Saltus stood there grinning at him. “Well, mister, what did you think of that?”
“There’s more room in a Syrian coffin,” Chaney retorted. “I’ve got bruises.”
“Sure, sure, civilian, tight quarters and everything, but what did you think of it?”
“Think of what?”
“Well, the—” Saltus stopped to gape in disbelief. “Civilian, do you mean to sit there like an idiot and tell me you weren’t watching that clock?”
“I watched the lights; it was like Christmas time.”
“Mister, they ran you through your test. You saw ours, didn’t you? You checked the time?”
“Yes, I watched you.”
“Well, you jumped into the future! One hour up!”
“The hell I did.”
“The hell you didn’t, civilian. What did you think you were doing in there — taking a nap? You were supposed to watch the clock. You went up an hour, and then you kicked yourself back. That stuffy old engineer was mad — you were supposed to wait for him to do it.”
“But I didn’t hear anything, feel anything.”
“You don’t hear anything in there; just out here, on the outside looking in. Man, we heard it! Pow, pow, the airhammer. And the guy was supposed to tell you there was no sense of motion: just climb in, and climb out. Shoot an hour.” Saltus made a face. “Civilian, sometimes you disappoint me.”
“Sometimes I disappoint myself,” Chaney said. “I’ve missed the most exciting hour of my life. I guess it was exciting. I was looking at the lights and waiting for something to happen.”
“It did happen.” Saltus stepped down from the stool. “Come on out of there and get dressed. We have to listen to a lecture from old windbag in the lab — and after that we inspect the ship’s stores. The fallout shelter, food and water and stuff; we might have to live off the stores when we get up there to the brink of 2000. What if everything is rationed, and we don’t have ration cards?”
“We can always call Katrina and ask for some.”
“Hey — Katrina will be an old woman, have you thought of that? She’ll be forty-five or fifty, maybe — I don’t know how old she is now. An old woman — damn!”
Chaney grinned at his concept of ancient age. “You won’t have time for dating. We have to hunt Republicans.”
“Guess not — nor the opportunity. We’re not supposed to go looking for anybody when we get up there; we’re not supposed to look for her or Seabrooke or even us. They’re afraid we’ll find us.” He made a weary gesture. “Get your pants on. Damned lecture. I hate lectures — I always fall asleep.”
A team of engineers lectured. Major Moresby listened attentively. Chaney listened with half an ear, attention wandering to Kathryn van Hise who was seated at one side of the room. Arthur Saltus slept.
Chaney wished the information given him had been printed on the usual mimeographed papers and passed around a table for study. That method of dissemination was the more effective for him; the information stayed with him when he could read it on a printed page and refer back to the sentence or the paragraph above to underscore a point. It was more difficult to call back a spoken reference without asking questions, which interrupted the speaker and the chain of thought and the drone which kept Saltus sleeping. The ideal way would be to set down the lecture in Aramaic or Hebrew and hand it to him to translate; that would insure his undivided attention to learn the message.
He gave one eye and one ear to the speaker.
Target dates. Once a target date was selected and the pertinent data was at hand, computers determined the exact amount of energy needed to achieve that date and then fed the amount into the tachyon generator in one immense surge. The resulting discharge against the deflector provided momentum by displacing temporal strata ahead of the vehicle along a designated time path; the displaced strata created a vacuum into which the vehicle moved toward the target date, always under the guidance of the mercury proton gyroscope. (Chaney thought: perpetual motion.)
The engineer said: “You can be no more than eighty-eight minutes off the designated hour of the target date, 2000. That is four minutes per year; that is to be anticipated. But there is another significant time element to be noted in the field, one that you must not forget. Fifty hours. You may spend up to fifty hours in the field on any date, but you may not exceed that amount. It is an arbitrary limit. To be sure, gentlemen, the safety of the displaced man is of first importance up to a point. Up to a point.” He stared at the sleeping Saltus. “After that point the repossession of the vehicle will be of first importance.”
“I read you,” Chaney told him. “We’re expendable; the bucket isn’t.”
“I cannot agree to that, Mr. Chaney. I prefer to say that at the expiration of fifty hours the vehicle will be recalled to enable a second man to go forward, if that is deemed advisable, to effect the recovery of the first.”
“If he can be found,” Chaney added.
Flatly: “You are not to remain on target beyond the arbitrary fifty-hour limit. We have only one vehicle; we don’t wish to lose it.”
“That is quite sufficient,” Moresby assured him. “We can do the job in half that time, after all.”
Upon completion of their assignment, each of them would return to the laboratory sixty-one seconds after the original launch, whether they remained on target one hour or fifty. The elapsed time in the field did not affect their return. They would be affected only by the elapsed time while in the field; those few hours of natural aging could not be recaptured or neutralized of course.
The necessities and some few of the luxuries of life were stored in the shelter: food, medicines, warm clothing, weapons, money, cameras and recorders, shortwave radios, tools. If storage batteries capable of giving service for ten or twenty years were developed in the near future, they would also be stocked for use. The radios were equipped to send and receive on both military and civilian channels; they could be powered by electricity available in the shelter or by batteries when used with a conversion unit. The shelter was fitted with lead-in wires, permitting the radios to be connected to an outside antenna, but once outside on the target minitennas built into the instruments would serve for a range of approximately fifty miles. The shelter was stocked with gasoline lanterns and stoves; a fuel tank was built into an outside wall.
After emerging from the vehicle, each man was to close the hatch and carefully note the time and date. He was to check his watch against the wall clock for accuracy and to determine the plus-or-minus variation. Before leaving the basement area to enter his target date he was to equip himself from the stores, and note any sign of recent use of the shelter. He was forbidden to open any other door or enter any other room of the building; in particular, he was forbidden to enter the laboratory where the engineers would be preparing his return passage, and forbidden to enter the briefing room where someone might be waiting out the arrival and departure.
He was to follow the basement corridor to the rear of the building, climb a flight of stairs and unlock the door for exit. He would be instructed where to locate the two keys necessary to turn the twin locks of the door. Only the three of them would ever use that door.
Chaney asked: “Why?”
“That has been designated the operations door. No other personnel are authorized to use it: field men only.”
Beyond the door was a parking lot. Automobiles would be kept there continuously for their exclusive use; they would be fueled and ready on any target date. They were cautioned not to drive a new model car until they became thoroughly familiar with the controls and handling of it. Each man would be furnished the properly dated papers for gate passage, and was to carry a reasonable sum of money sufficient to meet anticipated expenses.