“I think if you want to live, you won’t go any deeper into that, Doctor,” Sandoval responded nervously.
It took three trips for the women to bring in the suits. They looked very much like the spacesuits worn by astronauts, all made of some fine, silvery, mesh-like material. The helmets were airtight. Each contained a backpack air supply and a front pack consisting of instrumentation, which told the status of the air and other suit systems, and also a meter series with small, recessed pentometers above each meter. Cline checked each one of them. “This suit’s a bit large, but has a four-hour air supply and a fully charged power pack,” she told them. “This second one might just fit Chris, but has a little under three hours of air and a ninety percent charge. Enough to get you both where you want to go. The third one fits you like a glove, Roberto, but has only an hour-and-a-half s worth of oxygen and a sixty percent charge.”
With Chris covering the doctor, who, despite some romantic notions, was in no condition to try much of anything even if he had the gun, Sandoval tried on the large suit. It was clear even without the helmet that the fit was ridiculous, and with that helmet he would barely be able to balance himself. “No use,” he muttered. “It’ll have to be the other one.”
Dr. Karen Cline sighed. “Yes, I agree. But you haven’t much reserve. You’ll be O.K. for the trip, but if you have to make a boost, it’ll be touch and go.”
“We are traveling in time!” Sandoval exclaimed. “Why do we need much at all?”
“Time is relative. All other things being equal, time breaks first, so you’ll go back. But the journey takes time because it requires a steady power supply. Inside the suit, it’ll take time to get there at the same rate as power is being supplied. To 1875, it’ll take, oh, forty minutes or so. Once there, the reality of the suit is the only link you’ll have with the present. The suit must be kept energized from here, using full power, or you’ll nightside. That means we can’t add anything once you’re on your way. The internal suit charge will remain at where it was when you left, minus the power required to get you there. Even then, it’ll deteriorate as time will try and throw it out. The effect is progressive. Twelve days is all it’s safe for Chris, fourteen for you, in any one time slot. And we have to hold this installation for the exact same amount of time you spend back there, because we can only send power at the normal clock rate.”
“In other words, the shorter the better,” Sandoval said. “Well, I depend on you. All of you. You know the stakes.”
Sandoval quickly got into his suit, then took the rifle while his companion donned hers. “Get Clarence in here,” he ordered, and Cline left.
Silverberg was feeling much better. “I’m curious—just what are the stakes?”
“The future of humanity on the face of Earth, and I do not mean that as a metaphorical or idealistic statement,” the terrorist replied. “If we fail, humanity will be wiped out to the last man, woman, and child. I don’t just believe this, Doctor—I know it.”
The big black man entered the command center, followed by Cline. He grinned when he saw the two dressed in the suits. “Buck Rogers, huh?”
“Don’t get funny. Are you sure John can handle that mob alone?”
Stillman nodded. “They’re pussycats with bad headaches. Still, they’ll be trouble later on. I wish we didn’t need ’em as hostages.”
“We’re depending on you to keep this place operating and secure until we return, even if it’s two weeks,” Sandoval told him. “There’s food down here, enough to last if you ration it, in the little cafeteria.”
“Plenty of locks, too. Don’t worry about it, Roberto. These dudes didn’t even trust themselves.”
“Then I think we had best be at our business as quickly as possible,” the terrorist leader told them. The two suited people followed Karen Cline out of the command center. Soon Silverberg and Stillman saw the inner door open and the three of them enter the time chamber. First the woman, then the man, kneeled down so that the scientist could fasten their helmets and activate their internal systems. Soon she exited the room, leaving the pair there alone, and returned to the command console.
“Doctor, will you handle this or shall I?” she asked him. “I would prefer that you do it, for safety’s sake. Remember, all our lives depend on you doing it exactly right.”
Silverberg chuckled dryly. “Do you really think they gave the enabling command?”
“They gave it. Either that or we are all going to be very dead very fast. It doesn’t matter to me, Doctor. I’m dead, no matter what. But I wouldn’t like to see you and a lot of the others, a lot of my friends, die as well.” She seemed on the verge of hysteria, and that made him more nervous than the big man with the gun. Clearly, Karen Cline was having a hell of a fight between what she saw as her duty to her friends and associates and her resolve to see it through. He wished he had more time to work on her.
“I’ll do it,” he told her. “And I’ll do it straight. We’re still pretty much on automatics because of Jamie, but I assume you’ve already fed the instructions into the computers.”
She nodded. “I made them up and tested them weeks ago. The code is Auer, comma, Geib, comma, Bebel, comma, Liebknecht.”
“That you’d better input. I might make some terrible spelling error. The rest I will do.”
Quickly she went over to the keyboard on the side of the control panel and typed in the passwords. The board came alive.
“Just what’s gonna happen?” Stillman wanted to know.
“They’ll just… disappear in there,” Cline told him. “Or so it will seem to us. Actually, we’re going to keep going and they’re going to stand still.”
“Huh?”
“I’ll try and explain it later. All right, Doctor—we’ve got limited air and power on one of those suits. Let’s do it.”
Silverberg shrugged and turned to the console. The sequence and number of controls he changed, punched, pulled, pushed, or otherwise manipulated seemed enormous. Stillman couldn’t follow any of it and turned to Cline. “You sure he’s doing it right?”
“He’s doing it right; don’t worry. Most of it is security, anyway. The whole operation’s computerized and, as I said, I did that. If he does anything wrong, they just won’t go anywhere.”
An alarm buzzer sounded, making the big man jump. “What’s that?”
“Warning to clear the area. Here they go!”
Suddenly the walls blazed with light, and the two figures inside clasped metallic gloved hands. Beams of energy, beams nearly too bright to look at even through the shielding, shot out and enveloped the two. There was a sudden burst of light from where they stood, and then all of the energy seemed to flow into that spot, as if swallowed by some great mouth. In a moment, all was normal again—except that the time chamber was empty.
“They’re away!” came the call over every security frequency. Ron Moosic held his breath and just watched and waited. It was now or never—with the two dangerous ones separated and only one man, no matter how crazed, with the bulk of the hostages.
“Stairway doors are open!” came a cool, professional voice. “We are going on down.”
“We’re on top of the elevator,” said another voice, equally calm. “On your mark we’ll enter.”
“Now!” came the not so calm voice of John Riggs.
The operation was handled with surprising quiet and determined professionalism. The cameras had shown that the terrorists had constructed a makeshift barricade at the base, of the stairway door, not so much to keep out anyone who reached that level but to make one hell of a clatter when they did so. The elevator, however, was not so well guarded. It was designed to have its door open if held by its stop on a floor, and it was not in full view of anyone at this point. At the start, there had been two holding the hostages, one in the hallway and one covering the central working area, but now both the traitorous Dr. Cline and Stillman were still in the command center, while two were downtiming and no longer a direct threat, and Bettancourt was alone with the hostages. Nobody could see the elevator area, and three well-armed, black-clad agents slipped into the car.