“Robert!” Maeve raised her voice as much as she dared, but it was clear that the professor was in a daze of excitement. He was completely beside himself, eyes alight with the fire of discovery and a ruddy glow on his cheeks. She had to do something. Kelly would be working, he’d be trying to pull them out. Robert had moved from his initial point of manifestation, and her instincts told her that this would complicate things, perhaps fatally, if Kelly was trying to retrieve them. In spite of her caution she found herself rushing across the room and grabbing Nordhausen by the lobe of his right ear in a hard pinch. “Damn it, Robert! Put that down and come away from the window!”
There was a loud crack, deafening as the musket went of in a flash. The professor was so startled by the ignition that the musket tumbled wildly from his grasp and fell with a hard thump to the pressed clay floor.
Maeve released him, covering her ears with the shock of the sound, but she quickly recovered and seized hold of Robert’s arm. There was shouting and wild commotion outside the narrow window. She heard the neigh of a horse and the scuffle of many booted feet. Deep voices barked out commands and she immediately recognized the language as French.
“What are you doing!” Nordhausen was aghast. “I could have killed someone! Do you know who’s out there?”
The world was spinning out of control. Maeve felt a dizzy sensation of nausea settle in her stomach. All she could think of was getting back to that first point of entry on this strange new world. It was the only safe island she could see, a retreat to the moment when they had first appeared, as though none of this had even happened. She would stand there, close her eyes, and make it all go away. But even as she pulled the professor along, she could hear the men outside drawing ever nearer.
“Stand here,” she commanded, her eyes riveting the professor. “And whatever happens next, don’t you dare move a muscle or say one single thing if those men find us here—understand?”
Nordhausen gave her a breathless look, but nodded his assent. They could hear men below them in the alleyway beating on a wooden door with the butts of their muskets. The door gave way with a loud crash and booted feet tramped into the rooms below them. The sound of their approach drove a rising anxiety through Maeve as she whispered a silent prayer.
“Kelly… Do something!”
Nordhausen took her hand again and the two stood stone still, just as they had been in the Arch only moments ago. Maeve felt faint as the voices and heavy footfalls grew louder on the stairs below them. The soldiers were hastening up to the second floor, kicking open one door after another.
14
“You’d better hurry, I’m losing the particle density.” Paul saw the reading turn yellow, and he knew the quantum fuel that was keeping the breaching sequence alive was ebbing fast. Kelly gave him an anguished look, hesitated for one brief moment, and then toggled a console switch. There was only one thing he could do now, though it meant he would have to sacrifice one of his emergency pattern signatures. He crossed his fingers, hoping that he would not have to move the travelers a second time.
The light on the infusion chamber began to blink red, and then went out. Paul looked over his shoulder with a worried expression. “I hope you have them, Kelly. The infusion mix is expended and the Arch is out of gas.”
“Hold on…” Kelly was watching his chronometer digits settle on a new target date. “Got them!” he exclaimed.
“Paul sighed with relief. “Good, I’ll go down and smooth things out with Maeve while you re-set things up here.”
“Umm… Don’t bother,” said Kelly, and the tone of his voice put Paul on edge.
“Why not?”
“Well, they’re not in the Arch. I knew we wouldn’t have enough intermix on the infusion chamber, so I just used my emergency pattern signature to nudge them forward to the correct target.”
“You mean…”
“Yup. I moved them to July 15, 1799. There was nothing else I could do once the particle infusion went yellow. There just wasn’t enough particle density for a retraction. But I took three pattern signatures while they were in the flux tube before the mission launch, so I just grabbed their pattern and we had just enough gas to get them where they were supposed to be in the first place.”
“But how will we get them back? This was just supposed to be a Spook Job.”
“We’ve still got the main mission retraction scheme programmed. When they manifest on the original target coordinates, and don’t get yanked home, they’ll realize something went wrong. They’ll just have to start the mission early.”
“Assuming the target coordinates were clear,” Paul suggested the one thing that could pose a real complication for them now. “What if they manifest right in the middle of a column of Turkish soldiers? I’m still a bit nervous about that breaching site. These blind jumps could be dangerous. That little coffee spill sent them back to the very day someone took a pot-shot at Napoleon as he entered Alexandria. Lord, who knows where they landed?” Then another question took the forefront of his thinking. “Did they shift OK?”
“Solid Green. Readings were 100%,” Kelly assured him. “I just patched in the original target vectors and bumped them forward. A little jump like that has almost no chance of pattern loss on the shift. Let’s just hope the target was clear.” He looked down at his coffee cup with a frown. “New rule,” he said with finality as he pointed a finger at his mug. “No coffee at the workstations during mission time.”
“Right,” Paul agreed, but his mind was already centuries away, wondering what was happening with Robert and Maeve.
And Robert and Maeve were wondering much the same. They heard heavy booted feet clomping down the hallway and, just as the door gave way, Robert felt the chill accompanied by that airy lightness of being that characterized time shift. He vaguely discerned the shape of a uniformed man bursting through the doorway, but then the milky green haze of eternity masked his vision, and his stomach rolled with the shift. This time he closed his eyes, hoping that Maeve had done the same. A moment later he felt the solidity of soft earth under his feet, and the travelers appeared in a haze of icy fog.
Robert steadied himself, feeling Maeve’s hand tight in his own. When he opened his eyes the room they were in had vanished. It was dark now but, as his eyes adjusted, he realized that it was just before dawn. The sky was lightening and slowly revealing a gray-brown landscape of undulating, sandy ground, with small stands of date and palm trees scattered here and there. There was a tinge of salt in the air, and Robert breathed deeply, taking in the fresh breeze that was coming off the ocean. He could not see the shoreline from the low depression in the ground where they huddled in the cold, but he could feel it, and hear the distant roll of wave sets breaking on the shore.
“Where are we?” Maeve’s voice was unsteady.
“I… Well I think this must be the road to Alexandria.” Nordhausen squinted trying to make out the lay of the land. “Kelly must have moved us back on our original target. I wonder where we were before?”
“Thank God,” said Maeve. “We almost had a nasty encounter there. When will you learn to keep your hands to yourself, Robert?”
“The damn musket wouldn’t have gone off in the first place if you would mind your own rules!” The professor was still rubbing his right earlobe where Maeve had given him a hard pinch. He stood upright, composing himself and straightening his white wig. There was a tinge of hesitation to his movements now, as if he expected another time shift at any moment. “At least the target vectors are clear. When the retraction kicks in, keep your eyes closed. In fact, close them now. We’ll need our wits about us for the real shift. I’ll give Kelly the thumbs up and he can drop us back here when the Arch is ready—unless you have an hour’s meeting in mind for debriefing on that little mishap we just went through.”