“But suppose there wasn’t cheap energy,” Moosic said, picking up Silverberg’s reasoning. “Suppose, in fact, there was less. A future civilization on the ropes, able to send one or two people into the past but not far enough to do what had to be done. You said you were limited to a few hundred years. Maybe they are, too. But able to come back far enough and with enough proof—and enough records of who might pull something like this off—to convince these people to do whatever they had to.”
The scientist grew excited. “Yes! Yes! Perhaps a few survivors of some atomic holocaust, using their version of this project, perhaps this very project, to come back and convince these people that only they can halt the extinction of mankind. What sort of proof we may never know, but it would explain your security leak, Admiral. I assume our computer records will be uploaded someday into new generations of computers. They might only have had to call up this day to get everything from the security measures to the passwords. What little minutiae they couldn’t know, Karen would.”
Jeeter shook his head in amazement. “Are you telling me we should let them go and do whatever it is they intend doing?”
“Perhaps we should,” Silverberg replied. “But perhaps we are just whistling in the dark on this, too.”
“I can’t take that sort of gamble, and you know it. Somebody is going back and getting those clowns. I wouldn’t trust that kind of mind with the future of my cat, let alone the human race.”
Ron Moosic sat back and considered the arguments, and realized that he sided with the admiral. Roberto Sandoval was no savior of mankind; he was a cold-blooded killer. His girlfriend was a limousine radical, with no more concept of the proletariat than Marie Antoinette, and seemed vacuous to boot. Even granting his original speculation, those people of the future would have been faced with a dilemma. The best people to get into this place, and take it, and get back in time, were hardly the best people to trust once they’d done it. On the other hand, from a purely pragmatic standpoint, they’d compromised about as much as they could. If their agents didn’t get in, the rest wouldn’t matter, and if they were faced with certain death, they had nothing to lose.
“Have you thought about who’s going back after them, Admiral?” Riggs wanted to know. His tone indicated clearly that he was not volunteering.
Jeeter looked at Silverberg, who shrugged. “My agents are the test-pilot type,” the scientist said. “They might be best in tracking the two down, but they would hardly be a match for Sandoval when the showdown came.”
“I guess it’s the CIA’s baby, considering it’s London,” Riggs noted.
“But this is our project,” the admiral reminded him. “They left here in our… vehicle… and they are legally still here, tied to that machine. If you want to pull legalisms, it’s the FBI’s baby, but I wouldn’t want to pull somebody in to do it. No, it’s NSA’s job, and specifically NSA Security’s.” He looked over at Ron Moosic. “You’re the new boy on the block here, but I was very impressed with your handling of the entire situation, and so was the President. Do you think, if push came to shove, you could shoot them down in cold blood?”
Ron Moosic was shocked. This level of involvement, after all he’d been through, was not something he’d considered at all. He was tired and pretty much spent. “I don’t know, Admiral,” he managed. “I just don’t know.”
“Your record’s good; your psychiatric profile is excellent, and you have some background and feel for history. You’re single, childless, and haven’t been very close to your surviving family. I cannot and will not force you to go, but I am asking you. The suggestion came right from the National Security Council. We just don’t have any time to tap somebody, brief them fully, and send them back cold.”
“I’m pretty cold, too,” Moosic reminded him. “Until this morning, I didn’t have any idea this place existed or that what it did was possible. I’m still not sure I believe it.” But, even as he protested, he knew that he would go. He was always the one who volunteered to do the things that had to be done, even when he knew somebody else alway got the credit and he always got the blame. But—to go back in time, to really visit the London of Victorian England…
If he refused, they would find somebody, perhaps one of the agents long experienced at this station. He, of course, would never know the result—and the admiral knew that he understood. His career, the entire rest of his life, depended on this decision.
“If I can get some background, and some sleep, I’ll give it a try,” he said at last. The admiral smiled in satisfaction; Riggs smiled in relief.
DOWNTIMING THE MAIN LINE
Ron Moosic had a brief time to eat and relax before they were ready. The cuisine wasn’t the greatest, being mostly hot dogs and microwaved soup, which made him wonder about whether those old movies showing condemned prisoners eating lavish feasts were just fantasy.
Somebody had brought down copies of the Baltimore Sun and Washington Post, and the lead stories in both were, at the very least, amusing. It seemed some Cuban-financed radicals shot their way into and briefly took over the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Generating Station with the avowed purpose of causing a nuclear meltdown as a protest against U.S. policy—there was even a “manifesto” from the radicals, allegedly given to authorities after the bloody takeover—and that all of them were subsequently killed by federal and state security forces. All of them were named, and named correctly. Only Dr. Karen Cline was not listed as among them; instead, her name appeared among the plant workers who died in the onslaught.
They had allowed some reporters and photographers in to photograph the upstairs carnage, and it shocked, as it was intended to, while giving away nothing. Interviews with hostage survivors, however, were carefully controlled, and while he couldn’t tell, he suspected that none of the people interviewed were actually people held down there. It was, nonetheless, a compelling and convincing story. There was even mention of a “low-level secret Defense Department project” at the site, which served to allow security to be clamped where it was needed and which explained the large number of federal officers and military personnel involved.
He almost believed it himself, although he knew that at least two of those radicals were not dead, but simply away somewhere, or some when. To him, there was still an air of unreality about it all that he couldn’t shake. Not the invasion and its aftermath, that was something he could at least accept, if not understand. To travel back in time, to actually change the past—that was the problem, and quite possibly the root cause of his accepting the assignment. To be convinced, he would have to see for himself, and were he to say no to this, he’d never really believe it.
Dr. Aaron Silverberg looked tired, but he was going to see it through, at least until Moosic was back. Then, perhaps, he would allow himself the luxury of sleep. He’d tried on the couch in his office earlier and hadn’t been able to, and his body screamed at him.
“The suit will be a bit snug, but it will fit,” the scientist assured him. “We’ve had someone doing adjustments on it. The batteries transferred nicely and took a good quick charge to boot, so you will be going with over ninety percent of full power, which is more than they’ve got. The instruments show that they are now still in 1875, in London, and by this time they must know that the date is off. They have chosen to wait, it appears, and that is to our advantage. However, they are now in phase with the time frame, and that puts time at risk.”