“As you can see,” he said, “the mission parameters have changed. The launch time has been moved up twelve hours.”
“What? Twelve hours?”
“Yes. We’re trying something new.”
Jen looked very surprised. “Can you change things this late? I thought we needed time to program everything.”
“It’s all been planned,” Paul reassured her. “There were several alternate mission profiles worked up.” A little white lie would do no harm, he concluded. “How do you like my costume?”
“How strange,” she smiled, but that was one thing she always liked about Dorland. He was a bit unpredictable.
“And the professor and Miss Lindford are getting ready for the operation as well. We haven’t decided about Mr. Ramer yet. He’s still working up some numbers and I was hoping we could count on you and Tom to monitor things up here when we go down to the Arch.”
“System Monitor? Me?” She took a deep breath, as if taking in the obvious implications of the position. It would be no small matter to ride shotgun on the main system terminals while the Arch was at full power.
“You’re fully trained,” Dorland pressed on. “And frankly, you’ve shown the best record of any technician these last six months. I’ve… had my eye on you lately.” He smiled inwardly at the double meaning that he hoped would only be apparent to him. “I think you’re best qualified for the job. You’ll have Tom to watch the power levels in the generator room and perhaps Mr. Ramer here to see to the computers. Sorry about the intercom, but we still have the stairs.” He smiled as he gestured to the stairwell leading down to the power generators. “Once we start the experiment you’ll have approximately two hours on the system monitors. The important thing will be the retraction module, of course. You must be certain it reads green the whole time. If the readings fall into the yellow I want you to run the focal routines on terminal three. Can you remember that?”
“Two hours?” Jen seemed a bit flushed with the responsibility he was handing her. “But the other team members won’t be here until at least six AM. Should I call them in now?”
“I’m afraid there won’t be time for that. This will be a brief mission; just a little test, that’s all. We should be finished before four o’clock this morning…”
The futility of what he was trying to do became more and more apparent to Paul as he spoke. How could he enlist Jen’s support and try to keep her in the dark about the real intentions of the mission? It wasn’t fair. She had heard the news about Palma, and would probably begin to put questions together in time. The more he tried to spin out his cover story, the more uncomfortable he became. At last he sighed with resignation and looked her straight in the eye.
“You’ve heard the news, right Jen? So you know what’s at stake.”
She gave him a perplexed look, but he could see that his point was hitting home. “So we’re going to see if we can do something. Kelly’s working up last minute numbers now.” He waited, watching her reaction closely. Bewilderment became fear, and then understanding. He forged on.
“Watch the retraction module closely now, will you? We don’t want to lose our lifeline.” Paul smiled, reassuring her that all would be well and, as her features softened, he realized how very attracted he was to the woman, and how very stupid he had been all these months to hide behind his project title and do nothing about it. Somehow, the precipice he was slowly approaching in his own personal time line had emboldened him. He imagined himself sweeping the woman off her feet, a wild eyed Sherif of the desert felling her with a passionate kiss. Instead he reached out and touched her shoulder. “Thank you, Jen” he said. “I knew I could count on you. Now, tell Tom to take the Arch to 100 percent in ten minutes.”
He caught a glimmer of bewilderment in her eyes and smiled again as he ushered her off toward the stair well. Something was suddenly tugging at his attention in the main console circle. Maeve was badgering Nordhausen and urging him to get into costume. Paul turned and saw that something well beyond Maeve’s overweening air of self-assertiveness was bothering the professor. He knew the man too well. Nordhausen seemed oblivious to her entreaties, and then he swiveled suddenly in his chair to look at Kelly where he was still fidgeting at the main data terminal.
“Can we change the time?” His question had an edge of urgency in it.
Kelly looked up, obviously frustrated. “What? Change the time? Are you kidding?”
“What’s wrong?” Maeve’s eyes narrowed, and she folded her arms, giving Nordhausen an accusing stare.
“Well, I was just thinking that we ought to give ourselves a little time to get settled in once we arrive and—”
“What’s wrong, Robert?” Maeve was becoming fierce now, and the professor gave her a sheepish look. He scratched the back of his neck, and glanced at his volume of the Seven Pillars. Paul saw how his finger marked a place where he had been reading.
“There was more than one train,” Nordhausen blurted out. “Just after they laid the charge at Kilometer 172 they were surprised by a train coming down from the north. No one seemed to see the damn thing in the rain, so they let it go by. The second train out of Amman came up from the south at mid-day, and a third was scheduled six hours later from the north out of Damascus. They were staggered on the single line, you see, about six hours apart.”
“And…” Maeve looked as though she was ready to explode.
“Well I’m not exactly sure which one we need to concern ourselves with, that’s all.”
He looked from one to the other, obviously flustered, but trying to muster what little remained of his dignity under Maeve’s adamant stare. “We might end up tampering with the wrong train…”
Kelly dropped his pen.
8
Paul passed a moment of great hesitation as the implications of this latest obstacle struck home. Three trains… All at Kilometer 172 on the tenth of November, 1917. Two passed through unscathed. One was blown up and derailed. If there had only been two trains the outcome would have been easy enough to decide. They would simply work to make an end of the first train and, that failing, they would labor to spare the second—the one that had been blown up according to Lawrence’s narrative. But three trains added just the extra measure of complication to the mission that could prove its undoing.
“OK,” he said as his thoughts spilled over. “Let’s reason this thing out. Go get into costume, Robert. I’ll discuss this business with Maeve.”
“Right.” Nordhausen was only too glad to extricate himself from the situation, and he slipped away as Paul settled into a chair, looking oddly out of place in his 19th century Arabian clothing against the backdrop of humming blue computer screens and 21st century technology. “Was there anything else in that note you can recall that might help us out here, Maeve?”
“Nothing I can remember. Our visitor couldn’t write all these details down. I’m sure he meant to discuss this with us. They must have known about this potential complication.”