Chronospace (2 page)

Something flashed. For an instant, he thought it was sunlight reflecting off the
Miranda,
until he realized that it
was coming from the wrong direction, about 30 meters from the timeship. He turned his head, looked that way . . .

“Donal!” Joelle snapped. “Do you see . . . ?”

“I see it,” he whispered.

Just above a large boulder near the top of the trail, not far from where the boy had emerged, a bright halo of white-yellow light had flickered into existence. About three meters in diameter, it surrounded an indistinct form lurking within its nucleus: a bisymmetrical figure, vaguely human-formed save for the pair of broad, winglike shapes that expanded outward from behind its body.

“Hans, are you getting this?” Donal spoke quietly, not daring to move a muscle. “Tell me it’s not a hallucination.”

“I’ve got it.”
Brech’s voice was subdued.
“Sort of. I mean, it’s not registering on . . . no, there it . . .”

Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, the haloed figure vanished.

Not all at once, though. When it disappeared, Donal noticed that the nimbus seemed to collapse into itself, much as if it had created a miniature wormhole. As it did, sand and gravel were sucked into the vortex, and the surrounding scrub brush was violently yanked toward it. A half second later, there was a loud thunderclap as air rushed in to fill the vacuum. Donal’s hands went to his ears as Joelle yelled something unintelligible.

No one said anything for a moment.

“Was that an angel?” Joelle asked softly.

“If it was,”
Brech said,
“then it’s another good reason for us to leave.”

T
he train from Virginia was crowded, as it always was during morning rush at the beginning of the week. Murphy could have driven into D.C., and in fact had left his home in Arlington intending to do just that, but when he heard on the radio that an accident on the Roosevelt Bridge had caused traffic to back up on the Beltway, he changed his mind at the last minute and decided instead to catch the inbound Metro from Huntington Station. Under normal circumstances he would have sat out the jam, but his meeting was scheduled for eight o’clock sharp, and this was one appointment for which he dared not be late.

So he sat nervously on the plastic seat, hands folded together on his briefcase, jostled every now and then by the man next to him reading the
Washington Post
. As the train rumbled through the long tunnel beneath the Potomac, he contemplated his reflection in the window. The face which gazed back at him was still young, yet rapidly approaching middle age; he saw creases where he had never noticed any before, a hairline subtly receding from his forehead and temples, dark circles beneath eyes that had once been curious and lively.

Was this just the Monday blahs, or was he was getting old, and more quickly than expected? It had been only seven years since he had left Cornell University, moving his wife and infant child from Ithaca to Washington so he could take a job with NASA. He’d had a beard then, as he recalled, and his eleven-year-old Volvo had still sported a peeling Grateful Dead sticker left over from some grad-student road trip he had taken with Donna. That seemed like a hundred years ago; the beard was long gone, he had traded in the trusty Volvo for a Ford Escort that promptly broke down once every three months, and even the Dead were no longer around. All that remained was another overworked and underpaid government bureaucrat, indistinguishable from the dozens of others riding the train to work.

He only hoped that, when the day was done, he’d still have a job to which he could commute.

Just as Murphy was checking his watch for the tenth time since boarding the Metro, the train began to decelerate. A few moments later, the next station swept into the view. Rushing past businessmen in overcoats, students in parkas, and shabby-looking street people, the train gradually coasted to a stop in front of the platform.

“L’Enfant Plaza. Transfer to all lines. Doors opening on the right.”
Again, Murphy found himself wondering whether the train’s voice was recorded.

He pulled on his gloves, picked up his briefcase, stood up, and joined the line of passengers shuffling out of the car. Once on the platform, he quickened his pace; buttoning up his parka, he marched through the exit turnstiles, then jogged past the ticket machines to the long escalator leading up to E Street. Muted winter sunlight caught random flakes of snow drifting down through the entrance shaft; he pulled up his hood against the harsh wind and ignored the homeless people begging for spare change at the top of the escalator.

He was almost running by the time he covered the two city blocks that separated L’Enfant Plaza from his place of
work. A long, eight-story glass box, NASA headquarters was as soulless as any of the other other federal offices surrounding the Mall, but at least it didn’t have the paranoid Post-Apocalypse-style of government buildings erected during the late sixties and early seventies, when government architects were obviously planning for civil insurrections by excluding ground-floor windows and limiting the number of entry doors. Digging into his coat pocket, Murphy pulled out his laminated I.D. badge and flashed it at the security guard behind the front desk, then sprinted for the nearest elevator just as its doors were beginning to close. He glanced at his watch; just a minute past eight. No time to visit his office; he reached past the other passengers to stab the button for the eighth floor.

The elevator opened onto a long corridor decorated with paintings of Saturn V rockets and Apollo astronauts being suited up. Murphy tugged off his coat as he strode down the hall, carefully noting the coded signs on each door he passed. In the seven years he had worked at NASA, he had been to this floor only a few times; this was the senior administrative level, and you didn’t come up here unless you had a good reason.

The boardroom was located at the end of the corridor, only a few doors down from the Chief Administrator’s office. The door was half-open; he could hear voices inside. Murphy hesitated for a moment, then took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

Three men were seated at the far end of the long oak table that took up most of the room; one chair had been left vacant between them. Their conversation came to a stop as Murphy walked in; everyone looked up at him, and for an instant he felt a rush of panic.

“Dr. Murphy, welcome. Please come in.” Roger Ordmann, the Associate Administrator of the Office of Space Science, pushed back his chair and stood up. “You’re running a little late. I hope you didn’t have any trouble getting here today.”

“My apologies. There was a . . .” No point in telling them about his decision to take the Metro. “Just a problem with traffic. Sorry if I kept you waiting.”

“Not at all.” Ordmann gestured to the vacant chair as he sat down again. “The Beltway can be brutal this time of day. At any rate. . . well, I believe you already know everyone here.”

Indeed he did. Harry Cummisky, Space Science’s Chief of Staff, was the man who had hired Murphy seven years ago. Although only a few years older than Murphy himself, he was the person to whom Murphy directly reported. Harry gave him a nod which was cordial yet nonetheless cool. If it weren’t for Murphy, after all, he wouldn’t be here today.

Next to him was Kent Morris, the Deputy Associate Administrator of NASA’s Public Affairs Office. Murphy knew Morris less well; they had met only three weeks ago, during NASA’s annual Christmas party. Morris seemed affable enough then, but there was a certain edge to him that Murphy instinctively disliked. As it turned out, his feelings were correct; Morris had just transferred over to NASA from the Pentagon, where the PAO was more inclined to scrutinize civilian employees for possible security breaches. It had been a little less than a week after the Christmas party when Morris had blown the whistle on Murphy.

As for Roger Ordmann . . . although Murphy had only met him once or twice before, he knew him all too well, if only by reputation. The former vice president of a major NASA contractor, Ordmann had been recruited to the agency by the Chief Administrator after Dan Goldin himself had come aboard during the Bush administration. Ordmann was a company man; he followed Goldin’s visionary lead without having much of a vision of his own, beyond making sure that Space Science continued to be sufficiently funded through the next fiscal year. Courtly, urbane, and soft-spoken, he could nonetheless be unmerciful when
it came to dismissing any personnel in the Washington office who roused his ire.

“Yes, sir. I know everyone.” Murphy draped his coat over the back of his chair; there was a long, expectant silence as he sat down. Now it seemed as if everyone was staring at him, waiting for him to continue. “To start with . . .”

Feeling an itch in his throat, Murphy coughed into his hand. “Excuse me. To begin with, I apologize for any embarrassment I may have caused the agency. It wasn’t my intent to cast NASA in a bad light. When I wrote that article, I didn’t believe it would be attributed to . . .”

“David . . .” Roger Ordimann regarded him with a paternal smile. “This isn’t a formal board of inquiry, let alone an inquisition. We simply want to know . . . well, at least I’d like to know . . . how you drew your conclusions, and why you decided to publish them at this time.”

“And who gave you clearance to do so,” Morris added, much less warmly.

Murphy glanced across the table at the PAO deputy chief, and that was when he noticed a copy of the February issue of
Analog
resting before him. Not only that, but Ordmann and Cummisky also had copies. The very same science fiction magazine currently on sale in bookstores and newsstands across the country which, along with new stories by Michael F. Flynn, Paul Levinson, and Bud Sparhawk and book reviews by Tom Easton, also featured a nonfiction article by one David Z. Murphy: “How to Travel Through Time (And Not Get Caught).”

“So . . .” Steepling his fingers together, Ordmann leaned back in his chair. “Tell us why you think UFOs may be time machines.”

F
ranc Lu awoke as the lunar shuttle fired its braking thrusters. Feeling the momentary pull of gravity, he pushed off the eyeshades he had donned a couple of hours ago and carefully blinked a few times. The ceiling lights had been turned down, though, so he didn’t have to squint; free fall returned after a moment, and he felt his body once more beginning to rise above his seat; he was thankful that he hadn’t neglected to check the straps before taking a nap.

Turning his head to the left, he peered out the oval porthole window next to his seat. Past the port engine nacelle, he caught a brief glimpse of Earth, an enormous, cloud-flecked shield that glided away as the shuttle completed its turnaround maneuver. Unable to make out any major continents through the clouds, he assumed that they must be somewhere over the Pacific. Probably just beyond the visible horizon lay Hong Kong, his ancestral home. Franc smiled at the thought. Someday, he would like to get another chance to visit . . .

“Well. Now there’s a pleasant smile.” Across the aisle, Lea put down her compad to regard him with mischievous eyes. “Pfennig for your thoughts?”

Franc started to reply, then realized, too late, that she was indulging one of her favorite games. “Caught you!” She playfully wagged a finger at him. “Now, tell me . . .”

“A pfennig is a coin.” Franc laid his head back against the seat. “Smallest form of hard currency used in Germany until 2003, when the deutsche mark was replaced by the Eurodollar.”

“Very good.” Yet she wasn’t about to let him get off so easily. “And what does that expression mean, ‘pfennig for your thoughts’?”

“That you’ve made a bad pun. And I was thinking about Hong Kong, if you must know. It might be an interesting place to visit.”

“I thought you’ve already been there. Three years ago, when . . .” Then her elegant eyebrows arched slightly. “Oh. You mean a CRC expedition.”

Franc nodded. “Dec 31, 1997. The day Great Britain formally ceded the island to the People’s Republic of China. An intriguing period, from what I’ve read.”

She shook her head as she folded shut her compad. “It might be, but it’s probably well documented. Nothing of major interest there. You could always file a proposal, of course, but . . .”

“The Board would probably turn it down. You’re right.” He shrugged, then turned toward the window again. “Just a passing thought.”

Earth had completely disappeared; now all he could see was the black expanse of cislunar space. From behind him, he could hear the small handful of fellow passengers beginning to move restlessly in their seats. They had been travelling for a little more than eighteen hours now, following the shuttle’s departure from the Mare Imbrium spaceport. A private spacecraft owned and operated by the Chronospace Research Centre, the shuttle didn’t have the luxury accommodations afforded by the large commercial moonships. Everyone aboard was a CRC employee; some were returning from furlough, while others like Lea and
himself had their homes on the Moon. Yet because commercial craft weren’t permitted to dock at Chronos Station, you had to take the CRC shuttle or else try hitching a ride aboard a freighter.