Chapter 16

Those Marines moved in like they knew what they were doing. I found out later that they were all ex-military men and women who had been offered the same kind of deal that I had, except that they were to specialize in the small-unit military operations like this one. They certainly knew their business, and had the situation under control in practically no time.

We thanked Capt. Rhonda Ziwan for her unit's action to rescue us. She gave us the usual "no problem, glad to do it" response her kind always did, but I could tell that she did appreciate the personal thanks. The recovery crew that had worked with us before came in and removed several tons of gold, so our operation certainly paid for itself.

The powers that be on Shorne were bound to realize that their operations had been discovered, since the dead aliens had not been killed by local weapons. I wondered how they would react to this, but I didn't worry about that, since it was not my problem. We were pulled back to Headquarters and spent two days on a detailed debriefing. A couple of days of R&R followed that, and we were ready for a new assignment.

Meanwhile, some Special Ops types jumped to the Dahlonega area to see what the aliens did about our little raid. They reacted with massive force! A guard of uniformed men surrounded the mining operation, and armored units escorted the delivery trucks back and forth. Lars and the council were currently considering how to deal with the situation, but it was too big a deal for us to get involved in, so Ann and I went about other business.

I did ask Lars if the aliens had set up the same kind of operation on timelines at a date too early for the locals to fight them off. It seemed to me the aliens could move into North America before 1400 AD and remove all of the gold before the Europeans ever got there. Likewise, they could pick up Aztec and Inca gold, too, so that there would be none for the Whites to find when they finally arrived.

Lars cussed what for him was a blue streak—he actually said "hell" and "darn" a couple of times that I heard! "We hadn't thought of that. That may be why certain time lines don't show much trace of gold among the locals. We'll have to check into that." I left him fuming as I walked away to go swimming with Ann.

Later, Lars said to me that the council had voted to launch a full scale war against the aliens before things got out of hand. The first thing they were going to do was to start recruiting among the soldiers on both sides from WW1 and WW2. Enough men were killed during those wars that they should have no trouble recruiting a sizable army when the soldiers found out the alternatives. They decided to use an empty timeline as a training and holding facility. He figured that they would have several million soldiers available within six months.

I asked what he was going to do with the soldiers when his new war was over. His answer was that they would use the men as settlers for other empty timelines. They would recruit women for wives in essentially the same way as they had recruited the soldiers. I wished him luck; I sure was glad that it was not my problem.

There was still plenty for Ann and me to do. We had been concentrating on aliens, but there were plenty of home-grown scoundrels, thieves, and murderers scattered over the thousands of timelines to keep us as busy as we wanted to be. Lars pointed out that there was a conman who preyed on widows who were desperate for male companionship. He had wanted to get rid of the guy for some time, but the pressure of the aliens had overridden any other targets.

I was reluctant to murder the man in cold blood, but I agreed that the world would be a better place with him in his grave. I discussed the situation with two different scientists, and they both claimed that simple murder would create two new timelines, one where the bastard lived and one where he did not live. On the other hand, if I got him to fight me in a duel, he would have no chance to win, and no new timeline would be formed. That was an interesting and comforting concept, so I thought I would test it out.

Ann and I jumped to the little town of Sugar Falls, Texas, in 1879. A certain Mr. James Hawthorne was courting a certain Mrs. Alice Wilson, a rich, but very lonely widow. Hawthorne, the name he was using for this scam, was the man we were looking for, and I had to set up a way to make him challenge me to a duel.

We checked into the town's only hotel and went hunting. We found Mr. Hawthorne whiling away a few hours at his favorite pastime: poker. Thanks to some training at Headquarters, I was now an expert poker player, so I wedged my way into the game. I played for about an hour, but it didn't take long for me to see that Hawthorne was cheating. He was very clever about it, in that he did not cheat on every pot, just on the big ones. He lost more times than he won, so none of the other players realized that he was steadily making money as the game went along.