Fedorov could feel the anxiety himself as he waited for the moon. Without any good ground reference, they could easily drift off their intended course, and the moonlight would be needed so they could mark out terrain features. Just to be safe in times like this, they would reduce speed to ahead one third. It would minimize the possibility of course drift until they had more light for ground observation. There they were, in this aluminum framed leviathan, defying gravity in the careful balance of lift and ballast, a beast of the wind and sky.
Another hour and they should be through the worst of it. The moon would rise, they could spy out the ground to find a telltale terrain feature, mark their position on the charts, and then make any necessary correction for inadvertent drift. Vanavara was right on the bend of the Stony Tunguska River, and the twisting course of the Vanavarka tributary entered it from the northeast. If they drifted, they would most likely move west with the prevailing wind, and so Fedorov was keeping a close eye that direction. If he saw the tortuous flow of the River Chamba, he would know they had gone slightly off course, but as the time passed, his anxiety became more than a welling inner feeling. Something was wrong.
“Captain,” he said, his eyes narrowed as he scanned the horizon. Symenko had been dozing in his chair, and he grumbled as he woke, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. His dreams had been black, and now he remembered why. He was none too happy to be where he was, off the charts as he knew them, levered out of his position in Karpov’s fleet, a renegade now, and with an uncertain future ahead of him at the end of this journey, and surely, a bounty on his head when his lordship learned what had happened.
“Captain Symenko?”
“What is it? Can’t a man sleep?”
“We have a problem.”
“What kind of problem? Is it weather? The ship feels sound; winds even. What’s the matter?”
“The moon,” said Fedorov, a disheartened and almost foreboding tone in his voice.
“What about it?” Symenko growled.
“It’s wrong.”
Symenko gave him a dismissive look. “Well give it time, Captain. It will sort itself out.”
“You don’t understand,” said Fedorov. “It hasn’t a mind on these things. In any given position on this earth, I can calculate the exact moment the moon will rise, and to the second, give or take a few due to terrain on the horizon. It’s never late, nor is it ever early, but this one is simply not there at all. Unless every man’s watch, and your own ship’s chronometer are all wacky, I make it 19:30. That’s already two minutes after moonrise for this location—the light I’ve been waiting on to give us a good look at the ground should have been apparent even before that, but it’s still dark out there. Well, have a look for yourself.”
He pointed off the starboard side. “The moon should be up right there, and right now. This is completely wrong. Something has happened.”
Symenko shook himself awake, took a good long look, and now the impact of what Fedorov was saying dawned on him. “No moon, eh? I say give it time. Maybe the ship’s chronometer is off—my damn compass clearly is.” He had fished his compass out of his pocket, and now he handed it to Fedorov, who saw the needle spinning wildly about.
Fedorov’s worst fears descended on him now, and he knew, after all the many shifts he had been through, that they were slipping, moving in time. Something was wrong, and the position on the map was ample testimony as to what might have happened. They were over it now, the very impact site of the Tunguska Event. There could be no other explanation.
“There’s your goddamned moon,” said Symenko, pointing.
Fedorov turned to a place in the sky where he had not expected to see anything, off the port side of the ship, and there was a thin evening crescent, barely there. His every instinct, and long years of experience told him that was wrong as well. That moon was setting. It was to their west!
Before he could say another word, there came a shudder, very pronounced. The equipment was shaking all over the bridge, the big guns rattling in the pods below them off the main gondola. Then the skies about them seemed to lighten, slowly at first, as if someone had the sun on a dimmer light, dialing it up. To his shock and surprise, that thin crescent faded away completely and then vanished. In its place, off the starboard side, and high up, what first looked like a full moon was now hanging in the sky, veiled by clouds and smoke. The smell of burning woodland was very evident. Then, to their amazement, the ground itself started to glow red. Fedorov stared at it, eyes wide, and with each passing second the image became clearer—fire! The ground beneath them was engulfed with flames.
He looked around him, stunned, seeing many of the bridge crew doubled over, as though stricken by some stomach ailment. One man vomited. Only Troyak and his own people seemed unaffected, and he, himself, passed only a momentary sense of nausea, a queasy feeling that was quickly chased away by the utter shock of what he was now seeing. He rushed to the side port, looking down at the burning ground, and now he saw that it stretched away from a dark center, circular in shape, covering a vast segment of the ground below.
By God almighty, he said to himself inwardly. It’s pulled us right on through to the source. I was a fool to steer this course and overfly this ground. I should have known better than to take a risk like this.
“What in hell is going on?” Symenko looked at him, unbelieving. “Look at it, hell itself down there. Those fires must stretch for a hundred kilometers!”
Now they were over the edge, and into that dark central area where there was no fire. Looking at the ground, Fedorov could clearly see the forest had been completely flattened, the trees pointing away from a central point that he could just make out, where it looked like blackened trees unaccountably remained standing in a small cluster.
There it is, he thought, the epicenter of doom itself. My reckoning was dead accurate, and if we keep on, we’ll fly right over it, but I’ll not risk that. God only knows what might be going on there. Time could be all knotted up, and again it might be swirling and twisting away into some black hole.
“Helmsman, come left thirty, and engines ahead two thirds,” he said. But the helmsman was down on the deck, in no shape to answer that order.
“Captain,” he pointed. “I don’t want to overfly that. We need to turn.” He could see a strange aura emanating from that stand of blighted trees, and what looked like greenish lightning striking it from above. A Time Storm, he thought, worse than any gale a ship at sea could ever encounter. It’s already pulled us here to 1908, for that’s where we have to be, hours or days after the Tunguska Event.
Symenko took the wheel, and now he shouted through a voice tube for his Chief Medical officer. “Durgin! Get to the bridge, we have men down here. On the double!”
He wrestled with the wheel, and Troyak helped out. Orlov was holding on to a handrail for dear life, gaping at the scene around them. The airship’s rudder responded, the Irkutsk now beginning a wide turn to port. It would take them back over the edge of that darkened central zone, and over those raging fires. The sea of green forest Fedorov had been gazing at earlier was completely engulfed for miles. That dark center had come to be called the ‘Fire Eagle’s Nest’ by the local tribesmen down there, many which stood as witnesses to this event.