Across Realtime

- Flashforward -

Allison's wound showed no sign of reopening, and she didn't think there was much internal bleeding. It hurt, but she could walk. She and Quiller set up camp - more a hiding place than a camp, really - about twenty minutes from the crash site.

The fire had put a long plume of reddish smoke into the sky. If there was a sane explanation for all this, that plume would attract Air Force rescue. And if it attracted unfriendlies first, then they were far enough away from the crash to escape. She hoped.

The day passed, warm and beautiful - and untouched by any sign of other human life. Allison found herself impatient and talkative. She had theories: A cabin leak on their last revolution could almost explain things. Hypoxia can sneak up on you before you know it - hadn't something like that killed three Sov pilots in the early days of space? Hell, it could probably account for all sorts of jumbled memories. Somehow their reentry sequence had been delayed. They'd ended up in the Australian jungles.... No that wasn't right, not if the problem had really happened on the last rev. Per-haps Madagascar was a possibility. That People's Republic would not exactly welcome them. They would have to stay undercover till Air Force tracking and reconnaissance spotted the crash site.... A strike-rescue could come any time now, say with the Air Force covering a VTOL Marine landing.

Angus didn't buy it. "There's the Dome, Allison. No country on Earth could build something like that without us knowing about it. I swear it's kilometers high." He waved at the second sun that stood in the west. The two suns were difficult to see through the forest cover. But during their hike from the crash site they'd had better views. When Allison looked directly at the false sun with narrowed eyes, she could see that the disk was a distorted oval - clearly a reflection off some vast curved surface. "I know it's huge, Angus. But it doesn't have to be a physical structure. Maybe it's some sort of inversion layer effect."

"You're only seeing the part that's way off the ground, where there's nothing to reflect except sky. If you climb one of the taller trees, you'd see the coastline reflected in the Dome's base."

"Hmm." She didn't have to climb any trees to believe him. What she couldn't believe was his explanation.

"Face it, Allison. We're nowhere in the world we knew. Yet the tombstone shows we're still on Earth."

The tombstone. So much smaller than the Dome, yet so much harder to explain. "You still think it's the future?"

Angus nodded. "Nothing else fits. I don't know how fast something like stone carving wears: I suppose we can't be more than a thousand years ahead." He grinned. "An ordinary Buck Rogers-like interval."

She smiled back. "Better Buck Rogers than The Last Remake of Planet of the Apes."

"Yeah. I never like it where they kill off all the `extra' timetravelers."

Allison gazed through the forest canopy at the second sun. There had to be some other explanation.

They argued it back and forth for hours, in the end agreeing to give the "rescued from Madagascar" theory twenty-four hours to show success. After that they would hike down to the coast, and then along it till they found some form of humanity

It was late afternoon when they heard it: a whistling scream that grew abruptly to a roar.

"Aircraft!" Allison struggled to her feet.

Angus shook himself, and looked into the sky. Then he was standing too, all but dancing from one foot to the other.

Something dark and arrow-shaped swept over them. "An A511, by God," exulted Angus. "Somehow you were right, Allison!" He hugged her.

There were at least three jets. The air was filled with their sound. And it was a joint operation. They glimpsed the third coming to a hover just three hundred meters away. It was one of the new Sikorsky troop carriers. Only the Marines flew those.

They started down the narrow path toward the nearest of the ships, Allison's gait a limping jog. Suddenly Angus' hand closed on her arm. She spun around, off balance. The pilot was pointing through a large gap in the branches, at the hovering Sikorsky. "Paisley?" was all he said.

"What?" Then she saw it. The outer third of the wings were covered with an extravagant paisley pattern. In the middle was set a green phi or theta symbol. It was utterly unlike any military insignia she had ever seen.