Allen Steele - ...Where Angels Fear to Thread

“We heard that much on the car radio. What sort of difference did it make?”

“That’s the question.” She drummed a pensive fingertip against the pedestal. “Suppose, just for the sake of argument, that Spehl accomplished what he had intended. The Hindenberg was the very symbol of Nazi power. Assume that its destruction was the first act of open dissent that finally led to Hitler being ousted from power. Perhaps one of the subsequent assassination attempts was successful….”

“Come on… that’s one assumption too many.”

“Perhaps, but…” She hesitated. “Well, there’s one more thing. It’s not much, but…”

“Let’s have it.”

She turned back to the pedestal, began tapping in another set of commands. “Remember when the jets intercepted us after Oberon entered the atmosphere? When they tried to radio us?” He raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. “I searched the flight recorder, full AV mode, then had the library backtrack historical sources. Here’s what I found.”

The two jets appeared onscreen as a pair of angular dots racing ahead of vapor trails; there was no digital readout at the bottom of the screen. As the dots began closing on the camera, they heard a static-filled radio voice:

“Sewart Tower, this is Wildcat One, we’ve got a confirmed bogey at…”

Lea froze the image, then gently moved a forefinger across the touchpad until a tiny square appeared over the nearest of the two jets. She then enhanced the image until it was magnified several hundred times; a window opened on the screen, showing the aircraft in greater detail. Another couple of keystrokes, and a wire-frame composite appeared next to the photographic image.

“The library positively identified this as an F-15C Eagle,” she went on. “A one-seat jet fighter used by the United States Air Force from the late 1970s through the early 1990s, when it was replaced by an updated version of the same jet, the two-seat F-15E. We know that they had to be F-15C’s because only one pilot bailed out of the Eagle that flew through our negmass field.”

“So?”

“During radio communications between the jets and their home base, you can clearly hear the base being referred to as Sewart Tower. I checked with the library system, and it turns out Sewart Air Force Base was decommissioned in the late 1960s. It shouldn’t be there, let alone sending up fighters not put in service until ten years later.”

Franc stared long and hard at the split-image on the wallscreen. “All right,” he murmured. “You’ve convinced me. We’re in an alternate world-line…”

“An alternate world-line we inadvertently created. And when we tried to return from 1937 to our own future, we ran into a rift in chronospace… a divergent loop in a closed timelike circle. We’re lucky that we weren’t destroyed completely. As it was, we were dumped out here…”

“In a parallel universe,” Metz said.

Franc and Lea looked around to find the pilot leaning against the hatch. How long he had been there, they couldn’t know; he had probably heard most of the discussion. Just as well, Franc thought. It would save them the trouble of reiterating everything Lea had learned.

“Don’t bother.” Metz held up a hand. “I know. I screwed up. If we had remained in ’37, studied this a little longer, we might have seen this coming. I’m sorry. It’s my fault.”

“No, Vasili. It’s everyone’s fault.” Holding herself up against the pedestal, Lea turned toward him. “Paradoxes like this have been postulated for a long time. Previous expeditions have been lucky until now. We were stupid to think our luck would hold out.”

“Forget it,” Franc said. “Point is, how do we get out of here?”

No one said anything for a moment.

“First thing,” Lea said softly, “we have to find out what time it is.”

3:00 P.M.

The second time the Rangers visited the sandbar, they approached the saucer from the opposite side of the tiny island, with four men in each of the two inflatable boats. They rowed slowly enough as to not cause any ripples when they dipped their oars in the water, and they observed strict silence during the journey, using hand signals to communicate. They went armed, with two of the soldiers carrying 35mm cameras and camcorders.

Col. Ogilvy placed Lt. Crawford in charge of the operation; Murphy accompanied the landing party in the role of a civilian advisor. Not surprisingly, Meredith Cynthia Luna objected to being left behind. After two hours of psychic meditation, she declared that the UFO was inhabited by aliens from a planet located somewhere in the Crab Nebula; on the eve of the Third Millennium, they had come to invite Earth into the Galactic Federation. Ogilvy heard her out, then handed her an M-16 and asked if she needed a refresher course in how to use it. It was a good ploy; she dropped the unloaded rifle as if it was a medium-rare steak, and although she bitched about approaching peaceful emissaries from another star system with weapons, the argument was effectively ended.

Murphy felt the bottom of his boat slide over the sandy shallows a few feet from the island. Crawford pointed to the sandbar, then balled a fist and pumped it down twice. The two Rangers at either end of the raft hopped out; their boots had barely splashed into the freezing water before they grabbed guy ropes and started hauling the boat ashore. About twenty feet away, the four soldiers in the second raft were doing the same. Everyone crouched low, rifles in hand, yet the Rangers were so quiet that a handful of ducks lounging in high weeds at the tip of the sandbar barely noticed their presence.

It wasn’t until the troops had taken positions behind the two oaks that Crawford signaled Murphy to get out of the raft. The sandbar was littered with beer cans, washed-up sandwich wrappers, and lost fishing lures. Between the two trees was a small circle of blackened rock, a rudimentary fireplace left by boat bums. The tree trunks were carved with initials; as Murphy knelt down behind one of the oaks, something jabbed against his knee. He looked down, spied a tiny hand sticking out of the soil, and reached down to pull up a sand-crusted Darth Vader action figure. A toy left here last summer by some child; the irony was inescapable. He smiled and tucked it into a breast pocket of his parka; perhaps Steven would like to have it.

Past the trees, though, there was nothing to be seen on the other side of the island. At least nothing that looked like an alien spacecraft, from the Crab Nebula or otherwise. Yet, as he looked closer, it seemed as if the waterline was distorted in a strange way, the late afternoon sun casting queer, inconsistent shadows upon the beach. If he could only get a little closer…

Murphy glanced one way, then another. The Rangers lay on their bellies on either side of him, nervously peering over their rifles as if expecting some monster from a fifties sci-fi flick to suddenly come roaring out of the water. Crawford tapped him on the shoulder, raised a level palm, lowered it to the ground, then pointed toward the opposite side of the sandbar. What the hell did he expect him to do, crawl across the island?

“Aw, nuts,” Murphy said aloud. “This is silly.” Then, before Crawford could stop him, he stood up and started walking toward the area of distortion.

The lieutenant called his name, the Rangers looked up at him in shocked confusion, but Murphy didn’t stop. Moving one step at a time, he raised his hands to shoulder height, hands out flat. His heart trip-hammered against his chest, his parka felt a little too warm; suddenly, he wondered if this was such a good idea after all. Yet there was no backing down; if he retreated now, Crawford would probably have him hog-tied and rowed back to the campground. And he was already past the trees, only a few yards from the waterline.