The Traveler (2 page)

“Good, with securing the special package perhaps you can now realize how close this project is to my heart. To directly challenge the Führer's edict, one that was of my own design, would be considered by some as”—he smiled but only briefly—“treasonous? But the need to have complete cooperation from the test subjects cancels all that out, yes?”

Thomsen knew he had better answer right or he would be buried deep inside this bunker when it was razed to the ground after Himmler got what it was he desired out of him. He would show the man his resolve in the finalizing of the design and its test subjects.

“How could the advancement of science ever be construed as treasonous, Herr Reichsführer? As you will see our test subject is now cooperative and very much intelligent enough to see the final test through. The Traveler has accomplished this feat more than once. With the assurances now in place with the transfer of her brother, yes, the Traveler will complete the final test and we can begin to transfer equipment to Berlin at the first opportune moment.”

Himmler raised his brow and then nodded. He turned and stepped from the large lift. “I am pleased to hear your reputation for humanitarian causes has its limits.” Heinrich Himmler looked back at the much taller scientist as he wanted to see his expression when he realized that the scientist's small meetings he held with his staff over the use of slave labor as test subjects had not gone unnoticed. Thomsen remained silent as Himmler smiled again, this time even more brief than the first, and then nodded for his security detail to move ahead. Thomsen and the other three observers moved quickly to catch up.

The men were led to a large enclosed area that overlooked an even larger room filled with men, women, and equipment, the likes of which none of the SS men or industrialists had ever seen before. Standing in the middle of the laboratory space was what looked like a large door frame constructed of a material that was not immediately recognizable. This frame had large conductors that coiled out of the top and sides of the machine. The entire flooring was covered in a rubberized material that protected the workers inside from static electricity. The men and women all wore coats of either white or blue—it was explained to Himmler that the technicians had been broken into two teams. The white team handled the power output and consumption, which would be massive in scope, while the blue team was in charge of radar tracking, signal acquisition, and would perform the actual conducting of the test. There were sixteen rows of stations with a technician at each console and over 170 power cables running from the monitoring stations to the Doorway, as the Reichsfürher had come to call it. He was adamant about using the doorway's code name because of its British connotations in using its full moniker, the Wellsian Doorway, in honor of the man who wrote about this very subject many years before.

Thomsen turned and bowed his head at Himmler as the Reichsführer remained standing at the large, thick window that gave visitors a view of the entire floor below.

“With your permission,” the German scientist asked.

The small man nodded just once.

“As you know, gentlemen, this project began in earnest in 1941. It is meant as a ‘fail-safe,' if you will, against the Americans entering the war against Germany, a scenario our farsighted Reichsführer saw as a precursor to the Fatherland losing the war with so much of that world pitted against us. This fail-safe, gentlemen, is now ready and may I say with pride, fully functioning. This will be the final non-German personnel test in the schedule. The next test will be conducted by a representative of the Reichsfüher's staff and myself when our equipment has been properly placed inside our Berlin complex.”

Himmler knew that they had lost at least sixty reassigned non-German personnel in the doorway's testing. Some of the lost were recovered right back inside the facility, mangled and in grisly pieces at the doorway's opening, or were lost in the void of time and space.

“As you already know the first gate was commissioned in May of 1942 and was completed that same month. Our scheduling of tests has been nonstop since that historic day. The first success came three days ago.” Thomsen handed Himmler a folded newspaper. As he was unfolding it he saw the headline in bold print as described by the
London Times
over one year ago: “American Fortress of Corregidor Falls to Japs.” And then next to the headline was the scrawled signature of none other than himself. Himmler nodded as he refolded the newspaper. “May I assume that is your signature next to the headline, Herr Reichsführer, and no others?”

The miniscule man nodded his head and handed the newspaper over to the next man who examined it and passed it on.

“As you know, the very first Wellsian Doorway was built right here in this room you see below. It was dismantled exactly six months ago as we built the secondary door—the one you are now seeing below. The first doorway has ceased to exist for exactly one year, gentlemen, as it was dismantled in the past—only the doorway and its signal remain. No personnel, no power other than what it would take to run the testing. This newspaper and several others like it were placed next to the first doorway over a year ago. To see these newspapers again is proof positive that the Wellsian Doorway”—here he paused for dramatic effect—“works beyond all expectations.”

Himmler looked pleased but only he knew just how pleased.

“The third doorway was completed this month, only this one was constructed in Berlin at a secret location known only to the assembly team and the Reichsführer. This doorway will be utilized if the worst-case scenario happens and the war is lost. The new location is far more viable an option of escape for … you gentlemen than out here in Dortmund.”

“So, we are convinced this is the only way in which Einstein's hypothesis can be achieved?” asked the man who represented Krupp Steel.

“Yes, Herr Einstein has theorized that the balance of inner-dimensional travel can only be achieved through conducting poles of influence. In other words, one doorway has to be connected to another doorway or the travel is unachievable if the direct transfer of material, or in this case, a human, can get to the coordinating doorway in the past. If there is no corresponding doorway the Traveler will be lost and deposited in a time frame, air, water, or land coordinates not of his choosing. Maybe even lost three or four kilometers above the Earth, there would be no rhyme or reason to the Traveler's exit point from the originating Wellsian Doorway without a corresponding doorway, or signal for the first doorway to lock on to.”

“So, in essence, what you are saying is the Traveler would not only be sent to a time in the past not of his choosing, but may also materialize deep within the oceans or miles into the sky?”

“Correct, it was never hypothesized by Einstein that this was a safe science to use.”

“We know it takes an inordinate amount of power to create the rip in time, but how is that action achieved? The thoughts and schemes of men such as yourself and Herr Einstein fly far above our barbaric ways of thinking,” the immaculately dressed gentleman from Klienmann Electronics inquired.

“Ah, the gist of the theory.” Thomsen clapped his hands together in excitement as Himmler took in a deep breath.

He was forced to listen to the egghead braggart tell his tale, one in which he was growing ever tired of hearing. The man could not keep his mouth shut, and Himmler knew that was going to be a problem that was easily remedied when the final testing and assembly was complete inside the Berlin city limits. He brushed all thought of covering his tracks aside as Thomsen continued his explanation.

“The doorway we have here will read the coordinates we have programmed into the Traveler's jump pattern, which in turn will read the radio and electron waves from the area of the entered coordinates. When it doesn't find a corresponding signal the signal amplifiers start a search until it finds the correct signal from a doorway we know isn't there any longer, because we dismantled all but the portal and signal amplifiers almost as soon as it was built. The signal is then transferred to a transmission tower high in the Harz Mountains. The reinforced radio waves will search time and space for its sister signal. We know it will not find it simply because it no longer exists—in this current time frame—but it does occupy the same space in the past. Still, the searching transmission will not be defeated when the acquisition of past signal cannot be found. It will expand into space, which we all know is limitless. However, our signal transmitters are so powerful that it travels, and then travels even farther through space until it gets a glimmer of a return.” Thomsen gestured toward the laboratory floor where a technician leaned into a microphone at his station.

“Signal acquired at zero twenty hours local time, latitude fifty-one degrees north, longitude seven degrees twenty-seven east.”

“Excellent, now confirm signal origin, please,” Thomsen said into the intercom.

As the men in the room watched on, the signal emanating from the doorway below it ceased to beep. On the overhead speakers they heard a weaker signal coming from somewhere other than the doorway they were looking at.

“Signal capture confirmed, the doorways are conversing with each other,” called out the technician from below.

“Are you saying that the transmission is now being picked up by the original doorway dismantled last year?” one of the three industrialists asked. Thomsen saw the smile grow on Himmler's face, and that was the only approval he needed.

“Correct. Now we will make the connection and the doorway will open. Thus far we have the power to only send two hundred kilos through the door, but we will expand on that as we get more power from the Möhne Dam. The force of the connection expands the rift until a portal, tunnel as we call it, is constructed through the time and space dimensions as described by my colleague Herr Einstein. We have yet to figure the dynamics of the tunnel, but we will learn far more in the next year or so with continued testing and refinement. Soon we will have the full dynamics of the doorway solved.”

“You have until Christmas 1945, Herr Professor,” Himmler said as the others in the room looked shocked.

“Such a precise and restrictive date, Herr Reichsfüher?” Thomsen inquired worriedly.

“My offices have calculated the approximate month of Germany's final destruction, and that was the most optimistic view rendered. By then we will all be on the run from the Jew-loving allies. Then we will be caught and hung.” Himmler turned and faced the men in the room. They all knew that his estimates of the downfall of the Thousand-Year Reich were accurate. “This machine has to be online before this happens. I, gentlemen, do not intend to follow our great leader into his immortal destiny.”

The men in the room were now only twenty minutes away from confirming the fact that they had a viable escape route out of Germany when the war was finally lost.

The plan? Run to a place they knew was far safer than the capital would be in 1945. That place was right here, almost two years in the past.

The age of time travel had arrived.

TWO HUNDRED MILES WEST OF THE MÖHNE DAM, GERMANY (OPERATION CHASTISE)

Squadron Leader Guy Gibson felt the heaviness of his Avro Lancaster bomber as it flew at twenty-two thousand feet above France. They had successfully departed England without arousing suspicion just as the plan had called for. His squadron of heavy night bombers was now entering Germany without the Luftwaffe knowing they were coming. Target—the Möhne Dam near Dortmund, Germany. Their task, take out the dam that supplied power to various locations the allies wished to go away. Not only was the process of developing the hard water needed in atomic research progressing near the dams of Germany, but the rumors of even more disturbing projects had started to filter through the minutia of intelligence coming through London and Washington.

Gibson checked on his navigator.

“How are we coming back there, Terry?” he asked through his rubber mask.

“Eighty-seven kilometers from target. We are exactly two minutes ahead of schedule.”

“Bloody good,” Gibson said to himself as he knew the timing of the bomb drop had to be precise to the minute for the most audacious attack to date outside of the American raid on Tokyo by Colonel Jimmy Doolittle a year before.

“Very good, boys. Now, how is our darling little
Bouncing Baby Boy
doing back there?” Gibson asked into his mic.

“Upkeep is now breathing, waiting for final arming sequence,” came the reply from the bomb bay compartment of the large aircraft.

Hanging half in and half out of the bomb bay doors was what the RAF had dubbed “Upkeep.” The cylindrical bomb was designed to hit the water in front of a dam and “skip” over the reservoir to the wall of concrete and slowly settle to the bottom of the reservoir where it would detonate at its base. The resulting explosion would be catastrophic to the core of the dam, bringing it all down. There would be two nights of these specialized raids on the dam complexes of Germany.

The
Bouncing Baby Boy
was on its way to end Germany's attempt at developing an atomic weapons platform. However, Squadron Leader Gibson had been briefed and knew that the mission was so much more than that.

THE WELLSIAN DOORWAY

“Expand the doorway, please, gentlemen,” Thomsen said as an assistant started passing out earplugs. It was Himmler who raised a brow. “The sonic wave that assaults the inner ear can be rather uncomfortable without protection, Herr Reichsführer.” He nervously watched as the leader of the SS nodded his head only once.

Below, the technicians were moving about excitedly as the doorway started to expand by hydraulic lines into a more circular pattern that allowed the stainless steel frame, lined with ceramic tiles, to take its shape so the magnets inside the ceramics could negotiate the complex design. The ceramics were designed to hold back the generated heat that would in turn protect the Traveler from being fried alive inside. The Wellsian Doorway was now six times the size it had been when the hydraulics expansion had started. A loud clang was heard as fifty technicians came through an expanded tunnel with an electric cart pulling a long train of what looked like chain-link. The entirety of the chain was one hundred feet in length and looked as if it went from one conductive coil to the next. Once the electric car was in place a remotely controlled arm started pulling the secured end of the chain up until the entire length was only a few feet from the concrete floor.