the Russians are Free Radicals, and the senior officers, the real decision makers, may even be regarded as Prime Movers now. This is going to be a very chancy thing.”
“And there are still several loose threads we haven’t uncovered yet,” said Paul. “I want to nail down how this Argos Fire displaced in time, and what these keys are all about. And if I can get some answers as to how Kirov is making these unassisted shifts, it would help us plan some kind of countermeasure as well.”
“Yes,” said Maeve. “We still aren’t seeing the whole picture. We have no clear chain of causality between Kirov the ship, and the man it was named for. In fact, we still don’t know why Stalin was assassinated, or who really did it.”
“I’m hoping to find that out on this mission,” said Paul. “And I’ve got a little coinage to trade for the information they might give me, like my idea about retrieving that key that went down with the battleship Rodney. Fairchild may be very interested in that. The British may also be very interested to learn the location of the door that particular key opens. Remember, I’ve deciphered the coordinates.”
“First things first,” said Maeve. “Let’s get you there and back again in one piece, and then we’ll see where we stand.”
“Yes,” said Paul. “Let me get this mission to the Azores under my belt. When I get back, we’ll be in a much better position here. Come on Kelly. You have good numbers?”
“Solid,” said Kelly adjusting the fit of his Giants baseball cap.”
“Then let’s get started.”
* * *
They wasted no time getting to the lab monitors. Kelly manned the shift module, as always. Nordhausen and Maeve took up work at the Golem module. Between the two of them, they would closely monitor the Golem fetch data stream during Paul’s mission to see if they could detect new variations. Paul was back in uniform and down through the long access corridor and elevator to the Arch. There he stood calmly in the pre-scan position, while Kelly took a double reading to generate and store his pattern signature. It was a bit like a quantum fingerprint, or DNA, describing who and what he should be when manifesting in the stream of infinite particles that defined the world.
The technology they had developed could only hold Paul safely in another time for a limited interval. Then he would have to be pulled back, though, basically, to get him to another time, the Arch was going to do something with the particles that formed his being. And to bring him back again, they simply had to cease that activity in as controlled a manner as possible. It was as Kamenski had described it to Fedorov, there were no ‘places’ in time, only activities and expressions of reality. To go anywhere in time, one had merely to learn how to dance with infinity. The Arch complex achieved that, though only Paul could really say how it worked, and he seldom ever tried. But it did work, and that was all that mattered.
After the tingling energy of the pattern signature capture, Paul heard Kelly’s voice in the intercom wishing him well. The power revved up, with the Arch suddenly coming alive with the scintillating energy that accompanied time displacement. He stared at the broad yellow line on the cold concrete floor. Stay on this side, and you remain a movement in the here and now. Take one step across that line, and you become a movement somewhere else.
The great anaconda of causality lay coiled at your feet, and through the Arch, you could walk along that serpent’s back, traversing the scales of ages past, and move to another time. The moment he took that first step, however, the only thing in the here and now that remembered him were the memories of the other team members, and that pattern signature stored safely in the massive data banks of the Arch facility computers.
As always, Paul closed his eyes to lessen the shock and disorientation of the shift, and he whispered a silent prayer that Kelly had all his numbers in order. They had experienced any number of mishaps in their many missions, and things were already critical enough without any further problems arising from their own equipment failures, or operator errors.
He reached up, straightened his naval officer’s cap, and then took a deep breath. Maeve had it so right, he thought. Here we go again. Then he took that