Chapter 12

Once the novelty of the mere fact of being able to fly had worn off a bit, the trainees were taken through the rest of the things that were possible with the armor. They were all impressed with the way the armor was able to stop bullets and the fact that the armor, alone, made such an effective weapon. They spend 4 more days becoming familiar with all of the aspects of the armor. Most of the trainees felt that they had never seen a better toy!

Then they were introduced to the lightning gun. Now, there was a toy that any military man could appreciate. They practiced firing at targets and learned the gun's limitations, as well as its virtues. They also saw training films made from recordings of the teams various adventures and were given opportunities to constructively criticize each operation. Some of the adventures were funny, and some were exciting, but they all gave the trainees an inkling of the type of work they would be asked to do. A month was spent in training until everything, including flying, was second nature. Now, the trainees were ready to become trainers, themselves.

A total of 301 people were brought in and 7 were assigned to each of the original 43 trainees. The idea was to make up 8-person squads. The 12 members of the original team acted as overall supervisors, but tried to stay out of the way as much as possible. All of the 43 squad leaders had some previous training and experience in that capacity in their former lives, so they didn't need to learn how to lead a small unit. By the time the training was finished, after 6 months of intensive effort, all of the people were able to act as squad leaders in a pinch. Now, it was time for some field experience.

Most of them wanted to go back and prevent the war that they had been involved in, but they understood why they couldn't do that when it was explained how dangerous it was to change history. There was no problem for Seven in finding places to use these squads of near supermen. With millions of species scattered throughout the galaxy, there was always trouble brewing somewhere. The value of these troubleshooters was demonstrated over and over, to the point that there was a clamor for more to be trained.

Seven put her considerable assets together assembling a psychological profile to make it easier to pick out those new people who would make suitable policemen. The latest plan was to find those who could stand the long intervals of physical inactivity, yet remain alert to keep watch over their territories. These people would be assigned, one pair to a specific territory, to maintain order. They could call in additional help as necessary, but the bonded couple would have the overall responsibility of keeping order and maintaining the potential of a joyful life for everybody. There would be no effort to insure a joyful life, just maintain the potential. What people did with their lives was up to them!

Just covering the Earth was going to require thousands of new recruits. There was no way to estimate the number required to service the whole galaxy! It looked like it would be necessary to harvest recruits from sources other than wars just to have enough women to balance out the men. Judy suggested that they look into disasters such as the Titanic sinking and the Pompeii disaster. Such recruiting drives didn't produce as many willing candidates as from wars, but enough women were found, particularly when the alternative was considered.

Disasters in Africa and Asia produced a steady stream of recruits, but the greatest boon to recruiting turned out to be a chance discovery in M'rth's laboratory that they could take a hair clipping and, in only a few days, grow a clone of a human being. This clone was not alive in the normal sense, but so closely resembled a dead human body that the most meticulous autopsy would not find a difference between the original and the clone. Now, any person could be recruited, even if there had to be a body available for living people to see and examine. The miracle of time travel made it possible to determine when a death was to take place and substitute the clone for the original just moments before the death was to happen. It was often possible to extract a person and substitute the clone between the times a bullet was fired and when it struck, so that there was no obvious clue to the exchange. Unfortunately, famous personalities who suffered a lingering death, such as Abraham Lincoln, were not available for this treatment, but there were not many of those who were candidates, any way.

The original team was kept busy over a period of subjective years training and preparing the new "Wardens," as they came to be called. The training could take a long as necessary, since a new pair of Wardens could be put into place whenever needed through the use of time travel. Though the work of supplying Wardens for the Earth, alone, took almost 500 subjective years, the Wardens were put into place on the Earth over a period of only 1 objective week.

The question, now, was what to do with the rest of the galaxy. Should humans be the sole source of Wardens? That was not really desirable, since a lot of their actions depended on the Wardens' subjective interpretation of a situation, and it really took a local to understand the nuances of a situation. Therefore, Wardens were recruited from local populations much as had been done on Earth. This was not too difficult, because most of the galaxy already knew of the Wardens and the kind of work they did from the TV shows extolling their exploits. Nevertheless, humans still made up the main body of the rapid reaction force called in to quell major emergencies.

Early in the operation, M'rth's entire research and development laboratory operation had been moved to Avalon. It had grown so big, that the laboratory rapidly grew into an entire city of its own. On top of that, factories were built on Avalon to manufacture the body armor, lightening guns, and other paraphernalia that were required by the Wardens. A combination of wear and tear, plus the needs of new recruits, put a continuous demand on these factories. The factories were automated, but sentients were needed for the flexibility required for overall supervision. Therefore, the population of Avalon grew steadily into a very cosmopolitan planet with a wide variety of residents, none of them native.

After 500 years of training recruits, the original team requested field assignments. The were afraid that they were becoming stale and too set in their ways. All of the female team members had borne at least one child during this 500-year interlude, and they were as ready as the men to go back into the field. All of the children had become Wardens and had left on assignment, so there was nothing left to keep them at home.

It took a little time to find something suitable to involve the team as a whole, but something finally showed up. M'rth's people had found a way to visit alternate universes, and the Galactic Council wanted to mount an expedition to visit one to determine if friendly relations could be established. This looked like an ideal job for the team, so they began training immediately.

The visit was planned as travel in a relatively large space ship. Space ships were rarely used in the home galaxy because the transporters were so convenient; but a fairly large contingent of people were to be sent on the expedition and something was needed to house them while they were visiting the new universe. A space ship was deemed to be the optimum solution to the housing problem, since that would make the expedition completely independent of the reception they received, whether it be friendly or hostile. The team was along just in case the reception was hostile.

The space ship was built in space near Avalon. It really made no difference where the ship was built, but it was reasoned that the Avalon analogue in the new universe would likely be as deserted as theirs had been, for the same reasons. Therefore, it would be a good place to set up operations and not cause any trouble to the visited universe.

It took nearly 100 years to complete the construction of the space ship and the facilities necessary to transfer it to the new universe and, more importantly, insure its safe return. In the process, a number of small items had been sent to the other universe and returned, so M'rth's people were confident that they could accomplish the same thing with an object as large as the space ship.