When your invaders come out of time, how do you hold your territory?

Holding Action

Andrew M. Stephenson

The space stress detectors had not lied. We reached Memorial Park with only a few seconds to spare. Hardly had we dismounted from our personnel carrier when the time traveler appeared. Rimbron clapped me on the back.

"Dead on the nose. Come on." We ran towards our man, feet pounding on the rust-streaked concrete of the park, the only sound in that desolate place save for the constant tumble of water in the fountain and the muted throb of the surrounding city.

The time traveler had materialized some two meters above the Fountain of Death itself, rather than over the park, which was fortunate for him as its blood-red waters cushioned his fall when gravity took over. By the time he had regained his feet we were standing by the pool waiting for him.

He was a big one, this latest visitor from the past, easily two meters tall, though his actual proportions were masked by the bulky sealed environment suit he wore. It was built to the age-old design, very similar in outward appearance to the spacesuits used on the early voyages around the Solar System, with wrist-connected gloves and helmet. His boots and most of his legs were hidden by the colored water but doubtless they, too, would conform to the usual pattern. On his back hummed a rectangular box containing his life support systems, feeding air and power to the suit through duplicate umbilicals which entered his helmet just behind the ears. Of the man himself we could see only the eyes, twin pits of blackness in which burned coals of desperation— as with all the others. In silence we studied each other across the narrow space; he in his red-stained suit, a resurrected ghost from an age we wished had sever been, and ourselves dressed in the lightweight yellow-and-black of the Emergency PoBee— fugitives from that age. He spoke.

"I friend. See?" Hands oat, stretched, palms uppermost, the sign of peaceful intentions—and at his waist a buttoned-down holster, the sign of precautions.

I was fractionally nearer, so he turned to me; I suppose my graying hair may have contributed an additional impression of authority. However, Rimbron showed no offense.

"I comrade of you. We both part of same country, but different year, is all."

We remained silent. He tried again.

"You know my kind of talk, no?" As a friendly gesture, I suppose, he reached across to me and put one hand on my shoulder. I shook it off and stepped back out of range. He let his hand fall uncertainly. This was evidently not the kind of reception he had been expecting. They all think that the Future is simply longing for them to pay a visit, ready at any moment to drop everything and give them a guided tour. What kind of cretins are we supposed to be, anyway?

Finally he tired of standing foolishly in the water-sealed environment suit and made to climb out. Citizens' Advice Bulletin 4417-Q(2603) had made provision for that, and together Rimbron and I complied. With one hard push we toppled him back into the water, whence he emerged, dripping, furious, and shouting.

"What you do that for? What sort of place, this, where loyal unit is to be dumb-stared and thrown into water? You tell, quick!"

In returning him to the pool, I had moved closer, and now he made a grab for me. I was too slow and in an instant one hand closed on the fabric of my uniform and the other hovered, red stained and threatening, in front of my face. Through the view panel of his helmet I could see his eyes, blazing with a murderous rage.

"Now," his voice box rasped, "you tell, Comrade, and you tell good and quick or ..."

Discretion seemed wiser than civil obedience, with that fist ready to pulp my nose, and I essayed a neutral reply.

"What do you want to know?"

"Oho! So you talk English!" Determination had crept into the visible part of his expression.

"I know English, yes," I volunteered, although his last words had been more a statement of fact than anything else. The rule is always: Reduce the net information content as dose to zero as possible. Otherwise be the Spirit of Reticence itself.

However, this conversation was tending to become not only informative but protracted; either I or Rimbron would have to act promptly to prevent him learning much during his stay, should he by some mischance get away from us after all.

I looked around and managed to glimpse Rimbron standing some distance off, speaking rapidly into his comset, before a hard back-hander across the face returned my attention to more immediate matters. The reinforcements would come when they could; meanwhile I was on my own. Nevertheless it was heartening to know that the Anchor Squad was hurrying to our aid, even if the second alarm could do nothing to increase their speed.

My assailant was demanding attention again.

Ignoring the second bruise on the other side of my face, I quickly studied my opponent, searching for weak spots in his armor. The toughened metal and plastic outer layer of the suit would effectively stop anything less than a very sharp knife, so nerve holds and other aspects of unarmed combat were out. That left foul play.

Perhaps I could rupture his air lines? But no, he would have plenty of time to quietly and efficiently strangle me before I could make any progress with just my bare hands.

Glancing downwards, I was reminded of his sidearm, and felt a surge of hope. Unfamiliar with the details of portable guns, of which I assumed this to be a specimen, I could not be sure of pressing the right button or even directing its destructive action successfully. But I had to try. It was paramountly important that he should not go home with information that might redirect the course of this Line's history; equally, I had no wish to be a martyr. Consequently ingenuity was called for, and the agent of my deliverance seemed to hang at his waist.

"Good," he grated, evidently having completed a consideration of my last comment "Now we make words into data. You talk first." He waited.

I left it as long as I safely could, then said: "About what?"

"Which year is now?"

"2604." There could be little harm in letting him know the date.

"Where?"

"Resurrection City, British Isles." That should slow him down. It did.

"Huh? Oyez, Comrade you make funny talk and I hit face hard. Now where?"

"This area," I explained, waving towards the encircling tiers of buildings with one hand, "is called Resurrection City. It is situated in the British Isles." My ostensibly unoccupied, other hand unclipped the pop fastener on his holster; the thickness of his suit now worked for me, as he felt nothing through it, or if he did then his exasperation distracted him.

"But where in Brittich Ilze?"

"I don't know the exact coordinates," I lied. My fingers were feeling within the holster for the gun while my eyes feigned guilelessness.

"About, then."

"All I can tell you is that there used to be a place called Oxford near here about five hundred years ago. Apart from that I don't have any references with which to compare present geography. I mean, well, I can't know what landmarks you already know unless you say where and when you are from, which you' haven't yet." The gun handle was in my grasp now and I started to draw it out slowly so as not to catch his notice.

"Is not important!" he snapped. He shook his free fist in my face. "I think you try make slow talk. Not good procedure because I want data, much and fast. Maybe I got to shoot your comrade to get it"

"Shoot? Why?" If he tried to draw his gun now... I lifted it clear in one final motion and felt for the correct posture. Having seen old pictures in the Anthropology Museum I remembered that it had to be held by the handle, with the open end of the projectile launching tube pointing along the intended pellet trajectory, but how was the wretched thing worked?

"My battalion has wise words: 'Many corpses make good interrogator.' "

"I see what you mean," I replied, "but I think you'll need more than the wisdom of the ancients to complete this interrogation."

He frowned. "Not clear. Repeat."

"What I intended to say was that I would shoot you if—" Suddenly I found myself on my back with the wind knocked out of me. In the same motion that flung me from him the man reached for his gun. For a second he fumbled at the empty holster, then spotted the weapon several meters away from me where it had fallen after slipping from my grasp. Saying nothing, and giving no sign of the exertion it must have cost him, he vaulted the edge of the pool. In five steps he was standing over the gun after handing off Rimbron who had made a similar dash for it.

Now, I do not know how familiar you are with the practical difficulties involved in wearing any kind of heavy-duty suit, but the initiated will agree it to be a fact that they are not designed with the gymnasts of this world in mind. My man discovered this when he tried to bend down, giving me sufficient time to scramble to my feet and make a run at him.

I hit him low, behind the knees, and he folded backwards on top of me; for the second time that day I gulped air. Then his heavy boots lashed out at me and I had to roll clear to avoid a skull fracture.

A race to be first up ensued, and being more lightly burdened and unencumbered by a suit, I won. With one kick I sent the gun skidding across the concrete to Rimbron, who took possession, and with another I knocked the feet out from under my sparring partner once more. He went down again and this time made no effort to rise. wee exchanged dirty looks and fought to regain our breath.

At length he broke the impasse.

"I am failure. I, professional fighting unit and wartech, am made not-victor by civilian. Therefore I demand execution in shame, when is time." He sounded serious about it.

"Not so fast," I objected. "Before anything like that happens you are going to^; answer some of my questions. Call it a counter-interrogation if you like."

"Not function, if not want to help, which not. Am protected by brain block against enemy interrogators."

Rimbron had come up beside me and handed over the gun. "The fellow could be telling the truth. He could also be telling only a part of it and he might be boobytrapped."

"Boobytrapped?" I asked.

"Ask him the wrong kind of question and he blows up. It's an old trick, though, of course, we don't use it." So casual was he about it, as if commenting on the weather, that I was shocked.

For my part I felt revolted by the very notion and said as much.

"Maybe so, but it doesn't change the fact that they used it, and worse, once. If this one is anything like the others. . . Ow!" I kicked him on the ankle and he shut up, scowling. Too late, however, for our visitor had overheard.

"People like me come, too?" he demanded eagerly. All traces of hostility were gone in a moment. "Then experiment function previously." He hesitated. "For what reason they not return at end?"

I looked at my companion.

"I'm sorry," he muttered. He didn't sound it; the aching ankle probably.

"What he done?" The time traveler propped himself up with his hands; we backed off cautiously. He climbed to his feet and pointed an accusing finger. "You try to hide shameful act, I think." Fortunately he made no move to attack us physically, in view of his earlier display of superior agility and strength, but it was plain that he distrusted us and might be easily provoked to action.

I decided to stall for time. After all, it would surely not be long before the remainder of the squad arrived.

"Do you believe we have something to conceal from you?"

"Yes. I am not first volunteer who comes to this year, but Number Seven. None return. Why?"

Beside me, Rimbron's comset warbled, sparing me the problem of an immediate reply. He thumbed the "Active" swich, listened to what the caller had to say without comment, and cleared.

"They've been held up by a breakthrough at North East Six. The catapult is disposing of a twenty ton boulder that slipped through and is blocking their way. The breach should be sealed in a couple of minutes, after which they'll be with us inside another two." He glanced at the time traveler. "They want to know if we can keep him entertained a bit longer."

"Hmmm," I said. Breakthroughs were not news—we had long since learned to live with them—but this delay could be very serious indeed.

Here was a man from a period of Man's history when the whole Earth was a battlefield; land, sea, air and the space above it harbored Death in all its ghastliest forms. At the height of the conflict, which lasted over thirty years before utterly exhausting itself and the planet that endured it, no human being dared set foot on the surface. Even to go near was to invite destruction, for The War had become an independent entity—a senseless, coldly logical, overwhelming process whereby anything that lived was killed, anything moving was struck down, and anything dead was broken down for salvage to create more of the machinery that was its outward incarnation.

The atmosphere and the soil of Earth were drenched in a flood of poisons, chemical, biological and nuclear; the ground would foam and smoke as sluggish breezes moved listlessly over it, and at night it glowed brightly enough in places to mask the brief flashes high above in the upper atmosphere where automated dogfights came to abrupt and decisive conclusions. On the surface of the globe, indifferent to whether on land or in water, prowled the superbly efficient killing machines; beneath them lurked the Moles, the sapping torpedoes that eventually destroyed all of Man's last strongholds and the munitions factories that maintained the feud, so long since bereft of reason or purpose.

This man was a child of his Times, the Twenty-first Century. His line evolved time travel later than most; now it sought to save itself thereby, but in so doing it would obliterate us and all our aspirations.

Shall we never be rid of our past?

So close was his civilization to its ultimate day of collapse that there was but the barest possibility of averting it; yet Time is a lake of mystery in whose depths strange currents move, currents that might drag us under to oblivion if we were to relax our guard for even an instant. He had come to us and must remain lest he take back some breath of information remotely capable of changing the final outcome of The War. We were here to see to it; he would try to outwit us. The eternal game of Survival, but played for higher stakes than mere Life and Death-Existence hung in the balance. We had played with Time ourselves and knew only too well the penalty for losing. Had we learned the rules better we would not now be here.

I looked at the time traveler. "Tell me what you see around you."

For the first time he raised his head and scanned the intricate façade of the city.

"Many buildings." And, like an afterthought: "Also . . . something . . . Bragarg! I have not the words!" One gloved hand slapped his chest. "Hurt. . . empty . . . hungriness! I see many buildings, more than in my life, but I see more—not with eyes, but with pain, in here. Is what you mean?" He walked over to the fountain and fingered the carved stone of the surround.

"We have not thing like this in Headquarters. What is?"

"It's a fountain," I said. A feeling of pity had replaced my earlier one of fear, for the first time in his life this man was seeing art. Not outstanding art by our standards, and not intended as such, but art that held within its form all those things his harsh upbringing had denied him—humanitarian emotions, abstract function, hope in the future.

Aad in that last lay the grisly paradox: the sculpture that so deeply affected him was the memorial to the death of his own people, all two thousand five hundred million of them, and it was our promise to do better. If we were allowed to.

"It has reason?" One hand had found the verse from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam of Naishapur, in itself an epic of improvidence and self-indulgence yet, this once, strangely appropriate: "Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before

I swore—but was I sober when I swore?

And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand

My threadbare Penitence apieces tore."

I could not tell him the truth, nor was it wise to.

"Yes," I said, and "It's for decoration," I lied.

"Decoration." The word came awkwardly from his lips and was further distorted by the voice box. "De-cor-ay-shun. Is strange. What means?"

How do you explain the concept of "aesthetics" to someone who has no word for "beauty"? Would you need to if he did?

"A thing which has no active effect that can be measured with instruments, yet helps us to live better ..." I bogged down and turned to Rimbron for assistance, but he was using the comset again. He held up one finger. One minute more.

I listened to the wind, sifting the multitude of noises borne on it for the one I wanted. There!

In the canyons of the city the sirens of the Anchor squad hurried nearer, sending feeble tendrils of sound on ahead to herald their coming. The man heard them, too, and straightened up from his inspection, once more the soldier.

"You wait for someone, for comrades who come to make me prisoner! Before, when I ask what happen to others like self, you make diversion. Now I say again: What happen to them?" He waited, hands curled into fists at his sides.

Rimbron interceded. "They went away."

"Away?" Suspicion was gathering like a dark cloud; the approaching sirens were making him nervous. "Where? And what you do to them?"

"We did not harm them in any way." That at least was true, if you discount mental cruelty.

"Then why they not return?"

"Maybe something went wrong. Remember that experiments fail quite often. I promise you that when they left us they were in perfect health, as you will be."

"How I be sure you not lie?"

"You can't be, but why should we?"

"Not know." He trudged wearily over to the fountain where the sun would warm him from the front and sat on the stonework. After several seconds of deep thought he spoke again.

"We have not talked of why I come, or what year is mine, but already I think you know from my comrades. Is correct?"

"Er, yes." I wondered what he was leading up to.

"That is what I think. So maybe is not needful I should tell again. No matter, I will.

"My comrades fight great war at home: terrible years are; have been for long time, ever since I little boy. Old people say not always so, say that men able to go on top, without Baskerville come kill you quick and bloody. Is true sitreps now tell of changes for worse; enemy begin lose hope of quick victory, resort to weapons banned in Washington Accord.

"War goes on many years more, I think; no easy victory. But we not yield while energy to hand. This Time Jump I make prove it. My people, my comrades, all work very hard for long time, make this thing real. Send volunteers—like self—to later times. Hope find help.

"One, two, three, and six men go; not come home when scitechs make reverse. Still not yield; one more, say. One more. Only. Can send no more after; cost too much. If send others, then have nothing fight enemy with. So I come to you. . ." The voice trailed off into hopeless silence. The sirens were very close.

A strange noise came from the man. For a moment I was at a loss to identify it, but then I realized he was crying. I made to step forward. Rimbron put a restraining hand on my arm.

"Careful. It might be a trick." It was just possible, so I stayed where I was. The man raised his face to the sky.

"You fear me." A statement, dull and sick with disappointment. "So you will not help."

"We will not help you," I echoed, unaccountably ashamed of our whole policy. "We cannot help you; you must understand ..."

"Not? You will not do this thing for even your own comrades, your fathers, your own blood?"

"No." How could I tell him the truth? How?

He raved.

"I do not know you! Are you human, or will bombs and sprays of enemy destroy minds of our children like they destroy us, leaving . . . what? Animals? Devils? How can you say this, when knowledge of my comrades dying in dishonored thousands every watch is in your minds?" Burying his faceplate in his gloves he wept once more only to stop when the first of the squad vehicles entered the outer fringes of the Memorial Park. Straightening up, he pointed at me.

"And now you will neutralize me, like other six? You do not fight as professional soldiers, brave, duty-guided, loving Overlord and Headquarters, but as enemy units, not-brave, autoprotecting, thinking only of self, not of comrades in danger needing help!"

The yellow two-man personnel carrier glided up to us and settled in a swirl of dust and siren swan song. The riders unstrapped themselves and leaped off. One unclipped a set of Fregar cones from the equipment rack behind the rear saddle and hurried to set them out around the fountain. The second man waited by the control panel until the first had finished, then threw a switch.

Instantly, flaring arches of light flung themselves upwards from the ground between the cones, spreading auroral curtains behind; they climbed rapidly up and over us until, meeting and merging indistinguishably, they formed a shimmering dome completely enclosing the center of the park. We were sealed off from the outside world-nothing could pass through that shell of rainbows unless similarly sheathed. Nothing. The man from yesterday was trapped.

Somehow the uncertain fate in store for him appeared to annoy more man frighten, for he stood up and shook a fist at the two policemen who were now approaching him warily. Rimbron and I did not interfere; our part was over.

"Assassins!" he shouted. "Mercenaries! Conscript rejects! Must not all men see you at your work?"

Two other police vehicles slid gustily and colorfully through the Fregar dome and dropped, their force screens fading to extinction. One was another personnel carrier, but the second was the catapult platform on which squatted the bulk of me catapult itself. This is the axis of such operations; its horizontal transparent barrel, mounted at one erd on the trapezoidal power column, is a nexus of temporal forces that permits us our control of those most intangitfle of universal dimensions: time.

Its resemblance to a weapon of war made the time traveler halt on the verge of another series of insults. Instead, he exclaimed:

"What! You will shoot me with that? Is not handgun good?"

Four policemen ridged him in as he spoke, and with practiced skill caged him in a modified Fregar field. He tried to struggle against it but was powerless to overcome the force-triggered inertia effect and gave up. Silent in his polychromatic bonds, all sounds being damped out long before they could reach free air, he glowered at his captors.

The platform started its lifters and floated across, halting beside the group. Working together the four policemen loaded their burden into the barrel of the catapult and sealed the end. Now we could tell him everything. His own people could no longer pull him back unless we so desired. We breathed more easily.

Rimbron wandered off to chat with the heavies who had effected the capture. I chewed on a stimgum, and while I was doing so the squad leader came over to me.

"Happiness, Master," he said in ritual greeting. We had met before in the course of regular police work and now knew each other well.

"And Health, Leader," I returned. That was efficiently done, if I might say so, Meld."

"Thank you, Varao. Kind of you. Compliments from informed sources are always welcome." Slipping off his gauntlets and tucking them into the tops of his boots, he waved towards the time traveler in his mobile prison. "It was close, though. Most of the others have only wanted to stay five minutes, if that; they must be trying a last ditch effort, poor devils."

I nodded silent agreement. "He said he was probably the last. The energy costs alone would be enough to bankrupt their economy. I suspect that his failure to return will have been the death blow to their experiments."

"Shazol be thanked," muttered Meld. He takes his religion seriously, so I made no rejoinder but changed the subject.

"Rimbron says you hit a breakthrough."

"Yes, Over on NE6."

"Bad?"'

"Not really; I'm more worried about the implications. That's the way it all started originally, if you recall."

Could I forget? Meld and I are First Generation colonists: we were there when our world began to fall apart at the seams, when the walls of Reality crumbled, admitting all the fury of history that had never been ours. For us, the discovery of time travel came early; fully ten years would have elapsed before our Line became engulfed in The War. As it was, we used our new skills to probe the future, and what we learned from these researches averted the tragic consequences of the misunderstanding that was to shatter more than three thousand alternate Lines around us, rendering them totally unfit for life as we knew it for hundreds of years. When the fatal hour had come and passed we stood alone, a peninsula of peace and sanity stretching out into a hostile sea of violent Lines. We saw whole worlds at war with themselves, civilizations that might have been our own bleeding to death in meaningless conflict, and we trembled. Frobisher and Benyon had their doubles in these alternate hells and only a narrow-variance Gaussian distribution of experimental success rates had given us our lead over our neighbors. We realized that when they, too, found the key to free movement within the time dimensions then we were doomed: The War would spread to all of Space and Time unchecked. Hating ourselves, we made sure of their failure, and in so doing unleashed the horrors of this unnatural catastrophe upon ourselves. By the simple expedient of sending out teams of executioners we gradually achieved a false sense of security.

Yet conscience rebelled, and there were those who said that we should have let matters run their natural course; they had their vindication soon after when the fabric of quiddity tore under the strain of our hasty actions.

The months that followed, during which the thwarted outcomes of situations and events long past sought to reassert themselves, were an iron age of despair. Phantom armies clashed in whispered encounters, pale images of multimegaton nuclear explosions set the air shivering, and the shadow of Armageddon moved across the land. Vainly our scientists and theoreticians sought to dam the flood; History would have its way despite us.

So we made our Exodus, those of us who could in the limited weeks remaining before the visions attained solidity. Over two millions escaped, two million refugees who took what they could of the way of life that had sustained them, into the barren lands of a future Earth, half a millennium on.

I was still in my twenties, a young man working in the construction gangs slaving to assemble the factory-produced Gates intended to bridge the chasm between the dying Twenty-first Century and the new world, and I saw how daily the rot spread. Towards the end I was twice almost killed by errant projectiles breaking through unexpectedly; I, who had never so much as handled a gun in a world where they had become unnecessary and obsolete.

In a way I was lucky to the last. One Gate erected and operating, my gang were moving off to the new site one kilometer away on the far side of a small town when we heard a warcraft approaching over the rooftops.

It was of a type we had nicknamed "Bumbly," a subsonic robot hunter-killer propelled by a rapidly rotating tail jet, similar to its ancestor, the Twentieth Century Spinfire. Normally we would have ignored it and other flying ghosts, but this one looked dangerously real. Our driver pulled over and asked our Leader for instructions.

The Leader squinted through his binoculars for only a second or two then yelled: "It's seen us! Get out of here...!"

But the driver had needed no further information. He poured power into the truck's lifters and we hung on for dear life itself as he turned the massive machine around and drove as hard as he could for the Gate we had just left.

The Bumbly tumbled along after us in a deceptively erratic course; when it was ready to take us its onboard computer would direct the main jet full astern and the final part of the attack would be swift and inhumanly accurate. The meandering flight was all camouflage to deceive antimissiles.

We were some four seconds from the rectangle of stygian darkness that was the Gateway . . . Three, two ... A sound louder than a clap of thunder split the air and suddenly the jet was at full intensity. The Bumbly was making its run-in.

The terrified faces of fellow fugitives swept past us. Most had taken refuge amongst the broken rock and bombed-out ruins near the Gate, but some still tried to escape. These raised their hands in hopeful supplication; we could not stop, and left them behind.

One second. The Gate loomed up and swallowed us whole. We were through, and swerving violently to avoid the crowds that had preceded us. I looked back. A speck got in my left eye and I closed it, hoping that it would water and so remove the irritant With my right eye I watched the Gate we had come through.

A searing light filled it momentarily and was snuffed out. The Gate frame was empty; the bridge was down and the Bumbly had stayed on the far side. But to this day my right eye is blind at the middle, the price I had to pay for Life.

Might I have to pay once more? I studied Meld for a long moment.

"Do you believe it might come to that?"

He shook his head with what I thought optimistic emphasis. "No. We've improved vastly since those days. Twenty-five years of research have taught us enough to prevent repetitions. Still, I can't say I'm happy about the possible results of his crowd's experiments. The aftereffects may persist for quite a while. If you remember, we chose this Line originally as being well into the low probability area for time travel discovery in order to avoid lingering stresses in Lines closer to ... home." For an instant his voice caught, but he coughed to cover it. "Greater caution will be necessary, but otherwise. . .please excuse me."

One of the catapult operators shouted something about 'coming on'. Meld acknowledged and turned to me.

"If we'd taken much longer getting here we'd have been too late. The people at the other end are trying to retrieve him now. So far we're winning." He smiled.

We would almost certainly continue to win.

The only visible indication of the titanic tug-of-war proceeding between the two points in the multidimensional web of Time was the faintest softening of the barrel outline, but I was fully aware that that volume of space was presently, and had once been, the intersection of colossal quantities of energy, enough to vaporize whole cubic kilometers of rock. Even so, not a murmur was heard, neither did smoke appear, nor any other traditional portent of disaster. We had been in the game too long for that to happen at our end; sometimes I wonder what caused the Bowl, in which Resurrection was built, and what installation incorporated the rusty concrete of the park, but it is more than likely that a Mole was responsible.

The struggle lasted only minutes. Abruptly the barrel snapped back into focus. They had given up. The next task was to dispose of our visitor humanely. But first he would have his questions answered.

He was launched into a hitherto unexplored volume of Frobisher-Benyon space, but one in which we were convinced he would find our kind of human beings and a new life. Whatever he found would be better than that which he had been deprived of.

As for us, we sat on the running board of the platform, letting the tensions of the day ease themselves out of our bones in talk and quiet enjoyment of our peaceful life. A bottle of euphoriant appeared from some cache and was passed around without official comment, and with the spreading glow it brought came the reminiscences.

The younger men bragged of the assignments they had been on and the dangers they had seen. One told of a Field Trip he had gone with, out to the fringes of human FB-Space. None of us really credited his tale with much in the way of accuracy, reserving our true opinions and applauding his narrational skill.

Rimbron described how we had delayed the time traveler, being somewhat overgenerous in his account of our brief wrestling bout, and this led on by common consent to recollections of the Old World. Meld talked at length, his strong voice graphically conjuring up the collapse and the struggle to rebuild in the New. Throughout it all I kept silent, not daring to trust my self-control should I begin to revive my personal history; I am naturally an emotional person, and the liquor was making us all slightly maudlin by now.

Someone, proposed a toast to our future. Happiness. The idea caught on and soon we were toasting anything and everything. I do not yet know how the flask held out—or had we started with a bottle? I could not recall. We drank to each other's health, the new-born son of one of the men, the Senior Commisar's dog, the Citizenship generally of a great many variegated and usually irrelevant things and people. But a serious note crept in, and the proposals were now to memories loaded with regret the Old World; the unsung heroes, martyrs and unfortunates trapped there when the final breakthrough came; Jacob Frobisher and Thomas Benyon, both dead these twelve and fifteen years; friends and relatives amongst the casualties . . .

I stood up unsteadily, and in my mind burned the unspoken thought common to us all, ever present, a burden of sorrow:

"Citizens," I said, "let us drink to the Past."

They all got up, somehow, and raised their assorted drinking utensils.

"The Past: May it never die, but let it never live again . . . Wait."

Lips shaped to receive the liquor, they paused and stared questioningly at me.

"In addition" my throat was tight with not altogether alcoholic emotion, "I propose a final toast: The Last Time Traveler, and the hopes he represented."

We drank, long and deeply.