable in the future. A special low-powered battery would ensure the signal would continuously broadcast over the decades in between.
Someone pointed out that if this had indeed happened, the transponder box was already buried on the base and they ought to be able to find it in advance of sending Bantam back in time. But repeated searches had turned up nothing.
«T-minus two minutes, Ben.»
He looked at the screen showing the tunnel behind him. In the curvature of the collider tunnel, he could just now see a faint blue crackling light.
Here.
It.
Comes.
The Volzstrang Wave was building.
Then, he heard a sound like howling wind.
The voices on his headset became panicked of a sudden. «What?» Ben asked. «What is it?»
«Hang on Ben we — GET THAT SHIT SHUT DOWN! There’s a spike in the energy we didn’t — SHUT IT THE FUCK DOWN! NOW! — We didn’t see in the math. We don’t know if — “
At this point, static audio snow froze out the signal.
«Hello?» Ben said. «Control. Come in, Control. This is Bantam. HELLO?»
The wind-sound got louder. The blue crackling light grew brighter.
Something was coming around the corner.
Then, he saw it: the Volzstrang Wave, just as Hoermann Volzstrang’s famous equations had predicted.
Ice crashed through Bantam’s veins. The panic in the Control room combined with this sight made him taste copper.
Comprised of a fireball made of blue lightning, the Wave utterly filled the supercollider. It pushed at the edges of the tunneclass="underline" already, massive cracks had appeared. Metallic soot fell with hunks of ceiling.
The Volzstrang Wave was literally ripping the supercollider apart as it rampaged forward. This explained the panic in the Control Room.
The Wave was going to crush him.
There was nothing he could do.
He closed his eyes, inhaled and —
BAM! The capsule was lifted up. Ben felt his stomach drop out as he accelerated massively in the space of a second. This was going to crush him. G-forces, he knew, would shred his body to ribbons at this sudden shift in velocity.
Yet they didn’t.
He sped up massively again, and then tripled that.
He did not feel the massive pressure on his lungs, the elephant on his chest, that he had expected to feel, that he had felt in the fighter jet.
It must be the 28th dimension, he thought ridiculously.
But a sudden jolt snapped him back to the present. He shuddered. The capsule had already made more than ten revolutions around the Ross-Gaultier Supercollider. Or at least, that’s what it said on the screen.
Bantam glanced nervously around the interior of the capsule: there were no cracks. It appeared to be holding together just fine.
Well, that was something, anyway.
Already two minutes had passed, the entire trip was only supposed to —
Without warning, he felt his stomach drop out, like he was on a roller coaster. That could only mean one thing: he was airborne. He jerked his head to the monitor: he was above ground, that was certain. He was no longer in the Supercollider.
So: he’d been thrown clear. But he couldn’t make anything out other than that. It was all blurry lights and tumbling: the capsule was spinning.
Surely he could not be in 1944. Surely he had not actually time travelled. Or had he? Surely the Supercollider had merely been ripped apart by the stampeding Volzstrang Wave and he had been simply being tossed out of the centrifuge.
It was easier to believe that.
The capsule hit the ground with a violent lurch and then rolled to a stop.
Bantam caught his breath and allowed a moment for his heart to resume something like normal heartbeat. Then he unhooked his restraints and popped the door open, fully expecting to see a firetruck and ambulances racing toward him.
Instead, he was greeted with a sight far more bizarre than anything he could have ever predicted.
Three: Mother of All Whammies
BEN BANTAM stumbled out of the capsule, barely able to stand.
It was twilight: the edge of evening. That alone was weird: it had been morning seconds ago. He blinked at the sky. A dazzling full moon hung there, partially obscured by a shoulder of cloud.
Beneath this sky, and perhaps more importantly, men surrounded him. Army men. But like no Army men he had ever seen. They were all clad in some kind of body armor. It was like they were covered in soup bowls, or large scales that slid around gracefully to accommodate their motions.
And yet, this body armor was also a military uniform. It most resembled a Union uniform from the Civil War in coloring and placement of shiny buttons and buckles and yellow cords and trim on a base of deep blue. And their helmets had bits of silver and yellow feather.
They brandished silver and black guns. These, too, were odd, but there was no mistaking the barrel and trigger and what that implied.
«Ho there! More light! Get a naphtha on him!»
Somewhere nearby, there was a sharp hiss. Another floodlight blinded Bantam. It was an odd light … almost like a gas lamp, Bantam thought. It had the feel of flame.
This is not MacLaren, Bantam thought with a sinking feeling. Nothing looked right, nothing looked like the pictures they’d shown him, that he’d studied endlessly. Something had gone wrong, something had been miscalculated …
Or was this some secret project? Perhaps records of these armored suits had been lost along with the cure for the Shadow …?
«Hands up!» someone barked. «You in the spacesuit! Hands in the air, or prepare for a proper dewskitch!»
Spacesuit, Bantam mouthed. That was interesting. They recognized what he was wearing — or thought they did.
He tried to raise his hands, but found he was too weak. His legs wobbled and he fell to the ground.The Army men jumped nervously. «By Perdition!» one of them snarled.
«Don’t shoot! I’m just … dizzy,” Bantam yelled, or tried to yell. He was surprised by the lack of power in his voice. It barely projected past the end of his nose. He felt like a phantom: insubstantial.
Yet, it must have been enough. One of the Army guys — the Commander, it appeared — heard him. «What’s that you say? Dizzy? As in a Scaldrum dodge, I’ll wager! Then don’t move! Am I clear?»
The time travel … or whatever had actually happened … had made him dangerously exhausted.
«Yes,” Bantam said, as loudly as he could. «Don’t shoot. I’m not your enemy.»
«We’ll see, we’ll see,” the Commander said dubiously. «Fitzhenry! Kindly remove his helmet! I want to see the face of this magsman!»
Fitzhenry, Bantam repeated, sifting through the brain static. Fitzhenry … Fitzhenry … There was no Fitzhenry stationed at MacLaren in 1944. Bantam knew the duty roster by heart. It was yet another one of the endless details they’d made him study …
Fitzhenry stepped forward and several other men moved closer and stuffed their gun barrels in his ribcage. «No funny business,” Fitzhenry warned. «Now — how do I get this off?»
«There’s a latch in the back,” Bantam said, his voice raspy now. He was getting weaker. «You just unhook — oh there you go. You got it.»
The pungent smell of burning fuel hit Bantam immediately as soon as his helmet was yanked. He blinked at the lights blasting at him from several directions.