Part of the TLS was the input of a precise destination time in the past. Even though, Einstein said time was not a straight line, but in this case, it had to be. Pegasus must go back and arrive at an exact moment in time, in a specific place; otherwise, the computers go haywire and cannot reconstruct the time machine. The location is determined by GPS (another SCAR invention) coordinates. Accuracy at the arrival point must be measured to a distance less than ten feet; however, no one knows if Pegasus did or did not arrive at its targeted destination point. Obviously that is only part of the problem. The cameras within the interior and exterior of Pegasus will record all the gages, which would show when and where the craft arrived, but none of the time machines has ever returned, so it is impossible to determine whether the program was on the right path or not. Some of the flight engineers at SCAR believed the time-machines may have arrived at the pre-determined location, and on the programmed date, but twenty-four hours later when it de-materialized to return home something must have gone haywire with the onboard computers, and God only knows where the machines went from there. They may be 1,000 years in the future or lost in the stone age of the past. One thing was known for sure, they did not come back to the laboratory at SCAR headquarters. A cave man may be standing outside his cave at this very moment poking one of the shiny, round, time machines with his stone tipped spear urging it to get out of his way.
The one thing vital to a successful mission: Pegasus must land on a flat surface. If the angle of the craft is leaning more than three degrees the gyros will not properly balance, and the rotation of the rotors will not function correctly. Return flight will be impossible. Was this what caused the previous flights’ failure? No one knows.
There were a lot of unknowns to time traveling with the various earlier models of Pegasus, and, so far, with dire consequences. Months if not years may be required to perfect its transporting ability, although the alien documents indicate it is possible to do so safely. SCAR’s engineers and scientists do not know, for sure, where the previous Pegasus’ have gone. Did they land in the correct place? No one knew the answer. Did the transported object get reconfigured? Again, the answer was unknown. And worst of all - Pegasus had never been brought back home. To date a total of three Pegasus machines has been lost... Who knows? Maybe the interpretation of the alien blueprints for Pegasus’s construction was wrong - Pegasus may NEVER work.
When Captain Scarburg left the conference room the SCAR family had no idea he planned to put his own life in peril. If they had known the Captain was going to ride number four they would have attempted to talk some sense into his thick head.
Blast off was less than fifteen minutes away
Captain Scarburg knew all these risks. He had a mission to complete. He had to prove to those waiting upstairs that Pegasus would work. His “sixth sense” told him the alien blueprints were accurate. He reasoned if he could be sent back to the correct time and at the proper coordinates then molecular re-assembly would occur. He strongly believed he could figure out how to get his flying saucer back home. Captain Scarburg was a full-scale optimist.
Earlier the Captain had formulated a plan with the Pegasus Flight Team. He had informed Mr. Ryan Rousseau, Chief of Experimental Design and the Pegasus Flight Director that he, the Captain would personally be the guinea pig for the next ‘flight’. Mr. Rousseau had been a SCAR team member from SCARs early inception; actually he had been involved before SCAR was formed.
Mr. Rousseau had been the head of the Special Operations Division, working in the CIA office in Bangkok, Thailand. He worked with Spook’s two brothers Sam Lin and Si Lei Kim. In fact, he had been their division supervisor when Spook explained to Sam Lin and Si Lei that Papa Scarburg’s Special Forces A-Team had found the alien documents in Cambodia. Needing help within the CIA community Sam Lin and Si Lei had to take Mr. Rousseau into their confidence and explain the mission Papa Scarburg, Captain Scarburg, Spook and Tinker, were engaged in, a mission that only a few knew, or should know about.
Spook and the Captain also informed Spook’s two brothers of the discrepancies in the President Kennedy Zapruder film. Sam Lin and Si Lei realized those alien documents were monumental and could be vital to US security and beneficial to society as a whole. They decided to become a part of the team. It was entirely through their help and with assistance from Mr. Rousseau that Papa Scarburg, Captain Scarburg, Spook and Tinker escaped from Thailand and were able to return to the United States. Later they, with the exception of Mr. Rousseau, would establish the SCAR organization and facilities.
Ryan Rousseau and the Captain had been colleagues for over forty years. The Captain considered him a close friend. Rousseau was instrumental in helping Sam Lin and Si Lei arrange all the inside CIA connections in Thailand. His help allowed the team to avoid capture and escape to the USA. He thought he deserved a top leadership role; however, the recognition as a SCAR founder was his ultimate goal. Rather than being thought of as a charter member, an equal to the Captain, Spook, Sam Lin and Si Lei, he considered himself an underling, a mere supervisor within SCAR.
Rousseau harbored a deep, dark secret. A terrible secret he did not want revealed. A secret he would go to any lengths, including murder, to protect. This secret was much more sinister than just his desire to be recognized as a SCAR founding member.
The Captain’s “trip” was to begin at exactly 2:30:00 p.m. on Monday November 19, 2012 local Washington, D.C. time. The destination was programmed into the Pegasus computers for him to land on the roof at the southwest corner of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD), 411 Elm Street. The TSBD was located on the northeast side of Dealy Plaza in Dallas, Texas. The time of arrival was programmed for exactly 12:29:30 p.m., on Friday, November 22, 1963, forty-nine years plus one day, earlier. Extraction was to be at exactly 12:29:30 p.m. Saturday, November 23, 1963, exactly twenty-four hours after arrival. The spacecraft would remain visible for only five minutes after landing at its destination then it would disappear. Pegasus would not reappear until 12:24:30 a.m. on Saturday, November 23, 1963, twelve hours later, and twelve hours before departure. It was supposed to re-appear back at the SCAR laboratory at 2:30:32 p.m. Monday, November 19, 2012. Two seconds after it left! To paraphrase a famous general: ‘The plan of battle usually goes awry at the sound of the first gun.’ Need more be said about the Captain’s bold adventure?
After landing in Dallas, the Captain would have to open the hatch, jump from the ‘flying saucer’, attack the shooter on the roof, disrupt the assassin’s first shot, and if able, jump back through the hatch into Pegasus before it disappeared. It must disappear; the roof will be swarming with police just minutes after the first shots are fired at the President. Five minutes might be cutting it short, for once the hatch closes the craft dematerializes and the Captain will not be able to enter Pegasus and return for twelve hours.
This five-minute period of time would be some of the most dramatic five minutes in American history.
Why wait twenty-four hours before attempting extraction of Pegasus?
It was believed the Sunev aliens engineered the automatic exit flight exactly twenty-four hours later as a safety margin. This would allow some leeway in case something went wrong. During this time, Pegasus would be totally invisible except for a five-minute window of time exactly twelve hours later, and it would not materialize again until five minutes before the 12:29:30 p.m. November 23, 1963 departure time. If something went wrong, this five-minute appearance of Pegasus would allow someone to re-enter the craft.
It was necessary to land on top of the Texas School Book Depository at the southeastern corner of the roof at exactly thirty seconds past 12:29. The shooting of President Kennedy occurred at 12:30 sharp. A witness had placed a second shooter on the roof in that exact location - this shooter was using a 30-06 rifle. A much more powerful rifle than the 6.5 mm Italian Carcano supposedly used by Lee Harvey Oswald. Papa Scarburg, the Captain, Spook and Tinker all say they heard four shots fired as they viewed the Za
pruder film on the ‘Edison’. Papa Scarburg and Captain Scarburg both military men, recognized two of the weapon discharges, as coming from a 30-06 rifle, if not a 30-06 it surely wasn’t a 6.5 mm Carcano rifle. Additionally, we know in the Alternate Universe Agent Hill jumps on the rear of the limousine after the first shot is fired and is hit in the back by the second shot saving President Kennedy from a fatal wound. The Captain had to distract this shooter long enough to allow Lee Harvey Oswald or whoever to fire the fatal second shot. This second shot would hit the head of the target at which they were aiming - President John Kennedy.
President Kennedy would be killed, and destiny’s road would take a totally different path. Earth’s destiny will be set on the correct course. Since we had the benefit of knowing the course of both the current Universe and the original Universe, there was no doubt the original was the right choice.
LAUNCH!
The Transport Launch Sequence leading up to the departure of Pegasus had already started approximately thirty minutes before Captain Scarburg arrived in the laboratory. He had to hurry, it was already 2:20 p.m. - only ten minutes to ‘transport’.
He quickly jumped into his bright red flight suit and slid through the entrance hatch. The Flight Prep Crew hurried to secure his safety harness and flight helmet when he heard the Crew Chief Mike Watkins announce from the Pegasus Control Center, “T minus four minutes, thirty seconds.” This command activated the craft’s operational instrument recorders. Time in this world was running out, but before that happened disaster was about to strike. The Flight Prep Crew could not get one of the d-ring buckles to lock on the Captain’s harness. It had to be fastened, or the mission had to be aborted. If postponed, it would be hours, if not days, before Pegasus could be prepared for another attempt. The bank of onboard computer, which have many different types of formulas and equations, would have to be re-programmed in order to manipulate the time/space continuum. The re-programming was essential to insure the craft arrived at its preselected destination.
At T minus thirty-one seconds, Pegasus’s onboard computers started their terminal launch sequence. Although, according to the alien documents the ‘flying saucer’ remained exactly in the middle of the staging area where it started, it never actually moved, only the world around it changed to the Pegasus selected destination GPS coordinates. The craft just broke the thin fabric of time though a wormhole and crossed into another Parallel Universe. Strange huh? But the problem still remained – Captain Scarburg’s harness was still not fastened! The launch window was quickly closing. “Come on we have less than thirty-one seconds to get the latch snapped shut - do something - anything!!” With this demand, one of the Flight Prep Crew grabbed a pair of Vice-Grip pliers and with all his might squeezed the latch closed. It might never open again, but the Captain simply could slip out of the harness even with this latch locked. He gave the Prep Crew a thumbs up signal - he was finally ready to go as they hurriedly tried to get everyone out the hatch - time was running out!!
At T minus ten seconds, the "Go for Magnetic Rotor Start" command is issued by the TLS. All physical connections from Pegasus to the launch facility have been severed. Pegasus was ‘good to go’. Captain Scarburg quickly pointed his camera out the porthole to his front and snapped a picture.
At T minus six seconds, the three main rotors energized at intervals of 110 milliseconds. The rotors had three seconds to throttle up to 95 percent rotational speed. At T minus three seconds, if the main rotors were at the required ninty-five percent, the ‘Tachyon’ sequence started. Theoretically a Tachyon is a sub-atomic particle moving faster than the speed of light. The Pegasus’s four primary flight computers monitor all of these faster than the speed of light events.
At T minus zero, the craft began to disappear and totally ‘departed’ the staging area at T plus seven seconds. Hopefully, at T plus twenty-three seconds the craft and Captain Scarburg should appear on the roof of the School Book Depository. The Captain had to exit the vehicle, accost the shooter on the roof, disable him somehow and get back into the time machine before the allotted five minutes had expired.
From the window of his office, Ryan Rousseau stood and watched Pegasus gradually de-materialize into thin air. His right hand rubbed the whiskers of his beard, but this hand did not cover the diabolical grin he had as Captain Scarburg’s flight disappeared.