Noxon held on to the box of mice.
“Excuse us,” said a mouse, “and I know this will sound self-serving and you’ll interpret it as an attempt to finagle our way out of the box, which it is, but we would feel a lot safer about this change in time direction if we had direct contact with your skin the way Ram Odin does.”
Noxon understood at once and, despite his annoyance with and distrust of them, he opened the box and let the mice crawl up inside his sleeves and pantlegs and down the neck of his shirt. “Thank you,” several of them murmured. Noxon appreciated the politeness, though he also knew that once they got back into forward-time—if they did—he’d wish there were a way to make them get back in the box—which there wasn’t. Short of stripping naked and having the expendable pick them off his body one by one. And who knew how much damage they could cause before he was able to carry out such a plan?
They had served their time in prison, and now they were free again, and he would have to deal with them like the sentient beings they were.
“All right,” said Noxon. “I don’t know how long it will take me to find an appropriate path. Earth is a long way off, hundreds of thousands of kilometers even now. And the nubs of paths are very small even close up. This may take me a while. It may not even be possible.”
“We won’t interrupt you,” said Ram Odin.
The first challenge was to find paths at all—or, rather, the nubs that implied the presence of a path. Noxon began with near-contemporary paths in the construction station itself. He quickly found a few, then a lot of them. He began spotting paths that must be in nearby ships and shuttles, and then in farther ones.
It got harder and harder, the farther they were. And none of them were all that far.
He realized that there was no chance he could spot any individual paths on Earth, especially since they would all be mere nubs anyway.
“I need a second plan,” said Noxon. “I can see the nearby paths in the station and ships but Earth is just too far.”
For a few moments, there was silence.
“Well,” said Ram, “that’s useful information.”
“Can we start up our engines and move away from here, closer to the surface?” asked Noxon.
“Theoretically,” said the expendable. “But we’ve been in an atom-for-atom lock with the structural components of the outbound ship. The energy cost of breaking away might be too high. We don’t understand the nature of those bonds, since they’ve never been detected or measured in nature. Nor can we be sure in which direction Earth might lie. Or how far we’ve traveled in relation to it.”
“Clear enough answer,” said Noxon, who understood little of the physics but knew what “probably not” sounded like when he heard it.
“The new plan is obvious,” said a mouse.
“The mice think it’s obvious,” said Noxon.
“The mice can come live in my butt,” said Ram Odin.
“No need to be crude,” said a mouse.
“He’s being hospitable,” said another.
“What’s your obvious plan?” asked Noxon.
“Slice onward until the time when they haven’t yet started constructing the outbound ship.”
The expendable heard this, too, of course, and immediately began working it out. “Looking at the ship’s memory, which includes all the reports on the construction process, the ship was finished on—”
“No,” said Noxon. “We need a time when there was nothing in the space we occupy, but there were people up here so I can attach to their paths.”
“If it’s at all possible,” said Ram Odin, “can you seek out a time, about twenty-five years, when there were no paths at all, and choose a path before that break?”
“Why?” asked Noxon. “What’s the gap?”
“The comet that came so close it threw the Moon out of its orbit. Tidal forces then tore chunks out of the Moon, which formed a ring that destroyed everything that was orbiting Earth. I’d really like us not to reappear during that time. And before it would be better than after.”
“Why? Either way, we’ll be seen.”
“I don’t want you to be disappointed in the dingy little runt of a Moon we have left,” said Ram Odin. “You need to see the glorious Moon under whose influence the human species evolved.”
“I’m pretty sure I’ll see both versions of the Moon, if this works at all,” said Noxon. “So here’s what I’ll do. I’ll take us forward to a time before this ship was built. Then I’ll attach to a forward-moving path out here in space. I’ll switch the whole ship to that timeflow. If it works, then I’ll immediately jump us further into the past without looking for a path at all.”