The Dream of Mythraea

Episode 36

Prologue

"It is possible to believe that all the past is but the beginning of a beginning, and that all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn. It is possible to believe that all the human mind has ever accomplished is but the dream before the awakening."

--HG Wells

"In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."

--Eric Hoffer

Mythraea, the dark star, transited past the depleting goblin corona of her helium roasting, blue giant. The sun only burned for 9,000 years in geologic, Earth time, and when it went, the blast was more incandescent than the galaxy itself. The world was born yesterday, literally, and it defied the sciences. No cartography, no nomenclature--no radio telescope, no thermal ionic spectrometer, no amount of trimethylaluminum--no malodorous bore with an opine could extrapolate on why the planet had existed for only twenty-four hours.

The universe hands us a gourmet feast, and we respond by serving jug wine. This is the way of things.

Drifting by in apolune, and 200,000 nautical miles downrange of a body that was Jupiter Plus Three--high atop the panoramic triad of the Main Mission auditorium, frowning, and cursing (with respect to the unknown, and those who do not believe in underarm deodorant)--amidst the solar, windswept gale of decaying sunspots, a lone figure stood in the easternmost, observation window. Controller Paul Morrow never seemed to tire of seeing nothing/his own reflection. Planet Mythraea was a black, obsidian marble. It's surface was an analysis resisting smoked glass--a pillar in the metaphorical palace of Susa that didn't care if the controller impatiently, and obnoxiously drummed his fingers against the sill. Here was a domain of the impurest limestone, and a double team melvin. Morrow could gawk, and transude his reek to his heart's content.

For his pains, there would be a sore neck.

"Sandra." He gave up, turning towards the rail, and gripping it with both hands. "What were the results of the revised, micrographic scan?"

Below, and to the right of him, the data analyst ignored Umberto Garzon's toothfulness as she set her clipboard between her coffee, and gooseneck lamp (The useless laser mass report stared back at her--empty, like the head of deputy controller Mark Winters.).

"Same as ten minutes ago." She said, studying the devices tab of her workstation monitor. "Nothing. But heat." She ameliorated. "And rocks."

"Care to let us in on what you know, Paul?" Winters bleated. "Share the Ouji Board. From where I'm sitting there's diddley out there."

"Still no signs of life." Emma Black added--in toto more professionally from her position at the mainframe desk.

"Continue monitoring." Morrow instructed with sullen ascertainment. It bothered him that the inner, and outer rings of ice were only visible on the big screen.

The Hook

The amphitheater was almost filled to capacity. The music was synthesized, as there was not enough of a musical contingent to create an orchestra. In the rear of the auditorium, high on the balcony, Victor Bergman held his clipboard and studied the lighting, indicating to Truman Starns, his 'production assistant' that spotlight number 3 would need to be gradually dimmed in approximately 30 seconds, as spotlight number 2 was brought to bear on the stage.

Bram Cedrix was dressed in somewhat convincing 16th century nobleman garb. He was no longer the Chief Eagle Mechanic but Don Quioxote, the Man of LaMancha. He gazed tenderly, at his 'lady', Dulcinea, who was actually Aldonza, the village prostitute: aka reluctant Moonbase Alpha resident Caroline Kennedy. She had asked him, in an unusual moment of gentleness, why he was so 'good', so virtuous in such an evil world.

"To dream, the impossible dream," Cedrix sang in strong and smooth baritone as Bergman cued the music. "To fight, the unbeatable foe. To bear, with unbearable sorrow. To roam, where the brave dare not go."

Angelina Carter, clearly swept away from Moonbase Alpha by the performance, sat next to Captain Alan Carter. Melita Kelly-Geist sat on the other side of her, equally entranced, next to Phil Geist whose expression was unreadable. It could be interpreted as complete boredom or disappointment in the performance; or, perhaps just simple fatigue. Behind them, Helena Russell and John Koenig, arms crossed over chest, appeared to be enjoying the musical presentation.

"This is my quest! To follow that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far! To fight for the right, without question or cause...to be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause!!"

*************

In the small forensic crime lab, Velma Hill stared at the computer monitor. Central computer had confirmed the match. In a way, it was no surprise, knowing the perpetrator. When she reconsidered the circumstantial evidence, the murderer of Edgar Bayleton and Dave Reilly was as plain as the back of her hand. The forensic evidence though, incriminated him 100%. He should have never committed the third murder. He should have stopped at Bayleton and Reilly.

Velma Hill speed dialed her boss on her comlock. Truman Starns was not answering. She remembered he was in the theater assisting Professor Bergman. It could not wait. Velma quickly gathered the conclusive printout and stepped through the hatch, heading toward the theater.

*************

In Main Mission, the man had been covertly monitoring Hill's activity on computer.

"Hey," he mumbled somewhat nervously to Mark Winter. "I'm headed for the Cantina for some fresh coffee. You want anything?" He asked, though he had no intention of bringing it back to him.

"No thanks," Winters only half paid attention.

The man quickly moved out through the left archway.

************

"And the world, will be better for this...that one man, scorned and covered with scars, still strove, with his last ounce of courage..." Cedrix's voice reverberated throught auditorium as Hill stepped toward Starns, whispering into his right ear as he flipped through the flimsie.

"To Reach....the...unreachable.....staaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!!"

Starn's expression immediately became grave then determined.

The rag doll, bloody, lascerated corpse-horror from legend's past suddenly had a hundred kilowatt bulb to candent its gruesomeness (like the pale light that appeared above the faux, 16th century dungeon where Bram Cedrix prepared for his next refrain--a tune that was entitled, with unknowing acuity, "The Combat").

"Don Miguel de Cervantes." Assembly expert Yul Ostrog beckoned in evil tonus from stage left, where he felt less dumb. This was his only line in the production. Originally, he was to open the cell door, and enter the torture chamber wearing a fake-ass, van dyke beard, and a doublet, but his embarrassment persevered. "Prepare to address the Holy Inquisition."

"ONE DAVID TO ALL ALPHA UNITS." The detective blated while ruining the performance by violating center stage. "THIS IS EMERGENCY, CODE 100. THE COMMAND TOWER IS CLOSED, EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. LOCATE AND DETAIN OPERATIVE KLAUS ROTSTEIN.

"HE'S TO BE CONSIDERED ARMED AND DANGEROUS."

Commander Koenig, followed by a bewildered Dr. Russell, bounded up the access ladder, the shortest route to the balcony. The rest of the crowd, abruptly brought back to the harsh light of reality, murmured with questions and rumor mills afire. The two Carters followed Russell up the ladder.

"Acknowledged." Harness Bull Coldaryn responded, unmoved over the link to the security cube. "Recommending Red Alert."

Bram Cedrix realized that fame was fleeting when the claxon began to pulse.

"Starns," Koenig assessed while questioning, "what's going on?"

The detective reeled. His rondeau only lasted a tenth of a second, but it seemed imperatively wrong considering the nature of the situation. As the pulse blazoned, the occupants of the cracker box theater--which multi-tasked as humanity's last planetarium--began to empty through the forward exits. John Koenig could see that the wake-up call had also reached the other establishments in the attractive, glitzing, silver reflexing Recreation Dome. In the narrow, ellipsoidal corridors outside, patrons of the spa, and the game room rushed by--some still towelled; some urging thier slower counterparts along with a rough shove of the palm. The vertically challenged got the heel.

Melitta Geist was leaving the conservatory--the blissfully sweet, eau de blossoms still in her mind, and if she had left two seconds earlier she could have added the pulverizing, calf love of Ed Malcom on her back.

It was furor. It was discontinuity.

It was the end of slaughter.

**********

"Rotstein?!?" Angelina blurted, glancing at Carter. "Why doesn't that surprise me?"

"Are you sure?" Russell queried, attempting to find the slightest possiblity of innocence before the security lynch mod commenced. She knew that Security would take particular delight in exacting revenge on Rotstein, since the last seemingly unsolved murder of one Harness Bull Amar N'Dole occured less than a month ago. One of their own had been murdered in cold blood and they had been hell bent on finding the perpetrator.

"Oh yeah, doctor," Hill responded, moderately irritated at being second guessed by a non-detective,"thanks to medical science, the DNA matches perfectly." She nodded. "He's our boy alright."

**********

"SECURITY TO ALL SECTIONS ALPHA." Coldaryn commandeered the ether again as Rotstein tumbled down the stairwell, and shook the bars of his symbolic prison as he encountered the impasseable chain link fence at the bottom. The route was a dead end. Death occured quite frequently on Moonbase Alpha--especially when he was around. "SEEKING, OPERATIVE KLAUS ROTSTEIN. PLEASE REMAIN AT YOUR DUTY STATIONS AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. ANYONE WITH KNOWLEDGE OF THE SUBJECT'S WHEREABOUTS SHOULD CONTACT DIVISION HEADQUARTERS IMMEDIATELY."

But the panting, dry gulching, junior controller--blood easing from warped tear ducts--was back on level one before the the remainder of the message could be heard.

**********

"COMMANDER KOENIG." Pierce Quenton interrupted the olympic sprint down Corridor-G. His commlock image rattled up, and down on Koenig's right hip like a piston. "HE'S BEEN SIGHTED NEAR FIREX SYSTEM CONTROL. WE THINK HE'S HEADING FOR LAUNCH PAD FOUR."

"Send a patrol immediately to the area," Koenig acknowledged into the comlock. He dialed another number. "Coop. Klaus Rotstein is suspect number one in the unsolved murders. He's headed toward Launch Pad 4. Lock down procedures for standby Eagle 4."

Stellar Cartographer Carroll Severance never stood a chance. As soon as the hatch to Travel Tube-B opened, Truman Starns and Alan Carter made cornmeal mush out of him.

Rather than sitting, Koenig paced in the moving travel tube. "Harms! Do you read me?" he called standby Eagle pilot William G. Harms III. He did not answer.

**********

It was a liposuction on the universe.

"!!!PAUL!!!" Sandra Benes--as calcimine, and picket as a sheet of computer paper--tried to deliver the warning, but the polyphasic disaster heading towards them was inclement on the big screen.

Morrow looked up from the controller's station, his headset plugged into Winter's jack in an attempt to assist in the pursuit. In the split second that resided between sang-froid, turning upside down, and finally, landing on his ass, he could see another feature of the planet Mythraea that he had overlooked. A delta of culbutering unreality spiralled away from the planet's ionosphere, and engulfed the Moon.

**********

Carter was hurriedly accessing the Reconnaisance Hub when the compression wave hit. The double doors were opening just as the ceiling became the floor. When he looked up again, his commlock was lying beneath Marilys Sing's desk. Koenig, Starns, and Bergman--throttled, and indifferently Mix Mastered, struggled to stand.

**********

They barely divined the barrier of white snow that engulfed every compartment, and accessway on the base.

Alpha was there, and then it was gone.

The Moon was a fantasy.

They were joyously non-existent, but then it all came back and they had to suffer space again.

As the streaming tachyons flooded compact space like pirannahs heading south to dine, Victor Bergman paused from his recoupe. In degrees, his salt, and pepper, receeding hairline lengthened. His thick, blocked sideburns began to turn dark brown again as his biological clock was sent into a tailspin. He was approximately thirty years old again when the effects of the field showered the commander. The deep, frown lines on Koenig's forehead, and around the mouth began to fill with the collagen of youth. In seconds, he grew twenty pounds heavier whilst the iron, deadweights of bad living, and the aura of desperate decisions dissipated like a dark cloud in a wind tunnel.

Carter was suddenly sporting a grumous beard with red highlights.

Then the aftershock of the immerse arrived not long after, wiping away the effects of the torrent.

**********

"MAIN MISSION TO COMMANDER KOENIG." Morrow thundered over the link. "WE'VE ENCOUNTERED SOME FORM OF OCCULT ENERGY FIELD. LOCATION: THE PLANET'S SURFACE."

"Secure all sections!" Koenig ordered on rubber legs. "Ouma, what does computer have to say? Is this an isolated hit or should we expect more?"

"Unknown, commander," Ben Ouma's voice over response emanated over the commlock speakers. "Computer does not have enough information. It is still analyzing data from the planet."

Of course computer is useless, the commander thought sarcastically. He cut the link. "Willet!" He shouted into the link to the newly returned (again) Technician from his Service section kitchen duites. "Bring down Eagle 4 on Launch Pad 4!"

"WILLET!!!"

His frustration was answered. Bergman, Carter, Starns and Koenig stepped through the door of the Pad 4 control room. Velma Hill, Helena Russell and Angelina, who had outraced them by minutes via access corridors and ladders, were in the room and Hill and Russell were giving CPR to a prone and electrocuted Hugo Willet.

Angelina Carter had the access panel to the pneumonic control circuits for the Launch Pad 4 elevator, shaking her head in despair.

"Whatever it was that hit us, Commander, fried every circuit," she pulled out a charred PCA and realizing it was stil hot, dropped it to the floor. "Damn. We can't drop the elevator into the hangar."

**********

Rotstein had achieved the pad four firing room, and found it extremely disappointing to find that Harness Bull Duncan, and VAB Manager Gordon Cooper were awaiting him. 'Coop dove first, but the murdering traffic controller was too, heinously graceful. With an adrenaline-powered, rotation of the hip, he was able to thwart being sacked, but the resulting Foxtrot sent him careening backwards into the bull. Duncan choked him out with both hands whilst 'Coop grappled for the unholstered laser.

Rotstein was purple, and on the verge when the security guard made the mistake of leaning too close. The malefic operative aimed his left elbow squarely at the cartaledge of Duncan's nose. There was a gruesome, greenstick crack which was followed by a discharging splatter of blood. The harness bull toppled over unconscious, just as 'Coop was taking aim with Duncan's laser.

Then the voluminous energy tide struck yet again. Cooper lost his balance, and fell backwards against the yellow light panels.

He managed one, unable-to-hit-the-broad-side-of-a-barn, shot before Rotstein disappeared down the accessway that led towards the pad four Ready Room.

**********

Koenig, Bergman, Starns, Alan and Angelina Carter came upon the human carnage of the firing room. Angelina stopped to aid Coop, his head still spinning from his direct hit with the now shattered light panel, to a sitting position. She ripped a section of her zippered, rust color sleeve, ironically the color of dried blood, to stem the hemoglobin river coming from the nose of a moaning Duncan.

"He can't fly, can he?" Ang asked as she eyed the Ready Room accessway.

They didn't answer her. There was no time for talk. They were headed to the Ready Room.

Angelina continued compressing Duncan's nose, the torrent of blood easing and darkening her sleeve.

"What?" the downed Harness Bull groaned.

"Be still," Ang soothed. "Help is on the way. Your nose is busted up pretty good. Looks like you'll finally get the nosejob that you..."

She paused. Her bare forearm caught her attention. She noticed as an aside that the freckles were gone but she was most attentive to the fact that the scar she had gotten as a 7 year old when she accidently fell through her grandmother's glass storm door was...gone. The room was suddenly filled with the scents of her grandmother's house. The aroma of the meat sauce for the polenta filled the air. Just as unsettling, she almost 'felt' like she was 7 years old.

She blinked and the old scar returned and the smells of yesteryear receeded in her memory. It was stress. She was exhausted and hallucinating. There could be no other explanation.

*************

"...just a little, seizmic disturbance...let's not make a federal case of it." William Gregory Harms, III finished telling Professor Shir Demskey. It was a strident, tantalizingly brief story--one to squelch the overbearing silence that is attendant on any trip to the coffee machine. "But anyway, that was how I defeated twenty Ethiopian terrorists with only my wit, my ingenuity, and an imported can of Moolatte." He chuckled, indicating the scar on his right temple which at one time, held a sniper's bullet, fired from an AK47 in Tel Aviv. "It wasn't a cake walk, mind you. I knew from the minute that I was transferred from the OSS that I might be placing myself in a precarious position.

"A virtual cauldron of genocide, and political unease.

"Madmen with suitcase 'nukes...and Dirty Bombs.

"Exotic women."

"I-" 'Cryo Specialist Demskey started.

"However." Harms bombasted with a sacred finger. "I've always felt that it was my duty to be a gadfly. I didn't think twice about charging aboard that bus even if the odds were I'd be tossed aside like some old chin pump. It was time to make doughnuts, my friend, and if I was to ever be an effective member of MOSSAD, I would have to come to terms with the strong-arming hoodlum who had his semi-automatic shoved up the nostril of the old lady sitting in the back seat. There she was, all ready to have her brains turned to red applefritters."

"I-" Demskey prehended uselessly.

"Let me tell you, it's tough to be old." The pilot lectured, his forgotten coffee turning ice cold. "It's also tough to be alone. This woman was old,and she was alone. Don't forget--I was the one who suspected that this touchwood was the same guy whose photo I had in my briefcase; an attache working for the covert, Party of Democratic Kampuchea--no, don't let the name fool you--who, at that time, were attempting to blackmail the west with a stolen superformula that would allow rivalling nations to yield natural gas from cows.

"Say, why are you staring at me like that?" Harms self-consciously degressed.

"!!!LOOK OUT!!!" Professor Demskey yelled, and grabbed the pilot by the tunic. He pulled him safely out of the way as the Tazmanian Devil of blood and perspiration broke past them and dashed through the open airlock into the brightly lit passenger module of Eagle Four.

The next railroad car was Truman Starns, whose 200 pound magnitude slammed into the closing doors of the boarding tube just as the status panel switched from green, and NORMAL, to red and COUNTDOWN.

"DAMMIT." The detective reviled angrily as the others were arriving.

"OUMA." Koenig was determined.

"WE CAN'T DO ANYTHING TO STOP IT FROM HERE." The mainframe specialist told him over the emergency channel. "THE ONBOARD COMPUTER IS ALREADY OUT OF SAFE MODE."

"PAD FOUR BLOCK HOUSE, THIS IS CARTER." The pilot vociferated into his own commlock. "THAT SHIP CAN'T TAKE OFF. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? DELETE THE ROLL PROGRAM. BLEED THE HYDRAULICS. DO WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO DO. IF HE GETS OUT OF HERE WE'RE GOING TO LOOK AS STUPID AS A CUT SNAKE."

**********

So be it.

In the command module of Eagle Four, Rotstein slid into position behind the CPN's panel, and hurriedly fired the mainstage boosters.

**********

"Eagle Four." GNC Kate Bullen declined from the tower while Koenig and the others listened. "Eight nautical miles downrange."

With deep encumbrance, the commander looked over his shoulder at Bergman and Carter.

Chapter 1

Planet Mythraea gave her the seeming evil eye and Angelina Carter, leaning on the sill of viewport #3 in Commander Koenig's office, reciprocated with a glare of her own. Behind her, the command conference had begun with everyone taking their seats except for Pierce Quinton, who continued to pace on the deck in front of Koenig's desk.

The big doors to Main Mission rumbled to a close, silencing the backround noise of computer and operators moving about the auditorium with tense purpose. The Commander opted for more privacy as the subject turned into the bizarre range. Pierce Quinton continued to pace.

"I felt something too, Commander," Angelina turned toward the conference table. "When I was helping Duncan, I noticed a scar on my arm I've had since I was 7 years old...gone. I could have sworn too that I was in my grandmother's kitchen. The smells were so real. Then, it was gone and the scar had returned."

She took her seat and shrugged, though Quinton's pacing was starting to get on her nerves. "It was really weird."

"The Argument Of Perihelion has brought us closer to Mythraea." Victor Bergman said, engrossed in his methodical unscrewing of the utiltiy module from Koenig's commstation. Alan Carter stood behind him--ready with a three quarter socket wrench. "And...." The professor trailed, pulling away a bunch of red, and blue solid state wiring. "That's much closer than we initially thought."

"Too close, professor." Truman Starns lamented from his position on the bookcase setee. The coach had arrived just in time. Rotstein made good his escape, leaving behind faces, and egg, and an immodest pile of mutilated cadavers.

"It's a fair crack of the whip, alright." Carter deliberated neutrally.

At the round table, Security Chief Pierce Quenton lowered his head into red, blood pressure filled hands.

"I must admit I'm finding this hard to accept." Lorna O'Brian said nervously. She had been in space as long as anyone on Moonbase Alpha, and still her three doctorates were as useless as canned Kleenex. "The planet is emanating waves of pure time?"

"Seems that way." Bergman said, and politely indicated for Carter to hand him the wrench. "Our analysis was fairly useless--then along came that unexpected parabola. Now everything is different.

"The planet appears to be like some immense battery." The professor said, looking up from his work to address the others in the command yoke. "Somehow, through a process we can't begin to understand, it's harnessing the gravitational core of the surrounding stars...pulling it all in.... The distortions that we felt were the resulting overflow--the biproduct of superfluous time.

"Have a look at this." He motioned, turning the module's face towards the group. It was the unit that tracked the analogue, and digital lunar time. "This is just one example."

"On the one hand it's 09:00 hours." Sandra Benes agreed, leaning back in her chair with her arms folded. "That was ten hours before the first upsurge."

"But the other chronometer says it's 10:00 hours...AM." Helena Russell coalesced with Benes and Bergman. "Is that one hour later?" She quizzed eloquently. "Or three hours from now?"

"We are not exactly sure," Angelina answered from behind her laptop. The Microsoft time in the lower right hand corner of the screen read 11:19PM. "None of the clocks on the base read the same time; at least we haven't found any yet. Even the master time keeper in computer is screwed up."

"Ironically, the analog clocks," she motioned to the round module with the big and little hands,"are probably the closest to the real times. We are resynchonizing the time in 15 minutes to 1000 hours, though, if you are obsessed about keeping track of time, you might want to take out your old fashioned alarm clock and keep it wound up. We don't know when we will experience the next time distortion wave, just that there is over a 99% probability that it will happen again while we are in range of Mythraea."

"THAT'S A NAFF." Quenton blurted aloud, his anguish fracturing like plastique. "IT SEEMS TO ME THAT WE'RE MISSING THE POINT. COMMANDER, THAT NUTTER ROTSTEIN IS DOWN THERE, AND WE'RE UP HERE--A BUNCH OF PILLOCKS WITH A MORGUE FULL OF DEAD BODIES.

"PLAIN AND SIMPLE, WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?"

Ang jumped in her seat, startled from the loud outburst and accidently hitting the Enter key, prematurely sending an IM response to Technician Chris Potter before completing the sentence.

She glanced with annoyed at Quinton, her left ear ringing slightly from the verbal thunderclap.

"Why should we do anything?" Sandra offered. "He is going to a barren rock. So far, we have not found any signs of life on that planet. He has limited resources, Commander." She sat back, petite arms crossing over chest, dark eyes blazing. "As far as I am concerned, his fate is sealed. Let the elements deal with him."

"We can't just leave him," Russell intervened from the humanistic side. "I will not dispute that the evidence suggests he murdered three times. But John, we must deal with him. We can't leave him out there to die, if not because it would be inhumane but because we can't just dump our problems out in space and hope they go away."

"Paul?" Koenig surveyed, unkneading his fingers, moving from person to person.

"I agree with Sandra." The controller verified while acknowledging Russell only remotely. "His crimes were unconscionable. If he's obviously guilty, what would we gain by bringing him back? Pretending to be the filth does nothing to promote our day, to day survival." He regarded Ang' docilely. "We would be bringing him back to execute him.

"Nothing more."

"Is that the way of it?" Winters jawed with antipathy and disrelish. Behind him, the Gorski rubber tree plant splayed fake leaves on either side of his head like green, Dumbo ears. "The law of nature, Paul?"

"No." Morrow spat back. "It's about not having the resources, nor the interest to reform some macabre bastard who makes us all want to chunder. I saw N'Dole and the others.

"They were unrecognizable." He reminded Koenig who did not need reminding. "No one on this base would be safe as long as Rotstein was here--even if he was locked away in irons for the rest of his appalling life. Commander, he's not worth the drain on our life support.

"Let it be."

"Although I want to agree with Sandra and add to the fact that we have never dealt with a murderer before, I am much more concerned about any possible effects Rotstein's presence would have on that planet." Angelina closed the lid on the laptop for emphasis.

"Why should the planet care?" Mark Winters scoffed. "Its just a planet."

"Haven't you been listening to anything that has been said in the last 10 minutes?" Angelina retorted with supreme irritation. Her generous reserve of patience for arrogant idiots was quickly running dry.

"Interesting point, Angelina," Bergman piped in after setting the time unit module on Koenig's desk. He stepped into the pit and took his seat next to the Commander, leaning back in the moduform white plastic chair. "Of course, we are not sure exactly what effect he could have...if any."

For some reason, all eyes fell upon O'Brian, the unawashed. Their's curiously. Bergman's advisably.

"Well...I don't know." The phycisist conceded, on the fence. "I suppose it's possible...." She allowed, glancing towards Ang,' and Bergman for support. "The phenomenon is causing a precession--marked solar effects. I suppose this 'frame dragging' could become more pronounced....

"We really need time to launch an RXTE to make a more thorough study."

"Ouma?" Koenig consulted quietly.

"Don't have it." The mainframe specialist informed them. "We're closer, but if anything, the Moon's velocity has increased due to this peturbation of gravitational fields. In less than thirty hours, Mythraea will be behind us."

The weirdness and undulating rollercoaster of invisible displacement appeared to be returning from Angelina Carter's point of view. Her husband now appeared markedly younger, sporting a much fuller head of hair and appeared to be much blonder. From Carter's perspective, the fine lines around Ang's eyes were gone and she appeared not the minimal weight cited on Liberty Mutual life insurance weight tables but fairly close to the maximum. Her face was rounder and her hands were smoother.

Young Ang of Christmas pasts became Older Ang of the present.

Young, barely post adolescent Alan Carter of yesteryear became mature astronaut in his late thirties.

Professor Bergman was a nearly unrecognizale graduate student again as John Koenig appeared to be a tall, lanky and dark haired lad, years away from gray and receeding hairlines, and looking more like a high school basketball team star center than the Commander of Moonbase Alpha.

"I think its happening again," Lorna O'Brian, her face riverting to the peaches and cream complexion of her youth.

"I think you're right," Ang mumbled her ascent.

"Captain," the familiar man, but one who had not been seen in years, waved from the open auxilliary door of the office. "Captain Carter. Sir, I have a question."

Angelina looked at Carter, the color draining from his face. "That looks like..." she spoke to the Captain then swallow uneasily. "Steve Abrams."

"Oh no...." Victor Bergman blurted with heart rending sympathy, and commisseration for the dead--particularly those who aren't aware that they have kicked the bucket. Unwilling to face the human stain, and the force majeure of it all, he looked away and took to rubbing his dogging forehead.

"Hello, Steve." John Koenig offered his felicitations in a weary, chapfallen voice. He wasn't exactly surprised. And it wasn't an illusion. No Svengali's coin. It wasn't a hologram, or a clone of Abrams, produced by aliens with no moral pretext, or by a psycho scientist in a laboratory filled with lightening bolts. The commander realized that this person, no other, died in space, but now he was back and seemed timid for the interruption. The pilot, beyond all bounds these many years, stood firmly--a breathing human being amongst other human beings. His blood was as real as theirs as was the actuality of his soul.

"Make like a tree." Carter swelled--angry at a shadow (which lacked the deacency to be a figment of his imagination) whose ignorance he could not allow; angry at the planet, for picking the wrong time to do it's imitation of Solaris; outraged at himself for being made to succomb.

"Yeah." Abrams apologized, blushing. "O'kay. Sorry for barging in."

Following a wave of contrition, the maintenance panel closed behind him.

Truman Starns walked immediately to the door, and opened it with his commlock. Holding both sides of the bulkhead, he peered into the auditorium, looking cautiously from left to right. Paul Morrow could make out the back of Zed Astrin's tunic as he stood before the controller's workstation, with one hand on his left hip, and with the other holding a green-flimsied PTR Report. It was obvious that things were as conventional as could be expected, given the circumstances.

In Main Mission at least.

Starns turned and shook his head at the group before closing the door again. It appeared that the ressurrection of Steve Abrams was brief, and bittersweet. No one outside of the command conference had noticed anything unusual. He was back to being dead again, his question yet unanswered.

"You said something about the effects worsening?" Koenig said satirically to Angelina.

"Yeah," Ang nodded, wondering how much worse it could get. "It seems that these aberrations are confined to the past though which is..."

She stopped abruptly, ready to eat her words. For sitting on the steps, Ang saw another version of herself, apparently 10 years older. The preteen next to her was clearly her son Nicky, as evidenced by his white hair. His face was no longer a cherubic toddler but changed in the shape of emerging manhood with the light acne and the pronounced peach fuzz on the upper lip.

They were both immersed in an Algebra text, he the student and she the teacher.

"If I know what X is but I don't you what Y is," older Nicholas Carter asked, "how can I solve for Z in the equation 2xy + 3zy = 30?"

Behind them, the orange sleeved pilot with burning red corneas lurked in the shadows.

"GET AWAY FROM HIM!!!" she cried out, bolting to a standing position.

She blinked and the time to come retreated back to the future.

"I..." she stammered, slowly reseating herself. "I'm sorry. I saw something..." She stopped and took a sip of coffee.

"We saw it too." Truman Starns stated numbly--his inborn, 'canuck ability to face the cold 'vamoosed.

Pierce Quenton groaned forever.

"Well," The commander said standing. "Obviously this is not a good situation."

"No, it isn't." Bergman concurred. "We can thank our lucky stars that we 'shant be spending much time with Mythraea. Prolonged exposure to these upsurges could cause us to lose all reference to what we consider normal time."

"What do you mean?" Carter balked while Koenig paced. "If we hang around long enough we won't have the brains to give ourselves a headache?"

Pursing his lips, Bergman nodded a slow, but incontrovertible affirm.

"We've hit the jackpot." The commander said deprecatingly. "This is a bad, BAD region of space.

"I know--that's an understatement.

"Therefore-"

He was about to suggest that they forget all notions of bringing Rotstein to justice, though it would mean the loss of Eagle Four--a commodity more crucial to thier existence than her pilot.

"Commander." Carroll Severance's face appeared on the commstation panel that was minus a clock. "Professor Bergman. We have the results of the advanced interferometer series that we took of the eastern hemisphere. It would appear that the planet is inhabited."

"John," Russell turned insistently, ignoring Morrow and the others, "if that planet is inhabited..." She trailed off.

"If he has such disdain for life that he would kill his own kind, what's to stop him from killing other life forms?" Angelina Carter reinforced.

Sandra Benes sighed deeply and threw down her pen. It was apparent she was rethinking her position.

Bergman stretched, leaning back in the plastic chair, hands kneading behind his head. "I don't see any other choice now, John," Bergman shook his head, not particularly liking the situation or the lack of options. "We have to go get Klaus Rotstein."

Koenig stood at the commstation, not facing the group, but not quite addressing the expectant cartographer either. He was somewhere in the turgid middle ground between safety, scrupulousness, and ethical responsibility. It would be easy enough to let Rotstein abate. And given thier meager resources, this was probably the preferred choice. As long as the ass in the sling was not theirs--who gives a damn? The Moon would be out of range by the time the inhabitants realized that their population had increased by one, and that the new guy on the block was a cold blooded killer. However, if this was intelligent life in the balance; not just beasts of the field chewing thier alien cud--and considering the operative's yen for torture, and evisceration--they would be leaving behind Klaus, The Ripper as Earth's only, permanently ensconced dignitary to the planet Mythraea.

On the screen, Severance shifted slightly off camera--waylayed and bored.

"Alright, keep me updated." The commander said and terminated the link. "Quenton, put together a security patrol. We leave within the hour."

Chapter 2

"Your hesistancy to act is not understandable," the witch with the torch berated the leader while scratching the mole on her nose.

Eagle 4 fired its landing thrusters, generating billowing clouds of deep purple dust.

"The earth creature is deranged and slaughters his own." The hag continued. "The portal is in danger. We must protect it."

Images of the acts of Rotstein flashed in the portal, as the screams of his victims echoed through the dark canyon. The wizard, known as Eyes, broke down in a torrent of sobs.

"Despicable creatures," Torchbearer went on. "It amazes me how they have survived this long." She cackled hideously. "Surely you know what is about to happen. I have seen it. We have all seen it. What is the point of it?"

**********

"Alpha to Eagle one, you are cleared for lift off," Paul Morrow spoke into the comm system as she passed the green flimsie to Lars Manroot.

"Eagle One to Alpha," Commander Koenig's image appeared on the right monitor under the big screen. "Lift off in 10 seconds."

Angelina Carter glanced at Alan Carter, manning the capcom then returned her gaze to the intimidating planet of Mythraea on the big screen. The base had reverted to nightmode, with a skeleton crew. The illusions and hallucinations of time rippling out of place and out of control was taking its toll on the majority of the crew. Russell and Mathias concurred putting the crew on a forced sleep would minimize the psychological chaos. Mathias, having given the last of the sleep inducing medications, walked briskly under the left archway and switched the blue and white monitors to medical mode and life signs of all members of Eagle one, Koenig, Russell, Bergman, Quinton and his crew replaced Koenig and Bergman's images in the pilot and co-pilot's position.

**********

"Five seconds...." Morrow said expectantly from the tower.

"I read IMU realignment and optical calibration as go." Umberto Garzon accepted a cup of coffee from Bill Addison, and nodded to Carter who was scanning Eagle One's projected Delta-H at his own workstation. The tension beneath the goosneck lamps was thick enough to cut with a knife. A pity, really. Rotstein would have loved it.

"Computer shuns the probability of navigating the ice rings." Ben Ouma castigated them again, ostracized, and irate.

"...three, two, one...." Morrow ignored him, and watched.

**********

Hypersonic propellant exploded from the RCS engine bells beneath Eagle One's passenger module.

The spacecraft lifted off with it's bowsprit at a forty-five degree angle while the rest of the stack followed suit with astronomical deft, and lissom. A huge expanse of dust whirled like a vortex beneath the ascent engine jets. The white room was buried in a prehistoric sheath of powdered breccia.

**********

In the command module, John Koenig waited for the inertial guidance display to come up before leaning forward in his harness for the throttle-up controls.

"Let's hope they have an understanding way about them." He told Victor Bergman uncertainly. "Here we go...."

The Professor tightened the strap of his harness. "Understanding? Or a willingness to let us be heard?" he offered. "I don't fancy them welcoming us with open arms, given the fact that their first encounter with us is likely to be with one of our worst."

"But if we can get Rotstein before he does any harm," Helena Russell started then stopped, realizing she had better grab a seat or be tossed about the cabin during lift-off. She quickly existed the command module.

**********

One hundred nautcal miles downrange of Moonbase Alpha, the planet Mythraea was corpuscular--virtually subatomic, and unseeable in the field of black--the portier of covert space. The halo of orbiting icebergs was the only viable thing in Koenig's telescope during the first star check. Water, frozen, and compacted over the eons; imprisoned in static revolutions over the onyx dark star.

Compared to Security Chief Pierce Quenton's blood, theses sheets, and growlers were as hot as the Sahara Desert.

**********

"You don't much fancy the 'direct' approach do you?" Pierce Quenton harrangued Helena Russell as she sat at the passenger module workstation. The statement was made in pleasant, melodic tones, but it was quite clear that he had taken a respite from his inventory of the security arsenal for the sole purpose of beating the physician across the head. "The way you 'yapped it up during the command conference, I dare say you're worried about Rotstein's health.

"You feel sorry for him because he wasn't a happy bunny? Isn't that right?" He sneered in his charming, Pierce Quenton way. "I too feel that way. I figure there must have been some terrible conflict going on inside him. That's what drove him, time, and time again, to march right into someone's flat and murder them.

"It couldn't be because he's off his fucking trolley."

The chief tsk'ed, tsk'ed, tsk'ed.

"We have no idea why Klaus Rotstein behaved as he did," Russell responded cooly, ignoring the Chief of Security's tone. "I understand your anger. I performed the autopsy on Reilly and Bayleton. But without even a trial, you have already condemned Rotstein to death." She shook her head. "I do not deny he is dangerous. However, I do take exception to imposing the death penalty without considering other alternatives, in the height of vengefulness."

She looked him in the eye. "Does that make us any better than Rotstein, Chief Quenton?"

**********

"More of them come," Eyes looked up toward the heavens, contemplating.

"Danger. More danger." Torchbearer shook her head with mangled dreadlocks.

The leader glanced at her impassively then returned his gaze to Eagle 4 as Rotstein emerged and stumbled down the steps of the passenger module.

**********

John Koenig looked over the yoke, and peered left and right through the rendezvous window. It was one layer of black, gaseous vapor after another. If a god could be said to hold things precious, then this world was but an armoire. Here there was a socket but no bulb. A forgotten closet adjacent to a mudded, dripping crawlspace. A mason jar, buried beneath a euglenid creek.

**********

At the poles, pale and futile solar flares transformed the topography--it went from being dirt to being hot dirt. The solemn mockery of ice caps--like the BOMFOG seas--were confervoid as Eagle One coasted towards a gangrene terminator line. Rose colored blains began to appear following the spacecraft's fiery exit from the ionosphere.

Truman Starns was standing by the weapons rack next to the starboard airlock. He passed Harness Bull Duncan a HEAT beam, while selecting a single barrell, rocket blaster for himself. The shoulder strap fell over his civilian sleeve like a gird of destiny. Coldaryn closed, and latched his polymer travel case. It contained Brain Banger Prisms, and a perfume bottle filled with Tetrodotoxin spray--first it would ruin Rotstein's day...then he would croak. There was a dart gun filled with a Botulinium derrivative--the champagne of modern torture devices, which wrought paralysis first, and ultimately cardiac failure. There was nothing in Helena Russell's medical kit that could forestall this method of execution.

Rotstein would have approximately one minute to plead his case before being loosed from this vale of tears. This was the moment that Pierce Quenton waited for.

Take note of this item: the case also contained Blind Man's Bluff. This was not a game that involved searching for one's tormentors while blindfolded. It was an opthalmic irritant, delivered as a powder, or as a liquid. After being exposed to it, destruction of the retina soon followed.

It also led to an agonzing inflammation of the nervous system. During the war, gaoled test subjects likened it to the sting of a Black Widow spider.

And then, they died.

"Commander's orders." The chief reprimanded Harness Bull Judge, and then gave him back the reset laser. The safety was off, and the function selected was ATOMIZE.

**********

The prime recovery zone for Eagle Four was in an arid archipelego of fragmented islands. Eagle One descended into the maroon alongside her stolen sistership. She airbrushed the surrounding boulders with jet spray before the landing pads made secure contact with the ridge.

Fifteen steps in the wrong direction would lead to a screaming, sky dive of a demise.

"According to computer, we're in the winter season." John Koenig commented, rolling backwards in the pilot's couch with a strip of register tape. "And still...it's one hundred and twenty-five degrees."

"But the downside of winter is the prevalence of violent dust storms," Bergman went on, reading a long print out of the local climate. "This world is not very hospitable, that is a certainty."

"Whoever lives here must be fairly hardy," he nodded as he stretched and stood up from the co-pilot's couch.

Bergman followed Koenig into the passenger module. He immediately cocked an eyebrow toward Koenig when he assessed the excess arsenal.

"You must believe Rotstein is a extraordinarily formidable man to be packing so much power, Pierce," Bergman commented to Quenton.

"We're not taking any chances, Victor." Koenig interceded as he reached for the clear shoulder strap of his red, and white utility case. "All of you are well aware of what happened to Bayledon and the others. We're here only because we have no right to turn our backs on an unknowing civilization. We have nine hours to conduct the search. Stay with your group. Watch your backs. We'll rendezvous back here at dusk. Rotstein is no doubt armed, and he's to be considered extremely dangerous. Give him one opportunity to surrender, but only one."

"And after that?" Helena Russell wondered, morally and judicially confused.

"I had Technical program this scanner to detect human life signs," Bergman unsnapped the small black satchel and passed it to Dr. Russell. "Heart beat, respiration, temperature and the correlating and appropriate normal ranges. Of course, if the other life forms on this planet have similar life sign ranges, it won't do us much good, but the likelihood of having such a similar physical combination is small."

Koenig stepped to the front of the group, ready to open the door via the manual access panel as Helena activated the sensor. She frowned.

"Anything, doctor?" the Commander read her expression and knew her well enough that the quizzical look on her face contained more than a yes or no answer.

"Very strange," the CMO dialed the knobs and studied the display. "Yes, I got Rotstein. However, when I widen the range, I'm not picking up anything else. Nothing."

Bergman's frown matched the doctor's as he turned and queried the onboard computer. He tapped the panel impatiently until it spat out the register tape.

"Uh, according to the onboard computer," Bergman read the result, "there is no other life on this planet besides Rotstein...and now us."

Perplexity and perturbance mixed with anger masked Koenig's features.

"Eagle One to Alpha," he stabbed at the communication stud. "Ouma. Eagle One's onboard computer is telling us there is no life on this planet. Why did computer tell us this planet is inhabited? Is there a fault with computer?"

"JOHN!" Russell interupted. "I'm not reading Rotstein. One moment he was there, the next he wasn't."

"Ouma, this is Koenig. The coffee break is over. We need that information." The commander became unwrapped over the infuriating silence of the commstation. "Paul?" His ire yielded no links though--only silvery silence. "I'm not getting anything." He gave up, releasing the toggle.

"It's possible that they're in the throes of another upsurge. We'll have to try again later." He supposed.

The commander stood speechless, knowing full well what the next step was, and detesting it viscerally. The pregnant, dumbfoundedness of the others illustrated that they too were in the know. There was no problem with relativity on this planet. It was time for Klaus Rotstein to be condemned, and cursed spite that they were ever born to make it right; he hated Shakespeare, but as elementary as a child's building blocks was the knowledge that they were committed.

Koenig opened the hatch.

The dry heat made Harness Bull Pound deathly vomitory. From there on out, it got worse.

"Jim." Pierce Quenton mustered his team, heading down the gangway. "Ed. Search Eagle Four. 'Dunk, I want you and Judge up on that rise, and give it some wellie. Take a pair of binoculars, and try to get a visual sighting. And watch your step. There's no room for plonkers."

The canyon below was bottomless.

"I'll set up the GPS." Truman Starns acted, moving past Koenig and Bergman, humping a Brobdignagian case on his back that bore the number 18. The detective assumed that this designation stood for 'tons.'

"Helena, anything on the life readings sensor?" Koenig and Bergman turned to the physician after the Commander closed and locked out the passenger door of Eagle One.

"Nothing," she shook her head glumly.

"There is a significant fluctuating magnetic field in this area," Bergman added. "It would not be a surprise if it was contributing to intermittent interference. I would leave the sensor on and set at the ranges we programmed. When the magnetic field ebbs, we'll pick him up." The professor nodded with a half wink.

"Alright, let's go," Koenig motioned to Starns, Bergman and Russell. "Helena, you'll need this."

He set a Class II laser to heavy stun and handed it to her. She took the laser reluctantly.

**********

Two hours later, and sadly, there was still no recompense for N'Dole, Bayledon, and Dave Reilly, the Texas Leprachaun. There were, however, numerous bruises, and contusions, and a near tumble down the rocky precipice for Harness Bull Coldaryn.

Koenig grabbed for the monument rock with his good right hand, and a bad left hand that Helena Russell had bandaged after the commander took a tumble into a two foot sinkhole in the sandstone. The hill was fifty meters high, and it blockaded the circumference like the Sioux nation at Custer's last stand. The heels of Helena Russell's hiking boots disappeared into the quagmire, and dug for purchase. Her cheeks were covered with silt, and bramble. Pierce Quenton's unmanageable hair stood in horns on his prostrated head.

Starns wondered if he lost his commlock ten meters back, near the deadfall of impaling thistles, or if it had become dislodged from his belt during the wade through Lake Inferior. He nudged his way cautiously upwards, climbing, and pulling his laser rifle through the sapropel.

Harness Bull Pound looked like he was fighting a war with a pile of shit, and so far, the shit was winning.

"Victor?" Koenig ceased his acclivity momentarily, and gazed upwards, panting. "Does it seem to you like something is wrong with the sky?"

Bergman's studious features concealed the sudden inward panic. Astronomical calculations and estimated whirled through his mind once, twice then a third time. It should have been the same result but obviously, he senses told him otherwise.

A look of doom crossed his face.

"What's wrong?" Helena Russell followed Koenig and Bergman's gaze upwards.

**********

On the other side of the high andromeda, they discovered the city. A sprawling, water color metropolis of extramundane mist, of multicolored devil lights.... Truman Starns had to focus hard to see it, though the empire was upon them.

"The creature which you seek does not exist...here," the witch with the torch proclaimed to the weary group from her high rocky perch.

Russell blinked and saw three others beside her, each on separate pedestals.

"In fact, you no longer exist. We must correct the aberation in time." She continued with no argument from the others. The other female witch broke out into high pitched cackling while the male wizard known as Eyes began the weep. The apparent male leader of the group remained impassive, staring at the group.

"But I am feeling generously merciful," torch witch continued. "Name your manner of death, a quick death, and it shall be granted to you."

Chapter 3

Koenig stopped suddenly--predictably, and dropped his case on the serrated, crystalline floor. They appeared to be standing in the shelter of some sort of natatorium. A triangular pool of water dominated the center. Harness Bull Coldaryn backed away with his rifle as the commander took a moment to process the plaintive cries that emanated from the city; the gelatinous waves; the barely perceivable arcs of electricity that reinvigorated him, even as he was being sentenced.

"Death?" Koenig said, his thoughts scattered. "If you can understand what I'm saying, then you know we came here to help."

The aliens continued thier vigil.

"We're pursuing one of our own." Truman Starns ventured gamely. "A murderer. We thought your people might be in danger so we came here to retrieve him."

The aliens continued thier vigil.

Bergman was studying a convexion of red, green, and blue lights that emanated from an amethyst dais to the left of the pool. Finally, scientific curiosity overcame his hurt feelings over being told that he must die.

"What is that noise?" The professor foundered as all around him the alarms prevailed in a multisynchronous shriek. "Do you liive here?"

Harness Bull Judge was abruptly kicked aside by a black hole that blossomed, and opened not five meters away from him. Post-extant dust from the floor of the natatorium was drawn in. A solitary figure dressed in the flowing crud, and unsanitary pleather of the ages stepped out. The white, bloodless joints of his hands were locked in iron gauntlets smelted with helical razor blades. The being walked away from the collapsing doorway, and strolled unpleasantly towards the commander, and Bergman.

"I am the one called 'Hyacinth.'" The alien said, dropping his martyrized, black fingernails to his waist. "We know of you, and your people." He added smugly. "The sounds you are hearing represent the splendid ability of Time as it refashions, reproves itself.

"And us as well.

"We are the ostiaries." The alien elucidated. "Long before the synthesis of the first atoms. When the universe had yet to cool--this was, and is, our place."

"Then you must know that we mean you no harm, that we are here to help," Helena Russell moved next to Koenig.

"Help?!?!?" Torch witch cackled. "Your very former existence was a menace. Your race has been doomed to extinction since the beginning, and by your own hand."

"So be it," the other witch finally spoke in agreement.

"Consider what will come with thier extinction," Eyes sniffed miserably. "Open your eyes to what is to come. Hyacinth, behold the future."

Hyacinth briefly closed his eyes. The Alphans could read nothing from his unchanging expression.

"They must be permitted to correct the aberration," Eyes implored, like rolling credits at the end of a film. Hyacinth opened his red and blackened eyes.

"What aberration?" Koenig asked. Knowingly, he pulled his commlock from his belt. "Koenig to Alpha. Come in Moonbase Alpha."

Static was his reply.

"Paul, this is Koenig." He tried again. Unpleasant snow and static.

"Alan....Ang....ANSWER ME." In vain he switched frequencies and the result was the same. Static, interfence and unanswered channel.

"What's going on?" Koenig asked despite his intuition screaming loud and clear.

"Your transmissions are not memorable." Hyacinth advised casually--infuriatingly--as he stooped beside the pool to gaze narcisistically at his own scrofulous reflection. Koenig's bones told him that it was less of a put-down, and more of an incomprehensible fait accompli. Somewhere along the line of extraterrestrial growth, and development, in a singularly barbaric act of biocosmetics, an ascerbic wedge of steel had been grafted to the alien's denuded skull. "The long chain of iron, and rosaries that bound you is dissolved now. You are back to the first link."

"Isn't that exquisite?" Truman Starns exclaimed angrily, tilting his riot gun in the general direction of Hyacinth's collar bone. "We achieved that with a little help from you, of course."

"Down." Pierce Quenton fumfuh'ed, surprisingly mollified, and bewildered as he grabbed the barrell of the detective's rifle. "Put it down, chum." The chief directed, knowing with freezing clarity that this situation was bigger than their box of death; larger than Rotstein; more humongous than them all. "I don't think it's going to help."

Concern for Moonbase Alpha was still urgently at the forefront--but only in his fading short-term memory. The chief was having a difficult time remembering what the base looked like. And it bothered him. This was not good. The layout of sterile corridors; the security hub (That was what it was called...right? Or was it the security complex? Or was it the security annex? Police Central? The Halls of Justice?); the time he spent marooned there, claustrophobically--year after year. The elephant of despair was off his back, suddenly--like a half-remembered, night terror that was growing increasingly vague in the morning refresh.

The Moon was no longer a proper noun to him. It had been relegated to an adjective status--just another entry in an appendix of astronomical terms.

"Commander." Harness Bull Judge said, blanching over his hand held sensor. "The temperature in that pool...it's jammed the unit. The reading stops at about one billion degrees Kelvin."

"Run the self check diagnostics" Koenig suggested, already knowing the answer.

Judge nodded and was not surprised with the result. "Diagnostics show the sensor is functioning normally."

One billion degrees Kelvin. They should have been atomized for standing so close to the apparent inferno.

"Ostiaries," Bergman repeated, seemingly unmoved by the further bad news. "You said you are the ostiaries, gate keepers. Gate keepers of what?"

"We are the Clocksmiths." Hyacinth told him, standing. "The indentures of Time." He accounted. "You must come to terms with the fact that everything you knew is gone."

The group was stunned into confounded silence. The screams of the ages reverberating throughout the structure underscored their dire predicament. Bergman, arms crossed and mentally making the connections, began to 'uh huh' and wag his index finger.

"I think I understand now," the professor began. "The Clocksmiths oversee some sort of doorway to time. Any time including ours. Past, Present and Future."

Koenig surmised, "You don't think that Rotstein.."

"That is precisely what I think happened." Bergman connected the last dot in the puzzle, finishing his sentence. He glanced at Hyacinth, who gave him neither hint nor clue. "Obviously, it had to be in the past."

"What?" Russell queried, wanting an explanation for the non-physics community, "what do you mean? What did Rotstein do?"

"Rotstein somehow used a doorway through time and did something that changed the events of history, such that the Moon never blasted out of orbit...or perhaps Moonbase Alpha never even existed." Bergman explained to the doctor and the others.

The group was once again stunned into silence, absorbing the impact of terrible realization.

"NO," Helena Russell stepped toward Hyacinth, barely containing her anger. "We will NOT come to terms with our situation. If you are responsible for guarding this doorway through time, WHY did you let Rotstein go through and change the future?!?!?!"

"You speak of deeds that never were, that never will be." Hyacinth reminded her, but the scrutiny of his black, collapsar eyes seemed to suggest that he admired Russell's tenacity and pluckiness. "One would suppose that he came here--was welcomed by us, for we are a benevolent race--and then used our naievete as a means to sponsor his escape. Your surliness is manifest. No doubt you are Earthmen--a species that revels in misinformation, and appertanances.

"Therefore, we are beyond impute." The alien told Bergman finally, having digressed on the nature of the beast. "That is my conclusion. These things are hypothetically possible."

"He's a right bastard. It seems to me that they mucked it up pretty well on their own." Quenton told Koenig parenthetically, in a low voice. "Now he's unwilling to admit their fair share in this sod."

"Hmmm." Bergman responded. "I'm inclined to disagree. Don't get me wrong, I believe he is messing about but for different reasons. Call it intuition if you like, but I get the feeling that Hyacinth knew this was going to happen before we even crossed over into this solar system. Either way, I fear we're getting mostly half-truths, quarter truths, five-eighths truths...."

"Then maybe it's time to redefine our relationship with them." The detective said, priming source of his relationship 'redefiner. The laser rifle.

"Mr. Starns...." The professor shook his head pathetically. "They would mop the floor with us. We'd be thrashed until they grew tired of doing it. No two ways about it, John. We're playing their game."

Whether it was to emphasize Bergman's theory about the superiority of the Clocksmiths or not, the cries and screams of tortured ages crescendoed into high pitched, ear splitting agony. The group grasped their ears, falling to their knees as the Clocksmiths stood by, unmoved and uninclined to assist the former Alphans.

Suddenly, the screetching stopped and as the ringing subsized in their ears, a deathly silence enveloped the area. The pool was completely still.

"Suppose," Koenig offered, calmer and surprisingly reserved for being a condemned man, "we were to go back in time and stop Rotstein from doing whatever it is he did to change our history. Would you allow us the opportunity to at least attempt to return things as they SHOULD be?"

"No." The sorceress--whose name was Sybele--denounced from high atop her throne.

"Why?" Koenig demanded, stepping close enough to the cthonic pool to give Bergman a start.

"Because time cannot be manipulated in such a fashion." Hyacinth answered for his seemingly demento sistren. The leather leather-clad spokesperson made futile gestures with his razor vivisected hands. "These cuts are my testimony. Time is our Master, not our servant."

"But you said before that we must be allowed to correct it?" The commander argued. "Now you're back-peddling."

"Oceans were created illustrious of themselves." The other witch, who called herself Sybil--educated him in a mud choked voice. "Such is time. It is an unflawed organism which should not be subjected--again, and again--to the contagion of your kind."

"John." Bergman paternally interposed. "There is one other thing we might want to consider. Perhaps the universe is better off for this incident having occured. Rotstein may have unwittingly changed history in a positive fashion. The Moon may still be in Earth orbit--the catastrophe averted. If so, the struggle is over. It never happened. Everyone who died out here has been given a second chance."

"A new beginning?" Quenton said sacrificially, lowering his laser in reverence and in memoriam. "It takes on a different light...when you think about that. We can't rightly deny anyone that chance. Even if it leaves us in the briney deep...."

"No." Bergman said with kindness and clementness. "We can't."

Hyacinth again gazed into the pool. It was completely free of waves and rip tides and his reflection was no longer visible. In the sky above, the sun began to grow larger. The aging red dwarf began to change the hue of the sky to a deceptively beautiful but deadly pink.

"There will be no second chances," Eyes lamented tearfully. "Those that you know do not exist. The end will be catastrophic."

Beyond the confines of the city, magma erupted and oozed over the landscape, gradually consuming Eagle 4. First one landing pod, then the next, as the ship leaned to one side, lava consuming the plastics and metals of the space craft in a sizzling, steaming repast. The city, the area around the pool, however, remained untouched, cool and dry.

Hyacinth continued staring into the pool. The exoskeleton of a giant mantis and the broken and ruined body of a woman with strawberry blonde hair arose to the surface and floated lifelessly in the now murky and pestilent reeking pool.

The leader made a decision and closed his eyes. Once again, the pool returned to its formerly clear state, ripples and waves reappearing.

"Why?" Sybil asked from atop her perch.

"This," Russell pointed to the pool, "is the time portal, isn't it?"

"Oy there, 'guv. I know you can't be bothered with the likes of us." Quenton addressed the alien accomodatingly. "But it seems to me that Time is about to broil us alive." He licked his cowardly chops as the wall of encroaching magma and sulphur began to climb whatever invisible barrier there was protecting the community. You sure that 'idiot treatment' isn't the posh thing to do?

"I mean...live and let live."

"It's like the planet is falling apart." Truman Starns made the passing comment as the calx, and the abyssal rocks began to rise above the walls of the city in an arc of uncreation. Vitiation surrounded them--except for this small seagirt in the aeonian void.

"I'm afraid it's more than just the planet." Bergman replied, argus eyed over the stars that were falling from the porphyrian sky like snow. "Whatever Rotstein did, it's having a cumulative effect on the entire universe as we know it."

"Why isn't it entering here?" Harness Bull Judge wondered hypersthetically. The red hot talus awakened the yellow streak in his spine, and the hunger pains that he so often experienced on Moonbase Alpha were no more. Tonight's table would be particularly good--barbequed security guard.

And it was guaranteed--no one would be late for the main course.

The professor shook his head inconclusively.

"Possibly because we're in some sort of zone where normal, physical laws do not apply." He ventured. "I'm really not sure."

"Time is not bound by law." Sybil admonished them. "It is the only true force of nature, unordered. Cacophany.

"You must go back and correct the aberration," Hyacinth ignored the torch witch and turned to Koenig. "If you do not make the correction, the end will be the end."

"How?" Koenig asked eagerly--motivated even more by the charnel deluge that was gluttonizing the galaxy. "Can you send us to the same place where you sent Rotstein? At exactly the same point? Look--the element of surprise will be on our side, and we can-"

"NO." Sybele stated categorically. "That is impossible."

"You cannot arrive at the same port, at the same instant. Hyacinth acceded, staring beyond Koenig's shoulder at the amorphous shape of things to come. "No moment is ever repeated in exactly the same way. You will arrive earlier, or later.

"Decide."

Koenig turned pensively to the group.

"If we arrive earlier," Bergman stated analytically, "we might arrive too early, much too early and long before Rotstein arrives to effectively stop him. We also would not know when he arrived. We could spend a lifetime waiting for him to come and we would miss him. If we arrive later, we would have a chance to stop him. If we arrive too late to stop him we still have a chance to implement damage control and attempt to reverse the effect of whatever it was that he did," Bergman pointed to the atmospheric and galactic chaos around them,"that created this kind of future."

"I say we go later," Berman finished with a nod.

"Right," Helena stated picking up her medical bag. "I will come with you."

They were distracted from their discussions by Harness Bull Duncan, who, profusely sweating, grasped his left arm in agony as he gasped for breath and dropped to his knees. Dr. Russell immediately went to his side as Quenton and Starns caught him and lowered him to the ground.

"It's his heart," Russell stated, scanning him and taking his pulse. "He is having a mild heart attack." She administed the sedative.

"That leaves you to stay here," Quenton stood up, giving a sympathetic glance at Duncan then turning to Koenig. "So the question is, who goes back, Commander? I'd like to go. When I get my hands on Rotstein, I'll make sure he doesn't alter anything."

Starns and the other harness bulls moved forward to emphasize their readiness and willingness to 'retrieve' Rotstein from the past.

"NO." Koenig said--choleric with the idea that yet another draft had been added to The Cheater's Rules of Klaus Rotstein. "Helena?"

"It's bad." The physician reported, sarcastic but unassumingly, as she reached for a 'nitro vial. "A TENS Unit would be nice--too bad it's back in the goddamn Eagle."

"So much for the joy ride." Koenig blistered over the roar of exploding planets. "WHY NOT JUST SEND US BACK TO OUR BASE? BACK BEFORE THE TIME WHEN ROTSTEIN WAS DISCOVERED. WE COULD SAVE THIS MAN'S LIFE, AND PREVENT THIS CALAMITY FROM EVER OCCURING?"

"We could." Hyacinth vouchsafed. "However, I would advise against that course of action in the strongest, possible way." He warned. "Your race does not learn. Not in the short term, or the long. An encounter with some fleeting episode will leave you bathetic, and unmotivated to change. You would return and try to amend Time by feigning ignorance...the outcome of this behavior would be that you would eventually find yourself in some similar peril. By your own definition, humanity is an acute condition. Your only hope is to face your own torturous, vexatious history, and hope for extrication."

"Right." Victor Bergman said doubtfully, and with rank disgust. "No concessions. Well, that sounds to us like an all-or-nothing proposition."

Hyacinth shrugged.

"You're running out of time, Earth man." Sybil checked. The end of the aeons seemed to have no effect on her.

The triangular pool was a bottomless, amber holocaust. Just inhaling it caused the professor's lungs to seize up.

"You won't survive it." Quenton exclaimed emotionally.

Koenig, and Bergman stepped nearer to the pool. Each side was approximately fifty meters long. A violent, in-ground magnum of uncontrollable flame. Both were inexorably soaked with sweat.

"HOW?" The commander asked again.

"Jump." Sybele replied simply.

Chapter 4

You could say, Commander John Koenig had it up to his neck.

"Sad." The bobby observed as he leaned against one foot while seated on his bicycle. He tipped his high, embellished helmut back, and rubbed his put upon forehead. "Mind you now, I've rightly seen a number of things in my time. I do believe this is the most mad aleck one of them all."

"Why?" Koenig challenged ludicrously as the cold, mudded waters lapped away at his disorientated neck. "You look like a cop." He said farcically as he began to inch his way through the silt. Gradually his soaked tunic, and refuse-dyed black sleeve became visible above the water.

"And you sound like one, serious mess of a yank." The police officer determined while polishing his whistle. "Let me guess--you could stand the stench no more, and you just had to have a bath." He theorized, pronouncing 'bath' as 'baoth.' "Who cares if it's broad daylight, and right in the river."

"River?" Koenig sloshed forward, pulling seaweed, and various other fetid from his sideburns. The 360 degree panorama of the royal borough was a familiar one, though subtlely deconstructed since the last time he had seen it. Back in those days, he was teaching an introductory physics course at the King's College. No one wanted him as their professor, but he never forgot the unctuous view of the city from the faculty sardine can. Surrey was a fine place for an upstart, egotistical educator, or politician to go for a humbling experience. "This is Earth?"

The grogginess of his odyssey in time--the 'doofus effect, as it were--was slowly replaced by landmarks, and an impossible certainty of location. It was a land which, for all intents and purposes, ceased to exist following the slate wiper of September 13, 1999.

"Not from around here, are you?" The bobby said hesitantly while gazing at the commander's too apparent commlock and his barnacle covered laser.

Victor Bergman was no where to be seen in the transitory crowd that gawked at him from the bank of Kingston-upon-Thames.

Koenig's homecoming was all but ruined when the cop suggested that he may want to accompany him to jail.

**********

"Hurry up in there, lad, the line's a-formin' and stretchin' down the hall!!"

Victor Bergman sat up in the bathtub with a start. If it wasn't for the fact that he was fully clothed in his uniform with the neutral sleeve, he would have thought he was dreaming on Moonbase Alpha. He sat dazed, momentarily, then in a sudden rush, he remembered why he was there.

The watercloset was quite old fashioned, with a tub, a sink and an old chain pull commode. The grumbling in the hall told him he was in some kind of men's boarding house but how he had gotten there was anyone's guess.

"I'll be out in a minute, old chap," Bergman replied genially in his best native accent, attempting to sooth frayed nerves and stressed bladders.

He peered out the small window at the street below and recognized the city instantly. It was London, his birthplace but not the birthplace he remembered. It was before WWII, before much of it had been laid to waste by the Luftwaffe. He further recognized the automobiles as early 1930's.

Bergman spied the suit on the back of the door as he peeled off the wet uniform from another era. It was a bit large and worn but appropriate for the period. He slipped the commlock and the laser into the overcoat pocket on each side, stuffing the wet uniform into the back of the closet. He frown at his image in the small mirror. His hair was more pepper and much less salt, perhaps a curious effect from the Clocksmith's pool.

"HEY!!! OPEN UP!!!" the disgruntled patron pounded on the door.

"I apologize," Bergman opened the door to the shared facilities, narrowly missing an accidental pummel on the face. The other man grunted and brushed passed him. Bergman walked past the line of irritated faces and headed toward the stairs.

**********

John Koenig's trip through time was off to a bad start.

After sucker punching the bobby right on the snout, he fled down the peer like a refugee from The Incredible Mr. Limpett. Tan boots sloshing, patrons on the street stepping aside--all sated with the knowledge that a lunatic was on the loose. The city suddenly seemed to explode outward. The commander felt unappreciated. Children cried--and then pelted him with ice cream, and rocks. Some stiff 'brit in a bowler hat tried to trip him--just, you know, for general purposes, Koenig surmised. And for the fun of it.

"I AIN'T 'ANSWERIN NO QUESTIONS FROM AN EFFING SHITHOUSE RAT." The huge housewife proclaimed.

He was on Arthur Street now, but this was not Guinevere.

"Listen, I'm sorry to annoy you-" The commander apologized, and it was here that she lashed out at him with her broom. Plus sized fists gripped the splintering, wooden handle. She whipped it backwards over her flower print housecoat, and brought it down on target with the ease of a professional 'nag and harridan.

"...ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh." Koenig blurted, feeling the thump of the straw against his wet scalp. All he had done was to ask what year it was. The true victim in this saga was clearly the husband of this unlovely, scolding kvetch.

"GET YOUR ARSE OUT OF ME WINDOW." The Mussolini Transvestite cried, and gave him some more straw therapy on the 'noggin.

Wooden shards and yellow chaffe rained down on him as he back-peddeled heroically away from the Window Sil Of Death. His buttocks accidentally made contact with the business end of a white, picket fence. Middle class Londoners jeered him from the overhead windows. He recovered just in time to see Rin Tin Tin unleased from an elderly woman's leash.

It would have been almost picaresque--a quiet, city street with the Big Ben clocktower crowning the beaucolic, urban tapestry. Unfortunately, having the hundred pound Maud Earl gun dog lunge for his nuts disappointed Koenig.

**********

"Very rare indeed," the shop keeper studied the Professor's pocketwatch. "It is running too. In fact, sir, I have never seen one like it."

The clerk tried to retain his enthusiasm. The Lord of Marlborough had been interested in such an antique and was willing to pay top steriling pounds for one.

"I will give you 10 pounds for it," the clerk offered, clearing his throat.

"10?" Bergman gave the man a slightly insulted glance.

"Alright, sir," the clerk sighed. Obviously this client knew the value of the piece. "15 pounds. Fifteen pounds and not a shilling more."

"Very good, chap," Bergman smiled. "Agreed." He extended his hand to exchange a gentlemanly shake.

With his 15 pounds in his pocket, Bergman knew in this time period it would last him awhile, long enough for him to find Koenig and then together, they would find Rotstein.

The professor walked along the busy road and saw something of interest. An automobile dealership had a "Help Wanted" sign posted in the window. He reasoned that they might be there for some time and would require more money. His knowledge of early 1930s automobiles would make him a perfect candidate for the position.

His luck was running very smoothly, he thought, as he removed the sign from the window and stepped inside the office.

**********

Incontrovertibly, there were two things a person should never do when travelling through a mathematical expression in time.

Firstly: Never, ever mug a police officer. Don't do that. Second: Avoid the cavalier, sticking-of-your-head through the window of a house shared by a battle-ax. You will intensify your predicament if you ask her the surreal question 'what year is it?'

John Koenig raced down the motorway, pursued by Scotland Yard land rovers, and a pair of Black Marias, sirens blaring. The other half of the metropolitan police force pursued him on foot with lynch-mob rules. He had begun to feel like a character in a classic, Universal horror film with the villagers carrying torches, and clamoring for his destruction. This did nothing to help him locate Victor Bergman, or Klaus Rotstein, but nevertheless he ran like a fugitive, and he had all kinds of luck.

Bad luck.

**********

"Can you start tomorrow?" the dealer manager asked the professor with eager anticipation.

"Yes, that would be fine," Victor Bergman, now Jared Leto for the sake of anonymity shook his new supervisor's hand. "However, I would like to move into a flat closer to my new job. Do you happen to know of a place for lease?"

"Why, this is your lucky day." Mr. Davis responded enthusiastically. "My brother inlaw owns a build around the corner. It is a very nice area, a nice one bedroom flat, fully furnished. Very reasonable as well. Would you be interested?"

A short walk to the flat and a quick inspection resulted in a satisfactory nod and an agreement to lease the place, as Bergman counted out the first month's rent and deposit. After Davis left, Bergman walked to the market for groceries and the evening paper. He was becoming disturbed that he had not encountered John Koenig but surmised the news might, if he was lucky, give him a clue to his whereabouts.

He stopped into a pub and relished the chicken, REAL chicken, dinner and ale as he perused the paper from front to back. Intuitively, he knew that his appearance would probably be noted in the news, if not in this evening's paper then in the near future.

**********

"Anyway, that's my opinion of old Blighty." The wino--who bore a jaw dropping resemblance to Ed Malcom--said as he passed Koenig the Water Of Life; a home made can of Atholl Brose that was activated with Shinola shoe polish. "They're a grateful lot, and me--I wasn't some Doctor on palace road. I was there with Sir Douglas 'hisself during the Battle Of The Somme. Fifty thousand men died when we took on the Kaiser and what does I have to show for it?

"Not even a farthing.

"You look thirsty." The wino said with concern for the commander's unlubricated throat.

"No thanks." Koenig declined, letting the can of hooch pass by him while he warmed himself by the fire. He had no idea what part of the woods he was in, and his commlock wasn't working--which made sense, when one considers that the device relied on sophisticated satellite relays, and transponders that did not exist yet.

Either way there was still nothing from Victor Bergman.

"You know...." The wino digressed. "I'd hate for you to take me as unkind--you're a good bloke and all...sharing your fire with me like you did--but your clothing is a 'tad bit peculiar. Are you with a circus, or some greyhound show over in Coventry?"

"Yeah." Koenig decided. It was as good a false history as any.

"I always took to that kind of thing." The wino confessed secretly. "My favorite was the fellow what would stick his head in the lion's mouth. I got to give credit where credit is due. And to not piss 'hisself, which is probably what I'd end up doing.

"Well, just before I got decapitated, that is." He mused sardonically. "Between the two, I'd much rather be separating a woman from her knickers.

"Hello...what do we have here?" The wino suddenly noticed the laser that was holstered to the commander's waist.

"It's nothing." Koenig said gently as he stood. The weapon still worked incredibly well, especially after his little swim in the Thames. The Argyle, diamond core was charged, and capable of all settings--from lighting a fire, as he had done earlier, to vaporization, a setting he had not tried, but malign intuition told him that it would work. He had brought with him a specter from the Nuclear Age, and for the sake of these people, he hoped to God that Rotstein's was destroyed during the trip backwards through time. "It's a chalk box." He lied.

"Chalk?" The wino repeated, and in his bewilderment, evidenced a head that was devoid of teeth.

"For the circus." The commander grinned. "We use them to outline stalls on the tent floor...where the lamas will stand...where the sword swallowers will enter...where the cotton candy goes.

"That kind of thing."

"What a pickle." The wino exclaimed with childish enthuse. "Might I attend some time? With your permission of course. You can count on Harold Cotton here minding his manners. I've never been one what would look a gift horse in the mouth."

"You bet." Koenig said compassionately while his eyes drifted towards a bundle hanging in the brush. "Be right back." He told Cotton, and leaving him to his juice, strolled purposefully down the hill.

**********

Bergman wound up the alarm clock and settled into the comfortable featherdown bed. He glanced out at the window as the passing cloud unveiled a bright full moon.

A poodle barked in the distance.

A cat yeowled.

An auto chugged by.

The street grew quiet again.

He was concerned about John Koenig and he stood up to gaze out the window. He had guessed the approximate year (1934) before seeing the calender on his employer's wall. He calculated that they arrived at the same time and likely in the same area of the world though the possibility existed that Koenig could be in the United State, Asia or anywhere. The professor did not want to dwell on that possibility. Even if he was in London, London was a large city and it might take a few days to locate him.

Bergman had adjusted his comlock to receive lower band frequencies. He was able to pick up radio but he was still working on adjusting the transmitter. He would require a few parts in order to do this and planned on visiting the service department of the dealer ship for wire and a soldering iron.

Victor Bergman returned to his comfortable, overstuff bed and exhausted, drifted off to sleep.

**********

Stuffed in the translucent, silvery branches of the Downy Birch, the wad turned out to be the front page of The London Times. Koenig unraveled it methodically, smoothing out the copy as the cool dusk interacted with his partially wet tunic to freeze his cajunas. A cordon of black, red eyed chimney sweeps swooped down from the rooftops of the city. The overhead sky was violet with lesions of declining orange clouds. A glance at the header told him that the year was 1934--October 11th being the printing date.

Then again, had he known that earlier, the local constabulary would have been denied the sharply honed, dragnet expertise that they acquired from tracking down a water-logged, seeker from the future.

Koenig briefly noted the fifth quarter Moon that was emerging in the night sky with a trio of dappling stars. Of course, it was not the Moon he had known; the extirpated, dissected rock from 1999--forget the fact that it was minus several billion tons of undecayed fission material. In 1934, the airless, waterless planetoid still retained its ability to stump and stupefy. This was luna as mythos. It was Chandra--the bootleg soma of the gods; it was an arena for Hati to devour Mani.

In the low-tech thirties, rather than being one small step for man, one scientific, calculable, boring leap for mankind, the satellite evoked a sense of fear, and august superstition.

In forty, some odd years, it would be more than that. The Moon would be a blast. A real bomb.

Not too much was happening in England these days (the cartoon was "Bo-Peep"...that alone should tell you something....), the commander decided as he scanned some of the articles. One story was titled "BFRC Up To Snuff," which was somewhat of a misnomer, since the British Foreign Relations Committe was actually down on the congo for importing illegal rhino horns which were destined to be crushed into a powder, and sold to apothecaries as a nasal decongestant.

They would be punished with tariffs.

Here was some newsworthy folderol: The House Of Commons was engaged in a long, mostly petty dialogue about the formation of the Scottish National Party, which was actually a hybrid between the Scottish Party, and the Scottish National Party, because some ass couldn't bear to see an assembly formed by a constituent of Scots who were not nationalistic.

So for him, the party was over.

Koenig eyed the bottom of the page. There was some union stuff, and the alarm was being sounded because the sewer system was becoming more, and more delicious. Some guy named Humphries vowed to rid the world of this foeterousness. In the course of the interview, he evoked the Victorian critic Matthew Arnold: "Bald as the bare moutain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur."

The point was somewhat elusive.

On the bright side, finding a copy of The London Times was not the extremum of John Koenig's evening. To the contrary, finding the decomposing, necrose corpse in the narrow brook beside the trees took the cake. The slain victim had layed there, undetected for weeks--long enough for the rot, and the fust to overcome thier gender. Whoever it was, they now looked more like the Creature from the Black Lagoon than a once living, breathing person.

The fate that would befall Bayledon, Reilly, and N'Dole over half a century later--the same horrible climax did betide this individual from 1934. Beaten, and carved into a phlegmy, ensanguined side of poisonous beef--it was the unforgettable horology of Klaus Rotstein.

For John Koenig, there was no longer any doubt.

The Clocksmiths had sent them to the right place.

Chapter 5

"Allow me to introduce you to our newest sales associate," Mr. Davis led the woman to the corner office.

Victor Bergman, aka Jared Leto, rose as his supervisor and the woman stepped through the door.

"Mr. Leto, this is Mrs. Simpson," Davis made the introduction.

"A pleasure to meet you," the finely dressed woman with porcelein complexion and aristocratic yet warm and pleasant manner extended her gloved hand in greeting.

"Good morning, Mrs. Simpson," Bergman reciprocated the handshake.

"Mrs. Simpson is interested in purchasing a new automobile," Davis explained. "A few of the '34 Phantom II Rolls Royce have caught her eye. Mr. Leto will assist you, Madam."

"Thank you, Mr. Davis," Simpson nodded as Davis left the room. She sat ladylike in the mod style 30's chair in front of the desk. "Mr. Davis tells me you are new to his staff." She began, fitting her cigarette into the diamond encrusted black holder. Bergman immediately struck a match and lit it for her.

"Thank you," she replied politely yet focused as she took a few drags. "How much knowledge about Rolls Royces do you possess? I'm an American and though I've lived in London for the past 5 years, I am not familiar with cars. My former husband purchased our vehicles." She took another drag. "This is the first time I have bought an automobile."

"Knowledge?" Bergman pondered. "A bit. When it comes to cars that is." He stated honestly. "I was nursed on crank case oil. My father would have given Albert Derancourt a run for his money, and that was all early doors. By day he was involved in studying the effects of electrical conduction within atomic structures-"

Mrs. Simpson blinked.

"Oh...." Bergman laughed, unhysterically. "It's not what you think." He lied. "Just a fancy way of saying he worked on motor cars." The professor stipulated. "His entire life." He added to seal the deal, and to prevent further inquiry. "But to make a long story short, besides my mother, the other love of his life was a 1909 Ghost Coupe. Many, many times we could be found in Old Silver, burning up the roads in Cumbria. I used to derrive so much pleasure from those little excursions, it was no surprise when I ended up greasing the wheels myself." He explained with conspicuous pride. "I also acquired some experience on the fast track, and maintenance crews while working on my undergraduate studies at-"

Mrs. Simpson raised a curious eyebrow while exhaling unfiltered smoke, and in a precocious, almost Tom-Boyish gesture, she set her pack of Lloyd cigarettes on his desk while settling in for an even longer conversation.

"Forgive me, I do tend to ramble on." Bergman realized, feeling that it was better to leave some history as unresearched. After all, there weren't many PhD's in astrophysics working as used car salesmen. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Conform, man, conform. Make like an Iguana. "Now as to the vehicle you're looking for, let us take a moment to discuss the amenities.

"Heat, of course. Any preference as to the color?"

"No, Mr. Leto," Mrs. Simpson laughed, "you are not rambling. I find people to be rather interesting. I'm what you might call a social butterfly in that I adore meeting people of different backgrounds." She crossed her slender legs, ladylike, and relaxed, taking another puff. "Each person has a story and I find individuality to be facinating."

It was obvious that Mrs. Simpson either had or acquired money and apparent social status. The diamond brooch and matching earrings, along with the fur stole, designer dress and the latest Parisan hat illustrated her financial and higher status in London society.

"I enjoy hearing stories about fathers," she went on. A secretary, under the orders of Mr. Davis brought the tray of tea into the room and poured a cup for Simpson and Leto. Mrs. Simpson smiled and nodded in appreciation. "Thank you, dahling," she called after the departing secretary.

"My father died before my first birthday," Simpson went on. "I am a Warfield by birth." She paused, to check if Bergman was familiar with the aristocratic, Baltimore family.

"Awesome." Bergman clapped his hands with enjoyment, and leaned backwards in his chair. "I take it they're the same Warfields who are so adept at thoroughbred racing? Equestrianism is another of my hobbies--one that I sorely miss these days.. The Warfield reputation precedes itself well outside the borders of Pennsylvania, and Baltimore.

"I guarantee you that." He assured, wishing that he could remember why the name 'Warfield' troubled him. "A close friend of mine is also American. It's been some time ago, mind you, but we made tracks once to the derby in Kentucky." He disclosed, comically pronouncing the state as 'cain-tucky.' "My chum lost his shirt on the Exacta, but it gave me an opportunity to appreciate the art on a large canvass.

"So, while John may have come away penniless, one can not help but be enlightened at the craft, the very skill required in producing such amazing steeds."

He really didn't much care for the mention of Mrs. Simpson's late father--it unearthed something inside; a factoid that he had long since disgarded as meaningless. An tocsin began to pound inside his head, and he suddenly regretted that this was not the age of Bayer Aspirin.

"Anyway, after Daddy died, my mother and I moved in with my Aunt, thanks to her...generosity," she stopped, wondering why she was telling this automobile salesman, who she met merely 10 minutes ago, her life story.

She puffed again, composed and building her guard up again. "Well, here I am rambling, Mr. Leto. Back to the subject at hand. Color? Well, I like the green but black does seem to be the appropriate color for a woman of my social standing, I suppose."

She motioned to the pack of LLoyd's on the table. "Smoke? Help yourself, if you like."

"Thankyou very much." Bergman bypassed but was more than half tempted. "I should probably abstain. My doctor would make mincemeat of me if he caught me lighting up."

Then again, realizing that it would take over seven decades for Mathias' complaints to thunder down on him, the professor pulled one from the pack, and put a match to it.

He felt fine. No, better than fine. He felt realized--a state he had not expected in his this journey to quell murder, mayhem, and cosmic dissolution.

**********

"It don't fit." The anorexic manc complained, tossing a pair of black tweed, Canali trousers over the voluptuary, dressing room door. The stall was located in the rear of Department Store-X, which was adjacent to Who Knows Where Avenue. Koenig was sure of the hour because Harold Cotton had furnished him with a hot Rolex to carry around with him.

It was 10:00 AM, Greenwich Mean Time.

"Sorry about that." Koenig said dolefully, and pulled the pants away from the door. The fitting room was in the basement, adjacent to the coal-fire boiler. The commander had welcomed himself in an hour before after placing an anonymous tip about the little creek music he discovered the night before, and he did not mean The London Times.

"That's a good lad." The manc included so that Koenig wouldn't feel so bad. "Don't fret--I can hack it. Here, you may as well take these too."

He tossed the white cotton shirt, and the thin, classic cut necktie over the door too. The commander grabbed them while one foot was propped against the bench to tie his new (and inarguably low priced) wing tipped shoes.

"That lousy cravat took me breath away." The manc complained, and demanded immediate action. "Haven't you got something else, man?"

"I'm sure we can find something else that's more to your liking." Koenig said from the opposite side of the door as he headed back towards the boiler room, buttoning his shirt, and with the overcoat slung over his shoulder. "You appear to me to be a petite size." The commander observed, and then grabbed the iron latch, and pulled it after him.

"If you say." The manc griped. "Hurry along now. My bag is freezing. You people need to heat this place better."

Instead of going back from whence he came--which would involve crawling out of the cellar window in broad daylight, Koenig chose the rotting, orange paint specked Door Number Two, which he hoped would lead to some discreet side alley. On the other side, there was short hallway that was famous for two things--the amount of dust, and the monstrous rodent carcass that lay dead beneath the radiator.

"'Geez, how many forchrissakes evolutionary steps did it require to invent D-Con?" The commander wondered aloud, crammed, and allayed, and disgusted as he stepped inattentively through the other door, and turned to face a tall, humorlous looking fellow who sported a handle bar moustache and a white, pen-striped suit. This gentleman radiated with authority--police authority; either that, or store security.

"Alright, pal." The 250 pound sentinel who preferred highwater slacks coaxed him in an irritated voice. "What's the story, and no pap about it."

How does the old phrase go? John Koenig was busted.

"I..uh.." Koenig stumbled and mumbled. Sleeping in the alley, in the rain, on the cold London October night was not exactly restful and comfortable. He acutely became reminded that he was a man in his mid-late 40's and that damp coldness could wreak havoc on such a body. He needed a tylenol or ibuprofen, badly, but realized that such an animal was 40 to 50 years away.

"Look 'ear," the 20 something secretary spoke up suddenly from behind the white, pen striped suit man. Her accent suggested Cockney in origin and her manner of dress suggested she was working, middle class. "Mr. Jeffries, this is the American I told you about tryin' out for the commerical."

Jeffries studied the bedraggled Koenig. "Are you sure, Lily?"

"O' course me sure," Lily smiled at Koenig and stepped toward him, taking his arm. "You don't expect starvin' actors to be dressed like King Edward and his court, do ye?"

She did not allow him to answer as she dragged him through the door and up the stairs. "Ye better get cleaned up and finish rehearsing your lines." She handed Koenig the script to, ironically, the soap commerical. "There be a few more blokes tryin' out but you ave such a deep voice and that Yank sound is all the rage on the radio. Ye just what we lookin' for, Mister?"

"Murphy." Koenig prevaricated. As in 'Murphy's Law.' He fervently hoped that it did not exist. "What kind of soap are you talking about?" He questioned as the secretary pushed him towards the lavatory.

"The kind you ain't seen in a while." Supervisor Jeffries replied impatiently, and turned on the hot water.

Chapter 6

Coldfall Woods was no longer a safe haven for drunkards, and time travel refugees. It was literally crawling, and seething, and oozing with the forces of law, and order. On the east bank, an ambulance sat parked in the grass next to a funeral coach. Neither driver knew wether life, or death would prevail. They did know that they were the only vehicles on this side of the rope barricade that weren't being cited for intrustion into a crime zone. Bobbies with clubs held the afternoon brigade in recess--they were there to dispell rumor, to edify the citizenry in the ways of legal process, to incarcerate, and lay lumps upside anyone's head who insisted on barging into the scene.

"Please, monsieur. 'Tis mon sere." A maniere french woman wept, her mouth containing more baloney, and taradiddle than the deli roll in her brown, paper sack. "Is certainment."

"What rot. You know nothing of the sort." A middle aged police constable with graying sideburns rebuked, his plastic chin guard growing taught with consternation.

"!!!BASTARDO!!!" An italian butcher named Luigi cried, and jumped the line in the name of civil rights. "!!!I NEED TO KNOW!!!"

"Now you know." Another PC--whose name was Perkiss--said ironically after applying his size ten boot to the butcher's fat head. "Take Galileo here back to headquarters, and discuss proper crowd control etiquette with him."

He was offended at the thought of anyone, other than himself, applying the Dowler Darby handcuffs.

"Take a gander at that." PC Barrows told his partner, McClaine, and pointed his baton towards the rover that was plowing through the brush. "Looks to me like the reinforcements have arrived from Kent." He declared in the spirit of bigheaded critique. "I guess we're supposed to feel like buskers now."

"Give it a rest." McClaine apprised. "After all, the last murder occured in their area. They've got a right."

"They 'had' a right." Barrows amended. "But that was a year ago. If their detective work was less than amazing then, why will we be gagging for it now? This is our affair, not theirs."

**********

"Mr. Claire, sir, forgive me, but I fail to see how a local pack-up can be considered a tangible threat to the crown." Inspector Bell of Scotland Yard CID greeted in the hopes of discouraging the operative from setting up house.

"Local pack-up?" Claire's worse half, Agent Baldwin, chuckled and shook his head. "That's how you see it? Horror, murder, vivisection. It's all just a pack-up?

"If I had a heart, I'd take this case from you." Baldwin smiled casually. As it was, all he could see in the entire 365 degrees about him was galoots, and dumbasses. He could care less about some ronson getting himself dumped in the pond.

"This has nothing whatsoever to do with the riot yesterday, if that's what you're thinking. We suspect that was started by someone who got himself pie-eyed at the pub." Bell repercussed. "This is murder."

The gangrenous corpse was being pulled from the creek bed, even as they spoke.

"Inspector," Claire, impeccably dressed and well groomed, "this gruesome murder is the tenth in ten years. Unlike the other nine, though, I would expect Scotland Yard will finally solve the crime. It is clear you have a serial murder on your hands, something which London has not had since Jack the Ripper."

"Now, Bell. There has been more than idle rumor that The Ripper may have been a member of the royal family. It was malicious and certainly an attempt by the anti-loyalist forces to rally the people against the monarchy. It is my job to protect the monarchy against scandal. If there is even a hint or inclination that these murders are somehow linked to the crown, either true or false, I want to know about it."

He paused, then continued, spouting the desired imagery. "Besides, it is the duty of the Monarch to protect the people. King Edward himself has spoken with me," Claire lied," and is very concerned about the safety of the people. He has offered whatever assistance is required to find the murderer of these unfortunate souls and bring him to justice."

**********

"Well," Lily exclaimed in surprised as Koenig stepped into the dark hallway. "You cleam up pretty good, Mr. Murphy. You be a handsome bloke." She complimented though Koenig instantly noticed the gold band on her left ring finger.

"If I wasn't 'appily married wit a litt-el baby boy, I might 'ave a go at you meself." She gave him a friendly, complimentary smile.

"The ot'er blokes di'n't work out so you 'ave the job. Quick, now," Lily Carter hustled Koenig down the hall. "Do you know your lines?"

'Noooooooo, Koenig thought.

"Yeah, I think so." Murphy said, mangling his copy with disquietude, and the unease of a rank amateur. "What's this?"

He pointed towards a cubicle with a large, rectangular observation window. The room beyond was lined with egg cartons, and in the center, there stood an octogenarian with a high, venerable brow line. A 'true' member of the living dead. To Koenig's astonishment, the old 'geezer apparently had enough oxygen left in his brain to become enthused over the copy he was reading into a superannuated microphone that was labeled BBC. On the opposite side of the alcove, a pair of engineers sat with their sleeves rolled up, adjusting the tone, and the reverb on the soundboard.

"It's called a broadcast booth." Supervisor Jeffries insulted Koenig convivially. "And don't be such a rubberneck. You'll make old Cyril nervous. It's hard enough to keep that moose out of the bathroom."

"You know the old saying...." Engineer Number Two hopped on the Elderly Abuse Bandwagon. "Old rain puddles never die, they just dry up."

They laughed like geeks.

"We're almost finished with the news hour, and he's still working on the local page." Engineer Number Two finked out the antiquated anchorman, even as he waved to him from the opposite side of the window.

"'ere now," Lily Carter objected. "Di'n't your mum teach you any respect for your elders, James?" She eyed the engineer cooly with maternal disapproval. For whatever reason, it was clear this radio station was matriachial; it became clear to Koenig who was the 'boss' despite the 'secretary' title.

She gently pushed Koenig, still studying the lines on wrinkled paper, to the soundbooth door. "Go on, Mr. Murphy." She looked up nervously at the wallclocks. There were three of them, each with different times, one labelled "London", one labelled "Berlin" and one labelled "New York". The "London" clock read 4:56 and it was obviously "pm".

"Four minutes until ye're 'on'. Keep an eye on James and he'll give ye the cue." She motioned to engineer 2 then turn to Koenig/Murphy. "Good luck then. If ye do good, we bring ye back tomorrow and the next day...as long as you want the job."

She couldn't imagine why he wouldn't want to work, since work was scarce in depression era London.

Chapter 7

"I say," Mrs. Simpson sat regally in the back seat of the Phantom II, as Bergman/Leto test drove the vehicle around the town. "This auto is very comfortable and rides very well." She caressed the wood grain panels."

"Would you like to hear the radio, Mrs. Simpson?" Bergman asked, reaching for the 'on' switch.

"Oh, please," she smacked her lips after taking another drag from her cigarette holder, "call me Wallace. We've spent the afternoon together and I think it is acceptable to become more informal."

"No, no radio please. Perhaps later." Simpson shook her head. "It is just news right now and the news is too depressing."

Bergman was disappointed. He wanted to hear the news but he smiled a thin smile and returned his hand to the steering wheel. "Yes," he agreed neutrally. "It seems like the media enjoys reporting the bad news. One never hears of anything good nowadays."

Wallace laughed. "You think exactly as I do. It is all a business and nothing more, whatever makes a profit. Human nature thrives on negativity. Besides, I'm quite enjoying your company, your anecdotes are charming and I am in light spirits now. The news of the outside world can wait since it refuses to go away. Wouldn't you agree, Jared? "

He did. Especially intransient was the news that was to come. Total extinguishment. It might ruin the car sale if he added that prophetic morsel to the conversation.

"Say, Wallace." Bergman bolshevised the conversation as subtley as possible. "I know that I am here to serve you, which is a pleasure, but I was wondering...I've been having trouble locating an old friend of mine. Two of them, actually, but there's one that I'm particularly keene on finding. I've been away for quite some time.

"In Istanbul." He accounted off the top of his head, and steered to avoid colliding with a Model-T milk truck that was advancing on the right side of the road. "I fear that this friend may be having a hard cheese of it. If at all possible, I'd like to track him down, talk to him. Afterwards, I'll consider the penny dropped.

"His name is Klaus Rotstein." Bergman said. "I feel like a dolt for even mentioning this--I really don't know how long he's been in London, or if he even still lives here, but since you're probably more familiar with the city than I am at this point, I thought I'd have a go at it."

"A German fellow," Wallace took a contemplative drag. "No, I haven't heard of him."

Well, that was a lie. She knew of one German descent man in particular. She was completely comfortable with Jared Leto and was tempted to divulge the information. Too much information, though, in too little acquaintance time. She had to be careful.

"You're very kind." Bergman thanked her anyway, and steered to avoid the unnecessary, and chancy enterprise of cruising through the West End. The clutch on the Rolls Royce nearly popped. Concern for the human race, and driving--this was not a good combination when it came time to shift into third gear.

**********

"Murphy." Supervisor Jeffries growled ubiquitously. He was on the other side of the glass partition, but his mime was as clear, and as concise as a well written pink slip. "This had better be good. You are really starting to kick me off."

Lily Carter smiled supportively, and James "The Dried Puddle" Fleetwood gave him his queue.

The yellow bulb above the clocks spued light.

"GREETINGS, AND WELCOME BACK TO LIVE PROGRAMMING ON STATION 2LO, LONDON." The 5' X 5' announcer said in a baritone so deep, no listener would ever doubt that it could be anything other than the voice of God. "BUT FIRST, A WORD FROM OUR ADVERTISERS."

John Koenig was mortified.

"Hummm-Hummmm-Hummmmm-HUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM." The cockney, humble visaged trio who called themselves "The Pitts" (based on the surname for this group of sisters...and yes, a summary for the quality of thier singing voices) handled the 'intro. You know of George Gershwin? Well, this was not him. The tune reminded Koenig of a sacred version of "There's A Hole In The Bucket."

Jeffries glared at him intimidatingly, arms folded terminally over his chest.

"...say pallies? Do you like to scrub?" Koenig spoke unmagisterially into the microphone. Inwardly, he began to bleed. "In the tub? I shall say I do? That's why I use...BOILED HOPKINS? With glycerine? No itch? No flake? The nuts will love it so add it to the kit?

"Not lye...BOILED HOPKINS?

"BOILED HOPKINS?"

The light in the broadcast booth went dark again.

James Fleetwood turned his volume control all the way down, and began speaking with Lily Carter.

"Is that it?" Koenig asked The Pitts.

"That was wonderful!" Lily Carter gushed as the baritone anchor returned to his news broadcast.

Jefferies grunted and took a note from Ben Whitehall. "Evelyn at the switchboard downstairs reports a steady stream of complimentary calls." He stepped over to Mrs. Carter and Mr. Murphy. "Apparently our female listeners want to know about the new Yank with the deep and mysterious voice."

Lily Carter beamed. "I told ye he'd be a hit!"

"Hmmm," Jefferies rubbed his chin, seeing visions of dollar signs. "We have a daily radio drama show on at two o'clock in the afternoon. It appeals to the ladies and it's called "Days and Nights On Harrington Row." You heard of it?"

"Well...." Koenig acknowledged. He wanted to be ingratiating--he truly did--but the adjectives could not withstand it, so they rolled back down his throat. There was just no polite way of putting it.

"Anyway, tomorrow's script calls for an introduction of a mysterious American stranger, trying to seduce the wife of the mayor of Harrington Row." Jefferies tossed him the script. "If you can learn your lines by tomorrow afternoon," he added, "a bit better than you did today, you can play the part in tomorrow's broadcast. I'll pay you a pound for today and tomorrow. If it works out, we can negotiate a weekly salary. Are you interested?"

(TIME: 3:37

(An unrequited OGLETHORPE:

(You don't love Arthur....

(Churlish as he GRABS ESTHER in a PASSIONATE EMBRACE.

(!!!YOU LOVE ME!!!)

Koenig skimmed over the hackneyed script. The above constituted only a first look. A slight perouse of forthcoming bons proved to him that finding Rotstein would come only after great personal sacrifice. In the atlas of daytime absurdity, he had been fortunate enough never to have caught "Days And Nights On Harrington Row," but if this first page was any indication of how it would go, he was sure it would be a real killer diller. The Last Stand For Intimacy. A genuine thrum to the emotional aorta.

Hell, Koenig already wanted to weep.

"You bet, count me in." He told Jeffries undeleriously. "I'll take that advance now."

"What is there about America?" The supervisor marvelled as he began peeling bills from his money clip, and placed them in John Koenig's greedy palm. "Every one of you blokes run around like you got holes in your pocket."

Lily Carter dragged him away, excitedly and told him to come early to meet the actress portraying the adulterous wife of the mayor of Harrington Row. He was processing the information and skimming the script when he heard something of interest in the anchorman's newscast.

"Scotland Yard is not releasing information on the crime other than the victim appeared to be dead for a few days. However, our sources inside The Yard tell us it is remarkably similar to the nine unsolved murders in the area over the last 10 years. More information to follow as we receive it."

**********

"Well." Bergman said briskly as he closed the passenger side door for her. "I suppose it's time to ask what your appraisal is of this fine set of wheels. Pity that it can never do a lady like yourself justice, but if I must be left scatty, I am grateful that it was you who left me in that state, Wallace."

He patted her gloved hand gently...

...and then he kissed it.

Wallace gazed at him, giving a glimpse of her soul through her dark eyes. Men had always been a stepping stone, even a commodity. Marriage was merely a legal agreement to greater social standing and wealth. She'd always thought the whole notion of a soul mate was made up by hopeless romantics selling trashy novels.

"No, Jared," Wallace continued, hesistantly at first after clearing her throat. "The pleasure is mine."

Bergman maintained eye contact. It was like being a career geologist, and then, one day, awakening to realize that rocks make you want to hurl. The rules of attraction that were welling up inside of him did not come from outer space, or the Moon. It was something older, from a foreign corner of his uncharted psyche. The professor also did not believe in those bewhiskered tales; there were no Days And Nights Of Harrington Row in his past. There was only Days And Nights And More Nights spent on a black ocean trip through the cosmos. He felt the first pangs of trepidation, and self-estrangement as he began to realize that, like the color of his hair, planet Mythraea may have changed all of that.

Curious, very curious. He could not remember Moonbase Alpha for the life of him, even though he was working to preserve it. On the other hand, Wallace Simpson's every word was intaglioed to his brain.

"Yes...." He drifted away, staring across the perfect street at a disgruntled looking, old Victorian. The type who was destined to wait for the green light, who could only gain by jay walking. "Well, as to the financial obligation...." He composed himself cautiously. "If you're satisfied, the next step would be to jot down an offer, and I'll schlepp it through the office. I have no doubt that Mr. Blackmoore will accept, and then these keys will belong to you."

He smiled deacently, despite the fact that he was hating this final curtain far worse than he ever expected to. The fact that the tall, mordacious looking man in the black rain slick, and vintage Thuroid sunglasses was staring at him, and had been for the past five minutes, went unnoticed until the last, fragile second.

A Packard pulled behind them in Soho. Now they had a Packard, and a parlous thug to go with it.

Bergman eyed the strong-armer with frore.

Simpson had seen the shadow as well and knew exactly who it was.

"Let's take it for another spin," she said merrily, sprinting back into the car. "Only, this time, I'm driving. Get in."

She gunned the engine and peeled out of the lot as Bergman barely closed the door. A sharp right down the street then a left into an alley left behind a bewildered and caught off guard unwelcome tag-along. Bergman got a glimpse of the thugs scrambling into the Packard as they turned into the street but then they lost them after turning out of the alley.

Simpson crisscrossed through narrow alleys and one way streets.

"I do like this car," Simpson went on to a speechless Bergman. "Oh, yes, we were being tailed but I'm not in any trouble. No, its those damn gossip reporters." She lied."It is a price I have to pay as a wealthy divorcee in high society."

"They were probably getting ready to take our picture, Jared, and make up some story about us being a couple" Wallace continued as Bergman lit another cigarette for her. She took a few puffs. "Slime like that do anything to make up a story."

Actually, the idea of "coupling" with the auto saleman was not unappealing at all. However, she knew her "German fellow" might not like the idea.

Chapter 8

The city was golden. So what? After dark, the refuse crept out of the man hole covers. It was the same all over the world.

"Any sign of our charming, little abbess tonight?" Baldwin asked Claire as he slipped into the Packard's passenger seat.

"No." The operative replied as he maintained his vigil on St. James Street while tamping his pipe. "She's been absent from the proceedings. Every other type of bug hunter has found his way down those stairs though."

Two more shuffled down the steps, even as they spoke. Baldwin, the quintessential snot, was not impressed by the depths of thier outward degradation.

"Perhaps the blue bottles will rattle them." Claire speculated while eyeing one of the fresher, less used prostitutes that frequented the area.

"I doubt it." Claire said. "They're not bagged enough yet. Start pouring some rum down their Nazi holes, and they might. Repugnant bastards. Hopefully that won't happen. I've been here too long to have my surveillance thwarted by drunkeness, and debauchery."

In his mind, this was a trophy moment.

**********

"...wherefore, I can--I say 'I CAN' MAKE THE CLAIM...." Heir Josef Villicus entranced the cellar full of idealogues, and Proudhons, and black band wearing bigots. "OUR WORK IS DIVINE. WE CAN, AND WE WILL REPOSSESS OUR BIRTHRIGHT. LIKE ZEUS, WE WILL RETRIEVE OUR SIBLINGS FROM THE EXCREMENT OF DARK, CHAOTIC SOCIALISM."

A pug-nosed chimney sweep named Williams did not embarass the leader of the British Workman's Party by clapping prematurely.

"Yes...." Villicus trailed off, reaching for the water beside his podium. "I have been accused of being a berk.

"Some, including our former Home Secretary--not to mention any names, but now he's looking at becoming the Lord Of The Admiralty--would go even further than that. I'm a separatist monster, he would waive. Forget the complete, unoriginality of everything I propose, and the fact that our 'monstrous' solution was visited on India decades ago.

"Now it's different, you see. Then again, aspiring to the office of prime minister changes one's outlook profoundly."

Everyone in the room laughed, except for his deputy, Martin Drexler, who sat beneath the sawsticka like a bump on a log.

"Possibly I AM AS CRAZED AND AS LUDICROUS AS THEY SAY I AM." Villicus asserted, eyes crossed and spraying spittle--pacing back and forth on propoganda leader Klaus Ruthven's side of the stage. "I see myself as a man of God." He shrugged. "In truest obeisance to the Old Testament. Were the Hebrews not cast out of Egypt, from civilization itself?" He challenged. "This was more 'exile,' than 'exodus,' I assure you. Were they not defrocked, and scourged at Mount Sinai, failing to comprehend the Lord, even after the humility of having their rebellious, kike heads beaten to a pulp with their own, hypocritical Torah?

"According to my copy of the Holy Book, the answer is 'yes.'"

"Forget the barbaric Egyptians," Klaus Ruthven, at one time known as Klaus Rotstein, charismatically interupted Villicus. "Although the Egyptians were right in enslaving the Israelite, since they also knew the vermin were inferior, they proved themselves weak, and overpowered by the Jews."

He stood up, approaching the front of the stage. His blonde hair and blue eyes along with the high forehead made him the poster child of Arian race superiority.

"No, friends, look in the New Testament to witness the real crime of these animals," he held up the King James version of the Bible and open it, holding it high.

"The Jews murdered Jesus Christ. It was not the Romans. After He died," Ruthven bowed his head in mourning, his voice shaking. "The curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom." He looked up, determined. "It was a sign, my friends, of God's discontent with the Jew swine."

"It says so. HERE, in the word of God!" He shouted. "These Christ killers became the ENEMY of God! The Almighty's enemies are OUR enemies!! If we do not work to neutralize our enemies, then we, we, my friends, become enemies of GOD!"

The crowd roared--most of them were authoritarian personality types, counter narcissistic. Just a bunch of wild, and crazy guys with a thing for conquest, expansion, and creamatoriums.

Average IQ: less than 50.

The clamor, and the applause reached the roof tops--a grotesque acme of love/power, love/hatred that defecated in the face of compassion, and human civilization. It was a consummate, conscious expression of detestation, malignity, misanthropy, plain dislike for your face; misology, misopedia, and necrophilia.

Clicking his black bootheels together, Heir Josef Villicus summed it all up by extending his palm upwards in the sublime of hatred.

"Sieg Heils." He pledged in brimstone.

"Sieg Heils." The rabble echoed back, booming from one wall to another, creating ricochets on Earth, and in the hereafter. "SIEG HEILS." Amplifying, and waving banners, and placards that displayed overmastering eagles, and perverse odin runes, and black skulls. "!!!SIEG HEILS!!!

"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!SIEG HEILS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Chapter 9

Wallace Simpson turned several shades of crimson, surpressing the urge to laugh at her companion's humorous tale. The maitre d' in the French cafe glanced at the couple as he led another pair to a distant table. The restaurant was busy with lunch time clientele, upper crust but not exactly proper. The restaurant was a quiet corner for illicit rendezvous of spouses and lovers.

Wallace knew many of the patrons and was keenly aware that nothing would be said about her choice of companion, lest she might have tea with the wife of one of the patrons some afternoon to convey information which the husband would rather remain a secret.

"Jared, you amuse me," Simpson finished her coffee and reached for her Loyd's, offering him one from her pack.

"I better forego that one." Bergman said millifluently. He had no idea why. The amount of stamina he was currently enjoying together with the complete absense of vertigo was evidence enough of his reacquired, organic blood flow. He had suspected it the moment he arrived, and 48 hours later he was convinced. His cardiothoracic 'challenge' did not follow him through the time portal. He needed no X-Rays to prove that his Centrifugal Biopump--manufactured from the same type of spaceage plastic as the chairs on Moonbase Alpha--was swapped for his own heart, the organ that failed him all those years ago.

Or was it all those years from now? His tenses were hopelessly bunged up like an asses' shoe laces, and he did not care.

That concerned him more than the magic, reinstallment of his own ventricles.

"Ah!" She noticed the time and the waiter turning up the radio in the corner. "The newest trashy rage in London is about to come on." Leto lit her cigarette. "The Days and Nights on Harrington Row is one of those radio programs recently to ensnare the interest of women from all social classes of London. One of the few things the classes have in common, I suppose. I think it is a sign of the times. The depression is so deep and emcompassing that we all need some diversion to, at least for half an hour, take our minds off of the dim reality of our world."

She took a puff and smiled coquetishly, teasingly, "I've only heard it a few times and I'm not following it at all."

Of course she had been following it, especially since the mysterious American stranger began to seduce Esther. Everyone who was ANYONE had been following the horrendously simpleminded but entrancing drama.

"Wallace...." Bergman ventured, but nothing was gained. An integrity that he could ill-afford was prompting him more, and more to come clean, to admit to her the fantastic, unconcealed basics. These five, going on six years he had spent doing Robinson Crusoe; trapped on a technological version of Ile Du Diable. He was an astrophysicist from a future that had been decimated by nuclear holocaust. The Moon was a free agent now, and he was here to bring back a ganglial, neuropathic mass murderer who hated work, and drank too much caffeine. "Would you like to accompany me to Tower Bridge later? To City Hall?" He had no idea if this would benefit him or not, but it seemed a good place to start. "Then later we can visit the newspaper office. I need desperately to run an advert--if you're game that is."

"Delighted, love," Simpson snuffed her cigarette, eyeing him with concern. He had seemed more introspective lately, as if he had something to tell her. She was also feeling on the verge, compelled to tell him about the insistent love letters from a certain batchelor. She had cooled the relationship when she met Leto. However, he drew her back in when he insisted that the relationship would be platonic, that he needed her help in finding a suitable young, virgin bride who would be his queen and produce legitimate royal heirs. It was, as she discovered, a ruse. She was determined to break it off, once and for all.

In her purse, she had written the "Dear John" letter, to completely sever her relationship with King Edward.

She noticed he was completely entranced by the radio and Days And Nights of Harrington Row. "I see it has you hooked too," Wallace laughed.

**********

It was Drexler's turn.

Since it was his duty to demand a tithe, the adrenaline that characterized the first half of the meeting died a horrible death, and was replaced by obnoxious belching, suspicion, and penuriousness. They would all contribute, but they would not all contribute cheerfully. His closing statements included updates on the financial status of the National Socialist Party in Ireland (which was more solvent than were...incidentally...and it was all because certain chaps were not willing to allocate with their wallets as muchs as they were with their mouths--it was all becoming quite a diddyride....).

Klaus Rotstein--reincarnated on old Earth under the nom de theater of 'Klaus Ruthven'--slipped away during the role call for the upcoming dobbewalling of the New Labour's suction, and mishandling of private pensions.

He needed another score, more blood, and entrails. Since arriving ten years ago, he had made a pact with himself, and the Devil. He would kill only when the headaches became excruciating. Usually, he could go about ten months, but this past year had been his annus horribilis, and for that reason, he felt he deserved a bonus.

"Where might you be going?" Villicus grabbed him by the sleeve, and pulled him aside while Drexler completed his massacre of boredom. "Still on for tonight, aren't we?"

"I have it with me." Rotstein abided but kept walking.

On the other side of a rotting, Termite infested wooden door, there was a rickety table, an unstable chair, and a taught length of rope thrown over one of the sodden ceiling pipes. The table was for meeting, the chair was for relaxation, and the rope was to hang anyone with who spoke to often of the attendant activities at these meetings.

It was also a wonderful place to retire for covert discussion of the evening news. Plugged into the round wall socket, a black laquered, solid state Emerson radio adorned the floor next to a puddle of blood that had dried purple.

"...I know the human heart." Some soap opera maven whined, and soliloquied over one of the local channels that had been left on. "It can pound our reason. It can break us, divide us. Oh Lawrence, don't you understand?" The ingenue strangely began to sulk. "Sometimes it's better to be separate?"

**********

"I know that I am turned inside out?" The suave, rapacious American, Lawrence Oglethorpe res