That’s what happened to Volkov. He must have gone down twice, and found himself in 1908, at the source of the rift. He was probably so disoriented and confused that he never made the connection between his madness and that staircase. Too bad for him.
Yes, I could go down those stairs myself now, but what would I find? Would I find Volkov there in 1908? Did the stairway deliver each traveler to the same time? Imagine it. If I went there and did find him, I suppose I could easily convince him to come back with me. What then? Would we arrive at the top of that landing in 1940 again? Would we find that there was no “Orenburg Federation?”
The more he thought on this, the more he realized how precarious his own fate was now. Someone had killed Josef Stalin in 1908. Who? Was it Volkov? Kirov? Volkov would certainly have a motive, but Kirov? How would Sergie Kirov have known Stalin would become the monster he was? Could it have only been happenstance, a random change when these events replayed in the history?
I remember how plaintive and urgent Fedorov sounded when he learned of my decision to remain in 1908. He knew that I could topple the base pillars of the entire modern world from there. Now, with this stairway, I could do the very same thing. I could go back and get rid of Volkov, Stalin too if he’s still around. Then I could position myself within the revolutionary elite when the Tsar falls, and perhaps I would be the Secretary General instead of Sergie Kirov.
He smiled to think that he had the power to become the new Stalin of this world, right there on that back stairway. Then he considered the life he had now, a rising star in the Siberian Free State and certainly destined to rule here in time. Kolchak is old and tired, Kozolnikov easily dealt with. I could get rid of Volkov, but chances are I would find that someone took his place if I decided to return to this year. Now I am still young, while Kirov and Volkov are both over 50. This war is the hinge of fate. It will decide how the modern world looks after 1945, and from here I have a chance to shape that world.
Back and forth he went with all this in his mind. Should he stay here, and live into the modern era, or go back to 1908 and rewrite all the history he had just come to know? Karpov was still brooding over all this in his ready room aboard Abakan when a signalman came to him, startling him with alarm and surprise. Something had been seen on the airship’s long range early warning radar.
The early system was primitive, but just enough to do the job it was designed for that day. The Leningrad Electro-Physics Institute had pioneered development of rudimentary continuous wave radio emission sets to replace the old listening posts that required a human ear to actually hear incoming planes. Continuous wave was capable of detection and bearing location of an incoming threat, but could not determine range until it was converted to a pulse system in 1934. Others argued that higher frequency or microwave systems would better serve the purpose desired. The first equipment, dubbed Bistro (Rapid) and Buraya (Storm) used microwaves and became truck mounted radar, designated RUS-1. These advances eventually became the Redut (Redoubt) pulse radar tested in 1939 and entering service by 1940.
Designated RUS-2, it could detect high flying targets out to 100 kilometers, and lower level targets at 10 to 30 kilometers. Most of this development remained in Kirov’s Soviet Russia, but there were equivalent systems developed under Volkov’s regime in Orenburg. Even so, there were no more than fifty RUS-2 sets in all of Soviet Russia as the storm clouds of war gathered, though two had fallen into hands of independent Tartar cavalry units who had captured them near Perm during a raid on the border zone there.
Realizing the importance of radar, Karpov moved heaven and earth to secure the two systems when he learned of them in early 1940. One was posted in the frontier bastion city of Omsk, and summarily withdrawn to Novosibirsk when that city was lost. The second was in Irkutsk. There the Siberian Technical Corps had managed to reverse engineer the system and, with considerable guidance from Karpov, they were making rapid improvements. No one knew how this remarkable man possessed such a breadth of technical and scientific knowledge, but he was able to catalyze the research and remove false starts and roadblocks to set it all on the proper course. The information in his service jacket computer proved to be a limitless resource, which Karpov kept very secret. A new system, code named “Topaz” appeared in the mid-1940, and Karpov insisted that the first sets were mounted on all his airships.
The problem was where to place the new equipment for maximum effect? Mounting it on the gondolas allowed for good low level search capability, but the mass of the airship above was a major obstacle. Placing it in the nose only allowed coverage of the forward arcs, and there were too few systems available to have nose and tail mounted units. In the end, a small platform was extended from the interior frame on the forehead of the ship, and it was able to see incoming aircraft at altitude well enough, forsaking low level approaches in the bargain.
The threat of enemy planes coming in at low level could be mitigated as they would have to first cross the border zone where ground based systems could detect them. Few enemy planes had the range to venture into the vast interior of Siberia in any case. Yet Karpov was not satisfied with that. He ordered two Topaz sets for each of his airships, and mounted a second on the forward gondola to scan downward.
So it was that the fledgling Topaz system operator on the brow of Abakan spotted something he did not expect to see that day, sitting up stiffly and double checking his equipment to make certain he was not tracking the sudden onset of a storm. He squinted, adjusted his dials, and was then convinced this was something much more. His hand was on the crank to his voice set moments later, ringing the receiver in main control gondola below. The runner was off with the contact report, straight to Karpov, as he had insisted in his standing orders.
“Airborne contact, sir. Topaz operator reports a signal about seventy kilometers north, and closing.”
“Airborne contact? North of our location?” Karpov’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, his mind working like a computer. He knew the locations of all his airships, which mostly operated from the home cities they were named for. None were north of his position now, and it was 2000 kilometers to Volkov’s airfields at Chelyabinsk to the West. Only another airship could cover such distance and return.
“Volkov!” he said aloud with some alarm. “Sound action stations and tell Bogrov to cast off and climb to the highest altitude he can get to. Never mind. I’ll go there myself. You get to the wireless room and signal Talmenka and Novosibirsk. Tell them to make ready for immediate operations, and rig for air combat. Then signal Krasnoyarsk airfield. I want fighters up, and heading this way at once!”
So, he thought, Volkov finally put two and two together. In fact, I would not be surprised to learn if he has been tracking the whereabouts of my airships ever since I left Omsk. He has men everywhere, and if he learned I had come here, with two airships, it would have certainly aroused his suspicions. Of course he would have had to take a roundabout course well to the north. All they had to do was swing well north of Tomsk to avoid our Topaz system there and then follow theYenisey River south. But how many ships did he send?
Karpov was up at the run, and heading to the forward gondola, hastening along the mesh metal keelway until he came to the ladder down.
“Admiral on the bridge!”
He emerged to see Air Commandant Bogrov snapping off orders to a midshipman. The man saluted as Karpov strode in, all business. “Has the battalion debarked?”
“Yes sir. The last two platoons went down the ladders a half hour ago. They are all assembling at Kansk.”
“Get them to Ilanskiy.”
“Ilanskiy? But there is nothing there.” Karpov gave him an irritated look and Bogrov knew enough to keep his mouth shut and simply repeat the order. He turned quickly and collared a watchstander. “Pipe to the wireless room. The ground force is ordered to proceed to Ilanskiy immediately.”