John Schettler - Altered States

“Aye, sir. Shall I come to condition two alert?”

“Not just yet. But be prepared in the event we run into anything unexpected.”

So they eased away, leaving silence behind them like the thin foaming wake on the sea; leaving the island and everything that had happened there behind them as they went. Signals traffic soon convinced Fedorov that they had not been able to advance much more than twenty years into the future.

“I’m not sure why, sir,” he explained to the Admiral. “It could be that the mass involved was too much to move. Remember that the test reactor in the Primorskiy Engineering center left a man behind. We were lucky that Rod-25 was able to move both Kirov and Kazan , but we’re not home yet.”

“Then we will try again,” said Volsky.

Kamenski had come aboard the ship in the last hour and so the Admiral convened a meeting in the officer’s stateroom to determine what to do. Chief Dobrynin had also come aboard to check on Kirov’s reactors and was seated with them to provide technical advice.

The old ex-KGB man spoke first. “We could find ourselves hopping through the cold war next if Rod-25 can only nudge the two vessels a few decades at a time.”

“That might be better than finding we are in another hot war,” said Volsky. “What do you suggest?”

“We have three control rods-two that have never been tested for this application. We might try one of those here on Kirov , and then see what Rod-25 can do with Kazan .”

“Chief?” The Admiral looked to his reactor engineer, giving him the floor.

“A couple things come to mind at once, Admiral,” he said. “First, while we have three control rods, I cannot be in two places at once to monitor the shift. I could control one shift, but the other ship would be on its own.”

“A good point. What are the dangers involved?”

“Perhaps none at all, sir. We could dip the rods and everything might work out just as we hope. Then again, given all that has happened, I tend to doubt that will be the case. The first problem we face is that the two rods may perform differently. Rod-25 is older, more weathered by continuous use, yet it has proven to be very reliable. It tends to pop into the 1940s every time it shifts, one direction or another, but it was able to get us home once, and it was also able to get us to 1908. One day soon, however, it will go the way of all spent control rods. There is a limit to the radiation it can absorb. It will have to be removed and retired.”

“The other two rods-they are completely new, yes?”

“Yes sir, they have never been tested, as Mister Kamenski indicated. So they could perform in unexpected ways, or perhaps even fail to perform at all. This remains to be seen.”

“What do you recommend, Chief? We must rely on your experience in these matters.”

“Well, sir, Rod-25 is beginning to present some telltale decay signatures in the absorption spectrum data. I was just looking that over and comparing it to logs from our earlier shifts with the rod aboard Kirov . I would not suggest trying to move both ships again, even if Kazan was right beneath us now.”

“I see… Then we must install one of the other control rods.”

“If we do this I recommend we leave Rod-25 aboard Kazan . It is radioactive, and difficult to manage. The other two rods are still inert, and much easier to transport and install here aboard Kirov .”

“You would use both rods?”

“No, just one at a time. But Kirov is a dual 24 rod reactor system. I could place these new control rods in the number 25 spot in each of those two reactors, so the second would be immediately available should it ever be needed. It takes several hours to install these rods, and we have been in situations where our displacement in time literally saved the ship from almost certain destruction.”

“This is a good plan,” said Kamenski. “But will the engineers aboard Kazan know what to do?”

“I have some well trained men over there. They can initiate the maintenance procedure easily enough, though controlling it is another matter. I think I would need to be here aboard Kirov when we attempt to use one of these new rods.”

“So that leaves Kazan’s shift to the roll of the dice,” said Fedorov.

“Perhaps,” said Dobrynin. “Yet this time I have a plan, Mister Fedorov. I thought that I might be able to use the recording of our last successful forward shift and extract that data. It will tell the engineers aboard Kazan what I did by way of adjustments to the reaction to produce a safe shift home. This is by no means a sure thing. They will not hear it as I do, but it would be like a template of a proper shift, telling them when to adjust the power, the speed, and how to respond to flux events. I cannot guarantee anything, but it may work.”

Volsky sat with that, thinking. “So we give them a kind of road map home in the data and hope they get there. That is very risky, but I do not see any other alternative. Yes, I agree that you will be best placed here to break in these new control rods. Who knows where we will end up? Everything about this entire affair has been one surprise after another. Something tells me that fate may have a few more twists and turns ahead for us. That strange balloon was one thing. What do you make of it, Mister Fedorov?”

“It could have been a weather balloon, sir, or just a simple observation balloon.”

“You are hearing radio signals now?”

“Yes sir, which means we have advanced beyond the era of simple telegraphy, though that is still in use in modern times. The presence of AM and FM signals is very telling.”

“Well, where are we?”

“We have picked up Japanese and Chinese stations-a lot of ship to ship traffic, and some signals that could be coded messages on a military channel. Chekov has been on duty for the last two hours to translate as he can speak Japanese. Nikolin is listening for English. We have no firm dates yet, but I believe this is the early1940s.”

“How can you know this?”

“We received a transmission with what appeared to be a news feed out of Russia. I thought I heard the announcer speak of June 1940, but we got interference at that point. It came back and spoke of Orenburg and the war on the Volga. Then we lost it until the station signed off as the Soviet States of Siberia.”

“Very strange,” said Volsky.

“Then there was another clue, sir-music. We picked up a station in Manila playing the music of an artist known as Tommy Dorsy, a song called ‘I’ll Never Smile Again.’ It was announced as being in the number one spot this week and I checked that ship’s library. It released in June of 1940 and was 12 weeks in the number one spot.” He said that with a very disturbed look on his face, so obvious that it prompted the Admiral to prod him with humor.

“Don’t look so glum, Mister Fedorov. If this music does not suit your taste, perhaps Nikolin can share his files with you.”

“It’s not that, sir. Don’t you realize what this means?”

“Yes, yes, it means we are back in the soup again, and likely to run afoul of the Japanese Navy if we linger here.”

“That is the least of my concerns at the moment, sir. If this is 1940 as I suspect, then we are all in grave danger here, mortal danger, though it may not be from the Japanese fleet.”

“I don’t understand. Japan did not enter the war until December of 1941, or August of that year after our meddling. That is fifteen to eighteen months from now. There is no reason to assume they would be hostile. They would probably assume we were a British warship out of Hong Kong.”