Virginia was silent as she stared into the eyes of the graying master chief. She nodded just once and remained quiet.
“I’m sorry I was too much of a caveman to make it work with us, Slim,” Jenks said as he kicked at an invisible object and then angrily tossed the dead cigar away.
The assistant director was taken back by the hastily worded comment. The master chief lowered his eyes and then reached quickly for the next set of signal devices that were wrapped heavily in the manufacturer’s packaging. Virginia placed a thin fingered hand on Jenks’s own, stilling his movement. He looked into her green eyes and held them for as long as he dared.
“After all of the degrees I have gathered, the accumulated knowledge of centuries, I have come to one immutable fact of life, Harold, and that is that you are allowed two great loves in the span of one’s life. We just happened to be two people who loved not only each other but also the work we do. No ones’ fault, but the love is still there regardless.”
“I… I…” Jenks stalled.
“When you get back to this dimension, we’ll have to make a choice, Harold.”
“But—”
Virginia leaned over and kissed the gruff old master chief.
Jenks watched as Virginia turned away but then hesitated.
“Besides, I want to see if you can follow the directions on the doorway’s instruction manual. I personally think you’ll be like a father trying to put his son’s bike together on Christmas Eve.” Virginia waggled her fingers behind her in farewell as she left hurriedly.
“Damn, she always has to have the last word.”
The master chief continued to load the transport but at least for the time being the gruff old engineer was smiling.
“Will we have any problem maintaining a locking signal on the beacon until the doorway is constructed in the past?” Niles asked for the second time. He was showing his doubts and concerns in the past twenty minutes by grilling everyone in the conference room. Asking the same questions over and over to the very same people.
Virginia looked at Niles and simply shook her head as her thoughts remained on the master chief and his age. This mission was not for him and she knew it. SEAL instructor or not, he was just too old and too damn stubborn to admit that fact. Morales answered for her when she remained mute.
“The signal as of this moment is very strong.”
“Target area — they aren’t going to be put down in the water or released twenty thousand feet into the air, are they?” Niles asked as he was furiously writing down notes.
Morales again spoke up from Nevada. “The comp center has pinpointed the exact location and according to the British geological survey of 2014 it’s right on the edge of the newly named Durnsford Sea, approximately six hundred and twenty feet from the suspected edge of the inland shore. We’ll compensate by a mile east of the sea; that should be a safe guess as to a landing area. Equipment and men will be prepared for a mis-landing regardless. Heady, especially since the sea level landing is at this moment two miles below the surface of the ice. Europa says she can do it plus or minus one millimeter in height.”
On the large monitor Europa was projecting the star chart used to determine the exact time and location of the jump. Niles reached out and struck the button that activated the installed holographic system. Around the conference table the room illuminated with a ceiling full of star constellations. They revolved, stopped, and revolved again as Europa triple-checked her own figures. It was like the Event Group was sneaking a peak at the supercomputer’s arithmetic. The stars would expand outward from the time they suspected Everett had disappeared into the wormhole until they settled into their current position. Again and again Europa ran her model and she came up with the same results.
“Europa knows that lives are on the line,” Morales volunteered from the desert.
“Excuse me?” Niles said with a jolt, looking from the simulation and into the large monitor.
“Europa has learned the hard lesson of human loss. It had never been explained to her that her work could possibly send men and women to their deaths. I have since explained it to her. She knows what’s on the line now; she never did before.”
Niles thought that their new personnel move might have come a little too hastily as he listened. It was Alice who reached out with her hand and placed it on top of Niles’s and stilled him from questioning the new computer genius too harshly. He relented and moved on.
“Now, where is my missing geological specialist and our little Anya Korvesky?”
Coincidentally timed, a moment later the door opened and standing there were the two missing women. Sarah’s eyes went to Jack and then to Niles as she started to apologize for her sudden departure. She had several items in her hand as Anya accompanied her inside the conference room. They all noticed the way both Sarah and Anya made eye contact with Moira before sitting down.
“You know we are desperately short on time and you decide to take off without so much as a good-bye. You broke protocol by shutting down your cell phones’ geo locator. If you think we—”
Sarah cut Niles short. “I think we should get the entire story from Madam Mendelsohn about just how many people know about the existence of the doorway.”
Niles looked from Sarah toward the Traveler. He refrained from saying anything more about broken procedures as he studied the old woman. He didn’t have to broach the subject of security to a woman who had understood the need for it since 1942.
Sarah slid the disturbing charcoal drawings she had found inside the incinerator to the middle of the table. Charlie Ellenshaw stood and spread them out so all could see. Before Charlie realized it his hand moved quickly away after seeing the drawings in their half-incinerated state.
Niles raised one of the drawings and examined it. The depiction of children inside a concentration camp was vivid, unlike most camp drawings Niles had ever seen before inside the Holocaust museums. The detail was as if the artist was picturing the scene from memory. The one problem with that was the dates were handwritten by the artist in the lower right-hand corner.
“Nineteen seventy-one,” Niles said aloud.
“Nineteen sixty-seven here,” Charlie said as he was unable to touch the drawings again.
The images were stark and black. Children crying. Other children being led away to their deaths made most wince at the scenes all done in very disturbing charcoal. Anya turned away, knowing that this was her heritage being shown to her by the memory of some child who had lived through the nightmare.
It was Jack Collins who stood and turned the pictures over on the tabletop. Jack was one of those soldiers who found anything concerning the holocaust far beyond the imagination of a professional American soldier. The images always made him furious as to how a modern society or soldier could ever allow that to happen.
“How many did you bring back, Moira?” Anya asked. “How many children did you smuggle out when you couldn’t find your brother?”
Moira smiled as she looked at the faces around her. “All that I could. I know I changed the destinies of so many, but then again, Albert Einstein never had to look into the eyes of children on their way to mass slaughter. Yes, hundreds.” She braved the shocked looks of those around her. She saw no meanness in those looks, but one of awe and understanding… to a point.
Niles swallowed and calmed his scientific wariness at her actions but it was then that he realized the Event Group was about to attempt the same thing, on a smaller scale perhaps, but no less guilty of changing the destiny of one of their own.
At that moment an Air Force sergeant walked in and gave Niles a message and then made his way out. Compton read the note and then his good eye found the Traveler.