The Traveler (4 page)

*   *   *

The outline of the girl vanished. Himmler's eyes widened as her body became part of the swirling greens and blues of the electromagnetic storm.

“She's through, she has made the transit!” Thomsen said loudly. “Cut power to fifty percent,” he said as he saw five technicians run forward with fire extinguishers when they heard the power being curtailed to the machine. “Prepare one-way communication link,” he finished as he walked over to the small radio set that was connected to the main floor of the lab.

*   *   *

The young girl felt the assault on her body and senses ease as her mind started to unscramble. Her stomach heaved once more and the last of her evening supper emptied onto the cold concrete floor. She rose to her elbows and wiped her mouth. Then she quickly remembered where she was and frantically looked back and saw that the doorway was there and still open. The vortex of light and swirling particles obscured the other side but she knew that they were there, waiting to see if the experiment worked. She felt the evilness of the eyes that waited impatiently. She started to stand on shaky, weakened legs.

The room she was in was the exact double of the one in which she had just left. She actually had figured out after the initial test more than a week before that it was in fact the very same room she had left behind. The laboratory was empty of the advanced displacement equipment and the immense space was sparse of light. Only the doorway's frame that held the corresponding signal remained. Spiderwebs blew in the onslaught of wind still being produced by the partially opened doorway. She took a tentative step away from the swirling vortex and felt the ease of pressure. Her head stopped aching and her bones felt as if they had been resolidified somehow. Her stomach settled and she realized that she was thirsting to death. It was as if every bit of moisture had been sucked from her body. Then she saw through the swirling and flashing of the doorway behind her a large water bottle with folded paper cones beside it. She approached cautiously. Her hand reached for the dust-covered clear bottle but froze when the voice came through the doorway.

“Yes, you are thirsty, drink, we have very little time. You must be rehydrated before your return.”

The voice echoed in the emptiness of the deserted bunker as if an ancient god were talking to her from Olympus. Her heart leaped as the voice of Thomsen filled the girl with dread. Her hand lowered, forsaking the bottle.

“Ah, yes, the thought that will always come to the trapped animal—the brief glimpse of escape.”

The girl felt as if her thoughts had been read. She swallowed as her eyes tried to pierce the round circle of the doorway.

“But you have not thought this through, my dear. You were chosen for your above-average intelligence by our benefactor, the Reichsführer, and also because you come with built-in assurances of cooperation.”

Moira realized at that moment that which she so readily forgot—her small brother who was still in their evil hands. She tentatively reached for the water. She unfolded the paper cone and then uncorked the bottle and poured. She drank until she thought she would burst. She had no choice. When she finished she placed the bottle down beside the others she had drank on the other test nights. There were three empty bottles.

“Now, the proof that the Reichsführer requires is on the table, pick anyone, they are all the same.”

The girl saw the lined-up newspapers. The headlines of each were covered by a thick layer of dust. She reached for the first newspaper. She blew the dust free and read. She knew very little of the English language but Moira knew instinctively that the headline was not a good one. “American Fortress of Corregidor Falls to Japs.” She retrieved the paper with the scrawled signature of Heinrich Himmler next to the bold print and turned toward the doorway.

THE MÖHNE DAM

Squadron Commander Gibson brought the giant Lancaster to within fifteen feet of the surface of the reservoir as his assault charged through the front door of the German antiaircraft defenses. This was the second run against the dam. He had braved the first just to make sure that the level of the waterline had not gone down as they had to skip their payload over the two anti-torpedo nets that spanned the waterway in front of the enormous dam.

“Speed, two hundred thirty knots. Altitude, sixty feet, Gibby, for God's sake let her go!” the copilot screamed as the Lancaster bore in on the dam's angled facing.

Gibson knew they only had one shot at this. If the attack failed the industrial might of Germany would be unaffected, and the research involving the development of hard water would continue.

“I hate to say this, but we're so bloody close to the water we see fish!” came the voice of the starboard machine gunner as the Lancaster roared in, climbing to sixty feet over the shining waters of the Möhne.

“Now!” Gibson cried as he saw the white face of the dam grow like a wall of destruction in his windscreen.

“Upkeep away!” called the bombardier.

The cylindrical Upkeep hit the water just as Gibson pulled up on the stick with all the strength he and his copilot could muster. It felt as though the twin-tailed bomber was going to strike the top of the Möhne Dam but at the last moment the great bomber cleared it by a mere six feet. The force of the bombers' wash knocked over five German soldiers on the walkway as it passed. The Lancaster climbed free as the five-foot-long, barrel-like bomb started its magical skipping action toward the dam. It bounced over the line cable of the first torpedo net and then the second. There was nothing to stop it from striking the dam now.

Six times the
Bouncing Baby Boy
struck the water and then rose back into the dark night sky. Soon the sheer weight of the giant bomb slowed her advance to the point that the nine-thousand-pound bomb was only traveling at 100 kilometers per hour when it struck the reservoir side of the dam. It hit with a force that knocked more German soldiers from their feet as they scrambled to watch the attack. Then gravity took hold and the Upkeep settled and quickly sank into the frigid waters of the Möhne reservoir. It sank, spinning and bumping against the reinforced concrete and then crawled along the face as it was designed to do with the backspin of the launch. It fell directly where it was supposed to fall—right to the base of the fragile system.

*   *   *

Himmler watched and waited. He never suspected the subject of the test, the Traveler, would fail to return. After all, as long as she had the hope of saving her brother she would finish what the experiment called for.

“I assume you have retrieved the evidence of your travel, so return to the doorway,” Thomsen said into the microphone as he watched the anticipation on the Reichsführer's face. “Charge the doorway, one hundred and ten percent power.”

The doorway started to spin at a fantastic speed and the sparks of color returned. The connection was made once more. Soon Himmler would have the proof he needed. His grand escape plan was now a viable option to his hanging at the hands of his enemies, the allies.

“Power output at one hundred and fifteen percent!” the technician called into the loud void of the laboratory.

They felt the earth beneath the bunker roll as if the ground was made of water instead of bedrock. Heinrich Himmler's eyes widened in shock as the doorway erupted in flame and sparks as her emergency backup systems were knocked offline.

“
Mein Gott,
what has happened?” Thomsen cried as he felt the first ripple of earth movement.

As for Himmler, he knew exactly what had happened. He had been warned of possible RAF assaults on the power-producing systems of the war effort.

“No!” he said loudly as the world around him turned to electrical flame.

*   *   *

The Upkeep traveled to a depth of 112 feet, three feet farther than the designers wanted, but this failure actually ensured the success of the mission. Just as the Upkeep hit the bottom of the dam nearest the last of the solid granite masonry blocks where they joined clay and earthen bank, the shock wave as the hydrostatic fuse detonated the nine thousand pounds of explosive in the barrel-like weapon.

At first there was little reaction other than the giant waterspout above the dam's upper superstructure. The wash inundated the German guards running about in a panic. Then the real magic started to happen as Mother Nature started to take an interest in the game. The initial cracks in the dam were small, but as the explosion reached out from the base, the return of water to that empty pressure void slammed into the wall of concrete at over a thousand miles per hour. It cracked. The sizable void traveled like a snake at maximum speed as it raced up the waterside of the dam. It hit the top and the first of the five-thousand-pound chunks of wall started to cascade into the small village below, whose residents had already started to run for their lives.

The Möhne Dam and the surrounding countryside had only minutes of life left to them.

*   *   *

“Get me my power back!” Thomsen said as a shower of sparks cascaded to the floor, making even Himmler duck low.

“Get me to my car!” Himmler said as calmly as he could as he was pulled by his security team from the glass-enclosed room. His eyes fell on a panicked Thomsen as he tried to find out what was wrong. The fool didn't even realize his precious project had been attacked. Thomsen's eyes showed fear as he knew then that his life and his project were done. He would never survive the Reichsführer's wrath.

The lights flickered as the SS men cleared the room and ran for the elevator while they still had power to operate the lifts.

Himmler turned to two of his SS security men. “Remove Thomsen and only his most essential personnel. The rest need to be silenced, including the Traveler and her sibling, if she returns.”

The two men turned and made their way to the laboratory below and started to pull Thomsen from the room amid his cries to help stop the catastrophe to his experiment. Three of his assistants were also pulled out of the lab as others used fire extinguishers to try to stem the flow of the disaster.

Before anyone knew what was happening, bullets ripped into the laboratory below. Technicians froze at their consoles as their world exploded into chaos. Bullets ripped into their screens and then themselves as SS machine guns opened up from the stairwell in the far wall.

Thomsen and his three assistants were pushed toward the elevators. The second was waiting with an SS soldier. Professor Thomsen was hustled toward the lift. Suddenly he felt the large glass window blow inward and was inundated with shrapnel. The largest piece lodged into his thorax and jugular veins. His last view of his precious Wellsian Doorway was of men with weapons destroying it and his people. His last dimming vision was of the small brother of the Traveler as he ran away in fear. He wondered if the boy would ever make it out alive. Thomsen died with many regrets, but the boy's fate was not one of them.

Before the murderers of the many technicians of the doorway could reach the elevator, exploding water from the destroyed Möhne Dam was forced from the conduit tunnel. The furious flow of water burst forth like the rush of an oncoming train. The laboratory started filling fast with water from the collapsing dam.

*   *   *

The girl saw the explosions with the view she had of the doorway before it collapsed. Her eyes had found the frightened visage of her baby brother as the world she knew vanished before her eyes. She reached up at the spinning vortex of color as their eyes met and that was when she saw the frightened face of her brother turn to shock as the bullets ripped into the floor near him. Then the doorway closed forever and she was left with her hand reaching for nothing but the blackness that was the bunker. Moira Mendelsohn collapsed to the floor with the newspaper clutched in her hand.

Three hours later the young woman who had become the first time traveler in the history of the world broke open the door that led to the clean fresh air of the outdoors. It smelled wonderful. She looked at the stars above and took a deep breath.

The Traveler vanished into the Wellsian Doorway on that dark night back in 1943—and then disappeared again into a war-torn world of 1942—almost one year before she vanished the first time.

The Wellsian Doorway was closed and would not be opened again for close to a century.

 

PART ONE

DEPARTMENT 5656

This is a tale left unfinished … so let us conclude the story our way.

—Dr. Niles Compton, director,

Department 5656,

National Archives

 

1

ST. JUDE'S CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

The nondescript Black Hawk UH-60 helicopter eased its large bulk onto the painted heliport atop the hospital normally used to airlift critically ill patients to one of the most prestigious hospitals in the world. Before the wheels set down, one of the men in the passenger compartment felt the eyes on them in the darkness of the heliport. He knew that with those eyes came weapons—weapons that were right now trained on them and their air force flight crew.

Colonel Jack Collins looked over at his boss, Director Niles Compton, who was just placing paperwork back into his briefcase. Jack watched as the director removed the wire-rimmed glasses from his face and then watched as the fifty-one-year-old Compton rubbed the black eye patch that covered his right socket. Compton realized the colonel was watching him and quickly lowered his hand and replaced the glasses.

The two security men Jack had assigned to escort them to Los Angeles were politely not paying attention to the director nor his recent deformity received during the war with the Grays the previous month. The two men, Diaz and Voorhees, both U.S. Marines, were dressed in civilian attire. Collins unsnapped the seat belt and waited on Compton to gather his things just as the sliding door of the Black Hawk was opened from the outside. Before anyone could stand to leave, a rather large man in a navy blue Windbreaker stepped up to the door with four other men attired in the exact same manner. Jack assisted Niles as he maneuvered his cane to support his badly injured right leg. Collins knew Compton would never walk without the support of the cane again.