The Traveler (39 page)

Inside the large spinning wheel of the doorway the trapped atoms started racing around the interior of the wheel and then another from stream of protons from the opposing end. Both came on at the speed of sound as they passed each other. With every revolution the two particles came closer and closer together. It was only the sheer brilliance of Europa that timed the sequence perfectly and kept the two from colliding before the doorway was fully open. They needed the power of the colliding atoms and protons to punch a hole large enough out of this time dimension and into the desired target of Antarctica of 227,000 years ago.

Inside the observation room some of the department heads turned and they had to smile as Will, Sarah, Anya, and Jason entered. The director looked their way and nodded. He knew he would never be able to keep them out anyway. They had to know if their friends made it through the doorway and he couldn't blame them in the least. He turned and saw Jack and the others looking up at him. Collins saluted and then nodded that they were as ready as they would ever be.

“Dr. Morales, you have my permission to initiate sequence. Note that it was upon my order. Log it into Europa that I am solely responsible for the parameters and of the results of this mission.”

“Noted, Doctor,” Morales said with a faltering smile as he turned to his technicians. “Gentlemen, let's open the door. Colonel Collins, good luck to you and your team, sir.”

Jack and the others braced themselves. Henri felt the reassuring weight of the mini M-4 on his back and was sorely tempted to unsling it and be ready for a charging rhinoceros or whatever terror was waiting for them.

For the first time since she had known him, Alice watched as Niles Compton offered a silent prayer as he closed his good eye and lowered his head. The director had never been a religious man, but she knew that after the recent war he had changed—they all had.

“Los Angeles,
one hundred and fifteen percent power. Europa, expand the bandwidth and lock doorway on to target area. Let's bring the particles up to light speed.”

They all felt and heard the electrical whine coming from the outside as
Los Angeles
ramped up her powerful and highly experimental reactor. The power coursed through the thick lines and soon they all heard the particle accelerator inside the doorway start to charge with an ear-splitting whine.

Virginia Pollock sat down at her station as Jenks looked over at her through the protective glass. Even with her goggles on he could tell she had been crying. She smiled and then started her procedure.

“Injecting the core material. Bring revolutions to five hundred thousand RPM, please.”

The doorway started spinning faster. The noise was tremendous and then the sudden heavy vibration almost knocked Jack and the others from their feet. Up above Moira Mendelsohn had never beheld such raw power before. She had had a limited supply and had to use it very judiciously back in the day.

Virginia found she couldn't give the last command. The lights in the room dimmed as the doorway brightened as the opposing particles of atoms and protons finally achieved the speed of light inside of their protective cocoon. The colors were swirling faster than they could track. It was Xavier Morales who noticed her dilemma.

“Heat is holding, start the laser system,” he said from the large monitor overhead, knowing Virginia was hesitant to send the team off.

Ringing the doorway's frame, the 162 lasers fired. The green and blue beams of light cut a swath of brilliance through the darkness until it struck the lead-lined wall beyond. The rounded sphere of laser light held steady.

“Europa, please bring lasing system to full power—watch your eyes, gentlemen,” he called out as Jack and the others lowered their gaze from the doorway. Suddenly, the intensity of the green and blue lasers heightened to where no one could view them until their eyes adjusted. “Okay, final RPM boost in five, four, three, two, one, initiate power surge.”

The scream of the revolving Wellsian Doorway cracked the viewing glass in the observation deck from the audible assault from the platform, forcing those inside to back off nervously with not just a few nervous chuckles. Sarah gripped the windowsill that much tighter as she watched Jack far below.

The doorway hit its revolution limit and a powerful roar filled the air inside the room as she came to full power-up. Europa sounded a warning tone that pierced even the noise of the doorway.

“Collider is at one hundred percent,” Europa said with her Marilyn Monroe voice as calming as ever, and believe it or not to most that was comforting to them. “Matter infusion in three, two, one, infusion initiated.”

Inside the rapidly spinning doorway the world exploded outward as the atoms and protons inside the collider mated at the speed of light, the collision producing the power surge needed to penetrate the dimensional rift and exploit it. Before anyone realized it, their world of knowledge and theory flew from their minds as the most amazing thing they had ever witnessed began. The laser lights started to bend backward toward the doorway as if a powerful suction were bending them. A human-made black hole was forming, powerful enough to bend light. At the speed of light the lasers shot back and into the Wellsian Doorway and at that very moment, the impossible happened. Never again would the Event Group doubt any science that Albert Einstein had theorized.

The lasers penetrated the doorway and the room exploded with the fantastic spectacle of light as the pressure wave of lasers sent back a hot, humid shot of air. Inside that brief moment of converging times all of the eyewitnesses would later say they all smelled another world as it invaded their own.

Before them, Jack and his team saw the lasers vanish over and around them until they were covered in a tunnel-like corridor. The lasers vanished into a swirling vortex of bright white light. They had their external air valves shut down and were on their limited thirty-minute supply of suit oxygen; if not, Jack Collins would have smelled the ancient savagery of the strange world they were about to step into.

“Tone signal has locked, you will be entering at ground level one and half miles east from the rescue beacon.” Xavier Morales could say no more as he anxiously watched the brave men almost two thousand miles away. It was now up to the team leader.

Below, Jack started the tracked vehicle. The train of men slowly and hesitantly entered the Wellsian Doorway and vanished.

The age of time travel had officially arrived for the United States.

 

PART THREE

THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT

Morality is of the highest importance—but for us, not for God.

—Albert Einstein, from

Albert Einstein: The Human Side

 

16

The pain, though less than the unprotected nonceramic construction of the earlier German and Mendelsohn doorways as reported by Madam herself, was still enough to make Collins and the others bend over. It was as if their very marrow were being assaulted by molten lead. Farbeaux would worry much later about the long-term effects of such substantial exposure to neutrons, protons, and atoms that flew through air at the speed of light. If it were not for the tractor and its ability to continue to transit the corridor between dimensions, they all feared they would have faltered and stumbled inside the hurricane of light and sound. Charlie closed his eyes against the pain and nearly crumpled to a knee. The light was blinding and it seemed the very atomized particles of this strange transitioning passed directly through their suits and bodies—which in actuality did just that. The team was essentially disintegrated and then their own DNA was reconstituted as they entered the dimensional plane of a new time.

Jack and Henri were the first to feel the sudden difference in their footing as each halting step brought them even more of the assault to their pain centers. The hardness of the old concrete floor of the naval warehouse was gone as their specialized boots were now walking upon a soft, spongelike footing. The pain eased and the team slowly recovered as they walked, each step more pain free. They thought they were through the worst of it when the wave of nausea gripped each man. It quickly passed but was replaced by dizziness that threatened once more to send them sprawling. A blinding flash of light illuminated the air around them and then the brightness vanished and the sound exited the new world with it. They soon found themselves in utter darkness. Charlie clicked on the light that was affixed to his right shoulder and his helmet.

“Shut it down, Charlie,” Jack said through his com link just as he raised his tinted visor. He looked skyward and the night slowly started to take shape around him. “Your eyes will adjust. Look up and concentrate on the stars. You can see a few of them through the canopy and the—”

That was when they all noticed the heavy fall of black and gray ash as it fell upon them. Even as they looked the dark ash cloud blotted out the remaining stars. Charlie still did as Jack had ordered and shut off both lights.

All four men heard the heavy breathing and just assumed it was Charlie. It wasn't long before they realized that each of them was the culprit. Jack released the toggle on the tractor's remote and the small train came to a stop. He turned and looked back at where the doorway had been. He saw ash-covered jungle in the darkness as his eyes slowly adjusted. They seemed to be in a small thigh-high grass clearing. He once more looked at the sky and the moon was just sitting in this strange land, that and the ash clouds of angry elements was why the night was so dark. Collins looked over at Henri just as Jenks and Ellenshaw joined them. The master chief still had to have a handhold on the tractor as he steadied his shaking body.

“Well, we made it someplace,” Jack said as he looked around them and the stillness of the green canopy they found themselves under. The moon vanished low in the northern sky and then the ash had a complete hold on the night. The darkness became even more still than it had been just a moment before. They all knew it was the total absence of light that played tricks on their minds.

“Yeah, so far anyway,” Jenks said as he looked at a small box he held in his hand. “Wherever we are the oxygen level is off the chart.” He looked up from his readout. “Twenty times the content of our atmosphere at home. No pollutants other than this.” He reached up and caught a handful of hard ash as the pumice-like material fought its way through the thick tree canopy above them. Jenks turned his hand over and allowed the ash to slide off his glove. “Heavy ash particulate. It looks like your volcanoes are acting up big time, Colonel. This isn't from just a smoking cauldron, it's activity that's carrying some weight to it. This stuff is being ejected far from the caldera.” Jenks looked to the south and that was when he saw the clouds in that direction were tinted red and flashed heavy electrical activity.

“We only have four hours' extra supply of O2 in the trailers, we're bound to run out. Can we breathe this stuff?” Jack asked.

Before Jenks could answer they saw Henri reach up and slide his locking mechanism on his helmet. He waited a moment and then looked at Collins. “We may as well find out now rather than later if we have to pack up and get out of here.” He lifted the helmet free and then slowly took a breath.

Charlie couldn't help but take a deep breath while he watched the Frenchman, as if he were willing the air to be good.

“One thing we must do before we leave this place,” Henri said as he took another deep breath, “is to bottle as much air as we can to sell on the black market back home.”

Jack smiled and then removed his own helmet. He was happy not to hear the warning alarm for a bad environment sound in his ears just the same.

Before long each man had to sit in the darkness as the air was so heavy and oxygenated that they became momentarily giddy with an overdose of something none of them had ever breathed before—unpolluted air from a world producing such an abundance through the ancient plant life. It was impossible for them to fully comprehend its purity.

“This clearing seems good enough to get our bearings. Master Chief, can you get our precise location?”

“Yeah, I'll break out the sextant,” Jenks joked.

Jack cleared his eyes and took a shallow breath as he tried to limit his intake as much as he could. He looked at his gloved hand and then unzipped it and peered at the illuminated dial on his watch. He was shocked that the timepiece made it through the electrical hell as they passed through the doorway. He again glanced up but was unable to see anything beyond the canopy as the falling ash came down like a winter snowfall.

“It should be daylight soon enough. We'll forego camp and make ready to move at first light. We'll set up in a more defensive position when we can see what the hell we're doing. I don't relish the idea of flashing a bunch of lights around without knowing what may be watching.”

The stillness of the night was shattered by the scream of a large cat somewhere in the distance. Each man froze as the cry echoed against some far-off obstruction and bounced back.

“That was not a normal large-cat call. I've heard them all and believe me, that's something that hasn't walked the Earth for well over ten thousand years,” Charlie explained excitedly.

Jenks, Farbeaux, and Collins looked at Ellenshaw as if he had just reverted back to his old, ditsy self. However, it was the Frenchman who put things into perspective once again as he removed the small M-4 from his back and made sure to charge it.

“I'll say this once again: You people never cease to amaze me in your unlimited and imaginative ways you have for trying to get me killed.”

As if in answer to Farbeaux's observation the unseen beast roared again, and this time it was answered by a second, far closer call before the echo of the first had faded to nothing. As they listened a heavy rain came and started cleaning the jungle around them of the white and gray ash. Still, the sound of the animal life of the Antarctic continent 227,000 years ago told them they were indeed a long way from home.