Now Fedorov realized that he had been a witness to this event as well. He realized, with a sudden awareness, that they must have been pulled to a point in time very close to the impact. It was not a matter of hours, he thought quickly, but perhaps a day after impact, perhaps two days at most. The raging fires might have burned for many days or weeks before they eventually died out, but those flames look hot and young. This had only recently started.
The impact of what had just happened to them hit him now. They were in 1908, and with an airship that could take them to the one place that was now uppermost in his mind! In bringing the ship around to port, he had already started to nose in that direction. He took a quick look at his charts, moved a ruler, then asked for another fifteen degrees. The compass was all awry, so a precise turn was impossible, but his long years of experience served him well.
“Give me a little more to port. Alright. Steady as she goes now. Hold this course and let’s see if we can pick up the Stony Tunguska soon.”
The hatch above the ladder opened, and Zykov stuck his head through. “What’s happening?” he shouted, then stared at the scene around them.
“What could have caused this madness?” said Symenko.
“Tunguska Event,” said Fedorov, but he realized Symenko would not know much about it in 1942. “This ground you called the Devil’s Country was devastated by the impact of a large object from space, a meteor or possibly an asteroid or comet. This is what such a strike might look like after impact. That black area behind us is closer to the center. Everything there was mostly blown to hell. These fires would be caused by the extreme heat generated by the detonation.”
“For god’s sake man,” said Symenko. “What are you talking about?”
“That!” Fedorov simply pointed to the darkness behind them. “This was no storm, Captain, not lightning, and there’s no volcano about, is there? Nothing man made could have caused that, not if every bomber in the world dropped its load all in one place. No. It was caused by something much bigger; something that struck the earth itself. That dark hole back there is over 2000 square kilometers.”
Even as he spoke a heavy rain began, and soon a crewman who had been tending to a rigging line on one of the upper decks appeared, his face and clothing streaked with black soot. Lightning scored the sky, and there was a continuous rumble of thunder.
The shock of what they were seeing still gripped them, and though Fedorov had moved to analyzing what had happened in his mind. They had been to hell and back again so many times that he was able to accept what had happened, and was already thinking about what this all meant. Yet the others were still dumbstruck.
The whole damn ship was pulled back, he thought, a crew a thirty men for me to worry about now, and here we are in 1908! From my reckoning we are now on course for the very place I was hoping to get to when I boarded that KA-40 on Kirov. My god, I hijack this airship, and then events conspire to bring me right where I wanted to go—to the year 1908, and to the place just off the nose of this airship now, no more than another 600 kilometers, just eight hours flying time away—Ilanskiy.
Part XII
Downfall
“Life is a full circle, widening until it joins the circle motions of the infinite.”
Chapter 34
How do you explain what just happened to a man like Symenko? You don’t. The scourge of fire, the blackness in the scorched earth behind it, were enough reason to make that turn and flee. At some point in the next hour, when they had put the devastated zone behind them, and the crew had time to recover, words were needed. Something had to be said, but Fedorov had decided it would be foolish to try and lay it all out and feed Symenko the whole truth.
“Then you mean to stay on this course?” asked Symenko. “We’ll never make it to the Dolphin’s Head this way.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“You think Karpov’s ships will all just bow and curtsey when they see us darken the sky at Ilanskiy?”
“They won’t be there.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Look behind you, Captain. See that glow on the horizon? Look at the sky. That will be seen for thousands of kilometers. Whatever this was, it was a massive event, and it fell right here in Karpov’s Siberia. If he’s here, he’ll damn well be curious about it. Don’t worry, this airship is the least of his problems now.”
Fedorov knew Karpov wasn’t out there anywhere, not yet. He might be soon, for he had first arrived in 1908 on the10th day of July, on the old ship, the vessel he took out from Vladivostok. Was that the history he now found himself in again? It just might be. That had been the Prime Meridian before we started changing everything. When I first went down the stairs in Ilanskiy in 1942, I reached this very time and place—probably yesterday, the day of the event itself. I was there that morning when it happened, but did not stay long. I know that Mironov was there as well, so he just might be waiting for me off the bow of this ship. It’s only a matter of time now before I know the answers to these things. But there’s no way I can explain all this to Symenko.
“Captain,” he said. “You might want to make up for lost sleep. In another six or seven hours you’ll have your answers, at least in part.”
“Sleep? After that?” he thumbed the red glow on the horizon behind them. “No, I’d better walk the ship and see to the men. If we might have a fight ahead of us, then they’ll need to be ready. And they’ll have questions too—like how we go from the dark of night into that mess back there, and all in the blink of an eye. What do I tell them? And another thing—you were right about that moon. How do we go from no moon, to that sliver of a moon we spotted, and in the wrong place, all in the blink of an eye? Then it ups and disappears altogether. Its broad daylight. That’s the sun up there in all that smoke and haze, not another moon. This is insane.”
“Captain… Things are going to be … somewhat strange for a time. I could tell you what I think has happened, but you won’t believe a word I said.”
“Try me.” Symenko wanted something, any explanation that could help him make sense of what he was experiencing now.
“Alright, let me put it to you this way. The sun and moon don’t lie, they mark the time each day, and when they change like that, it can mean only one thing—the time has changed right along with it. Look at the sun. See how high up it is? It wouldn’t be up like that in September, not in this latitude, and not at this hour. But there it is. That’s a summer sun, and you know it as well as I do. So if the moon was wrong, and that sun out there is up like that, we aren’t where we were when that gibbous moon last set. We’re somewhere else—not another place, but another time. That’s my explanation. If you have a better one, let me know.”
“Another time?” Symenko shook his head, starting for the ladder up. “God almighty, what a load of crap that is. Karpov will straighten you and your lot out soon enough. Just you wait.”
“Zykov,” said Fedorov. “Go with him and make sure all is well with the other men.”
Fedorov knew Symenko had a volatile temper, and he didn’t want the Captain stirring up anything with the rest of his crew. When they had gone up, and the hatch was closed, he looked at Troyak and Orlov. The other four Marines were stationed in pairs, two in the engineer’s compartment aft, two more watching the local contingent of Naval Marines that Symenko had with him.