“That’s what I figured…” Thorne nodded. “In July/August of 1940, Hitler issued Directive 17 which concerned what I believe became one of his greatest mistakes and eventually cost Germany victory in the Second World War. There was an operation planned called ‘Sealion’, ideally scheduled for sometime between July and September of 1940: this was to be the invasion of Great Britain. Before this operation could go ahead, Hitler demanded the total destruction of the Royal Air Force, enabling the Luftwaffe to be freed up to neutralise the Royal Navy. Göring promised that this could be done and on paper it certainly looked possible. At the beginning of the Battle of Britain the RAF had about six hundred and forty combat-ready fighters — a number that included 26 squadrons of Hurricanes and 19 of Spitfires. Against them, the Germans were fielding about twenty-four hundred fighters and bombers.
“Four to one: that was what Air Chief Marshal Dowding told us,” Trumbull interjected.
“Yeah, he said that where I came from, too…” The Australian added quickly, grinning. “Come on, mate…I know this is hard to cop in one load, but I’ve got a few things to show you that you might find interesting.” He clapped a hand on the man’s shoulder and started walking with him once more toward the concrete hardstands and the cargo aircraft.
If the C-5M Galaxy seemed large from the outside, it was no less impressive to the RAF pilot from the inside. The cargo bay was gigantic, measuring more than four metres high by five and a half wide, and stretched for nearly thirty-seven metres from nose to tail not including the loading ramps. As they mounted the forward ramp, Trumbull walking rather tentatively beneath the huge, raised nose section, Thorne threw a nod at an armed guard in US greens who stood immobile near the cargo at the aircraft’s rear. Trumbull couldn’t clearly make out the type of rifle he held in his hands, but he could see well enough to know it was no Lee Enfield or American M1 Garand, and was unlike anything he’d ever seen.
The sound of their boots on the metal floor literally rang and echoed in the darkened space, and in what light streamed in through the nose loading area, Trumbull could see quite a large load of cargo still stacked on pallets of various sizes, all tightly crammed in toward the centre of the bay from floor to roof with barely enough space for a man to squeeze down on one side and none at all on the other. A few metres inside, a retractable metal ladder connected an open hatch in the roof to the loading bay floor and lead to another level above — Trumbull presumed it led to the cockpit high above that hinged nose.
“Up we go,” Thorne said cheerfully, and without hesitation began clambering up the metal rungs. The Galaxy’s upper deck was smaller but still an eye opener for Trumbull. At the front there was an open hatchway through which could be seen instruments, cockpit glass and the pilots’ seats. Even in the small section of console he could see from that angle there were more gauges and dials and strange small screens than the pilot had ever seen on one aircraft. The area they stood in was filled with several rows of seats; enough for all the personnel he’d seen exit the aircraft the night before by Trumbull’s reckoning. Thorne led him down a central aisle between the seats to another hatch at the rear of the seated area.
Behind that second bulkhead was a small room with barely enough space for more than two or three people. On one side, there was a narrow bench surrounded by walls and panels of a type of cream-coloured plastic. The bench carried what looked like a typewriter keyboard made of similar material and a large, black screen similar — very broadly — to the type that were used in the few examples of prototype television Trumbull had seen, although quite a bit larger in size and screen area. Opposite that on the other side of the room were racks of black, anodised metal that carried all manner of inexplicable objects the pilot couldn’t identify from long, black, oblong boxes of plastic in wafer-thin cases to even thinner plastic containers with clear tops that protected what appeared to be small, shiny discs of an unknown material.
“Give me a moment here…” Thorne requested briefly as he fiddled with some controls set into the bulkhead near the screen. Invisible mechanisms within the bulkhead beeped into whirring operation and within a few seconds, the screen before them came to life. To begin with, the information the screen displayed was no more than a cascade of unintelligible text and numbers, but that was quickly replaced by something that was to Trumbull an equally inexplicable image filled with coloured borders and strange, tiny pictograms.
“You’re not going to recognise any of the equipment here, Alec, so do bear with me…” Thorne requested as he searched within the metal racks for something in particular. He eventually dragged out a DVD, lifted it from its case and slipped it into an appropriate slot in the PC’s casing. “I think what I’m putting on here might help a bit.” He gestured to the only seat in the room — a swivel-topped, padded stool at the bench. “Take a seat, mate — make yourself comfortable.”
As Trumbull sat, the screen began to flicker into motion and immediately captured the entirety of his attention. Sound began to issue from speakers mounted beneath the screen.
“Bloody hell…!” Trumbull exclaimed, stunned. “A colour television!”
“Just watch,” Thorne grinned, turning up the volume control.
The face of an old man appeared against the bright background of a huge airbase, dressed in denims and a thick, green parka as several jet aircraft stood in the background. Trumbull of course couldn’t recognise the aircraft but it was clear they were larger than the Lightning by a fair margin and all of them carried RAF insignia. The man on screen however did appear somehow familiar, although he couldn’t place the face. He appeared to be in his eighties, with silver hair cut short and thinning on top to the point of baldness. What appeared to be a rather cold wind was gusting past as he stood there before those aircraft, but despite the buffeting there was enough clarity in the image to show a strange intensity in the old man’s eyes that Trumbull found intriguing. He chose to ask no questions, instead waiting to hear what the fellow on screen had to say.
“Hello, Alec…” The croaky voice was surprisingly clear through a small microphone clipped to the collar of his parka, and again Trumbull found something familiar in the tone that he couldn’t quite identify. “This short video’s been produced specifically for you — Max and I are hoping it’ll go a long way to convincing you of the truth of what he’s been telling you. I know you won’t recognise me just yet, but I suspect you’re wondering about it” The old man gave a wry smile that Thorne instantly recognised as an almost perfect reproduction of the same smile he’d seen on Trumbull’s face several times since they’d met. “I’m eighty-five years old now, Alec and as you watch this in Nineteen Forty, I’m barely fifteen, so I’ll take no offence if you don’t recognise me straight away. Perhaps it might help if I take this opportunity to again thank you for never telling mother or father it was me that backed your MG into mother’s Riley that day…”
“Laurence…!” Trumbull breathed the name as if in sudden shock as Thorne used a small remote control he held in one hand to halt the video momentarily. “My God, that’s my brother! I never told anyone about that…!” Thorne watched with a good deal of empathy as the man seated beside him tried to assimilate what his eyes and ears were telling him. It was now quite obvious that it was his younger brother, Laurence Trumbull standing before him despite the ageing brought about by the intervening years. “He’s old…!” That blunt and rather obvious observation was all he could manage as he tried to come to terms with the ramifications of that information. There were faint tears welling in the corners of his eyes as he glanced up at Thorne. “‘Eighty-Five’, he said… and he’s fifteen now… that would make it…” he quickly made the mental calculation within his head “…the year Two Thousand and Ten…?” The revelation hit him like a brick. “…Two Thousand and Ten!” He repeated with incredulity. “That would make me…ninety-six?” The questions were coming with the speed of a machine gun now and were mostly rhetoric, which was fortunate for Thorne as there was no chance for him to actually provide an answer. “Am I still alive…?” The question the Australian had been dreading arrived, but again Trumbull answered it himself as his own excited logic carried him on. “Of course I’m not…why else would you have my little brother making this motion picture rather than myself? Who lives to ninety-six anyway… stands to reason!” Deciding it safer to continue the video rather than allow Trumbull any chance to dwell on those dangerous thoughts, Thorne activated the remote once more.