He reached up and slid his shaking hand along his jacket pocket, ensuring that the remote detonator was still there. He'd rigged the bomb yesterday, knowing that today he would not be well enough to do the intricate wiring work. All it would take was to flip up the cover on the detonator and press the switch, and it would all be over.
His eyes were so intent on the road that it took him a moment to realize that the sun had been blocked out and he was in a shadow that extended only a short distance on all sides of the truck. He slowly became conscious of a howling sound. The wind was swirling around the vehicle, blowing snow up into the air. He pushed the brake and rolled down the window, leaning out and looking up.
Twenty feet above, Tuskin leaned out the open door of the skimmer and recognized Sergot as the older man squinting against the down blast from the thrusters. Tuskin considered vaporizing the cab of the vehicle with the plasma projector, but quickly vetoed that idea. For all he knew, Sergot might have rigged a dead man's switch, in which case the bomb would go off. Or the bomb itself might be up in the cab, in the passenger seat, and he was unsure what effect the projector would have on it.
Hawkins appeared at his side, having set the controls to hold the skimmer in position. "The nearest place to land is about two hundred meters ahead!" Hawkins screamed into his ear.
"He's there!" Tuskin yelled above the roar of the thrusters. "There's no time to land."
The door of the truck opened and Sergot stepped out. He held something in his right hand. As Hawkins swung up his weapon, Tuskin made his decision. He leapt out the open door and fell the thirty feet to the ground, landing on top of Sergot.
Tuskin heard the snap as his left leg broke and could feel several ribs on the side that had hit Sergot splinter and tear into his left lung. He ignored the pain as he reached with both hands and seized Sergot's right hand, squeezing with all his might. The older man was dazed when Tuskin landed on him and desperately tried to flip open the lid to the firing device. Tuskin kneed him with his good leg and dug his thumb into the other man's wrist, forcing the fingers open. Tuskin grabbed the device as he heard the roar of a pistol and felt the thud of a large-caliber bullet slamming into his gut. As Sergot fired again with his left hand, Tuskin threw the firing device clear of the two of them and turned his head up at Hawkins, hovering in the doorway of the skimmer overhead. "Shoot!" Tuskin screamed, but his words were blown away by the roar of the engines.
Sergot shifted and again fired into Tuskin at pointblank range. Tuskin felt his hold on the other man slip away as a darkness came over his eyes. With all his might he gripped the other man one last time to keep him from crawling after the detonator. He smiled for the briefest of moments as he heard the crackle of the plasma projector come from above. Then the smile was obliterated along with the rest of his body and Sergot.
Hawkins gently lowered the skimmer into a field a short distance away and then walked back to the truck. He stepped, with hardly a glance, around the black charred spot that had been two men, and pulled aside the tarp that covered the back. The bomb sat there all alone in the rear. Hawkins got into the cab of the truck and drove it to the skimmer and trundled the bomb on board.
He went up to the cockpit and set the controls for Tunguska.
TIME
"Five minutes." Batson muttered. Looking at the glowing face of his watch. The gray in the eastern horizon was now an ever-brightening reddish tinge, heralding the coming of the sun. Fran could now make out the outline of the eastern rim of the crater hundreds of feet above her head.
"Why were you sent back so many years before now?" Fran asked.
Pencak had been fading and coming back into focus every thirty seconds or so, for the past ten minutes. The old woman wearily looked at the younger one. "I was the one who had to help set up the whole scenario here in the United States."
"That's why you wrote all those articles about nuclear explosions forming the craters," Don observed. "And why you made your living here."
Pencak nodded. "But I had much more to do than that." She paused, faded, and then came back. Her voice was shaky as she tried to explain. "I had to monitor events and people. I have watched all of you at various times, as did my comrades. We had the facts laid out in our books and computers, but we wanted to know about the people themselves-would they be up to the tasks set before them."
"Were you the only one?" Don asked.
Pencak sighed. "No. My husband went back when I did. Except he went to Russia and he went earlier in 1943."
"Felix Zigorski!" Fran exclaimed.
"Yes. We got to see each other only every few years and then he died in 1990. But he had done his job well enough by then that the plan could go forward without him."
"You've sacrificed much to change things," Fran said.
Pencak looked at the younger woman for a long moment. "Our sacrifices will be for nothing if you do not make your own from here on out."
The antiaircraft systems surrounding Tunguska didn't even have a chance to fire as the skimmer hit the portal at over two hundred miles an hour. Hawkins flinched in the front seat as the front display showed nothing but trees just below until, at the last second, the craft skipped over the lip of the excavation and dived straight into the black Wall.
He was out on the other side before he had a chance to fully comprehend what had happened. By itself the skimmer threaded its way through the underground complex to the elevator door. The door slid open and Hawkins landed the skimmer. He rolled the bomb down the ramp and settled it on its side. He glanced up as three figures dressed in robes appeared and seemed to glide forward toward him.
Hawkins ignored them for the moment. He leaned both Tuskin's and his plasma projectors against the bomb casing, then straightened and stared at the figures. "I've recovered the second bomb. Colonel Tuskin died getting it."
"Yes, we can see that you have the bomb, Major Hawkins." The sound seemed to come from the center figure. "There are only a few minutes remaining." The Speaker slid his hood down, revealing his misshapen features. "My name is Raynor. I am human like you and come from your future."
Hawkins didn't even blink. During the ride back to the portal he'd put many of the pieces together. He stared at Raynor. "You're trying to change history."
"We have changed history, now that we have that bomb here. It was scheduled to go off in two minutes and twenty-three seconds. When it doesn't, this complex and my comrades and I will no longer exist. This future will no longer exist."
Hawkins shrugged wearily. "It doesn't look like a future I would want."
"It isn't." Raynor stepped forward. "You don't care about your own future, do you?"
Hawkins shook his head. "No. Here's as good a place as any to die."
"But it's not your time," Raynor replied. "It's our time." A black portal appeared on the side wall. "You must go back."