yet migrated forward. The world we entered to board Kazan with Gromyko was not yet altered by my meddling! Yes, there were some changes, but they were very minor. The really big things were still in play. I was again determined to go back and stop Karpov in 1908, and that was going to have everything to do with the outcome on history.
Then his logic took one last leap. What if that world we returned to was the same as the one we left, with only these slight alterations? We stopped Karpov, and then tried to come forward again, but we could only reach 1940. There the changes Karpov caused in 1908—the changes I had caused with my warning to Mironov, had time to take effect. The world was clearly altered, drastically different. But those changes may not yet migrate to 2021, because Kirov was still in the past, still operating to effect the outcome. Our story had to resolve itself before the consequences of our actions could be fully determined. If that is so… My god! Then the ship that arrived here from the future—this ship—must have come from the original time meridian—the world that was as yet unaltered by our actions! So my complaint that events would never stack up to permit that was faulty logic. I was assuming the future was already changed, but that may not be the case.
Of course! That is the only way this ship could be here now—the only way Karpov could be up there on the bridge. Did he replace the other Karpov in Siberia? Did that man vanish when this ship arrived here some hours ago? That thought gave him some hope, because at this point, Karpov had not yet fallen into the darkness that consumed him. He was all potential, dangerous potential, yet the possibility of redemption still remained in him.
There were still so many questions in his mind. He needed to start getting some answers. First off, where were they? Was the ship in the Norwegian Sea? That seemed likely, because that was where Kirov was operating when the accident happened, the first cause.
Then will events play out the same way as before? Will we soon make contact with Wake-Walker’s task force headed for Petsamo? How could that happen given what I saw? The history of the 1940s had clearly been overtaken by the wave of changes migrating from 1908. In fact, that was the theory posited by the American Physicist Paul Dorland. He called it a Heisenberg Wave, and claimed it acted to re-materialize the world to account for the changes made in the past. It migrated out from a major variation like ripples in a pool of still water. Here in the 1940s, we’ve already been overtaken by the wave that was initiated in 1908. But it has not yet reached the future in 2021! Not entirely. Some changes were seen, like the fact that the US entered the war earlier, but otherwise, things were still intact, and they should have been drastically altered.
My god… I think Kirov just came from that original time line, only it entered the meridian already changed by events in 1908! I’ve got to find out if this is so. I’ve got to find out what is happening on the bridge, but I must be very cautious here. As I recall events when we first shifted to 1941, we would have made contact with Wake-Walker’s task force by now. Yet the ship is quiet. I heard the KA-40’s return some time ago, and we are no longer at action stations. That would certainly support my theory that this ship entered the altered timeline. If I could just get to Nikolin, he would probably know what is happening. In fact, he’s most likely off duty by now.
That thought prompted him to get up and steal down the corridor to Nikolin’s quarters. It was very late, well after midnight, and he knocked lightly on the door, waiting impatiently. Thankfully, Nikolin was a night owl, and he had been listening to his own short wave radio, still monitoring stations as he had been on the bridge. He opened the door, surprised to see Fedorov there.
“Fedorov, how are you feeling?”
“Well enough… May I come in? I need to speak with you.”
A moment later the two men were sitting by Nikolin’s desk, where he had been playing solitaire with a deck of cards while listening to the old style music being played on the radio. Nikolin explained