Mehmet’s handsome features frowned as he looked from his gauges at Dr. Taleghani. “And you, Doctor?”
“I too have been in a timespanner, Mehmet, much larger than this one. It was in Cairo at the university when I was a student. My friends and I also believed ourselves gypped. We were shown a lot of dust and desert with an occasional horse and rider vanishing into it. We had supposedly witnessed Muhammad’s army of ten thousand on its way to persuade Mecca to submit to Islam. It could have been a cheap Hollywood production, from what little we could see.”
“What did you want to see?” asked Gordon.
Dr. Taleghani grinned like a mischievous schoolboy. “Allah forgive us, we were Egyptian boys. We wanted to see Cleopatra.”
Mehmet grinned widely and nodded. “I personally wanted to see Nefertiti. I did, however, get to see T.E. Lawrence and his Bedouins blow up a Turkish train.”
“Was it as good as the motion picture?” asked Gordon.
“No,” answered Mehmet. “The lighting and audio were terrible and no close-ups. Reality has much to live up to.”
Gordon nodded. “That’s been my experience.”
“Very well,” Mehmet continued, “then both you barnacle-encrusted time mariners know there will be no perceptive spatial movement until we get to when we are going. Do not touch the hull once we start punching dimensions. I’ll warn you when we start. Hull materials will become intensely cold. It won’t be cold long enough to affect the capsule’s air temperature significantly, but it will be cold enough to burn you rather severely should you be touching the wrong thing at the wrong time.” He held up a pair of thin white cotton gloves.
“I wear these just to be safe.” He nodded toward the formed plastic couches behind which they had stowed much of their supplies. There was a pair of white cotton gloves on the center couch and the couch to their left. “You may as well be seated. In a little over thirty-eight minutes—God willing—we should have you when you want to be. Then after we unload I go back for three weeks of unmitigated grilling and endless browbeating and guilt from my father for leaving the two of you behind.”
“What if they ground you and the operation?” asked Gordon. “What happens to us?”
“We have rather good leverage should something like grounding the T-span happen,” said Mehmet, smiling at Dr. Taleghani. “Leaving you there for three weeks or so won’t affect anything in the present. Anyone you might come into contact with will most certainly be eliminated by the combination of the shockwave and the floods resulting from the Kebira impact.”
“Leaving us back there for years, however,” said Taleghani, his hands held up in innocent helplessness, “who can say what effects we might have? If we don’t get picked up on time, perhaps we might just get it into our minds to strike out on our own, make a run for it, get outside the flood area, perhaps bring some of the locals with us. I fancy I’d get tired cutting meat with a stone knife and might let slip how to find iron and make things out of it. Might even have central air conditioning before long.”
“That would put a spin on that old grain of sand,” said Gordon.
“We couldn’t really do such a thing, of course,” said Dr. Taleghani. “Place all of human history and accomplishment at risk? The dynasties of Egypt? The pyramids? Unthinkable, although,” he smiled, “not unthinkable to the authorities, I trust. They’ll let Mehmet return for us.”
Taleghani sat in the center couch and Gordon sat to his right. After an uneventful thirty seconds during which Mehmet stood at the wall and studied his small panel of instruments, the view plates seemed to mist. White and fuchsia vaporous streams appeared in cones extending above the cabin’s overhead view plate to an infinitely distant vanishing point. “As far as those on the ground are concerned, we’re gone,” Mehmet announced. He finished checking his instruments and faced them. “In a few more minutes the stage will be finished with orientation. We’re not just going back a few hundred years, so there is much to calculate concerning the movement of the African plate, the movement of Earth within the movements of the solar system, galaxy, and universe.”
“What is next?” prompted Taleghani.
Mehmet took his place in the remaining couch, raising a small instrument panel from his left armrest. “Once we’re oriented, we’ll fold into the general location of the escarpment, run our time, fix our windows, then I’ll steer through the arrival window neat as you please and put down where you want us to land.” Suddenly the cones of vapor vanished, revealing that the travelers were suspended high above the silica glass dunes under a full moon at night. Gordon and the archeologist got out of their couches, both of them looking down at the sands through the view plates.
“Mehmet,” said Dr. Taleghani, momentarily backing away from the hull, “what happens if I get sick?”
“Please don’t, Doctor. Whatever isn’t splattered all over you, me, and Mr. Redcliff gathers on the inside walls of the protective field. When the field collapses, the film collapses with it—all over the three of us. You must have brought some sandwich bags. If not, use a pocket.”
“It might make sense to stop looking down,” suggested Gordon.
“I agree,” said Mehmet. “Please, Doctor. We’re ranging the dimension edge. Get back in your couch and close your eyes.” As Gordon and the archaeologist returned to their couches, Mehmet’s hands became busy upon the controls as flashes streaked across the sky, everything taking on a turquoise hue. “Moving back,” he said. “Very well ... Punching dimensions now. Touch no metal.”
The turquoise hue abruptly went to orange, then midnight blue. Mehmet looked at his passengers and Gordon held up his gloved hands, as did Dr. Taleghani. “Excellent. A few days per minute accelerating by levels until we’re close to ten millennia per minute. That’s about as fast as I can take it with this portable. As we guide in to the proper time, I’ll fine tune the locater, get the exact time on that meteor impact, then we’ll sort and pick the window sets we’ll use.”
The view plates showed the dunes beneath began creeping, then walking, then flowing backwards across the desert as the passage of the sun and moon became a blinding river across the sky. Soon the dunes themselves became a blur, then vanished, leaving behind what appeared to be a gently hilly landscape stained ochre moving to pale green.
“Intermittent glaciation period,” said Dr. Taleghani, all thoughts of being sick forgotten. “Before the complete advance of the desert. Oh, this is magical!”
“We’re going through the seasonal cycles so rapidly,” said Mehmet, “nothing can register except aggregate color. Look closely at one spot, you may be able to catch a glimpse of a tree trunk.”
For the space of an eye blink the valleys between the hills were covered with water, then with faint green, replaced by more water, then green. Floods and ice fields that lasted for years passed in instants, each successive flood revealing more and more of the brick-red rocky cliff.
“The escarpment,” said Gordon.
“This is the way to excavate,” said Taleghani, nodding enthusiastically. “None of the evidence is disturbed and we get right down to what we want to see.”
Gordon looked at the floodwaters below, the storms and ice averaged with calms into a smeared pale gray blanket from which the red cliff reached toward the flashing skies. As Mehmet slowed the movement back in time, the scene below was one of absolute devastation—almost a moonscape. Suddenly there was a flash that momentarily blinded them. When Gordon’s vision cleared, he saw they were above a forested valley cut by a meandering river, a bend of which swung by the base of a tall red cliff. The cliff was much higher and shaped differently than before.