Hyatt nodded. "But it had to be done. First, because it was done. And it was worth any risk to stop you."
"And so I killed her…"
"You killed her?"
Susan nodded. "I snatched the pendant from around her neck, and she vanished."
Hyatt laughed. "Then she isn't dead."
"What?"
"It's like cutting a stretched rubber band," he said, motioning Susan to the chair before the desk. She sat, and he kept his hand on the blaster. "She was snapped back to our time, five years into the future. Had she succeeded in killing your past self, then had you taken her pendant, she would be dead. But your mutual past self lives." He shook his head.
Susan still couldn't believe what she was hearing. It all seemed so horribly strange.
After a few seconds, she said, "There are only four of you in on this, then." More a statement of fact than a question.
"No, there are only two from your future-myself and your double. Krueger, of course, was hired here, in this time."
"But what about the short belter, and the tall man outside the curio shop on Fleet Base?"
"I'm afraid they aren't with us."
"Then who are they with? They both wore pendants."
"That is interesting. But I assure you, I do not know. Originally, there were only two pendants."
Susan reached into her breast pocket and pulled out the pendant she had ripped from around her future self's neck. The old man's gaze went from that pendant to the one she wore around her neck, while his hand strayed to his own.
"I assure you," he said, "originally, there were only two pendants. Everything has become so mucked up-probably because of your indiscriminate jumps, as well as our own jumps while attempting to stop you."
Again Susan thought of the belter, and the tall man in the corridor outside the curio shop. Both had worn a pendant. And the old man in the shop had said the man who had sold him the pendant she now wore had possessed another those many years ago.
As if he could read her mind, Hyatt asked, "Where did you get the one you have been using?"
"That isn't important," she said.
"It might be extremely important. Don't you see that?"
He was right, of course. But Susan knew she couldn't tell him. Such knowledge might be just what he needed to use against her.
"Where did you get your pendants?" she asked.
"They were found on a cinder of a planet circling the Crab Nebula's star of origin," he answered.
"And there were only the two of them?"
He nodded.
"What are they?"
Hyatt shrugged. "Artifacts from some ancient civilization, I imagine. What use their creators put them to, we have no idea."
They were both silent for several seconds. Finally, Hyatt lifted the blaster pistol from the desk, then held his other hand out to Susan, palm up. "Let's have them, Captain," he said.
Susan got to her feet. "No," she said, defiantly. "If you want them, you will have to kill me." She took a deep breath, then took a step toward him.
And he silently disappeared.
The pounding behind her eyes increased, and the snowflake pattern formed in her mind. The mantra came to her lips.
But that couldn't be. It shouldn't be happening. She had jumped-not he.
Yet she hadn't, and he had!
And there was something more, something she could never have expected. Somehow, she could sense the old man's track. She could actually feel the thread of his existence, observing him as he made a jump through time and space. He came to rest in an empty conference room elsewhere in the Survey Service compound, two weeks in the future.
With an effort, she brought the picture of the conference room resting in her mind into sharp focus. She concentrated on every small detail-bare walls, gray metal table, utilitarian straight-backed chairs. Even the sign on the wall denoting the after-hours use of the room as a holo-vid viewing area.
Instantly she appeared before him as he turned to the door to leave. The lump of gray metal burned between her breasts, and the headache grew.
But she couldn't give those symptoms any thought. Hyatt staggered back a step at the sight of her, shock turning his face white. His lips trembled as he spoke.
"How did you do that?"
"I don't know," she answered. And she didn't. She had not the slightest idea how she had accomplished it.
Then she realized she would quickly lose any advantage she might have unless she somehow negated the effect of what she had just said. She didn't know how she had tracked him, but it would be a mistake to let him know that. Somehow, she had to cover.
But how?
"I can track you," she said, "and that is sufficient."
"Track me!" he said. "You can actually track me through time and space?"
Wasn't that what he had meant? No, obviously not. Then what had he meant?
Then she knew. Hyatt had not jumped. Somehow, she had jumped him. She had pushed him from her through both time and space.
There was a moment of silence. Susan said nothing, to avoid giving him any information he might use against her. Hyatt remained quiet as well, out of pure confusion.
Then, as she watched, his finger again tightened on the blaster pistol's trigger.
Again the burning lump of gray metal between her breasts, and the pain behind her eyes intensified. This time, however, nothing was changed. Hyatt still stood menacingly in front of her, still pointed his weapon at her stomach.
But there was something different. The smile Hyatt had worn only an instant before was gone, and in its place was shock and fear.
But why?
And again she knew. She had jumped a second or two into the future, to a time just after the blaster's beam had past.
"No!" he screamed. And again he vanished. But this time she knew he had initiated the jump.
Again Susan detected his path through both time and space, like a golden thread of light. And again she activated her pendant with a thought, and followed.
This time she followed him down-time, nearly a year and a half into the past. In space she traveled Earth-side, to a hydroponics farm in southern Florida. She appeared beneath a huge plasti-alloy dome, beside Hyatt, as he came around the end of a row of drip troughs containing nearly mature tomato plants.
"You can't have tracked me again!" he said, incredulously.
Susan smiled. "You can't run," she said. "No matter where you go, I will follow."
"How can you be doing this? It isn't possible!"
How am I doing it? she wondered. She simply could not explain it-not to him, and not to herself.
She reached out for the pendant hanging around his neck, but again he vanished.
Standing still beneath the huge dome, she watched him run. He flashed frantically from one place to another, from one time to another. Luna City, during its first few months of existence, when it was little more than a five-man survival dome. The Ceres colony, out in the asteroid belt, fifteen years in the future. Earth- side, to 1900 China, during the Boxer rebellion. Never more than a few seconds in one place, then on to another time and location.
Throughout it all, she simply observed, making no attempt to follow. And finally he stopped.
He was again Earth-side. New Years Eve, 2141, in a crowd in Times Square, New York.
It was then Susan made her own jump.
Chapter Twenty-nine
The headache burned behind her eyes as the crowd pressed in around her. Thousands of sweaty, smelly people pushed from all sides, and she feared she would go down and be trampled beneath their feet. For an instant, she thought she would faint.