Camouflage netting.
From higher up, he never would have seen it. He circled around, powering down his jets and slowing his air speed. There was something down there, hidden beneath a wide expanse of camouflage netting covering an area about the size of half a basketball court. There were numerous gaps in the netting that let the sunlight through, but from higher up, it simply blended in with the rest of the forest. Delaney thought he could see a clearing down there, but he needed to get even lower for a closer look. He flew to the far edge of the netting and slowly started to descend through the trees.
Something stung him.
He slapped his hand to his neck, thinking that it was some insect, but he felt something sticking there, a tiny metal dart, no larger than a splinter. He felt another sharp, stinging sensation in his check and another in his temple, followed by several more in rapid succession. The drug was fast acting and took hold almost immediately. He started to lose control of the floater pat as he circled crazily through the trees, some ten to fifteen feet above the ground, smashing through branches as everything started to blur. Like a pilot with a crippled plane gliding in, out of control, Delaney tried to set down before he lost consciousness. Just before everything went black, he managed to shut the jets off and dropped the remaining few feet into a thicket, his forward momentum carrying him headlong into the bushes.
“They should have been back by now,” said Andre, nervously drumming her fingers on the tabletop.
“But they have been gone only a few minutes,” Gulliver said.
“They should have been back.”
“Perhaps it’s taking them longer than they expected.”
“You don’t understand,” said Andre. “We’re talking about time travel, Lem. They said they’d be back in about two minutes. Our time. It could have taken them two days to meet with Forrester and pick up the floater paks, and they could still have set their warp discs to clock back in here two minutes after they left.” She checked her disc. “And that was fifteen minutes ago.”
She smashed her fist down on the table, almost upsetting the wine bottle.
“Damn it! First Lucas disappears, God only knows where to, then Darkness takes off after him and now Finn and Creed are overdue. Something’s gone wrong. I just know it.”
“What can we do?” said Gulliver.
“For this moment, nothing,” Andre said, with a tight grimace. “They’re supposed to be coming back here. And Dr. Darkness will be coming back as soon as he finds Lucas. We’ve simply got to wait, but I hate not knowing what’s going on.”
“How do you think I feel?” said Gulliver, with a sigh. “At least what you are doing makes sense to you. You understand it, whereas I … I can only marvel at these things because I can’t even begin to comprehend them. Time travel; a dead man coming back to life because somehow he didn’t die and yet he did; a transparent, ghostlike man who lives upon some other planet, farther away than I can even imagine … it all defies belief, and yet I cannot dispute the reality of any of it. I tell you that if this table were to suddenly come alive and start to stroll around the room, I would not be surprised.”
“You asked for it,” said Andre. “You could have told us what we wanted to know and that would’ve been the end of it. You can still get out of it, you know.”
“Yes, but I would miss the adventure of a lifetime,” Gulliver said, with a grin. “Poor Mr. Swift. He so liked my story about the little people. I wonder what he would have made of this!”
“For your own good, you’d damn well better make sure he never hears of this,” said Andre. “You’ve told him more than enough already!” She shook her head. “Frankly, I still don’t understand why Forrester let you come along on this mission. It’s simply too damn dangerous. How did you ever talk him into it?”
“Ah, well, he’s a soldier,” said Gulliver, picking up a small clay pipe and packing it with some shag tobacco. “And a general, at that. As a ship’s surgeon, I have had some experience with serving under military men and I have seen my share of strong-willed commanders. Emotional appeals are wasted on such men. One must appeal to their pragmatism, to their sense of efficiency.”
Andre looked at him with interest. “What did you tell him?”
“Simply that removing my memory of what had happened and sending me back home after all that I had seen and experienced would be a waste of a potentially valuable resource,” he said, lighting up the pipe and filling the room with the pleasant, rich smell of red Virginia tobacco blended with some Turkish leaf. “Sandy Steiger, may he rest in peace, obviously fulfilled some sort of function here. That it was a military posting was not difficult to surmise from all that I subsequently heard. And after I discussed the matter with General Forrester, I came to a clearer understanding of what it is that soldiers, Temporal Observers such as Sandy Steiger, do. Perhaps I could not fulfill that function myself, but I could certainly provide assistance as a son of liaison and subordinate. Why waste a man when you can put him to good use?”
“I don’t believe it,” Andre said. “You volunteered to be a field agent?”
“It seems there is some precedent for this,” said Gulliver, with a smile. “Yourself, for instance. The general also explained how certain agents had employed people from the time periods to which they were sent and I submitted that I was eminently qualified. I am better educated than most people in this time and I already have some experience in these matte
rs. I told him that the potential benefits of accepting my services would seem to far outweigh the risks and he agreed. “
“Lem, you’re an amazing man,” said Andre, with a smile.
“Indeed, Miss Cross, I quite agree,” said a voice from behind them.
As Andre started to turn around, there was the cough of a silenced semiautomatic pistol and the empty wine bottle on the table burst apart into fragments of green glass.
“Please make no sudden moves, either one of you. I don’t intend to kill you, but I will if you force my hand.”
“Lord, now what?” said Gulliver. “And who is this?”
Andre stared at the gunman in the custom-tailored, mauve silk suit and slowly shook her head. “Lem, I haven’t the faintest idea. “
The first thing Lucas thought was that he had materialized directly in the path of an oncoming train. The ground was’ shaking and there was a rumbling sound, an incredible din, and a fierce trumpeting and then a Roman legionary knocked into him and sent him sprawling.