Lord God, I will be with you tonight, if the time maniacs have not killed you as well, he thought. It would take a squad of Marines to get me out of this now.
THE TIME HAS COME, THE WALRUS SAID, TO SPEAK OF MANY THINGS
The squad of Marines landed just off the Appian Way, and quickly they took up positions. There were eleven of them, clad in boots and camouflage uniforms, but they were not the Marines Ron Moosic was used to, nor were their weapons and belts standard issue.
The Romans had posted guards every twenty crosses, mostly in order to make sure that none were freed before death overtook them, for all the good rescue would do. The shock, loss of blood, and crushed bones would make them useless, and perhaps hopeless, in any case.
The squad spread out, each taking the five guards closest to either side of Moosic, while the eleventh stood poised, waiting for a clear path. On a signal transmitted to each member of the squad, they fired as one, their rifles issuing brief bursts of light. As they struck the guards, those guards went down; then each advanced to the guard’s previous position and assumed it. There were few torches along the Appian way at this point, and it was hoped that the Romans nearest to the fallen guards would simply see a figure there in the dusk. It wouldn’t have to be for long.
Waiting a couple of minutes to make certain they had not been discovered, and prepared for a display of firepower if they were, they relaxed and all but the outermost guard replacements moved in to aid the leader, who was already at Moosic’s cross. Quickly they lifted it up, then gently lowered it to the ground. Moosic had passed out by that time and had seen none of this.
The leader, a huge, fat man with Oriental features who resembled a Sumo wrestler, whispered, “Doc—check on him. Are we in time?”
Another figure approached and ran a few checks with some portable instruments, then nodded. “Barely,” she told him. “No way we’re going to risk taking him down, though. Get this spare belt around him and I’ll program it. He hasn’t reached a trip point yet, so I think we can get him back to the base as his original self.”
Quickly they strapped the belt around him, and around the cross as well. He groaned lightly, but otherwise remained unaware of the activity.
“Hurry!” somebody else whispered. “Those guards will be coming to in a couple of minutes!”
Doc nodded. “All set. Chung, you sound recall. I’ll set his and mine for the same point. Let’s move! He can die on us at any moment!”
Chung, the huge leader, unhooked a small wireless microphone from his time belt. “Recall to Base. Ten seconds, everybody. Acknowledge!”
As the acknowledgments were still coming in, Doc reached over and with one hand tripped Moosic’s belt, and with the other her own.
Both vanished into time.
Ron Moosic awoke slowly, as if from a very bad dream. He lay there for a while, confused and disoriented, as strange sounds around him began to resolve themselves into voices.
“Shock is as much mental as physical,” Doc told a couple of worried-looking young men in the small base hospital. “He’ll be O.K., as we know, but don’t expect an immediate recovery. We were very lucky with him, I can tell you.”
Moosic understood none of the words, not because of his condition but because they were spoken in a language he did not understand. Still, he recognized the language as real, opened his eyes, and groaned.
Standing near him was a white-clad woman who was rather tall and dark-complected, sort of Polynesian in appearance, with dark brown eyes and jet black hair cut very short. The two others with her were both men: one was dressed in a camouflage uniform and appeared almost too large to fit through any known door; the other, a light-skinned black man with strong Negroid features, was dressed in a one-piece outfit of black leather-like material. Even so, he looked like everybody’s vision of a military drill instructor.
The white-clad woman saw that he was awake, turned to him, and smiled down at him. She had a very nice smile. “Glad to have you back among the living. I am Kahwalini, generally known to everyone as Doc. That way they don’t have to remember how the name is pronounced.” She had excellent command of English, but her accent was strange, like no other he had ever heard before.
“Ron Moosic,” he croaked. “I take it I’m not dead?”
She laughed. “No, you’re not dead, although it was a very close thing. Minutes, perhaps.”
He realized with a start that he was Ron Moosic—real and in the flesh. But, somewhere in his mind, he also knew that he was a little bit of Alfie Jenkins, and Holger Neumann, and Sister Nobody, and, yes, Marcus Josephus as well. He could still feel the pain of the nails and the agony of the cross, and a little part of him, certainly the Sister, seemed to take some perverse satisfaction in that.
“Where—when—am I?” he managed, and tried to sit up. He felt instantly weak and dizzy and settled back down.
“Don’t try to move for a little bit yet,” the doctor warned him. “You have had a great shock, and it will take some small time to convince your body that it is not the one which suffered. As to where you are, we call it simply Home Base, although it has many names. As to when— well, that is something even we aren’t certain about. Some period after the age of dinosaurs but before the domination of mammals, although mammals there are around this place.”
In the prehistoric past, even before the appearance of apelike beings, he thought wonderingly.
“The very large gentleman over there is Commander Chung Lind,” Doc told him. “The other just calls himself Herb.”
“Herbert Axton Wethers,” Herb added, “for all the good that does now. Me and a hundred other folks.” His accent was as strange as Kahwalini’s, but totally different.
“You don’t have a tall, rough-looking blond fellow with you, do you?” Moosic asked hesitantly.
Chung Lind laughed. “Hardly. That’d be Eric. Him and we don’t get along very well.” A third accent, equally odd, equally unique. Now that he thought of it, the woman in London and Blondie had both had such accents as well.
“What about a short, chubby woman with short black hair?”
Kahwalini’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Yes, she’s here. You’ll meet her and the others soon. Right now you need sleep most of all. You two—get out of here! I’m going to let him rest.”
“But I don’t want—” Moosic started, but he saw he’d been too slow to win this battle. It wasn’t exactly a needle, but it hissed slightly against his arm and stung for just a second, and he began feeling very groggy in a matter of seconds.
It was a deep and apparently dreamless sleep, and when he awoke, he felt much, much better. He looked to see if he was attached to anything—IV tubes or the like—and, finding nothing, he sat up. He was still a little dizzy, but otherwise he felt pretty good.
The door slid aside with a hissing sound and Kahwalini entered, this time dressed in the basic black outfit that seemed the standard around here—wherever “here” really was.
“Glad to see you’re looking good,” she said cheerily. “How do you feel?”
“A little dizzy, and hungry enough to eat a horse.”
“Excellent! The dizziness, I think, will pass, and will be helped by a meal.” She opened a small cabinet and took out a package, then unwrapped something and offered it to him. “Here—eat this. It’s a sort of candy-and-cake roll, lots of sugar and not much else, but it should help until I’ve finished my examination and we can get you some real food.”