John Schettler - Ironfall

In effect, they would easily see the approach of any Zeppelin hoping to get close enough to deliver another bomb, but the worry was that the Germans might attempt to use regular bombers for the job. That would complicate the defense, because even though the attacker would be exposed to the RAF fighters, there would be no way to know which bomber might be carrying the bomb. To protect the city, they would have to get them all, and that was an unlikely prospect.

Yet defense against the high-altitude attack was at least something, until England could modify enough fighters to reach the 45,000 to 50,000-foot ceiling of the big German Zeppelins.

“I am much in your debt,” said Churchill to Elena. “You and your intrepid destroyer have been of immense help. Your sonar work on the Atlantic convoy runs helped us at a time when we most needed it. The job you did at St. Nazaire helped chase those German naval raiders from our doorstep, and now you receive my thanks, and those unspoken from tens of thousands of Londoners, for this watch you stand over the city. Your radar alone is of immense help—much more accurate than our own systems, which must seem primitive.”

“Primitive, perhaps,” said Elena, “but absolutely necessary. They are the foundation for all our own systems. Remember, my ship was built right here in the U.K.”

“And what of this business at Gibraltar you mentioned? I understand you were doing some cave explorations beneath the Rock.”

“Correct—at St. Michael’s Cave, and we found something most disturbing there, a fissure, deep beneath the cave.”

“A fissure? Well, what is remarkable about that? The entire site if a network of underground caverns and tunnels, and we’ve added to them year by year with our own artisans.”

“This fissure was something more,” said Elena. “It was both a physical and temporal rift, a disturbance of both matter and time….”

That got Churchill’s attention. “Time? Please go on, Miss Fairchild. Explain.”

“As I’ve related to you earlier, my ship is here because of a very special key that actuated a device we recovered from Delphi. We believe that both the key, and the device it engaged, were engineered in the future. In effect, they were engineered to displace matter in time, and the effect was limited to matter within a given radius of the device when engaged. Apparently, that radius was large enough to encompass Argos Fire.”

“And why do you suppose your ship appeared here, in the 1940s?”

“I think that was the work of the key we used. The device has apertures, all in the exact shape of the key—seven, to be precise.”

“I see…. Then this explains why you are so keen to recover the key that was aboard our HMS Rodney —a fine old ship, and a pity we lost her.”

“Yes, because I have it on good authority that the key aboard Rodney was associated with St. Michael’s Cave, and lo and behold, we find this temporal rift there.”

“Temporal rift… I understand that in theory, but what does it mean?” Churchill took a sip of the brandy he was nursing.

“Like any physical rift in stone, it can permit movement in time, like a gorge or passage through mountains that would be otherwise impassable.”

“You know this to be a fact?”

“I do.”

“This is not speculation?”

“No sir, I put men through this passage, and we thought we lost them for a time. Indeed, we did lose them, for they simply vanished. We even had one linked to our base team by a sturdy rope, but it was completely severed, as if something burned right through. I was considering how to proceed, when the two men finally returned, a full day later, and with quite a story to relate.”

Churchill gave her a long look, waiting. “Well, come on, my dear woman. Get on with it. You certainly have a captive audience here, and there’s a good deal more brandy in that flask.”

“To make a long story short, this fissure does, indeed, become a rift in time. They told us they climbed back out, only we were gone, our entire base force, and all the equipment we had brought in to excavate the place if necessary. So they made their way upwards, and out of St. Michaels Cave, only to find they were somewhere else. Not in space, mind you, but in time.”

“Where?” said Churchill. Then he corrected himself. “When?”

He took a long sip of brandy, his eyes gleaming in the wan light of the room.

“Themen were not entirely certain,” said Elena, “But we’ve done a bit of research to see if we could determine the date. One clue they brought back was quite unexpected.”

“What was it?”

“A rather nasty bug, and by that I mean disease. The men made their way up and out of the tunnels, finding Gibraltar to be a very different place. In some locations, the conditions were quite decrepit, particularly along Town Range. From all appearances, they thought they were back in the time of Victorian England. Well… There was trouble. A local officer got suspicious of my men, and they thought it best to make a hasty retreat. They were pursued, but their pursuers did not know the tunnels as well, and took a wrong turn. My men laid low, then made their way back, eventually finding the bit of severed rope, which we threw back in the hopes that they might find it. They did, spying it with a torch, and that was a strong clue as to which passage to take. By following it, they were brought back to their point of origin, here in 1943.”

“Astounding,” said Churchill. “And this nasty clue?”

“Yellow fever. It took us a few days to identify it, but our medical people confirmed it, and that gave us a clue.”

“The epidemic of 1804,” said Churchill. “There were small outbreaks along the Spanish coast in the late 1700’s and the turn of the century, particularly at Cadiz and Seville. The worst to hit Gibraltar was in 1804. If your man contracted the disease in that brief visit, I would assume it was rather widespread, as it was in that year. Over one third of the territory’s population succumbed to yellow fever.”

“Well that’s as good a guess as mine,” said Fairchild.

“I’ll caution that by saying the fever was quite common on the Rock all through that period. They came to call it ‘Gibraltar Fever.’ Well, I certainly hope your man recovered.”

“He did, but there was one other clue we had some difficulty understanding. My men were on Town Range, near the officer’s quarters when they were spotted by a sentry. They overheard some between the officers—of an imminent invasion. They seemed quite alarmed.”

“An invasion? Of the Rock? That doesn’t ring a bell for 1804.”

“Not the Rock,” said Elena. “It was England that seemed to be the threatened place.”

“I see…. Well this is all adding up,” said Churchill. “There was quite a stir over Bonaparte’s plan to cross the Channel. He had built an enormous fleet at Boulogne for that very purpose. In late 1804, he was there to rally the army that had been training for the attack. So that does seem to narrow down the date to 1804. There were further outbreaks of yellow fever on the Rock in the years after that, particularly in 1813, but there was no epidemic of fear concerning Bonaparte invading England in these years.”

“So our men reached the year 1804,” said Elena. “Which means anyone with the knowledge of that passage could do the same, and that brings us round to the matter of the key we lost on Rodney . We think we know where it was, that very year, in 1804.”

“Indeed… Now you can be the history professor, Miss Fairchild. Enlighten me.”

“It was in the salvage operation at the wreck of the Mentor, a ship owned by one Lord Elgin, a man you must certainly be familiar with.”