Leahy picked up a pencil from the desk and twirled it around in his fingers while he digested the information. Something was seriously wrong with the whole picture. Physical damage had been inflicted on the machine, but no one was present at the time it had occurred. The statement made no sense. “I’d like to take a look at the area if possible,” he said.
“I think that’s a good idea,” Durant replied. He raised his eyebrows and cast a sideways glance at Williams. “Let’s all go.”
“I’ll have to beg off,” Kasdan said. “I have some important work to get done before the end of the day." He returned his coffee cup to the kitchenette and walked to the door. He opened it, then turned and spoke to Leahy. "Good luck, Matt. I hope everything works out." He nodded to Williams and walked out the door, closing it behind him.
When they reached the guard station that controlled access to the Chronocom they each went through the same computer scan as required for access to the main research building. Williams was last, but when he placed his palm against the screen the panel lit up with UNIDENTIFIED SCAN and a loud buzz sounded from a hidden speaker. The two guards immediately stepped in front of the elevator doors, their postures challenging. The others had already entered the elevator, but Durant stepped back out.
“It’s okay, men,” he assured them. “I forgot Captain Williams hasn’t been cleared for this level; however, I can vouch for him.”
The Marines relaxed a little, but they continued to block the doors. “I’m sorry, sir,” said one of them with corporal stripes, “but no one can be admitted without computer recognition.”
Durant nodded and tried a different tact. “You know who I am, Corporal,” his voice was stern. “This is an emergency situation. On my authority, please stand aside and let Captain Williams enter the elevator.”
The corporal shook his head and remained stationary. “Sir, you know authorization can only be issued by SecCom.” He paused and cast a dubious glance at Williams. “Would you like me to call the duty officer?”
“That won’t be necessary, Corporal. You’re exactly right.” He took Williams by the arm and they walked a couple of steps away from the elevator. “Would you mind waiting here for us, Chuck? We’ll only be a few minutes.”
“No problem, sir,” Williams answered. He glanced at the Marines. “It’s good that they followed their orders. I’ll be here when you get back.”
Durant stepped back into the elevator and pushed the down button. When the doors closed he turned to Leahy. “I hated to give that demonstration at Captain Williams’s expense, but I wanted you to see that there’s no way an unauthorized person can gain entrance to this level.”
Leahy nodded without comment. It was a clever move on Durant’s part. His stomach tingled as the elevator descended. When it stopped the doors opened to reveal a large, softly lighted rectangular room. About twenty feet directly ahead was a glass wall that reached from floor to ceiling. Electronic equipment of all descriptions, including a number of mainframe computers, sat behind the glass. The low ceiling, painted a dazzling white, was thickly lined with conduits and pipes of all sizes. Tiny colored lights blinked intermittently on hundreds of instruments as technicians in white lab coats moved among them, tending to their needs. The scene made Leahy think of what the bridge of an imaginary starship might look like.
They followed Durant through a pair of glass doors leading into the computer room. An attendant working at one of the terminals stood up and acknowledged them as they entered.
“Open the Chronocom entrance for us please, Harry.” Durant said to the man.
The technician sat back down and began typing on a keyboard. When he finished, a soft tone sounded at one end of the room. Two black metal doors set in a solid wall at that location slid apart, revealing a small chamber beyond. At Durant's instruction they crossed the room and entered the chamber. When they were all inside, the doors closed automatically.
Leahy felt a gentle wash of cool air coming from the floor and ceiling. It flowed over them for a few seconds before being evacuated through registers in each wall. He gave Durant a questioning look.
“Dust particles from our clothing and hair are being removed,” he explained.
When the evacuation process was complete, another set of doors opposite the entranceway slid smoothly apart. Leahy, who had been standing nearest the doors, was the first to step through. The others filed in and stood beside him. He was already impressed with the level of technology at Apache Point, but he was not prepared for what he now saw. It was almost beyond imagination.
The room was circular, at least a hundred feet in diameter, with a floor that looked like polished black marble. The ceiling was also black, but of a dull texture. Instead of an ordinary wall, the entire perimeter of the room was lined from floor to ceiling with alternating panels of green and white material, each about four feet wide and twelve feet high. The panels glowed in the soft light and seemed to pulse with a gentle throbbing sound. Behind a waist high railing, directly in the center of the room, was the Chronocom.
Like the room, it was circular and sat on a low dais thirty feet wide. Sticking up along the rim of the dais were hundreds of vertical rods about five feet in length, spaced a few inches apart. In the center, a massive shaft of black metal rose almost to the bottom of a glittering silver dome about ten feet wide. The dome had no visible means of support, appearing to hang in midair above the shaft. The structure gave the impression of a monstrous black and silver mushroom. Except for the rods, the entire structure was slowly rotating in a clockwise direction. The rods themselves moved up and down in random order, apparently synchronized in some way with the moving dais and dome. It made Leahy think of a fantastic carousel with the horses missing from their poles.
They followed Durant to a horseshoe shaped console positioned just outside the railing. In the center was a monitor showing the computer room through which they had just passed. Dozens of colored buttons and digital readouts were scattered across the surface of the console. A gooseneck microphone protruded just to the left of the monitor. The physicist stepped up to the mike and pressed one of the buttons.
“I’m going to lower the shield, Harry,” he said into the mike. “Will you please give me the code?”
Leahy moved up to stand behind Durant and looked over his shoulder at the monitor. He watched the technician who had opened the doors for them begin punching out data on his keyboard. He consulted his monitor for a few seconds then turned and faced the camera.
“Code ready, sir.” His voice came over an invisible speaker.
“Transmit,” Durant ordered.
A digital readout above a numbered keypad on the console lit up with the numerals 8377. They watched as he punched in the code. There was a soft hum and the black shaft began to descend into the dais, leaving the dome suspended in place. As it receded Leahy saw that it was hollow, with a large transparent tube filled with boiling red liquid in its center. After it had dropped about four feet into the floor, the shaft stopped and the bubbling tube itself began to descend into the base of the dais. As it dropped, a faint green glow began to illuminate the floor of the dais. The source of the light soon became apparent, for mounted atop the tube like a huge glowing emerald was the stellarite itself. It was roughly spherical, about eight inches in diameter.
Leahy watched, fascinated, as the tube stopped its downward motion and began to rotate. The stellarite turned with it, displaying its opposite side. On that side it was dark and pitted, with hundreds of hairline fractures running through most of its mass. He felt a sickening feeling in his stomach, for here was the greatest source of power man had ever discovered, all but destroyed by the deranged mind of man himself. That the saboteur was insane he had no doubt, for only a maniac could be capable of such a wanton act of irreversible destruction. He stood staring at the tortured jewel for an interminable time before he found his voice.
“How was it done?” he asked softly.
“We don’t know,” Durant
answered. “We have been unable to remove it for examination because of the fractures. The risk of crumbling is too great. Until we get a new supply it will have to stay where it is.”
Leahy moved closer to the railing and scrutinized the stellarite for at least a full minute. No one spoke while he gazed at it. “It looks burned,” he finally said. “Almost like someone took a torch to it.” He turned around to find Summerhour giving him a steely look. Their eyes locked and held for a second before Summerhour glanced away.
“It does look burned,” Durant said. “But in reality it’s been crystallized. It looks dark because the fractures have broken it into minute pieces. The cracks interfere with its luminosity in some way.”
Leahy relinquished his fascination with the stellarite and returned to his role as investigator. “Is there any other way into this room?” he asked. He was still watching Summerhour, who had walked over to the rail and turned his back to them. Except for lying to him back in Atlanta, there was no logical reason for the powerful feeling of distrust he had acquired for the man. He admitted to himself that under similar circumstances he might have done the same thing. However, the self-admission did nothing to lessen the feeling of anxiety he had developed since Summerhour had reappeared. On the surface there was nothing wrong with him, but surface impressions could be deceptive. He could not shake off the feeling that Summerhour was something other than what he appeared to be. The fact was, he simply did not like him.
“There’s no other way,” he heard Durant say.
With an effort he turned his thoughts away from Summerhour and back to the situation at hand. He turned in a circle, sweeping the ceiling with his eyes. “What about air ducts or equipment conduits?” he asked.
“Nothing over twelve inches in diameter. Certainly not large enough to accommodate a man," Durant replied.
Leahy’s lips became a thin line. He shook his head and asked, “What’s above the ceiling and beneath the floor?”
“Four feet of concrete layered with steel mesh and vibration sensors,” Summerhour put in. He turned to face Leahy. “It would be impossible for anyone to get through it without setting off a dozen alarms.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and blew out a breath. “Besides, we’ve already checked that. Nothing above or below this floor has been disturbed.”
“How far are we below the level above?” Leahy asked.
Summerhour glanced at the ceiling and said, “Fifty feet, with nothing between but rock and dirt.”
“I assume you’ve checked the walls of the elevator shaft for signs of tunneling?”
“One of the first things. They haven’t been breached.” He pointed toward the doors and added, “You can rest assured, that’s the only way in and it takes two people to operate them.”
Leahy glanced at the doors then back to Summerhour. “What do you mean?”
“A safety precaution. The Chronocom doors can only be opened or closed from the computer terminal you saw outside. Built-in sensors that detect human presence inside the entrance foyer where the dust was evacuated from our bodies operate the inner doors. They won’t open until the outer ones are closed and the cleaning process is finished. So you can see, it takes a minimum of two people working together to gain access to this room and lower the shield. One of them would have to be someone who knows how to obtain the entrance code from the mainframe, and that code changes every hour. That person would have to open and close the outer doors. The other one would have to be in here when the code is entered at the computer terminal.”
Leahy looked at the doors again. It appeared that Summerhour had all the answers. He had the feeling that no matter what he asked, the response would be the same: Impossible. All of the questions he had asked so far were basic ones, and had probably been covered by the initial investigators. The FBI agents who had conducted that investigation would most certainly have asked the same things and had verified the answers. Admittedly, the Chronocom appeared to be in an impregnable location; yet it had been sabotaged. Or had it? If it was impossible to physically get to the machine, then the answer did not lie within the confines of this room. Another theory suddenly dawned on him. The machine was impregnable to outside forces, but was it protected from itself? This new line of thought was in total opposition to the idea of sabotage, but it was worth exploring. Edward's encrypted file kept flashing in his head: ENTER PASSWORD. The only person in the room he totally trusted was Taylor, but he could not explore the new idea with her until they were alone. He nodded to himself and turned to face Summerhour. He took a few steps toward the other man and intentionally violated his personal space. They were almost nose-to-nose.
“Since we’ve covered the obvious, I don’t suppose you’ve developed any theories about how it was done?” he asked in a quiet voice.
Summerhour refused to be intimidated by the tactic. He did not budge and met Leahy’s look squarely. “Yes,” he answered through clenched teeth. “But at this point they’re not sufficiently developed to discuss them with any degree of intelligence.”
Durant, perceiving a potentially dangerous situation, cleared his throat and said, “Do you want to see anything else, Matt?”
He and Summerhour continued to stare at each other a few seconds longer before he answered. “No, I’ve seen enough for now.” He turned away from Summerhour and looked once more at the stellarite. The undamaged side had rotated back towards them. In the low light it cast a green radiance across their faces.
He felt a soft touch on his arm and turned to find Taylor standing close to him. He looked at her face and saw the stellarite’s reflection in her eyes. They were almost the same shade of green as the element itself. He glanced back at the Chronocom and watched as Durant entered the code to return the machine to its original position. The red tube and black shaft began to ascend together to the bottom of the dome. The radiance diminished then vanished as the process was completed.
Back at the upper level, Williams, Durant and Summerhour left to make arrangements for their departure, leaving Leahy and Taylor alone.
“Do you remember when I asked Dr. Durant if he knew anything about the term Babylon Station?” he asked as they made their way along the tunnels.
She nodded.
“Does it mean anything to you?”
“Nothing. Do you think it’s significant?”
“It was written on a piece of paper marking a chapter in one of Edward’s books. It fell out while I was flipping through it. There was also an encrypted attachment on one of the files I've been looking at. I thought the two things might be related."
She looked puzzled. “I never saw an encrypted entry in any of the records before. What did the file pertain to?"
"It was one of the Middle Eastern expeditions. I didn't notice anything unusual in the report itself, but I made a mental note of the file number. Maybe we could work on it later." They walked in silence for a short distance. "There's another thing," he continued. "Mike Summerhour's name was mentioned as being a member of at least three of Edward's expeditions, including the encrypted one."
Taylor shot him a sideways glance. "What are you thinking?"
Leahy shook his head and smiled wryly. "I wish I knew. Probably just an overworked imagination. Will he be in charge of our team?" he asked Taylor.
"Each team selects its own leader based on his or her experience and knowledge of the time period in which they’ll be working. Mike's been with the program almost since its inception. He's probably the most knowledgeable agent we have. He has more field time than anyone else, so he'd be the natural choice as team leader. And by the way, I noticed that you’re not exactly in love with him. Is there a problem?”
He answered her with another question. "How familiar is he with the era where we're going?"
She thought it over for a minute then said, "I don't know about that exact target date, but I do know he was in charge of several expeditions close to that time period plus or minus fifty years or so."
Leahy nodded. "This
is going to be a hard question to phrase, so I'll just put it in ordinary police English. Is it possible to do something in the past that changes the future, but we in the future are not aware that anything has been changed when it happens?"
She stopped and searched his face. “That’s a really cryptic question. What are you driving at?"
"I mean, suppose there was something in the past that wasn't a problem then, but because circumstances have changed over the millennia, it's causing a serious problem now. Could we fix it in the past so the problem goes away, or change it enough so that it's at least minimized in the here-and-now? I know Dr. Durant said we can't alter history, but maybe we could correct it just a mite and nothing would be adversely affected."
"Like verifying the authenticity of the Bible Scriptures? Something like that?"
"In a way, but more physical. More like a project that has the potential of altering the future beyond today. It may be something that hasn't manifested itself yet, but could be activated at a later date if necessary. Something that would take a tremendous amount of energy to accomplish. Maybe even overtax the capabilities of that machine down there."
"You mean like a time bomb? You plant it in a specific place in the past and it explodes at some predetermined date in the future? Maybe at a location that doesn’t exist in the future yet?”
"That’s not a bad analogy," he complimented her. “But on a much grander scale.”
She shook her head. "Pardon the pun, but things take a long time to change. You have to remember that most of man's progress has taken place in just the last hundred years or so. I’m not sure anything from the past could effect a change in the present on a grand scale. And what could possibly overtax the Chronocom’s capabilities? Can you give me a scenario?"
"Yeah, but let me formulate it first. It's just a half-baked idea right now." He thought about what she had just said and smiled inwardly at the simple truth of it. His personal world had changed drastically in just a few short days. Indications were that it was going to continue to change at a rapid pace.