I didn"t like the conclusion, but I reached it anyway.

Either the timesweep system no longer existed-or I was outside the range of its influence. And since its influence pervaded the entire spatial-temporal cosmos, that didn"t leave much of anyplace for me to be.

All the stations were physically identical: in appearance, in equipment, in electronic characteristics. In fact, considering their ma.s.s production by the time-stutter process which distributed them up and down the temporal contour, there"s a school of thought that holds that they are identical; alternate temporal aspects of the same physical matrix. But that was theory, and my present situation was fact. Step one was to find out where I was.

I went along the pa.s.sage to the entry lock-some of the sites are located in settings where outside conditions were hostile to what Nexx Central thinks of as ordinary life-cycled it, and almost stepped out.

Not quite.

The ground ended about ten feet from the outflung entry wing. Beyond was a pearly gray mist, swirling against an invisible barrier that prevented it from dissipating. I went forward to the edge and lay flat and looked over. The underside curved down and back, out of sight in the nebulosity. What I could see of it was as smooth and polished as green gla.s.s.

Like the green gla.s.s crater I"d seen back on Dinosaur Beach.

I backed off from the edge of the world and went back inside, to the Record Section, punched for a tape at random. The read-out flashed on the screen: routine data on power consumption, temporal contour fluctuations, arrivals and departures; the daily log of the station, with the station number repeated on every frame.

Station Ninety-nine.

Just what I was afraid of.

The curving underside of the island in nowhere I was perched on would fit the gla.s.s-lined hollow back at Dinosaur Beach the way a casting fits the mold. The station hadn"t been destroyed by enemy gunfire; it had been scooped out of the rock like a giant dip of pistachio and deposited here.

I was safe in port, my home station. That had been what Nel Jard had been trying to tell me. He"d waited until I was clear, then pulled a switch. Crash emergency procedure that an ordinary field man would know nothing about.

No doubt Jard had done the right thing. The enemy had been at the gates. In another few seconds the screens would have collapsed under overload. All the secrets of Nexx Timecasting would have fallen into hostile hands. Jard had to do something. Demolition was impossible. So he"d done this.

The fact that this implied a technology at a level far beyond what I understood of Nexx capabilities was a point I"d take up later, after more immediate matters were dealt with.

In the minutes I"d been there, he"d given me a message; something I was supposed to tell someone, somewhere. I hadn"t heard a word he"d said, but in the excitement, he hadn"t realized that. He"d hustled me on my way, counted ten, and thrown the switch. The station was gone but I was in the clear.

And then I had negated all that effort on his part by using my built-in circuitry to jump back where I wasn"t supposed to be.

Null phase, the phrase popped into my mind. A theoretical notion I"d encountered in technical reading. But it seemed it was more than theory.

A place outside time and s.p.a.ce. The point of zero amplitude in the oscillations of the Ylem field that we called s.p.a.ce-time.

I walked across the room, conscious of my feet hitting the floor, of the quiet whispering of the air circulator, the hum of idling equipment. Everything I could see, hear, smell, and touch seemed perfectly normal-except for what was outside.

But if this was the Dinosaur Beach station-where was the hole in the lounge wall that I"d come in by a few subjective hours earlier? Where was the debris and the smoke, and where the dead bodies and the wreckage?

The place was neat as an egg. I pulled out a tape drawer. Files all in order, no signs of hasty evacuation, enemy action, or last-minute confusion. Just no people-and nothing much in the way of a neighborhood.

It was the Marie Celeste syndrome with a vengeance-except that I was still aboard.

I went into the dining room; there were a couple of trays there with the remains of food still on them, fairly fresh: the only exception to the total and impersonal order in the station.

I poked the disposal b.u.t.ton and punched out a meal of my own. It slid from the slot, steaming hot; syntho-this and pseudo-that. I thought of baked ham and corn on the cob-and Lisa waiting for me in the perfumed darkness. . . .

d.a.m.n it all-it wasn"t supposed to be like this. A man went out, did his job, involved himself-and tore himself away to follow the call of duty-on the premise that the torture of memory would all be soothed away by the friendly mind-wiper. It wasn"t in the contract that I should sit here in the gloaming in an empty station eating sawdust and ashes and yearning for a voice, a smile, a touch. . . .

What the h.e.l.l, she was just a woman-an ephemeral being, born back in the dawn of time, living a life brief as the fitful glow of a firefly, dead and dust these millennia. . . .

But Lisa, Lisa . . .

"Enough of that," I told myself sternly, and quailed at the sound of my voice in the deserted station. There"s a simple explanation for everything, I told myself, silently this time. Well, maybe not simple, but an explanation.

"Easy," I said aloud, and to h.e.l.l with the echo. "The transfer process shifted the station back to an earlier temporal fix. Same station, different time. Or maybe no time at all. The math would all work out, no doubt. The fact that I wouldn"t understand it is mere detail. The station exists- somewhere-and I"m in it. The question before the house is what do I do next?"

The air hung around me, as thick and silent as funeral incense. Everything seemed to be waiting for something to happen. And nothing would happen unless I made it happen.

"All right, Ravel," I said. "Don"t drag your feet. You know what to do. The only thing you can do. The only out . . ."

I got to my feet and marched across to Ops, down the transit tunnel to the transfer booth.

It looked normal. Aside from the absence of a cheery green light to tell me that the outlink-circuits were locked on focus to Nexx Central, all was as it should be. The plates were hot, the dial readings normal.

If I stepped inside, I"d be transferred-somewhere.

Some more interesting questions suggested themselves, but I had no time to go over those. I stepped inside and the door valved shut and I was alone with my thoughts. Before I could have too many of those I reached out and tripped the Xmit b.u.t.ton.

A soundless bomb blew me motionlessly across dimensionless s.p.a.ce.

9.

A sense of vertigo that slowly faded; the gradual impingement of sensation: heat, and pressure against my side, a hollow, almost musical soughing and groaning, a sense of lift and fall, a shimmer of light through my eyelids, as from a reflective surface in constant restless movement. I opened my eyes; sunlight was shining on water. I felt the pressure of a plank deck on which I was lying; a pressure that increased, held steady, then dwindled minutely.

I moved, and groaned at the aches that stabbed at me. I sat up.

The horizon pivoted to lie flat, dancing in the heat-ripples, sinking out of sight as a rising bulwark of worn and sunbleached wood rose to cut off my view. Above me, the masts, spars, and cordage of a sailing ship thrust up, swaying, against a lush blue sky. Hypn.o.briefed data popped into focus: I recognized the typical rigging of a sixteenth-century Portuguese gallea.s.s.

But not a real gallea.s.s, I knew somehow. A replica, probably from the Revival, circa A.D. 2220; a fine reproduction, artfully carved and fitted and weather-scarred, probably with a small reactor below decks, steel armor under the near-oak hull planking, and luxury accommodations for an operator and a dozen holiday-makers.

I became aware of background sounds; the creak of ropes and timbers, a mutter of talk, a shout, heavy rumblings. Something thudded on deck. The ship heeled sharply; stinging salt spray came over the weather rail and made me gasp. I blinked it away and saw another ship out there, half a mile away across the water, a heavy two-decker, with three masts, flying a long green pennant with a gray-white Maltese cross. Little white puffs appeared all along her side, with bright flashes at their centers. A moment later, a row of water spouts appeared in the sea, marching in a row across our bows. Then the baroom-om! came rolling after, like distant thunder.

My ideas underwent a sudden and drastic change. The picture of a party of holiday-makers cruising the Caribbean in their make-believe pirate ship vanished like the splashes made by the cannon-b.a.l.l.s fired by the galleon. They were shooting real guns, firing real ammunition, that could make a real hole in the deck right where I was lying.

I rolled to my feet and looked aft. A knot of men were there, grouped around a small deck gun they seemed to be having trouble wrestling into position. They were dressed in sixteenth-century costumes, worn, soiled, and sweat-stained. One of them was bleeding from a cut on the face. The wound looked much too authentic to be part of a game.

I dropped down behind a large crate lashed to the deck, containing a live turtle with a chipped and faded sh.e.l.l a yard in diameter. He looked as old and tired and unhappy as I felt.

Shouts, and something came fluttering down from aloft to slap against the deck not far from me: a tattered banner, coa.r.s.e cloth, crudely dyed, sunfaded, with a device of an elongated green chicken with horns writhing on a dirty yellow background. Heraldry was never my strong suit; but I didn"t need further clues to deduce that I was in the middle of a sea fight that my side seemed to be losing. The galleon was noticeably bigger now, coming across on the other tack. More smoke blossomed and there was a whistle and a crash up for"ard like an oil stove blowing up, and splinters rained down all around me. One of the men at the fantail went down gushing scarlet and thrashing like a boated carp. More yells, running feet. Somebody dashed past my hiding place, shouted something, maybe at me. I stayed put, waiting for an inspiration to come along and tell me what to do.

I got it in the form of a squat swarthy man in bare brown feet, faded pinkish leggings, baggy breeches of a yellowish black, a broad hand-hacked leather belt supporting a cutla.s.s that looked as if it had been hammered out of an old oil barrel. He stood over me and yelled, waving a short, thick arm. I got to my feet and he yelled again, waved aft, and dashed off that way.

He hadn"t seemed very surprised to see me; and I had almost understood what he was yelling about. That fool Gonzalo had been idiot pig enough to get himself a gutful of taffrail, it seemed he"d said. My presence was urgently desired to a.s.sist in manning the four-pounder.

The d.a.m.ned fool, I heard myself snarling. Dump the cannon over the side to lighten ship; our only chance is to outrun them, and even that"s impossible. . . .

Something screamed through the air like a rocket and a length of rope came coiling at me and caught me across the face and threw me across the deck. Somebody jumped over me; a piece of spar the size of my thigh slammed the deck and bounced high over the side. The ship was heeling again, coming around; things were sliding across the deck; then the sails were slatting, taken aback. Wind swept across the deck, cool and sweet. More thunder, more crashes, more yells, more running feet. I found a sheltered spot in the scuppers, not too fastidious now about the pinkish sc.u.m sloshing there, and watched the mainmast lean, making noises like pistol shots, and go crashing over the windward side, trailing a ballooning tent of cloth that split and settled over the stern and was pulled over the side by the current, taking along a man or two who were trapped under it. Things were falling from above like the aftermath of a dynamite blast. Something dark loomed and suddenly spars and sails were sliding across up above, and then an impact threw me on my face and went on and on, grinding splinters, snapping lines, tilting the deck. . . .

I slipped and slithered, caught a rope, held on, jammed against the side of the small cabin. The galleon was still sc.r.a.ping alongside, looking enormous. Men were in her rigging and lined up along her waist ten feet above our deck, shouting and waving fists and swords. I was looking down the black muzzles of cannons that slipped past, staring from dark square windows with smoke-blackened faces grinning behind them. Grappling hooks came down, slid and caught in the splintered decking. Then men were leaping down, spilling over the rail, overrunning the deck. The seaman who had yelled at me ran forward and a saber swung at his head; it didn"t seem like much of a blow, but he went down, very b.l.o.o.d.y, and the boarders crowded past, fanning out, yelling like demons. I hugged the deck and tried to look hors de combat. A big barrel-chested fellow swinging a machete with a badly bent blade came bounding my way; I rolled far enough to get a hand on my Mauser and got it up in time and put two through his broad, sweat-gleaming, hair-matted chest and kicked aside as he fell hard on the spot where I"d been lying. In the melee the shots hadn"t been audible.

A little fellow with bare, monkeylike legs was trying to climb the foremast; someone jumped after him, caught him, pulled him back down. Someone went over the rail, alive or dead I wasn"t sure. Then they were just milling around, yelling as loud as ever, but waving their cutla.s.ses instead of hacking with them-except for the few who were lying here and there like broken toys, ignored, out of it, holding their wounds together with their hands and mumbling the final Hail Mary"s.

Then I saw the Karg.

10.

There was no doubt of his ident.i.ty. To the untrained eye a Cla.s.s-One Karg-the only kind ever used in Timesweep work-was indistinguishable from any other citizen. But my eye wasn"t untrained. Besides which, I knew him personally.

He was the same Karg I"d left in the hotel room back in Buffalo, defunct, with a soft-nosed slug in the left zygomatic arch.

Now here he was, pre-Buffalo, with no hole in his head, climbing down onto the deck as neat and cool as if it had all been in fun. From the draggled gold lace on his cuffs and the tarnished bra.s.s hilt on his sword, I gathered that he was a person of importance among the victors. Possibly the captain; or maybe officer in charge of the marines. They were listening to him, falling into ragged ranks, quieting down.

The next step would be the telling off of details for a systematic looting of the ship, with a side-order of mercy killing for anyone unlucky enough to have survived the a.s.sault.

From what I remembered of conditions in the holds of Spanish ships of the time, a fast demise was far preferable to the long voyage home, with the galleys at the end of it. I was just beginning to form a hopeless plan for creeping out of sight and waiting for something that looked like an opportunity to turn up, when the door I was lying against opened. Tried to open, that is. I was blocking it, so that it moved about two inches and jammed tight. Somebody inside gave it a hearty shove and started through. I saw a booted leg and an arm in a blue sleeve with gold b.u.t.tons. He got that far and stuck. Something on his belt seemed to be caught in the door hardware. The Karg"s head had turned at the first sound. He stared for a long, long time that was probably less than a second, then whipped up a handsome pearl-mounted wheel-lock pistol, raised it deliberately, aimed- The explosion was like a bomb; flame gouted and smoke gushed. I heard the slug hit; a solid, meaty smack, like a well-hit ball hitting the fielder"s glove. The fellow in the door lurched, thrashed, plunged through and went down hard on his face. He jerked a couple of times as if someone was jabbing him with a sharp stick, and then lay very still.

The Karg turned back to his men and rapped out an order. The boys muttered and shuffled, and shot disappointed looks around the deck, and then started for the side.

No search, no loot, just the fast skiddoo.

It was as if the Karg had accomplished what he had come for.

In five minutes the last of the boarders were back aboard their own ship. The Karg stood near the stern, patient as only a machine can be. He looked around, then came toward me. I lay very still indeed and tried to look as dead as possible.

He stepped over me and the real corpse and went into the cabin. I heard faint sounds, the kind somebody makes going through drawers and peeking under the rug. Then he came out. I heard his footsteps going away, and opened an eye.

He was by the weather rail, calmly stripping the safety foil from a thermex bomb. It gave its preliminary hiss and he dropped it through the open hatch at his feet as casually as someone dropping an olive in a martini.

He walked coolly across the deck, stepped up, grabbed a line, and scrambled with commendable agility back to his own deck. I heard him-or someone-yell a command. Sounds of sudden activity; sails quivered and moved; men appeared, swarming up the ratlines. The galleon"s spars shifted, withdrew with much creaking and tearing of the defeated gallea.s.s"s rigging. The high side of the Spanish ship drew away; sails filled with dull boom!s. Quite suddenly I was alone, watching the ship dwindle as it receded downwind under full sail.

Just then the thermex let go with a vicious choof! belowdecks. Smoke billowed from the hatch, with tongues of pale flame in close pursuit. I got a pair of legs under me and wobbled to the opening, had to turn my eyes from the sunbright holocaust raging below. The tub might have steel walls, but in 5000 heat they"d burn like dry timber.

I stood where I was for a few valuable seconds, trying to put it together in some way that made some variety of sense, while the fire sputtered and crackled and the deck wallowed, and the shadow of the stump of the mainmast swung slow arcs on the deck, like a finger wagging at the man the Karg had shot.

He lay on his face, with a lot of soggy lace in a crimson puddle under his throat. One hand was under him, the other outflung. A gun lay a yard from the empty hand.

I took three steps and stooped and picked up the gun. It was a .01 microjet of Nexx manufacture, with a grip that fitted my hand perfectly.

It ought to. It was my gun. I looked at the hand it had fallen from. It looked like my hand. I didn"t like doing it, but I turned the body over and looked at the face.

It was my face.

11.

The standard post-mission conditioning that had wiped the whole sequence from my memory broke. I remembered it now: Time, about ten years earlier, N. S.; or the year 1578, local. Place, the Caribbean, about fifty miles southwest of St. Thomas. It had been a cruise in search of the Karg-operated ship which had been operating in New Spanish waters; I recalled the contact, the chase, the fight across the decks while I waited inside the cabin for the opportunity for the single well-placed shot that would eliminate the source of the interference. It was one of my first a.s.signments, long ago completed, filed in the master tape, a part of Timesweep history.

But not anymore. The case was reopened on the submission of new evidence. I was doubled back on my own timetrack.

The fact that this was a violation of every natural law governing time travel was only a minor aspect of the situation, grossly outweighed by this evidence that the past that Nexx Central had painfully rebuilt to eliminate the disastrous effects of Old Era time meddling was coming unstuck.

And if one piece of the new mosaic that was being so carefully a.s.sembled was coming unglued-then everything that had been built on it was likewise on the skids, ready to slide down and let the whole complex and artificial structure collapse in a heap of temporal rubble that neither Nexx Central nor anyone else would be able to salvage.

With the proper lever, you can move worlds; but you need a solid place to stand. That had been Nexx Central"s job for the past six decades: to construct a platform in the remote pre-Era on which all the later structure would be built.

And it looked as though it had failed-because of me.

I remembered the way it had gone the first time: waiting my moment, thrusting the door open, planting my feet, taking aim, firing three shots into the android"s thoracic cavity before he was aware that a new factor had entered the equation. He had fallen; his men had yelled in rage and charged, and my repellor field had held them off until they panicked at the invisible barrier and fled back to their galleon, cast off, and made sail before the wind, back into the obscurity of unrecorded history; while I had brought the gallea.s.s-a specially equipped Nexx operations unit in disguise-to the bulk transfer point at Locus Q-637, from which it had been transmitted back to storage at the Nexx holding station.

But none of that had happened.

I had blocked the door, preventing the other me from completing his a.s.signment, thus invalidating a whole segment of the rebuilt time-map and casting the whole grand strategy of Nexx operations into chaos. The Karg had gone his way, unharmed; and I was lying on the deck, very dead indeed from a bra.s.s ball through the throat.

And also I was standing on the deck looking down at my corpse, slowly realizing the magnitude of the trap I had blundered into.

A Nexx agent is a hard man to dispose of: hard to kill, hard to immobilize, because he"s protected by all the devices of a rather advanced science.

But if he can be marooned in the closed loop of an unrealized alternate reality-a pseudo-reality from which there can be no outlet to a future which doesn"t exist-then he"s out of action forever.

Even if I could go on living-doubtful proposition in view of the fire curling the deck planks at the moment-there"d be no escape, ever; my personal jump field was discharged; it wouldn"t take me anywhere. And there"d be no trace on any recording instrument to show where I"d gone; when I"d jumped from the phantom station, I"d punched in no destination. The other me had now been killed in the line of duty, during the vulnerable second when his shield was open to allow him to fire the executioner"s shot. His trace would have dropped from the boards; scratch one inefficient field man, who"d been so careless as to get himself killed.

And scratch his double, who"d poked his nose in where it had no business being.

My mind circled the situation, looking for an out. I didn"t like what I found, but I liked it better than roasting alive or drowning in the tepid sea.