The experts could just barely explain the mechanism. The rest of us didn't bother trying.
I was just starting to drift toward the engine itself when the Ping-Pong ball caught my eye.
I'd poked around planes like this one a lot during my time with Banshee and in some ways knew more about them than their designers did; and I was pretty sure there weren't supposed to be Ping-Pong balls floating around inside the fuel lines. Maneuvering around in front of it, I leaned in for a closer look... and it was then that I saw that the ball wasn't alone. A dozen more were coming down the line toward the right inboard engine, and a quick check showed that two or three more were already clustered up against the engine intake itself.
There had been a lot of times I'd wished I could touch something on a Jump, and this was one of them. But there was still a lot I could learn with vision alone. The balls were coated with something waxy looking—a gasoline-soluble paraffin, most likely. They were smaller than regulation Ping-Pong balls, too, small enough to have been dropped into the plane's fuel intake or perhaps even hosed in through the nozzle along with the fuel.
I settled down near the engine, watching the balls clustered there, and waited for the clock to tick down... and suddenly the balls began spouting clouds of bubbles. I had just enough time to notice that flickers of flame were starting to dance at the balls' surfaces when the whole thing blew up in front of me.
For a second I lost control, and an instant later had snapped back behind the wing to the full length of my tether. The trail of smoke Morgan and Hale had mentioned was coming out of the engine. In a handful of seconds the engine would explode and everyone aboard would die... and if I ended the Jump right now, I wouldn't have to watch it happen.
I stayed anyway. White House cartes blanches or not, someone was shelling out a quarter of a million dollars for this trip. They might as well get their money's worth.
Morgan had been right; it wasn't nearly as bad as some I'd seen. The right inboard engine caught fire and blew up on schedule, sending pieces of itself through the air toward me. I ducked in unnecessary reflex and watched as the rest of the wing caught fire, blazing more fiercely than it had any right to. The plane tilted violently, but for the moment the wing and the pylon I was tethered to were still attached and I stayed with it. Then the wing just seemed to disintegrate... and as I fell behind the plane with the tumbling debris I watched it arc almost lazily down toward the tree-covered slope ahead.
And coming to Earth far behind the crash site, there was no longer any reason for me to stay. I let go of the past, wishing as always that I could just as easily release the trauma of what I'd just seen; and a disoriented moment later, I was back on the couch.
The operators unstrapped me and began removing the tubes and wires.... and as my eyes and brain refocused I became aware of Kristin's face hovering over me. "Kristin," I croaked, trying to get moisture back into my mouth. My eyes were just the opposite: they were streaming freely. I turned my head to the side, feeling an obscure embarrassment at her seeing me like this.
If Kristin noticed, she gave no sign of it. "Griff sent me to get you," she said. "He wants all of us in his office right away."
I blinked away the tears; and even as I struggled to sit up I noticed the tightness about her eyes. Still mad at me, I decided... until I realized her eyes were focused off in space somewhere. "Is anything wrong?"
She licked her lips briefly. "I don't know, but something sure as blazes is happening. Griff and Shaeffer have been closeted up there since you left for your Jump... and Griff wasn't sounding too good when he told me to come get you."
I swallowed, hard, and concentrated on getting my blood up to speed again. With Kristin supporting me, we were upstairs in Griff's office five minutes later.
She was right: the whole gang was there... and one look at Griffs and Shaeffer's stony faces set my stomach churning. Something had indeed happened... I looked at Griff, but it was Shaeffer who spoke. "Your report, Mr. Sinn?" His voice matched his expression.
I gave it to him without elaboration, describing as best I could the Ping-Pong balls in the fuel line and the way they'd behaved. Shaeffer listened like a man who already had the answers and was merely looking for some confirmation, and when I'd finished he nodded. "The searchers on the scene already came to pretty much the same conclusion," he said grimly. "Catalyst bombs, sounds like—gadgets that get the fuel and the degraded fragments of flame retardant to react together."
"Never heard of them," Rennie said.
"They're not exactly on-shelf technology. We've developed a type or two, and there are maybe two or three other countries doing similar work. That could be a blunder on the saboteur's part—exotic equipment makes any trail easier to trace. All right, Mr. Sinn, thank you." He took a deep breath, looked around at each of us in turn... and his expression seemed to get a little stonier. "And here now is where we get to the sticky part. I imagine you've been wondering why I came to Banshee in person instead of directing your investigation from Washington. It's because I want you to do something I don't believe you've ever tried before. Something—I'll say this up front—that could turn out to be dangerous." He paused, and the tip of his tongue swiped at his upper lip. "I've read everything President Jeffers ever received on Banshee, and he and I both noted with a great deal of interest that you've been... seen... on more than one occasion by the people you've been observing."
Kristin shifted in her seat... and a horrible suspicion began to drift like a storm cloud across my mind.
"Now, tell me," Shaeffer continued, sweeping his gaze across us Jumpers, "did any of you, during your Jumps the past few hours, ever get a look inside Air Force One itself?"
Hale, Morgan, and I exchanged glances, shook our heads. "That why Griff set the tethers so short?" Morgan asked. "So we couldn't get inside?"
A flicker of surprise crossed the rock that was Shaeffer's expression. "I hadn't expected you to notice," he said. "Yes, that's precisely why I had Dr. Mansfield set them that way. You see... as of yet, the searchers at the crash site have located only a few of the bodies from the wreckage. It occurred to me early on that due to an unusual set of circumstances back at the President's retreat no outsiders actually saw him get onto that plane. And now you've told me that none of you have seen him there, either.
"Which means... perhaps he never was aboard to begin with."
A brittle silence settled, vise-like, around the table. "Are you suggestin'," Morgan said at last, "that you want us to go back there and change the past?"
His sentence ended on a whispered hiss. I looked back at Shaeffer, and to me it was abundantly clear that he knew exactly what it was he was suggesting... and that he was just as scared about it as the rest of us were.
But it was equally clear he was also determined not to let those fears stand in his way. "There's nothing of changing the past about it," he said firmly. "We don't know—none of us do—exactly what happened on that flight. If we don't know what the past is, how can we be changing it?"
" 'If a tree falls alone in the forest, is there any sound?' " Hale put in icily. "Do you have any idea what will happen if we meddle like this?"
"No—and neither do you," Shaeffer replied. "Face it, people, no one knows what changing even a known fact of history would mean. A known fact, notice, which is not what we're talking about doing here."
"Oh, aren't we?" Hale retorted. "All right, fine—let's assume for the moment that somehow we keep President Jeffers out of Air Force One. It's been over six hours now since the crash. Are you going to try and tell us that he and his whole Secret Service detachment have been sitting around listening to the news and no one's bothered to pick up a phone to let the world know he's still alive? Come on, now, let's be serious. We keep Jeffers out of the plane and we've changed history—pure and simple."