Timeline

Doniger paused. "We didn’t want him to go. Again, he threatened. In the end, we had no choice but to let him go. That was three days ago. He is still back there. He asked you for help, in a message he knew you would find. You know that site and time better than anyone else in the world. You have to go back and get him. You are his only chance."

"What exactly happened to him after he went back?" Marek said.

"We don’t know," Doniger said. "But he broke the rules."

"Rules?"

"You have to understand that this technology is still very new. We’ve been cautious about how we use it. We have been sending observers back for about two years now  –  using ex-marines, trained military people. But of course they are not historians, and we have kept them on a tight leash."

"Meaning what?"

"We haven’t ever let our observers enter the world back there. We haven’t allowed anyone to stay longer than an hour. And we haven’t allowed anyone to go more than fifty yards from the machine. Nobody has ever just left the machine behind and gone off into the world."

"But the Professor did?" Marek said.

"He must have, yes."

"And we’ll have to, too, if we’re going to find him. We’ll have to enter the world."

"Yes," Doniger said.

"And you’re saying we’re the first people ever to do this? The first people ever to step into the world?"

"Yes. You, and the Professor before you."

Silence.

Suddenly, Marek broke into a broad grin. "Terrific," he said. "I can’t wait!"

But the others said nothing. They looked uneasy, edgy.

Stern said, "About this guy they found in the desert. . . ."

"Joe Traub," Doniger said. "He was one of our best scientists."

"What was he doing in the desert?"

"Apparently, he drove there. They found his car. But we don’t know why he went."

Stern said, "Supposedly, he was all messed up, there was something about his fingers. . . ."

"That wasn’t in the autopsy report," Doniger said. "He died of a heart attack."

"Then his death had nothing to do with your technology?"

"Nothing at all," Doniger said.

There was another silence. Chris shifted in his chair. "In layman’s terms  –  how safe is this technology?"

"Safer than driving your car," Doniger said without hesitation. "You will be thoroughly briefed, and we’ll send you back with our experienced observers. The trip will last a maximum of two hours. You’ll just go back and get him."

Chris Hughes drummed his fingers on the table. Kate bit her lip. Nobody spoke.

"Look, this is all voluntary," Doniger said. "It’s entirely up to you whether you go or not. But the Professor has asked for your help. And I don’t think you would let him down."

"Why don’t you just send the observers?" Stern said.

"Because they don’t know enough, David. As you’re aware, it’s an entirely different world back there. You have the advantage of your knowledge. You know the site, and you know the time, in detail. You know languages and customs."

"But our knowledge is academic," Chris said.

"Not anymore," Doniger said.

The group filed out of the room, heading off with Gordon to see the machines. Doniger watched them go, then turned as Kramer entered the room. She had been watching everything on the closed-circuit television.

"What do you think, Diane?" Doniger said. "Will they go?"

"Yeah. They’ll go."

"Can they pull it off?"

Kramer paused. "I’d say it’s fifty-fifty."

They walked down a broad concrete ramp, large enough for a truck to drive down. At the bottom was a pair of heavy steel doors. Marek saw a half-dozen security cameras mounted in different locations around the ramp. The cameras turned, following them as they walked down to the doors. At the bottom of the ramp, Gordon looked up at the security cameras, and waited.

The doors opened.

Gordon led them through into a small room beyond. The steel doors clanged shut behind them. Gordon went forward to an inner set of doors, again waited.

Marek said, "You can’t open them yourself?"

"No."

"Why? They don’t trust you?"

"They don’t trust anybody," Gordon said. "Believe me, nobody gets in here unless we intend for them to get in."

The doors opened.

They walked into an industrial-looking metal cage. The air was cold, faintly musty. The doors closed behind them. With a whir, the cage began to descend.

Marek saw that they were standing in an elevator.

"We’re going down a thousand feet," Gordon said. "Be patient."

The elevator stopped and the doors opened. They walked down a long concrete tunnel, their footsteps echoing. Gordon said, "This is the control and maintenance level. The actual machines are another five hundred feet below us."

They came to a pair of heavy doors that were dark blue and transparent. At first, Marek thought they were made of extremely thick glass. But as the doors slid open on a motorized track, he saw slight movement beneath the surface. "Water," Gordon said. "We use a lot of water shielding here. Quantum technology is very sensitive to random outside influences  –  cosmic rays, spurious electronic fields, all of that. That’s why we’re down here in the first place."

Up ahead, they saw what appeared to be the doors to an ordinary laboratory hallway. Passing through another set of glass doors, they entered a hallway painted antiseptic white, with doors opening off on either side. The first door on the left said PREPACK. The second, FIELDPREP. And further down the hallway, they saw a sign marked simply TRANSIT.