Had there been anything that needed doing, I could see that these troops were ready to do it.
The construction workers were all Smoothies, and they were in much worse shape. One burly sand hog had simply fainted the moment that it was obvious that we were in trouble. Most of the rest just sat it out in a blue funk, with sweat beading up on their zero-G faces like monstrous zits. About an hour and a half in, one of them freaked out, screaming and clawing his way toward the canister door, for what reason none of us could imagine. There wasn’t anything outside the door, not even air. Maybe not even space.
At least we didn’t think there was anything out there. The temporal screen that surrounded the canister reflected back everything in the electromagnetic spectrum, including light and radio waves. Some of the test canisters had been programmed to turn off their screen so we could get an instrumented look around, but none of those had ever returned.
Bracing himself between two seats, Lieutenant McMahon simply threw the screaming worker back to the other end of the canister, and when the man immediately tried for the door again, Bob just kicked the fellow in the jaw, knocking him out cold.
“Nice job,” Ian said, as he helped haul the unconscious worker back to his seat.
Finally, the timer I’d set up to dump the buffer into the machine proper timed out, and we were, in theory at least, heading home. Not that we felt any change in our direction.
From there, it was another three hours of sitting around to see if my fix had really fixed anything, and if, indeed, we would survive this trip.
Ian had two of the workers break out some food and we had a quiet, nervous lunch.
The canister didn’t have a john, but the only sergeant we had along, a fellow named Kuhn, emptied a keg of ancient-looking, hand-cut nails into a plastic sack, and we made do with the keg. You had to be quick with the lid, or you had a mess floating around, but we made do.
After a bit, I joined into the poker game, and was soon followed by Ian. We all fit around the small table because half of the troops were upside down, and holding themselves to the ceiling by means of the cargo straps up there. None of the Smoothies asked to play, because Smoothies never gambled. With their lifestyle, there wasn’t any point to it.
The game broke up a few minutes before we were due to arrive home. It was just as well, since by then I was fourteen thousand dollars down, and Ian had lost more than twice that. When you know that there’s a fair chance that you won’t live to settle up your debts, there’s not much incentive to scrimp on your betting. Sergeant Kuhn was the day’s big winner, being over twenty thousand ahead. I don’t think he cheated, but that man is one mean poker player!
Everyone got back to their seats. Most of the people had improvised some sort of seat belts by then, and the rest of them just held on.
The timer hit six zeros again, and this time something definite happened. The canister wall to my right was suddenly three inches closer to me, the “POP” nearly burst my ear drums, and gravity had returned.
“It seems that we have arrived!” I shouted, and got a cheer out of the troops. The Smoothies just sat there and looked relieved.
Ian and Lieutenant McMahon got to the door at about the same time, but when they tried to turn the crank, it wouldn’t budge. We were home, or at least we were someplace with earth gravity, but we were still trapped in the canister!
The lieutenant started beating on the door with the butt of what looked like a “Brown Bess” musket, and a few minutes later, someone else started beating on it from the outside. Another cheer went up.
Our good lieutenant knew Morse code, and a few moments later, someone was found on the outside who could understand him and reply.
It seems that besides being welded to the side of the stationary canister, we had also come back a few inches too close to the door, such that the two doors were now welded together. We were instructed to wait until cutting torches could be brought down to our area.
“This is not good,” I said. “I can smell ozone. We are taking a dose of ionizing radiation right now.”
“Right. To hell with obsolete technology, anyway.” Ian said. “Bob, tell whoever is out there to back off! We’re cutting our own way out.”
Bob quickly beat out a message that I later heard read, “run away!”, because Ian was already positioning himself in front of the door with his temporal sword in his hand.
Ian gave whoever was out there a count of five to be gone, and then, with a quick rotation of his wrist, cut a six foot circle in the big door. As it began to fall, another fast wiggle of his hand cut the circle into six pieces, which came to the floor with a loud clatter.
“Everybody out!” I shouted, and was almost trampled by the little, ordinary sized people scrambling past me. I was the last one out, proudly wearing my white plumed hat and my fine steel sword.
Naturally, there were medics and ambulances waiting to take us all away. I felt just fine, but after my earlier experiences with radiation damage caused by temporal reimmersion, I thought it best not to argue with them.
Arguing with a medic doesn’t do you much good anyway. Their egos are such that if you disagree with whatever strange thing they’re doing to your only body, they’ll automatically assume that you’re in shock, or otherwise out of your head, and sedate you so that you can’t disagree with them any more.
Our exalted status did get Ian and me to the front of the line at the hospital, and we were out of there in an hour. It turned out that the dosage we’d gotten wasn’t at all serious. Of course, had we waited around in the canister for a few hours, things would have been much different.
I soon discovered that we had returned to our own time only a half hour after we’d left. Had we gotten back much sooner, we’d have run into Hasenpfeffer and his crowd again before they’d had a chance to leave. This was good, because I wasn’t ready to talk to him just yet.
“Lieutenant McMahon, you did well today. Now, I want you to look up Leftenant Fitzsimmons of the Navy and Captain Stepanski of the Air Force. I want the three of you at my office in a half hour. I have another job for you to do.”
“Yes, sir.” He saluted and left.
“What’s that about?” Ian said.
“We need some detective work done, and one thing this strange little island doesn’t seem to have is a police force.”
“True enough. But soldiers aren’t cops.”
“They’re the closest thing that we have available. If those three can’t do the job, I think that they’ll know who can. What’s more, I have the feeling that they’ll be on our side, no matter what, and that’s something I’m not sure I can say about all the Smoothies,” I said.
“Unfortunately, after this morning I agree with you. I didn’t like the way all of our managers were down there backing up Hasenpfeffer. Not to mention Ming Po and Barbara.”
“Yeah. Something stinketh mightily around here, and I intend to dig it up before we bury it again.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Sabotage?
Still in my eighteenth-centuary getup, with my steel sword at my side and my plumed hat hanging on a convenient peg behind my desk, I filled the officers in on the problems we experienced on our first attempted time trip, with Ian sitting in.
” . . . so what we need to know is what went wrong, and how do we fix it, if it was some sort of technical problem, or who did it and why, if we’re looking at sabotage. You can call in any help you think you may need, and spend as much time and money as you want, just as long as you all show up here again in an hour with some answers. Are you three up to the task?”
Leftenant Fitzsimmon had turned out to be the senior man in the group, so he answered, in his almost accurate upper class English accent, “Yes, sir. You will be seeing us back here shortly, I expect.”
They snapped to and saluted. It felt strange to be returning a salute to a bunch of officers, but I saluted them back, rather than make them hold that silly posture. Then they did an about-face and left. I guessed that they must figure that I was their Comander-in-Chief.