Chapter 27

It was a dark, peaceful night. I had no idea where we were. Frankly, I didn’t really want to find out for a while. Everything was very quiet. We seemed to be in the middle of the desert, as the land was fairly flat and the night was very cool and dry. In the distance I could see silhouettes of some rather interesting mountains. I was quite happy to accept our situation for now. That is, we were still alive and relatively unscathed.

Probably because we had come down in sand, our landing had been very gentle. That was a good thing for me, as I was still leaping through the air when we teleported, and crashed onto the platform just as the TDM was settling to the ground. After picking myself up, I stood beside Solomon.

We stood there for a couple of minutes and stared at the starry sky above us. I was transfixed, as though studying the constellations above me. It’s not that I knew a damn thing about astronomy and was trying to figure out where we were. I had just never seen so many stars before, and so clearly. It was really beautiful, and I was hoping we’d get more of a chance to enjoy it before we had to jump again.

Of course, I was really hoping those SF goons chasing us didn’t have any more of those explosives. From Solomon’s reaction to seeing them, they must have been pretty powerful. Which made me wonder...

“Do you think those guys survived that? I mean, we got out of there seconds before the explosion. I suppose they must have had a way to survive that.”

“Unfortunately, yes. They may well have been carrying a force shield, knowing they were going to use those explosives. I’m not going to worry about them, however.”

“What were those things they threw at us, anyhow?”

“They looked like blasting caps.”

“Blasting caps? You mean like miners use? That doesn’t sound like much.”

“Oh, really. Well, I guess you have to remember the advanced magnitude of power of everything from your era to mine. Do you have any idea of how much dynamite the miners of your era have to use to blast a chunk of rock when they’re tunneling? And how they have to locate several charges at different points?”

“Uh, well, not really. But I guess I can imagine.”

“Well, then imagine all that power put into one blasting cap, which has been designed to radiate its force out concentrically so you only need the one cap to bring down that whole wall of rock.”

“Uh, okay. I think I’ve got the picture.”

“Good. Now remember they both threw one of those, which had us bracketed.”

“Ouch.”

“Definitely.”

I stood there and thought about it for a moment. The effect would be devastating.

“Hey, wait a minute,” I verbalized my next thought. “Why would they use those things when they went to such trouble to get rifles in Dallas instead of using photon rays?”

Solomon considered for a moment.

“Well, I can think of several big differences,” he said finally. “First, they weren’t using them in public. What’s more, the explosives aren’t so unconventional that their true nature would ever be discovered after the ship sank. Assuming, of course, they ever raised the ship.”

Again Solomon just stood and stared at the stars for a while. Finally, I couldn’t stand the suspense any longer.

“Yeah?” I prompted. “It sounds like there’s another reason.”

“They’re probably getting desperate. At this point, they must feel that killing us is worth any risk they have to take, either to themselves or to distorting the future. They undoubtedly believe that, unless they kill us soon, the Zaibatsu no longer have a future.”

That was too frightening to even think about. If true, what else would the Zaibatsu try to do to us if we actually escaped this peril and made it back to the future? We didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Instead, we both went back to star gazing. I don’t know how we did it, but it was certainly a lot more pleasant than the alternative.

“Hey!” I said suddenly. “Would you like something to eat?”

“Hmm?” Solomon mused, totally lost in contemplating the stars he had rarely seen in his youth. “Oh, yes! That would be great. What’ve you got?”

“Well, I think we’ve got some roast beef in rolls, some raw vegetables, and a small bottle of wine. Is that okay?”

“Fantastic!” he enthused. “Although you wouldn’t happen to have a bit of Grey Poupon, would you?”

“What?” I said, dumbfounded.

“I mean, Dijon mustard.”

“I know what it is!” I protested. “Are you serious?”

“You figure it out,” he said dryly. “May I have my share, please?”

“Of course. Sorry.” I didn’t want to tell him, but he had definitely seen too much of the television of my era. “How about some wine?” I asked as I handed him half of the food.

“Sure. Anything is fine.”

“Oh, no! Let me show you our wine list ... oops.”

“What’s up?”

“This has a cork. I don’t have anything to open a cork with.”

“May I, please?”

I handed him the bottle and he pulled some gizmo out of a pocket. He fiddled with the gizmo, stuck some part of it into the cork, and all of a sudden he handed me the bottle.

“You first?” he asked politely.

“Why, thanks, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson,” I accepted. I took a small sip and handed him back the bottle. He also took a small sip and then attacked his food. I did the same.

We sat there in silence for a while, munching away on our food. Occasionally we passed the bottle back and forth, from which we both only took small sips. The wine was warm and not very tasty, but I’m sure it was just as welcome to Solomon as it was to me. I don’t know if it was because the intervals had been getting longer and we felt somewhat safer, or because we were so famished we just decided not to interrupt the eating process. Of what could be our last meal, I thought very cynically. Whichever it was, neither of us was in any big hurry to get back to the most important business at hand.

“By the way,” I asked at last, “could you please tell me where we are?”

“Hmm?” he said dreamily again. He was lost somewhere up in the vast nebula, but exactly where I’m sure neither of us would ever be able to say. “Oh, yes. Well, our last jump was to the desert somewhere between Corona and Roswell, New Mexico.”

“Oh. Well, that’s very interesting. Are we about to watch submarine races, or what?”

“Submarine races?” he asked, nearly as puzzled by the reference as I was by our location.

“Sorry, just an allusion to a school kid phenomenon during my time frame, mostly in desert communities. I mean, why are we here?”

“Oh, right. Well the date is June 3, 1947. I had wanted to investigate the report of an alien space ship.”

“Oh. I see. You mean there’s a ship from outer space supposed to land somewhere in this general vicinity tonight?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know if it actually is an alien craft, and I also don’t know if this is the night when it’s supposed to crash land somewhere near where we are.”

“Oh. Okay. Let me see if I can fail to make this perfectly clear. You programmed a jump to this spot on a date you weren’t exactly sure of, unlike our previous jumps, and to a location where were aren’t really sure anything will happen. But if it does happen, it may be the crash landing of an alien spacecraft. Is that right?”

“Exactly.”

Well, what the hell. It wasn’t any worse than most of the things we had already gone through. After all, those were known disasters. Maybe this would be nothing at all. I could only hope.

“Okay. Cool.”

Solomon smiled. Then he got right back to work, punching in the coordinates for some new destination. It reminded me about the thought concerning modern science flitting through my mind just before we jumped. Seriously, I wondered just exactly what role I might have played in it through my investments in different companies. After a few minutes, I decided I just had to interrupt again.

“Uh, Solomon?”

“Yes, Barney,” Solomon said patiently, not looking up from his work. After the last few perilous encounters with the SF troops, I understood the need for him to get on with it. Still, I also felt a great need to talk.

“You mind if I ask you a few questions while you work?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Of course you have a choice! You can answer my questions, or you can just ignore me while I talk.”

“Okay.”

He didn’t elaborate, or even look up. I took that to mean he’d answer what he wanted to – when he bothered to hear – and ignore me when he felt like it. Fair enough.

“Well, I know that you’re brilliant and all that. I also know a lot of previous research and experimentation contributed to your work before you started on this project. Still, the actual perfection of the time machine from the point where you first established your theory was right seems to be really fast. Especially when you were trying so hard to keep most of your work secret from the Zaibatsu.”

Fortunately, I seemed to have hit on the right subject. I mean, what scientist wouldn’t be happy to talk about his greatest invention?

“You have to remember all sciences are interrelated and lead to rapid advancement in later discoveries, even if they’re seemingly unrelated. For example, the science of miniaturization, whether of solid state or resistor-type devices, was invaluable in developing the current model machine we’ve used to travel during this Odyssey. In a lot of ways, the early work done in radio and television involving frequency modulation, band width controls, color spectrum harmonics, and other related sound and light manipulation, was critical in being able to perfect the setting mechanisms for those vital portions of the TDM. And can you imagine how far I would have gotten in my work without the decades of knowledge of electrical and other forms of energy? It would have been impossible.”

“Yeah. Well, I can see where most of those other advances would have made some kind of contribution to the development of the TDM. In fact, I remember how we talked about some of the companies I started being somewhat instrumental. But the so-called industrial revolution took hundreds of years, and yet the jump you made from the technology of my age to this particular machine seems miraculous. Doesn’t it seem that way to you, too?”