“The same technology that produced the T-span makes the shockcomb possible. There’s no real metal to it. Last I heard, it’s classified. If I really was in US Intelligence, I’d be real curious where Harith obtained this.”
“The boy is quite resourceful. What does it do?”
“I only did a familiarization course with one of these. Technically it shuffles or compresses selected time-space, briefly allowing whoever operates it to move, change things, or escape unobserved. In brief: aim, pull the trigger, and run like hell. To the observer, you look like you vanished when what you’ve actually done is slow the observer down. In another mode you actually do vanish. We only have one of these.”
“What will you use?”
“I’ll take the .38 and the rifle. Back to your weapon, Doctor. Besides minor space-time puckers, at extreme settings a shockcomb can kill. See that switch? The weapon has a focused range of twenty meters and a spherical range of almost three meters.”
Dr. Taleghani held up a hand. “Focused? Spherical?”
“Yes. If you want to move someone else in limited space-time, use focused mode.” He touched the switch illuminating a tiny white light. “To move yourself through limited space-time, use spherical. It literally places you on the edge of an alternate dimension for a nanosecond, which will seem to you like anywhere from five seconds to half an hour, depending on the intensity. It picks you up and puts you down up to six hundred meters away.”
“So, is this is a matter transmitter? I thought science had taken a vote and decided this was impossible.”
“Next you’ll be telling me the Earth orbits the Sun, Doctor. Actually, it is more of an interdimensional matter hitchhiker rather than a transmitter. Regardless, in spherical mode make certain you don’t have part of someone else within range when you pull that trigger. Whatever’s in range goes; whatever isn’t stays. Messy.” Pointing to another switch below the first, he said, “This is the intensity switch.” Indicating the color-coded settings, he showed the positions for safety, space-time movement, and killing. “Remember to check your switches before pulling that trigger.” He set the selector switch to spherical and the intensity switch to red.
“What’s that?”
“Suicide,” answered Gordon. He turned the intensity switch down to the 10 on the indicator. “Here. Stand close.”
Frowning, the archeologist stood next to Gordon, who aimed the comb at the piece of cardboard. “See our old target?”
“Yes.” Gordon pulled the trigger and the cardboard, apparently, vanished. “Where is it?”
“Look down.”
Dr. Taleghani looked down and they were standing on the cardboard. “Amazing!” He looked up at Gordon.
“That was spherical mode. Let’s try focused.” He adjusted the switches, handed the weapon to the archeologist, and began walking away. When he was fifteen meters from the archeologist, Gordon turned and faced him. He held out his arms. “Very well, Doctor. Aim, fire, and move.”
Dr. Taleghani aimed at Gordon, pulled the trigger, and seemed to vanish. From behind him, Gordon heard the archeologist say, “I like it!”
They tried it out a few more times, then Gordon turned off the weapon and placed it back in his pack. “One thing more: each assembled shockcomb has a standby function that, unless it is reset every so often, makes it fire on its own: high energy in extreme tight spherical mode.”
“It puckers itself out of existence?” said Taleghani, holding out his hands. “For what possible reason?”
“If an absent-minded professor, for instance, left one of these things out in the timestream, what might happen?”
The doctor’s eyebrows arched. “Well, with no effort at all, whoever found it could become a wizard, always supposing he didn’t kill himself first.” His expression changed to one of confusion. He said in a very quiet voice, “What’s the point of the thing if they never allow anyone out of a capsule?”
“The weapon design preceded the regulations, Doctor. However once they saw what it could do, the powers that be decided to keep it and use it. I have it set for seventy-two hours.”
“How does it recharge?” asked Dr. Taleghani.
“Just turn it off and leave it out in the sun,” said Gordon. “Next to a hot fire will do even better.”
“I’m feeling much better about my contribution to our chances of survival, Gordon. Much better.”
“Want to make another try at that .38? Never hurts to have a backup.”
“Don’t be absurd,” answered the archeologist.
Just before departure early that evening, representatives of the International Temporal Span Authority, the consortium, the media, and the staff of Site Safar were in attendance, along with the head of Egyptian antiquities, representatives of the Egyptian and Libyan governments, and Mehmet’s father. Captain Mansouri was even there, a frown hanging above the cigar stub stuffed in his face. Security this time, however, was courtesy of the Egyptian army. A company of regulars ringed the gantry and stood posts among the crowd while two more companies surrounded the entire site making certain there were no unwelcome publicity seekers, bomb-tossing or otherwise. Anything planning to cross above the site closer than fifty kilometers in altitude would be fried from the sky, according to the air force general who was attending.
There were television cameras and politicians, hence there had to be speeches. Both governments were in trouble with their peoples, and the Safar Project’s time span would be the farthest reach into the past that had ever been authorized. Perhaps the romance of this possible brush with another era might take peoples’ minds off the violence, sickness, and want stalking the streets of both countries’ cities.
In the blinding light cast by the TV and excavation floods, Dr. Taleghani waved and said a few cryptic words of farewell into the PA system—words that would be much less cryptic when the archeologist presented his living fossil Neo-Squanto to the world. Gordon wondered what their visitor would make of this sight, these people, these times, and what they would have to do to get the fellow to come along with them. They hadn’t talked about kidnapping, although the original Squanto had to be taken by force.
Harith Fayadh was at the edge of the small crowd, being helped by one of the European archeology students, a blond fellow wearing white shorts, a faded yellow tee shirt, and a bleached straw cowboy hat. Harith wore only the white ankle-length dishdashah. Gordon nodded at Harith and the young fellow nodded back, revealing nothing by his expression save disappointment, a bit of anxiety, and a lot of pain. Wishes and prayers for a safe journey came from this one and that one, and finally Mehmet Abdel Hashim leaned toward the sound pickup and called time. “Dimensional windows and tide wait for no man,” he quipped, causing a ripple of nervous laughter in the crowd. Mehmet’s father, a tall man with his son’s good looks, applauded and beamed proudly at his momentarily famous son.
As a number of reporters shouted questions at the same time, making all of their voices unintelligible, the three climbed the black gantry stairs, entered the capsule, and Mehmet pulled shut the hatch and sealed it. The tiny crowd did not dissipate. After all, the travelers should be back in under four hours local time, as far as they knew. Just going for a peek.
“You, Mr. Redcliff,” said Mehmet, tinting the view plates against the glare of the floodlights, “have you been out before?”
“As a boy in Philadelphia. I got to see the signers of the Declaration of Independence.”
“What did you think?” He flipped three switches that started the large generators.
“My friends and I thought it was a rip-off—a gyp. We wanted to see Custer’s Last Stand.”