The Year of the Quiet Sun

NINE

Chaney had no forewarning of something amiss.

The red light blinked out. He reached up to unlock the hatch and throw it open. The green light went dark. Chaney grasped the two handrails and pulled himself to a sitting position, with his head and shoulders protruding through the hatchway. He was alone in the room, as he expected to be. He struggled through the hatch and climbed over the side, easing himself down the hull until his feet touched the stool. The vehicle felt icy cold. Chaney reached up to slam shut the hatch, then cast a curious glance at the monitoring cameras. He hoped those future engineers approved his obedience to the ritual.

Chaney looked at his watch: 10:03. That was expected. He had kicked off less than a minute ago, the third and last to move up. He sought out the calendar and clock on the wall to verify the date and the time: 6 Nov 80. The clock read 7:55. A thermometer had been added to the instrument group to record outside temperature: 31 degrees F.

Chaney hesitated, unsure of his next move. The time was not right; it should have been ten o’clock, plus or minus eight minutes. He made a mental note to tell the engineers what he thought of their guidance system.

The first of the field trials had been launched at a few minutes past nine, with Major Moresby claiming his due. Thirty minutes later Arthur Saltus followed the Major into the future, and thirty minutes after him Chaney climbed into the bucket and was kicked off. All arrivals on target were supposed to be identical with departure times, plus or minus eight minutes. Chaney had expected to surface about ten and find the others waiting for him. They were scheduled to regroup in the fallout shelter, equip themselves, and travel to the target city in separate automobiles to effect a wider coverage of the area.

Katrina had given each of them explicit instructions and then wished them well.

Saltus had said: “Aren’t you coming down to see us off?”

She’d replied: “I will wait in the briefing room, sir.”

The wall clock moved to 7:56.

Chaney abandoned his irresolution. Rounding the hull of the vehicle, he opened the locker and reached for the suit hung there only minutes before. Small surprise. His suit had been cleaned and pressed and was now hanging in a paper sheath provided by the dry cleaner. Next to his were similar packages belonging to Moresby and Saltus. His name was written across the sheath and he recognized the woman’s handwriting. He was first in: seniority.

Chaney ripped away the paper and dressed quickly, aware of the chill in the room. The white shirt he found in the locker was a new one and he looked with some interest at the wavy, patterned collar. Style, 1980. The sheath was jammed back into the locker as a mocking message.

Leaving the vehicle room, Chaney strode down the well-lighted corridor to the fallout shelter, conscious of the cameras watching his every step. The basement, the entire building, was cloaked in silence; the lab engineers would avoid contact with him as he must avoid them — but they had the advantage: they could examine a quaint specimen from two years in the past while he could only speculate on who was on the other side of the wall. Their door was shut. Chaney pushed the shelter door open and the overhead lights flashed on in automatic response. The room was empty of life.

Another clock above a workbench read 8:01.

Chaney strode into the shelter to stop, turn, stare, inspect everything open to his gaze. Except for a few new objects on the workbench the room was precisely the same as he’d last seen it, a day or two before. He was expected. Three tape recorders had been removed from the stores and set out on the bench, along with an unopened box of fresh tape; two still cameras designed to be worn over the shoulder were there, together with a motion picture camera for Arthur Saltus and new film for all three instruments. Three long envelopes rested atop the cameras, and again he recognized Katrina’s handwriting.

Chaney tore his open, hoping to find a personal note, but it was curiously cool and impersonal. The envelope gave up a gate pass and identification papers bearing the date, 6 November 1980. A small photograph of his face was affixed to the identification. The brief note advised him not to carry arms off the station.

He said aloud: “Saltus, you’ve shut me out!” This evidence suggested the woman had made a choice in the intervening two years — unless he was imagining things.

Chaney prepared himself for the outside. He found a heavy coat and a rakish cap in the stores that were good fits, then armed himself with camera, recorder, nylon film and tape. He took from a money box what he thought would be an adequate supply of cash (there was a shiny new dime and several quarters bearing the date 1980; the portraits on the coins had not been changed), and a drawer yielded a pen and notebook, and a flashlight that worked. A last careful survey of the room suggested nothing else that would be useful to him, and he made ready to leave.

A clock told 8:14.

Chaney scrawled a quick note op the back of his torn envelope and propped it against the motion picture camera: Arrived early for a swim. Will look for you laggards in town. Protons are perfidious.

He stuffed the ID papers in his pocket and quit the shelter. The corridor was as silent and empty as before. Chaney climbed the stairway to the operations door and stopped with no surprise to read a painted sign.

Chaney fitted two keys into the twin locks and shoved. A bell rang somewhere behind him. The operations door rolled easily on rolamite tracks. He stepped outside into the chill of 1980. The time was 8:19 on a bleak November morning and there was a sharp promise of snow in the air.

He recognized one of the three automobiles parked in the lot beyond the door: it was the same car Major Moresby had driven a short while ago — or two years ago — when he hustled Chaney and Saltus from the pool to the lab. The keys were in the ignition lock. Walking to the rear of the vehicle, he stared for a moment at the red and white license plate to convince himself he was where he was supposed to be: Illinois 1980. Two other automobiles parked beyond the first one appeared to be newer, but the only visible change in their design appeared to be fancy grills and wheel caps. So much for nubile taste and Detroit pandering.

Chaney didn’t enter the car immediately.

Moving warily, half fearful of an unexpected meeting, he circled the laboratory building to reconnoiter. Nothing seemed changed. The installation was just as he remembered it: the streets and sidewalks well repaired and clean — policed daily by the troops on station — the lawns carefully tended and prepared for the approach of winter, the trees now bare of foliage. The heavy front door was closed and the familiar black and yellow fallout shelter sign still hung above it. There was no guard on duty. On an impulse, Chaney tried the front door but found it locked — and that was a commentary of some kind on the usefulness of the fallout shelter below. He continued his inspection tour all the way around again to the parking lot.

Something was changed behind the lot.

Chaney eyed the space for a moment and then recognized the difference. What had been nothing more than a wide expanse of lawn two years ago was now a flower garden; the flowers were wilted with the nearness of winter and many of the dead blossoms and vines had been cleared away, but in the intervening two years someone — Katrina? — had caused a garden to be planted in an otherwise empty plot of grass.

Chaney left a sign for Major Moresby. He placed a shiny new quarter on the concrete sill of the locked door. A moment later he turned the key in the ignition and drove off toward the main gate.

The gatehouse was lighted on the inside and occupied by an officer and two enlisted men in the usual MP uniforms. The gate itself was shut but not locked. Beyond it, the black-topped road stretched away into the distance, aiming for the highway and the distant city. A white line had been newly painted — or repainted — down the center of the road.

“Are you going off station, sir?”

Chaney turned, startled by the sudden question. The officer had emerged from the gatehouse.

He said: “I’m going into town.”

“Yes, sir. May I see your pass and identification?”

Chaney passed over his papers. The officer read them twice and studied the photograph affixed to the ID.

“Are you carrying weapons, sir? Are there any weapons in the car?”

“No, to both.”

“Very good, sir. Remember that Joliet has a six o’clock curfew; you must be free of the city limits before that hour or make arrangements to stay overnight.”

“Six o’clock,” Chaney repeated. “I’ll remember. Is it the same in Chicago?”

“Yes, sir.” The officer stared at him. “But you can’t enter Chicago from the south since the wall went up. Sir, are you going to Chicago? I will have to arrange for an armed guard.”

“No — no, I’m not going there. I was curious.”

“Very well, sir.” He waved to a guard and the gate was opened. “Six o’clock, sir.”

Chaney drove away. His mind was not on the road.

The warning indicated that a part of the Indic report had correctly called the turn: the larger cities had taken harsh steps to control the growing lawlessness, and it was likely that many of them had imposed strict dusk-to-dawn curfews. A traveler not out of town before dusk would need hotel accommodations to keep him off the streets. But the reference to the Chicago wall puzzled him. That wasn’t foreseen, nor recommended. A wall to separate what from what? Chicago had been a problem since the migrations from the south in the 1950s — but a wall?

The winding private road led him to the highway. He pulled up to a stop sign and waited for a break in traffic on route 66. Across the highway, an officer in a parked state patrol car eyed his license plate and then glanced up to inspect his face. Chaney waved, and pulled into traffic. The state car did not leave its position to follow him.

A second patrol car was parked at the outskirts of town, and Chaney noted with surprise that two men in the back seat appeared to be uniformed national guardsmen. The bayonet-tipped rifles were visible. His face and his license were given the same scrutiny and their attention moved on to the car behind him.

He said aloud (but to himself): “Honest, fellas, I’m not going to start a revolution.”

The city seemed almost normal.

Chaney found a municipal parking lot near the middle of town and had to search for the rare empty space. He was outraged to learn it cost twenty-five cents an hour to park, and grudgingly put two of Seabrooke’s quarters into the meter. A clerk sweeping the sidewalk before a shuttered store front directed him to the public library.

He stood on the steps and waited until nine o’clock for the doors to open. Two city squad cars passed him while he waited and each of them carried a guardsman riding shotgun beside the., driver. They stared at him and the clerk with the broom and every other pedestrian.

An attendant in the reading room said: “Good morning. The newspapers aren’t ready.”

She hadn’t finished the chore of rubber-stamping the library name on each of the front pages, or of placing the steel rods through the newspaper centerfolds. A hanging rack stood empty, awaiting the dailies. An upside-down headline read: JCS DENIED BAIL.

Chaney said: “No hurry. I would like the Commerce and Agriculture yearbooks for the past two years, and the Congressional Record for six or eight weeks.” He knew that Saltus and the Major would buy newspapers as soon as they reached town.

“All the governmental publications are in aisle two, on your left. Will you need assistance?”

“No, thanks. I know my way through them.”

He found what he wanted and settled down to read.

The lower house of Congress was debating a tax reform bill. Chaney laughed to himself and noted the date of the Record was just three weeks before election. In some few respects the debate seemed a filibuster, with a handful of representatives from the oil and mineral states engaging in a running argument against certain of the proposals on the pious grounds that the so-called reforms would only penalize those pioneers who risk capital in the search for new resources. The gentleman from Texas reminded his colleagues that many of the southwestern fields had run dry — the oil reserves exhausted — and the Alaskan fields were yet ten years from anticipated capacity. He said the American consumer was facing a serious oil and gasoline shortage in the near future; and he got in a blow at the utility people by reminding that the hoped-for cheap power from nuclear reactors was never delivered.

The gentleman from Oregon once injected a plea to repeal the prohibition on cutting timber, claiming that not only were outlaw lumberjacks doing it, but that foreign opportunists were flooding the market with cheap wood. The presiding officer ruled that the gentleman’s remarks were not germane to the discussion at hand.

The Senate appeared to be operating at the customary hectic pace.

The gentleman from Delaware was discussing the intent of a resolution to improve the lot of the American Indian, by explaining that his resolution would direct the Bureau of Indian Affairs to act on a previous resolution passed in 1954, directing them to terminate government control of the Indians and return their resources to them. The gentleman complained that no worthwhile action had been taken on the 1954 resolution and the plight of the Indian was as sorry as ever; he urged his fellows to give every consideration to the new resolution, and hoped for a speedy passage.

The sergeant-at-arms removed several people from the balcony who were disturbing the chamber.

The gentleman from South Carolina inveighed against a phenomenon he called “an alarming tide of ignorants” now flowing from the nation’s colleges into government and industry. He blamed the shameful tide on “the radical-left revamping and reduction of standard English courses by misguided professors in our institutions of higher learning,” and urged a return to the more rigorous disciplines of yesteryear when every student could “read, write, and talk good American English in the tradition of their fathers.”

The gentleman from Oklahoma caused to be inserted in the Record a complete news item circulated by a press wire service, complaining that the nation’s editors had either ignored it or relegated it to the back pages, which was a disservice to the war effort.

Chaney closed the record with a sense of despair and pushed the stack aside. Wanting to lose himself in less depressing but more familiar matters, he opened a copy of the current Commerce yearbook and sought out the statistical tables that were his stock in trade.

The human lemmings hadn’t changed their habits. A bellwether indicating the migration patterns from one area to another was the annual ton-miles study of interstate shipments of household goods; the family that removed together grooved together. The flow continued into California and Florida, as he had forecast, and the adjoining tables revealed corresponding increases in tonnage for consumer durabics and foodstuffs not indigenous to those states. The shipment of automobiles (assembled, new) into California had sharply decreased, and that surprised him. He had supposed that the proposal to ban automobiles in the state by 1985 would only result in an accelerated flow — a kind of hoarding — but the current figures suggested that state officials had found a way to discourage hoarding and depress the market at the same time. Prohibitive taxation, most likely. New York City should note the success of the program.

Chaney began filling his notebook.

The measured tolling of a bell somewhere outside the library brought him up from the book with surprise, and a flurry of aged men from the newspaper racks toward the door underscored the passage of time. It was the noon hour.

Chaney put away the government publications and cast a speculative eye on the attendant. A girl had replaced the older woman on duty earlier. He studied her for a space and decided on an approach least likely to arouse suspicion.

“Excuse me.”

“Yes?” The girl looked up from a copy of Teen Spin. Chaney consulted his notebook. “Do you remember the date of the Chicago wall? The first date — the earliest beginning? I can’t pin it down.”

The girl stared into the air above his head and said: “I think it was in August… no, no, it was the last week of July. I’m pretty sure it was the last of July.” Her gaze came down to his. “We have the news magazines on file if you want me to get it for you.”

Chaney caught the hint. “Don’t bother; I’ll look. Where are those files?”

She pointed behind him. “Fourth aisle, next to the windows. They may not be in chronological order.”

“I’ll find them. Thank you.” Her head was already bending over the magazine as he turned away.

The Chicago wall ran down the middle of Cermak Road.

It stretched from Burnham Park on the lakefront (where it consisted only of barbed wire), westward to Austin Avenue in Cicero (where it finally ended in another loose skein of barbed wire in a white residential neighborhood). The wall was built of cement and cinder blocks; of wrecked or stolen automobiles, burnedout shells of city buses, sabotaged police cars, looted and stripped semi-trailer trucks; of upended furniture, broken concrete, bricks, debris, garbage, excretion. Two corpses were a part of it between Ashland and Paulina Street. The barrier began going up on the night of July twenty-ninth, the third night of widespread rioting along Cermak Road; it was lengthened and reinforced every night thereafter as the idea spread until it was a fifteen-mile barricade cutting a city in two.

The black community south of Cermak Road had begun the wall at the height of the rioting, as a means of preventing the passage of police and fire vehicles. Both blacks and belligerent whites completed it. The corpses near Paulina Street had been foolish men who attempted to cross it.

There was no traffic over the wall, nor through it, nor along the north-south arteries intersecting Cermak Road. The Dan Ryan Expressway had been dynamited at 35th Street and again at 63rd Street; the Stevenson Expressway was breached at Pulaski Road. Aerial reconnaissance reported that nearly every major street in the sector was blocked or otherwise unfit for vehicular traffic; fires raged unchecked on South Halsted, and cattle had been loosed from their pens in the stockyards. Police and Army troops patrolled the city above the wall, while black militants patrolled below it. The government made no effort to penetrate the barrier, but instead appeared to be playing a waiting game. Rail and highway traffic from the east and south was routed in a wide swing around the zone, entering the city above the wall to the west; civilian air traffic was restricted to higher elevations. Road blocks were thrown up at the Indiana line, and along Interstate 80.

Chicago above the wall counted three hundred dead and two thousand-plus injured during the rioting and the building of the barricade. No one knew the count below the wall.

By the second week of August, troops had encircled the affected area and had dug in for a siege; none but authorized personnel were permitted to enter and none but white refugees were permitted to leave. Incomplete figures placed the number of emerging refugees at about six hundred thousand, although that figure was well below the known white population living in the rebellious zone. Attempts were being made daily — with small success — to rescue white families believed to be still alive in the area. Penetration was not possible from the north but search parties from the western and southern boundaries made several sallies into the area, sometimes working as far north as Midway Airport. Refugees were being relocated to downstate cities in Illinois and Indiana.

North Chicago was under martial law, with a strict dusk-to-dawn curfew. Violaters moving on the streets at night were shot on sight and identified the following day, when the bodies could be removed. South Chicago had no curfew but shootings continued day and night.

At the end of October with the election only a week away, the northern half of the city was relatively quiet; firing across the wall under cover of darkness had fallen off to nuisance shooting, but the police and troops had been issued new orders not to fire unless fired upon. City water service into the zone continued but electricity was curtailed.

On the Sunday morning before election, a party of about two hundred unarmed blacks had approached Army lines at Cicero Avenue and asked for sanctuary. They were turned back. Washington announced the siege was effective and was already putting an end to the rebellion. Hunger and pestilence would destroy the wall.

Chaney strode across the room to the newspaper rack.

Thursday morning editions confirmed their projections published the day before: President Mecks had carried all but three states and won re-election by a landslide. A local editorial applauded the victory and claimed it was earned by “the President’s masterful handling of the Chicago Confrontation.”

Brian Chaney emerged from the library to stand on the steps under a cold November sun. He knew a sense of fear, of confusion — an uncertainty of where to turn. A city police cruiser passed the building, with an armed guardsman riding beside the driver.

Chaney knew why they both stared at him.

TEN

He wandered aimlessly along the street looking in store windows which were not boarded over, and at parked automobiles along the curb. None of the obviously newer cars were much changed from the older models parked ahead and behind; it was a personal satisfaction to see Detroit edging away from the annual model change and back to the more sensible balance of three decades ago.

Chaney stopped by the post office to mail a postcard to an old friend at the Indiana Corporation, and found the cost had climbed to ten cents. (He also made a mental note not to tell Katrina. She would probably claim he had fouled up the future.)

A grocery store window was entirely plastered over with enormous posters proclaiming deep price cuts on every item: ten thousand and one cut-rate bargains from wall to wall. Being a curious futurist, he walked in to inspect the bargains. Apples were selling at two for a quarter, bread at forty-five cents a pound loaf, milk at ninety-nine cents a half gallon, eggs at one dollar a dozen, ground beef at a dollar and twenty-nine cents a pound. The beef was well larded with fat. He bent over the meat counter to check the price of his favorite steak and discovered it was two dollars and forty-nine cents a pound. On an impulse, he paid ninety cents for an eight-ounce box of something called Moon Capsules and found them to be vitamin-enriched candies in three flavors. The advertising copy on the back panel claimed that NASA fed the capsules to the astronauts living on the moon, for extra jump-jump-jumping power.

The store boasted an innovation that was new to him.

A customers’ lounge was fitted out with soft chairs and a large television, and Chaney dropped into a chair to look at the colored glass eye, curious about the programming. He was quickly disappointed. The television offered him nothing but an endless series of commercials featuring the products available in the store; there was no entertainment to break their monotony. He timed the series: twenty-two commercials in forty-four minutes, before an endless tape began repeating itself.

Only one made a lasting impression.

A splendidly beautiful girl with glowing golden skin was stretched out nude on a pink-white cloud; a sensuous cloud of smoke or wisp formed and changed and reformed itself to caress her saffron body with loving tongues of vapor. The girl was smoking a golden cigarette. She lay in dreamy indolence, eyes closed, her thighs sometimes moving with euphoric languor in response to a kiss of cloud. There was no spoken message. At spaced intervals during the two minutes, five words were flashed across the screen beneath the nude: Go aloft with Golden Marijane.

Chaney decided the girl’s breasts were rather small and flat for his tastes.

He quit the store and returned to his car, finding an overtime parking ticket fastened to the windshield. The fine was two dollars, if paid that same day. Chaney scribbled a note on a page torn from his notebook and put it inside the envelope in lieu of two dollars; the ticket was then dropped into a receptacle fastened to a nearby meter post. He thought the local police would appreciate his thought.

That done, he wheeled out of the lot and retraced his route toward the distant station. The sunset curfew was yet some hours away but he was done with Joliet — nearly done with 1980. It seemed much colder and inhospitable than the temperature would suggest.

A state patrol car parked on the outskirts watched him out of town.

The gatehouse was lighted on the inside and occupied by an officer and two military policemen; they were not the same men who had checked him out earlier in the day but the routine was the same.

“Are you coming on station, sir?”

Chaney looked across the hood of his car at the gate just beyond the bumper. “Yes, I thought I would.”

“May I see your pass and identification?”

Chaney gave up the necessary papers. The officer read them twice and studied the photograph affixed to one, then raised his eyes to compare the photograph to the face.

“You have been visiting in Joliet?”

“Yes.”

“But not Chicago?”

“No.”

“Did you acquire weapons while you were off-station?”

“No.”

“Very well, sir.” He waved to the guard and the gate was opened for him. “Please drive through.”

Brian Chaney drove through and steered the car to the parking lot behind the laboratory building. The other two automobiles were absent, as was the shiny quarter marker.

He unloaded the paraphernalia from his pockets and from under his coat, only to realize with dismay that he hadn’t taken a single photograph: not one fuzzy picture of a scowling policeman or an industrious sidewalk sweeper. That omission was apt to be received with something less than enthusiasm. Chaney fitted a tape cartridge into the recorder and flipped open his notebook; he thought he could easily fill two or three tapes with an oral report for Katrina and Gilbert Seabrooke. His personal shorthand was brief to the extreme — and unreadable by anyone else — but long experience in the tank enabled him to flesh out a report that was a reasonable summary of the Commerce and Agriculture yearbooks. Facts were freely interspersed with opinions, and figures with educated guesses, until the whole resembled a statistical and footnoted survey of that which Seabrooke wanted: a solid glimpse forward.

On the last tape he repeated all that he remembered from the pages of the Congressional Record, and after a pause asked Katrina if she knew what General Grinnell was doing now? The old boy got around a lot.

Chaney left the gear on the seat and got out of the car to stretch his legs. He looked at the western sky to measure the coming of darkness, and guessed that he had an hour or two before sunset. His watch read 6:38 but it was two hours faster than the clock in the basement; the engineering limit of fifty hours was far away.

The inquisitive futurist decided on a tour.

Walking with an easy stride he followed the familiar route to the barracks but was surprised to find it dark — padlocked. That gave him pause. The building deserted? Was he gone from this place? Moresby, Saltus, himself, gone from the station?

This day, this hour, this now was two years after the successful tests of the TDV, two years after the animals had stopped riding into time and men had taken their places; this was two years after the launching of the field trials and the scheduled launch of the Chicago survey. All that work was over and done — mission completed. Wasn’t it then reasonable to assume the team was disbanded and returned to their own corners of the world? Moresby, Saltus, himself, now working elsewhere? (Perhaps he should have sent that postcard to himself at Indic.)

Neither Gilbert Seabrooke nor Katrina had ever dropped a hint of future plans for the team; he had assumed they would be disbanded when the Chicago probe was concluded and he hadn’t considered staying on. He couldn’t imagine himself wanting to stay on. Well — with one reservation, of course. He would entertain the idea of a probe into the opposite direction: it would be sheer delight to poke and peer and pry into old Palestine before the arrival of the Roman Tenth Legion — well before their arrival.

He found himself on E Street.

The recreation area appeared not to have changed at all. The post theater wasn’t yet opened, its parking lot was empty. The officers’ club was already brightly lit and filled with music, but the second club nearby for enlisted men was dark and silent. The pool area was closed for the winter and its gate secured by a lock. Chaney peered through the fencing but saw nothing more than a deserted patio and a canvas covering stretched over the pool. The chairs and benches together with the tables and umbrellas had been stored away, leaving nothing but memories clashing with a cold November evening.

He turned away from the fence to begin an aimless wandering about the station. It seemed normal in every respect. Automobiles passed him, most of them going to the commissary; he was the only man on foot. The sound of an aircraft brought his head up, his eyes searching the sky. The plane was not visible — he supposed it was above the thickening cloud cover — but he could follow its passage by the sound; the craft was flying an air corridor between Chicago and St. Louis, a corridor which paralleled the railroad tracks below. In a few minutes it was gone. A drop of moisture struck his upturned face, and then another, the first few flakes of promised snow. The smell of snow had been in the air since morning.

Chaney turned about to retrace his steps.

Three automobiles waited side by side in the parking lot behind the lab. His companions were back, neither of them languishing in a Joliet jail — but he suspected it would be terribly easy to get into jail. Chaney lifted the hood of the nearest car and laid his hand on the motor block. He almost burned the skin from his palm. The hood was snapped shut, and he gathered up the gear from the seat of his own car.

The twin keys were fitted into the locks of the operations door and turned. A bell rang somewhere below as the door eased open.

“Saltus! Hello, down there — Saltus!”

The hurtful sound hit him with near physical impact. The sound was something like a massive rubber band snapped against his eardrums, something like a hammer smashing into a block of compressed air. It struck and rebounded with a tremulous sigh. The vehicle kicked back following its time path to home base. The sound hurt.

Chaney jumped through the door and pulled it shut behind him.

“Saltus?”

A sandy-haired muscular figure stepped through the open doorway of the fallout shelter below.

“Where the hell have you been, civilian?”

Chaney went down the steps two or three at a time. Arthur Saltus waited at the bottom with a handful of film.

“Out there — out there,” Chaney retorted. “Knocking around this forsaken place, staring through the fences, sniffing at the cracks and peeping in windows. I couldn’t find a spoor. I think we’re gone from here, Commander — dismissed and departed, the barracks padlocked. I hope we get a decent bonus.”

“Civilian, have you been drinking?”

“No — but I could use one. What’s in the stores?”

“You’ve been drinking,” Saltus said flatly. “So what happened to you? We looked all over town.”

“You didn’t look in the library.”

“Oh, hell! You would, and we didn’t. Research stuff. What did you think of 1980, mister?”

“I don’t like it, and I’ll be liking it even less when I’m living in it. That milquetoast was re-elected and the country is going to hell in a handbasket. A fortyeight state sweep! Did you see the election results?”

“I saw them, and by this time William has passed the news to Seabrooke and Seabrooke is calling the President. He’ll celebrate tonight. But I’m not going to vote for him, mister — I know I didn’t vote for him. And if I’m living Stateside then — now — I’m going to choose one of those three states that voted for the other fellow, old What’s-his-name, the actor fellow.”

“Alaska, Hawaii, and Utah.”

“What’s Utah like?”

“Dry, lonely, and glowing with radioactivity.”

“Make it Hawaii. Will you go back to Florida?”

Chaney shook his head. “I’ll feel safer in Alaska.”

Quickly: “You didn’t get into trouble?”

“No, not at all; I walked softly and carried a sweet smile on my face. I was polite to a mousy librarian. I didn’t sass the cops or buy any pork in a grocery store.” He laughed at a memory. “But someone will have to explain a parking ticket when they trace the license number back to this station.”

Saltus looked his question.

Chaney said: “I got a ticket for overtime parking. It was an envelope affair; I was supposed to put two dollars in the envelope and drop it in a collection box. I didn’t. Commander, I struck a blow for liberty. I wrote a note.”

Saltus eyed him. “What was in the note?”

“We shall overcome.”

Saltus tried to stifle startled laughter, but failed. After a space he said: “Seabrooke will fire you, mister!”

“He won’t have the chance. I expect to be far away when 1980 comes. Did you read the papers?”

“Papers! We bought all the papers! William grabbed up every new one he could find — and then read his horoscope first. He was down in the mouth; he said the signs were bad — negative.” Saltus turned and waved toward newspapers spread out on the workbench. “I was photographing those when you came in. I’d rather copy them than read them onto a tape; I can blow the negs up to life size when we get back — larger than life, if they want them that way.”

Chaney crossed to the bench and bent over to scan a page under the camera lens. “I didn’t read anything but the election results, and an editorial.”

After a moment he said excitedly: “Did you read this? China invaded Formosa — captured it!”

Get the rest, read the rest of it, Saltus urged him. “That happened weeks ago, and now there’s hell to pay in Washington. Canada has formally recognized the take-over and is sponsoring a move to kick Formosa out of the United Nations — give the seat to China. There’s talk of breaking off diplomatic relations and stationing troops along the Canadian border. Civilian, that will be a real mess! I don’t give a damn for diplomats and diplomatic relations, but we need another hostile like we need an earthquake.”

Chaney tried to read between the lines. “China does need Canadian wheat, and Ottawa does like Chinese gold. That’s been a thorn in Washington’s side for thirty years. Are you a stamp collector?”

“Me? No.”

“Not too many years ago, American citizens were forbidden to buy Chinese stamps from Canadian dealers; it was a crime to purchase or possess. Washington was being silly.” He fell silent and finished reading the news story. “If these facts are reliable, Ottawa has made a whopping deal; they will deliver enough wheat to feed two or three Chinese provinces. The cash price wasn’t made public, and that’s significant — China bought more than wheat. Diplomatic recognition and Canadian support for a seat in the United Nations were probably included in the sale contract. That’s smart trading, Commander.”

“They’re damned good shots, too. I told you that. I hate their guts but I don’t downgrade them.” He flipped a newspaper page and repositioned his camera. “What time did you get in this morning? How come you were early?”

“Arrival was at 7:55. I don’t know why.”

“Old William was upset, mister. We were supposed to be first but you fouled up the line of seniority.”

Chaney said impatiently: “I can’t explain it; it just happened. That gyroscope isn’t as good as the engineers claimed it to be. Maybe the mercury protons need fixing, recharging or something. Did you hit the target?”

“Dead on. William was three or four minutes off. Seabrooke won’t like it, I’ll bet.”

“I wasn’t jumping with joy; I expected to find you and the Major waiting for me. And I wonder now what will happen on a long launch? Can those protons even find 2000?”

“If they can’t, mister, you and me and old William will be wandering around in a fog without a compass; we’ll just have to kick backwards and report a scrub.”

The camera was moved again and another page copied.

“Hey — did you see the girls?”

“Two librarians. They were sitting down.”

“Mister, you missed something good. They wear their hair in a funny way — I can’t describe it — and their skirts aren’t long enough to cover their sterns. Really, now, in November! Most of them wore long stockings to keep their legs warm while their sterns were freezing, and most of the time the stockings matched their lipstick: red and red, blue and blue, whatever. This year’s fad, I guess. Ah, those girls!” He moved the camera and turned a page.

“I talked to them, I took pictures of them, I coaxed a phone number, I took a blonde lovely to lunch — it only cost eight dollars for the two of us. That’s not too much, everything considered. The people here are just like us, mister. They’re friendly, and they speak English. That town was one sweet liberty port!”

“But they should be like us,” Chaney protested. “They’re only two years away.”

“That was a joke, civilian.”

“Excuse me.”

“Didn’t they have jokes in the tank?”

“Of course they did. One of the mathematicians came up with proof that the solar system didn’t exist.”

Saltus turned around to stare. “Paper proof?”

“Yes. It filled three pages, as I recall. He said that if he faced the east and recited it aloud, everything would go poof.”

“Well, I hope he doesn’t do that; I hope to hell he doesn’t make a test run just to see if it works. I’ve got a special reason.” Saltus studied the civilian for a long space. “Mister, do you know how to keep your mouth shut?”

Cautiously: “Yes. Is this a confidence?”

“You can’t even tell William, or Katrina.”

Chaney was uneasy. “Does it involve me? My work?”

“Nope — you have nothing to do with it, but I want a promise you’ll keep quiet, no matter what. I’m not going to report it when I go back. It’s something to keep.”

“Very well. I’ll keep it.”

Saltus said: “I stopped in at the courthouse and had a look at the records — the vital statistics stuff — your kind of stuff. I found what I was looking for last March, eight months ago.” He grinned. “My marriage license.”

It was a kick in the stomach. “Katrina?”

“The one and only, the fair Katrina. Mister, I’m a married man! Me, a married man, chasing the girls and even taking one to lunch. Now, how will I explain that?”

Brian Chaney remembered the note found propped against his camera: it had sounded cool, impersonal, even distant. He recalled the padlocked barracks, the emptyness, the air of desertion. He and Major Moresby were gone from this place.

He said: “Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, be they favorable or not. John Wesley, I think.”

Chaney kept his face turned away to mask his emotions; he suspected the sharp sense of loss was reflected on his face and he didn’t care to stumble through an explanation or an evasion. He put away the heavy clothing worn on the outside and then replaced the unused camera and the nylon films. The reels of tape were removed from the recorder, and the recorder put back in the stores. As an afterthought, he replaced the identification papers and the gate pass in the torn envelope — alongside Katrina’s note — and propped the envelope on the bench where she would find it.

Saltus had finished his task and was removing film from the copying camera. He had left the newspapers flung over the bench in disarray.

Chaney gathered them up into an orderly pile. When he had finished the housekeeping chore, a right-side-up headline said: JCS DENIED BAIL.

“Who is JCS? What did he do?”

Saltus stared in disbelief. “Damn it, civilian, didn’t you do anything out there?”

“I didn’t bother with the papers.”

Incredulously: “What the hell — are you blind? Why do you think the cops were patrolling the town? Why do you think the state guards were riding shotgun?”

“Well — because of that Chicago business. The wall.”

“Bigod!” Arthur Saltus stalked across the room to face him, suddenly impatient with his naiveté. “No offense, mister, but sometimes I think you never left that ivory tower, that cloud bank in Indiana. You don’t seem to know what’s going on in the world — you’ve got your nose buried too deep in those damned old tables. Shape up, Chaney! Shape up before you get washed out.” He jabbed a long index finger at the newspapers stacked on the bench. “This country is under martial law. JCS is the Joint Chiefs of Staff. General Grinnell, General Brandon, Admiral Elstar, the top dogs. They tried to pull a fast one but got caught, they — that French word.”

“Which French word?”

“For take-over.”

Chaney was stunned. “Coup.”

“That’s the word. Coup. They marched into the White House to arrest the President and the Vice President, they tried to take over the government at gun point. Our own government, mister! You hear about that sort of thing down in South America all the time, but now, right here in our country!” Saltus stopped talking and made a visible effort to control himself. After a moment he said again: “No offense, mister. I lost my temper.”

Chaney wasn’t listening. He was running across the basement room to the stacked newspapers.

It happened not at the White House, but at the Presidential retreat at Camp David.

A power failure blacked out the area shortly before midnight on Monday night, election eve. The President had closed his re-election campaign and flown to Camp David to rest. An emergency lighting system failed to operate and the Camp remained in darkness. Two hundred troops guarding the installation fell back upon the inner ring of defenses according to a prearranged emergency plan, and took up positions about the main buildings occupied by the President, the Vice President, and their aides. They elected not to go underground as there was no indication of enemy action. Admiral Elstar was with the Presidential party, discussing future operations in the South Asian seas.

Thirty minutes after the blackout, Generals Grinnell and Brandon arrived by car and were admitted through the lines. At General Grinnell’s command, the troops about-faced and established a ring of quarantine about the buildings; they appeared to be expecting the order. The two generals then entered the main building — with drawn weapons — and informed the President and the Vice President they were under military arrest, together with all civilians in the area. Admiral Elstar joined them and announced that the JCS were taking control of the government for an indefinite period of time; he expressed dissatisfaction with civilian mismanagement of the country and the war effort, and said the abrupt action was forced upon the Joint Chiefs. The President appeared to take the news calmly and offered no resistance; he asked the members of his party to avoid violence and cooperate with the rebellious officers.

The civilians were herded into a large dining room and locked in. As soon as they were alone the aides brought out gas masks which had previously been concealed there; the party donned the masks and crawled under heavy dining tables to wait. Mortar fire was heard outside.

Electric power was restored at just one o’clock. The firing stopped.

FBI agents also wearing masks breached the door from the opposite side and informed the President the rebellion was ended. The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the disloyal troops had been taken under cover of a gas barrage, by an undisclosed number of agents backed by Federal marshals. Casualties among the troops were held to a minimum. The Joint Chiefs were unharmed.

Helicopters ferried the Presidential party back to Washington, where the President requested immediate reactivation of the TV networks to announce the news of the attempted coup and its subsequent failure. Congress was called into an emergency session, and at the request of the President declared the country under martial law. The affair was done.

A White House spokesman admitted that the plot was known well in advance, but refused to reveal the source of the tip. He said the action was allowed to go as far as it did only to ascertain the number and the identities of the troops who supported the Joint Chiefs. The spokesman denied rumors that those troops had been nervegassed. He said the plotters were being charged with treason and were being held in separate jails; he would not disclose the locations other than to say they were dispersed away from Washington. The spokesman declined to answer questions regarding the number of FBI agents and Federal marshals involved in the action; he shrugged off unofficial reports that thousands had been mustered.

The only reliable information known was that large numbers of them had lain in concealment about Camp David for several days prior to the action. The spokesman would say only the two groups had courageously rescued the President and his party.

Brian Chaney was unaware that the lights dimmed and the hurtful rubber band smashed against his eardrums; he didn’t hear the massive mallet smash into the block pf compressed air and then rebound with a soft, oily sigh. He didn’t know that Arthur Saltus had left him until he turned around and found himself alone.

Chaney stared around the empty shelter and shouted aloud: “Saltus!”

There was no answer.

He strode to the door and shouted into the corridor. “Saltus!”

Booming echoes, and then silence. The Commander was emerging from the vehicle at home base.

“Listen to the word from the ivory tower, Saltus! Listen to me! What do you want to bet the President didn’t risk his precious skin under a dining room table? What do you want to bet that he sent a double to Camp David? He’s no Greatheart, no Bayard; he couldn’t be certain of the outcome.” Chaney stepped into the corridor.

“We tipped him off, you idiot — we passed the word. We told him of the plot and of his re-election. Do you really think he has the guts to expose himself? Knowing that he would be re-elected the next day for another four-year ride? Do you think that, Saltus?”

Monitoring cameras looked at him under bright lights.

In the closed-off operations room, the TDV came back for him with an explosive burst of air.

Chaney turned on his heel and walked into the shelter. The newspapers were stacked, the gear was stored away, the clothing was neatly hung on racks. He had arrived and was preparing to leave with scarcely a trace of his passage.

The torn envelope caught his eye — the instructions from Katrina, and his identification papers, his gate pass. Cool, impersonal, distant — impassive, reserved. The wife of Arthur Saltus giving him last minute instructions for the field trial. She still lived on station; she still worked for the Bureau and the secret project — and unless the Commander had been reassigned to the war theater he was living with her.

But the barracks were dark, padlocked.

Brian Chaney knew the strong conviction that he was gone — that he and the Major had left the station. He didn’t believe in crystal balls, in clairvoyance, hunches, precognition — Major Moresby could have all that claptrap to add to his library of phony prophets, but this one conviction was deeply fixed in his mind.

He was not here in November, 1980.

ELEVEN

Chaney sensed a subtle change in relationships. It was nothing he could clearly identify, mark, pin down, but a shade of difference was there.

Gilbert Seabrooke had sponsored a victory party on the night of their return, and the President telephoned from the White House to offer his congratulations on a good job well done. He spoke of an award, a medal to convey the grateful appreciation of a nation — even though the nation could not be informed of the stunning breakthrough. Brian Chaney responded with a polite thank you, and held his tongue. Seabrooke hovered nearby, watchful and alert.

The party wasn’t as successful as it might have been. Some indefinable element of spontaneity was missing, some elusive spark which, when struck, changes over an ordinary party into a memorable evening of pleasure. Chaney would remember the celebration, but not with heady delight. He passed over the champagne in favor of bourbon, but drank that sparingly. Major Moresby seemed withdrawn, troubled, brooding over some inner problem, and Chaney guessed he was already preoccupied with the startling power struggle which was yet two years away. Moresby had made a stiff, awkward little speech of thanks to the President, striving to assure him without words of his continued loyalty. Chaney was embarrassed for him.

Arthur Saltus danced. He monopolized Katrina, even to the point of ignoring her whispered suggestions that he give unequal time to Chaney and the Major. Chaney didn’t want to cut in. On another evening, another party before the field trials, he could have cut in as often as he dared, but now he sensed the same subtle change in Kathryn van Hise which was sensed in the others. The mountain of information brought back from Joliet, November 1980, had altered many viewpoints and the glossy overlay of the party could not conceal that alteration.

There was a stranger at the party, the liaison agent dispatched by the Senate subcommittee. Chaney discovered the man surreptitiously watching him.

The briefing room offered the familiar tableau.

Major Moresby was again studying a map of the Chicago area. He used a finger to mark the several major routes and backroads between Joliet and the metropolis; the finger also traced the rail line through the Chicago suburbs to the Loop. Arthur Saltus was studying the photographs he’d brought back from Joliet. He seemed particularly pleased with a print of an attractive girl standing on a windy street corner, half watching the cameraman and half watching for a car or a bus coming along the street behind. The print revealed an expert’s hand in composition and cropping, with the girl limned in sunny backlighting.

Kathryn van Hise said: “Mr. Chaney?”

He swung around to face her. “Yes, Miss van Hise?”

“The engineers have given me firm assurance that mistake will not happen again. They have used the time since your return to rebuild the gyroscope. The cause has been traced to a vacuum leakage but that has been repaired. The error is to be regretted, but it will not happen again.”

“But I like getting there first,” he protested. “That’s the only way I can assert seniority.”

“It will not happen again, sir.”

“Maybe. How do they know it won’t?”

Katrina studied him.

“The next targets will each be a year apart, sir, to obtain a wider coverage. Would you care to suggest a tentative date?”

He betrayed surprise. “We may choose?”

“Within reason, sir. Mr. Seabrooke has invited each of you to suggest an appropriate date. The original plan of the survey must be followed, of course, but he would welcome your ideas. If you would rather not suggest a date, Mr. Seabrooke and the engineers will select one.”

Chaney looked down the table at Major Moresby.

“What did you take?”

Promptly: “The Fourth of July, 1999.”

“Why that one?”

“It has significance, after all!”

“I suppose so.” He turned to Saltus. “And you?”

“My birthday, civilian: November 23rd, 2000. A nice round number, don’t you think? I thought so anyway. That will be my fiftieth birthday, and I can’t think of a better way to celebrate.” His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “I might take a jug with me. Live it up!”

Chaney considered the possibilities.

Saltus broke in. “Now, look here, mister — don’t tell Seabrooke you want to visit Jericho on the longest day of summer, ten thousand years ago! That will get you the boot right through the front gate. Play by the rules. How would you like to spend Christmas in 2001? New Year’s Eve?”

“No.”

“Party-pooper. Wet blanket. What do you want?”

“I really don’t care. Anything will do.”

“Pick something,” Saltus urged.

“Oh, just say 2000-plus. It doesn’t much matter.”

Katrina said anxiously: “Mr. Chaney, is something wrong?”

“Only that,” he said, and indicated the photographs heaped on the table before Arthur Saltus, the new packets of mimeographed papers neatly stacked before each chair. “The future isn’t very attractive right now.”

“Do you wish to withdraw?”

“No. I’m not a quitter. When do we go up?”

“The launch is scheduled for the day after tomorrow. You will depart at one-hour intervals.”

Chaney shuffled the papers on the table. “I suppose these will have to be studied now. We’ll have to follow up.”

“Yes, sir. The information you have developed on the trials has now become a part of the survey, and it is desirable that each segment be followed to its conclusion. We wish to know the final solutions, of course, and so you must trace these new developments.” She hesitated. “Your role in the survey has been somewhat modified, sir.”

He was instantly wary, suspicious. “In what way?”

“You will not go into Chicago.”

“Not — But what the hell am I supposed to do?”

“You may visit any other city within range of your fifty-hour limit: Elgin, Aurora, Joliet, Bloomington, the city of your choice, but Chicago is now closed to you.”

He stared at the woman, knowing humiliation. “But this is ridiculous! The problem may be cleared away, all but forgotten twenty-two years from now.”

“It will not be forgotten so easily, sir. It will be wise to observe every precaution. Mr. Seabrooke has decided you may not enter Chicago.”

“I’ll resign — I’ll quit!”

“Yes, sir, you may do that. The Indic contract will be returned to you.”

“I won’t quit!” he said angrily.

“As you wish.”

Saltus broke in. “Civilian — sit down.”

Chaney was surprised to discover himself standing. He sat down, knowing a mixture of frustration and humbled pride. He knotted his fingers together in his lap and pressed until they hurt.

After a space he said: “I’m sorry. I apologize.”

“Apology accepted,” Saltus agreed easily. “And don’t let it trouble you. Seabrooke knows what he’s doing — he doesn’t want you naked and shivering in some Chicago jail, and he doesn’t want some damned fool chasing you with a gun.”

Major Moresby was eyeing him.

“I don’t quite read you, Chaney. You’ve got more guts than I suspected, or you’re a damned fool.”

“When I lose my temper I’m a damned fool. I can’t help myself.” He felt Katrina watching him and turned back to her. “What am I supposed to do up there?”

“Mr. Seabrooke wishes you to spend the greater part of your time in a library copying pertinent information. You will be equipped with a camera having a copying lens when you emerge on target; your specific assignment is to photograph those books and periodicals which are germane to the information discovered in Joliet.”

“You want me to follow the plots and the wars and the earthquakes through history. Make a copy of everything — steal a history book if I have to.”

You may purchase one, sir, and copy the pages in the room downstairs.”

“That sounds exciting. A really wild visit to the future. Why not bring back the book with me?”

She hesitated. “I will have to ask Mr. Seabrooke. It seems reasonable, if you compensate for the weight.”

“Katrina, I want to go outside and see something — I don’t want to spend the time in a hole.”

She said again: “You may visit any other city within range of your fifty-hour limit, sir. If it is safe.”

Morosely: “I wonder what Bloomington is like.”

“Girls!” Saltus answered. “One sweet liberty port!”

“Have you been there?”

“No.”

“Then what are you talking about?”

“Just trying to cheer you up, civilian. I’m helpful that way.” He picked up the photograph of the girl on the Joliet street corner and waggled it between thumb and forefinger. “Go up in the summertime. It’s nicer then.”

Chaney looked at him with a particular memory in the front of his mind. Saltus caught it and actually blushed. He dropped the photograph and betrayed his fleeting guilt by sneaking a sidelong glance at Katrina.

She said: “We hope for a thorough coverage, sir.”

“I wish I had more than fifty hours in a library. A decent research job requires several weeks, even months.”

“It may be possible to return again and again, at proper intervals of course. I will ask Mr. Seabrooke.”

Saltus: “Hey — what about that, Katrina? So what happens after the survey? What do we do next?”

“I can’t give you a meaningful answer, Commander. At this point in the operation nothing beyond the Chicago probe is programmed. Nothing more could be programmed until we knew the outcome of these first two steps. A final answer cannot be made until you return from Chicago.”

“Do you think we’ll do something else?”

“I would imagine that other probes will be prepared when this one is satisfactorily completed and the resultant data analyzed.” But then she added a hasty postscript. “That is only my opinion, Commander. Mr. Seabrooke has said nothing of possible future operations.”

“I like your opinion, Katrina. It’s better than a bucket in the South China Sea.”

Chaney asked: “What happened to the alternatives? To Jerusalem, and Dallas?”

Moresby broke in. “What’s this?”

The young woman explained them to Moresby and Saltus. Chaney realized that only he had been told of both alternate programs, and he wondered now if he had let a cat out of the bag by mentioning them.

Katrina said: “The alternatives are being held in abeyance; they may never be implemented.” She looked at Brian Chaney and paused. “The engineers are studying a new matter related to vehicle operations; there appears to be a question whether the vehicle may operate in reverse prior to the establishment of a power source.

“Hey — what’s that in English?”

“It means I can’t go back to old Jericho,” Chaney told him. “No electricity back there. I think she said the TDV needs power all along the line to move anywhere.”

Moresby: “But I understood you to say those test animals had been sent back a year or more?”

“Yes, sir, that is correct, but the nuclear reactor has been operating for more than two years. The previous lower limit of the TDV was December 30, 1941, but now that may have to be drastically revised. If it is found that the vehicle may not operate prior to the establishment of its power source, the lower limit will be brought forward to an arbitrary date of two years ago. We do not wish to lose the vehicle.”

Chaney said: “One of those bright engineers should sit down to his homework — lay out a paradox graph, or map, or whatever. Katrina, if you keep this thing going, you’re going to find yourself up against a wall sooner or later.”

She colored and betrayed a minute hesitation before answering him. “The Indiana Corporation has been approached on the matter, sir. Mr. Seabrooke has proposed that all our data be turned over to them for a crash study. The engineers are becoming aware of the problems.”

Saltus looked around at Chaney and said: “Sheeg!”

Chaney grinned and thought to offer an apology to Moresby and the woman. “That’s an old Aramaic word. But it expresses my feelings quite adequately.” He considered the matter. “I can’t decide what I would rather do: stay here and make paradoxes, or go back there and solve them.”

Saltus said: “Tough luck, civilian. I was almost ready to volunteer. Almost, I said. I think I’d like to stand on the city wall at Larsa with you and watch the Euphrates flood; I think I’d like — What?”

“The city wall at Ur, not Larsa.”

“Well, wherever it was. A flood, anyway, and you said it got into the Bible. You have a smooth line, you could persuade me to go along.” An empty gesture. “But I guess that’s all washed out now — you’ll never go back.”

“I don’t believe the White House would authorize a probe back that far,” Chaney answered. “They would see no political advantage to it, no profit to themselves.”

Major Moresby said sharply: “Chaney, you. sound like a fool!”

“Perhaps. But if we could probe backward I’d be willing to lay you money on certain political targets, but nothing at all on others. What would the map of Europe be like if Attila had been strangled in his crib?”

“Chaney, after all!”

He persisted. “What would the map of Europe be like if Lenin had been executed for the anti-Czarist plot, instead of his older brother? What would the map of the United States be like if George the Third had been cured of his dementia? If Robert E. Lee had died in infancy?”

“Civilian, they sure as hell won’t let you go back anywhere with notions like that.”

Dryly: “I wouldn’t expect a bonus for them.”

“Well, I guess not!”

Kathryn van Hise stepped into the breach.

“Please, gentlemen. Appointments have been made for your final physical examinations. I will call the doctor and inform him you are coming now.

Chaney grinned and snapped his fingers. “Now.”

She turned. “Mr. Chaney, if you will stay behind for a moment I would like more information on your field data.”

Saltus was quickly curious. “Hey — what’s this?” She paged through the pile of mimeographed papers until she found the transcript of Chaney’s tape recording. “Some parts of this report need further evaluation. If you care to dictate, Mr. Chaney, I will take it in shorthand.”

He said: “Anything you need.”

“Thank you.” A half turn to the others at the table. “The doctor will be waiting, gentlemen.”

Moresby and Saltus pushed back their chairs. Saltus shot Chaney a warning glance, reminding him of a promise. The reminder was answered with a confirming nod.

The men left the briefing room.

Brian Chaney looked across the table at Katrina in the silence they left behind. She waited quietly, her fingers laced together on the table top.

He remembered her bare feet in the sand, the snug delta pants, the see-through blouse, the book she carried in her hand and the disapproving expression she wore on her face. He remembered the startlingly brief swim suit worn in the pool, and the way Arthur Saltus had monopolized her.

“That was rather transparent, Katrina.”

She studied him longer, not yet ready to speak. He waited for her to offer the next word, holding in his mind the image of that first glimpse of her on the beach.

At length: “What happened up there, Brian?”

He blinked at the use of his given name. It was the first time she had used it.

“Many, many things — I think we covered it all in our reports.”

Again: “What happened up there, Brian?”

He shook his head. “Seabrooke will have to be satisfied with the reports.”

“This is not Mr. Seabrooke’s matter.”

Warily: “I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

“Something happened up there. I am aware of a departure from the norm that prevailed before the trials, and I think you are too. Something has created a disparity, a subtle disharmony which is rather difficult to define.”

“The Chicago wall, I suppose. And the JCS revolt.”

“They were shocks to us all, but what else?”

Chaney gestured, searching for an escape route. “I found the barracks closed, locked. I think the Major and myself have left the station.”

“But not Commander Saltus.”

“He may be gone — I don’t know.”

“You don’t seem very sure of that.”

“I’m not sure of anything. We were forbidden to open doors, look at people, ask questions. I didn’t open doors. I know only that our barracks have been closed — and I don’t think Seabrooke let us move in with him.”

“What would you have done if it was permissible to open doors?”

Chaney grinned. “I’d go looking for you.”

“You believe I was on the station?”

“Certainly! You wrote notes to each of us — you left final instructions for us in the room downstairs. I knew your handwriting.”

Hesitation. “Did you find similar evidence of anyone else being on station?”

Carefully: “No. Your note was the only scrap.”

“Why has the Commander’s attitude changed?”

Chaney stared at her, almost trapped. “Has it?”

“I think you are aware of the difference.”

“Maybe. Everybody looks at me in a new light. I’m feeling paranoiac these days.”

“Why has your attitude changed?”

“Oh? Mine too?”

“You are fencing with me, Brian.”

“I’ve told you everything I can tell you, Katrina.”

Her laced fingers moved restlessly on the tabletop. “I sense certain mental reservations.”

“Sharp girl.”

“Was there some — some personal tragedy up there? Involving any one of you?”

Promptly: “No.” He smiled at the woman across the table to rob his next words of any sting. “And, Katrina — if you are wise, if you are very wise, you won’t ask any more questions. I hold certain mental reservations; I will evade certain questions. Why not stop now?”

She looked at him, frustrated and baffled.

He said: “When this survey is completed I want to leave. I’ll do whatever is necessary to complete the work when we return from the probe, but then I’m finished. I’d like to go back to Indic, if that’s possible; I’d like to work on the new paradox study, if that’s permissible, but I don’t want to stay here. I’m finished here, Katrina.”

Quickly: “Is it because of something you found up there? Has something turned you away, Brian?”

“Ah — No more questions.”

“But you leave me so unsatisfied!”

Chaney stood up and fitted the empty chair to the table. “Every thing comes to every man, if he but has the years. That sounds like Talleyrand, but I’m not sure. You have the years, Katrina. Live through just two more of them and you’ll know the answers to all your questions. I wish you luck, and I’ll think of you often in the tank — if they’ll let me back in.”

A moment of silence, and then: “Please don’t forget your doctor’s appointment, Mr. Chaney.”

“I’m on my way.”

“Ask the others to be here at ten o’clock in the morning for a final briefing. We must evaluate these reports. The probe is scheduled for the day after tomorrow.”

“Are you coming downstairs to see us off?”

“No, sir. I will wait for you here.”