Ashe's only response was a slight crinkling of the skin around his eyes.

Milliard went on. "We're still expecting Colonel Vasilyeva's colleagues, and one of our own people, all of whom were delayed by the weather in Washington, D.C. The Colonel came on ahead so that we could begin the preliminary briefings. The Major will give you the general outline of what we're up against." He nodded at Kelgarries, and sat down.

Kelgarries turned to Vasilyeva. "Would you care to begin, Colonel?"

The Russian Colonel gave a short nod, and folded her hands. "We have come to request your aid," she said slowly, in accented but excellent English. "In the past the politics of our governments have made us rivals, and perhaps we Time Agents fostered that rivalry in an intellectual sense even after the political issues were resolved."

Kelgarries grinned, and the Colonel's eyes narrowed in unexpected humor.

Ross found himself grinning as well. Early on during Project Star, the diminishing Cold War had kept the two Terran nations apart, even when they seemed to be fighting the same enemy. Later, after the Cold War was officially considered at an end, the race for knowledge had seemed less political and more of a game to see who learned the most the quickest. Except it had been a game full of danger.

"But you had reason to be wary about approaching us before this."

Milliard's diplomatic statement brought a sour smile to Ross's lips. He hid it by sipping coffee.

"That is so." The Colonel gave an abrupt nod. "In the very beginning, when we encountered the ent.i.ties you Americans nicknamed the Baldies, we a.s.sumed incorrectly that they might be allies of yours. Their actions-destroying our bases without provocation-made investigation into your possible motives seem dangerous. It was deemed better to trust only ourselves."

Remembering those days, Ross felt a twinge in his hands. He nodded grimly.

"I see you agree, Agent Murdock," the Colonel said, comprehension clear in her dark eyes. "These Baldies are dangerous, and even after we discovered that you, too, worked against them, we did not know how far they had penetrated your own establishments."

Ross spoke for the first time. "So what's the score here? Baldies pulling a fast one on you?"

"Fast... one?" The Colonel repeated, frowning slightly.

"Baseball slang." Kelgarries turned to Ross. "No-at least not directly. Our target is a world, not a people, though the Baldies might very well be involved."

"But-" Ross looked from the Major to Ashe. "Dominion-"

"Is still safe," Gordon Ashe said quietly. "What this concerns is the world we first visited aboard that derelict, with Travis and Renfry. Remember?"

Ross grimaced, recalling the terrifying journey aboard a ship whose controls were totally alien, the worlds they'd nearly lost their lives on not once but several times. "How can I forget?"

The Colonel said, "When you returned, as you will probably remember, the tapes you brought back were shared among those governments who wished to exploit the knowledge on them. The random draw awarded to us the tapes that focused on that particular world."

"I remember that," Ross said. "And I was just as glad we were officially rid of that planet!"

The Colonel smiled, then continued. "We surmised, as apparently you did, that the ruined city you had visited was once a major starport, a center for many different star-faring species. Our immediate goal was to learn what we could about the Baldies to protect ourselves against another attack like the one that was so devastating to us. Our decoding of the tapes was frustratingly slow, and funding in our country is always an issue. Since we-I speak now of the Time Project-must remain a secret from the general public, and thus we win the government little advantage in the eyes of the citizens, the government wants maximum results for minimum funding."

Kelgarries and Milliard nodded, exchanging glances. Ross felt an unexpected spurt of sympathy for the Russians.

"It is much the same here, then?"

"Much the same," Kelgarries said.

The Colonel smiled again, this time her mouth curving in irony. "Well, you will understand, then, when I tell you that it was decided at high levels in our government to speed our research along by sending a party of scientists back to when the starport was flourishing in order to gather more data."

Ross whistled on a low, soft note.

Colonel Vasilyeva's brows quirked. "Yes, it seemed... premature to us as well. We planned what we believed to be a more cautious approach. Our time-travel team jumped back to when the tower you identified as a library was still functional, or at least intact, but after a time when we had adjudged the starport was no longer in use. After all, for all we knew, the starport might be peopled entirely by the Baldies, and we had no faith in their welcoming human beings into their midst."

"We'd probably plan an approach similar to yours," Ashe said. "I take it something went wrong?"

"That's what we need to find out." The Colonel turned to face him, her hands now tightly clasped. "Except for an abandoned Time Capsule, our scientists sent back to the past have vanished utterly, leaving no trace."

CHAPTER 2.

"NO TRACE," ROSS repeated. "But wouldn't that give a hint?"

"The Time Capsule's log was ended abruptly, so abruptly that we do not believe that Katarina, the team archivist, had time to add a warning or even a summation," the Colonel said.

"Can you describe your general plan of approach?" Gordon asked, leaning forward, his fingertips together.

"We send our exploratory teams out in doubles, the time-travel team, and the base team. While the travel team of scientists go back in time, the others stay and guard the ship and the transfer apparatus, and gather scientific data while waiting. Our travel teams can't reset the time from the far end-our technology was severely set back by the destruction the Baldies caused us-so time in the past marches parallel to time in the present. Our teams cannot appear moments after they left; that would require resetting the apparatus from the far end, which is impossible, since the far-end equipment is merely a projection, or image, of the present-end apparatus."

Kelgarries said, "Our own practices have brought us to much the same rule, if possible. There are ways to force micro-jumps within a given time: they are incredibly energy-costly, but even more risky, we've found after some disasters, is that they somehow stretch the fabric of time dangerously. We try to keep missions running parallel to current time."

The Colonel nodded in agreement. "We still do not really understand this alien technology-either how it works, or why."

Ross spoke up. "But the Time Capsule?"

"We have a standard schedule," the Colonel said. "Forgive me for what must seem circ.u.mlocution, but I believe it is necessary to describe all this in detail."

"We understand," Ashe said. "Please. Continue."

The Colonel paused to sip at her coffee, and then she sat back tiredly in her chair. "We never know if the travel team will execute their orders in hours, or weeks, so we arrange scientific gathering in a priority order. The guard team takes samples of the immediate surroundings, and a.n.a.lyzes them. They set up posts for observing local denizens. In this instance, the orders included finding the tower that you once found, Dr. Ashe, and exploring it, if the indigenous flying peoples permitted. We had included in our equipment items we thought to trade for the ancient spools-if there were any left for us to collect."

"And were there?" Gordon asked.

She gave her head a quick shake. "You and your colleagues had gotten the prime specimens," she said with a nod of approval. "But we wanted to double-check. We expected our travel team to be able to get far better materials from the functioning library-which would correlate with the present. Anything we gathered would, of course, be missing in our portion of the timeline."

Everyone nodded.

"After that, they were to start exploring farther out, excluding only the hostile weasel folk and their territory. Some of our people were to examine the buildings, and others to work in widening circles through the jungle area, taking samples and a.n.a.lyzing them." She frowned down into her coffee cup, her gaze going distant. "We found the remains of one of our travel team on the third sweep."

The room was completely silent.

"On the sixth, we picked up a signal," she continued. "It meant that the travel team had buried a Time Capsule, for whatever reason."

Ross made an impatient movement, caught Eveleen's eye, and controlled it. Major Kelgarries looked over at him, his upper lip lengthened as if he repressed the urge to smile, but he said nothing.

The Colonel, however, noticed the movement, and gave Ross a courteous nod. "You have a question, Mr. Murdock?"

"I just wonder why your team didn't detect their Time Capsule on arrival?"

"If they had, they wouldn't have jumped," Ashe said, grinning.

Eveleen grimaced. "Sometimes this time stuff makes my brain ache."

"Mine as well," Milliard admitted.

"Is same thing as quantum mechanics, Schrodinger's Cat, you know?" the Colonel said, leaning forward. In her intensity to convey her thoughts, her Russian accent was very strong. "The Time Capsule both was and was not detectable until the first team jumped. Then the superposition collapsed. After that the Time Capsule was was." She shook her head. "Nah! Is easier to say this in Russian."

"Comparable to the Baldies' interference with our station up north, several years ago," Kelgarries said. "We didn't see the evidence of their tampering when we arrived and set up base, until after the events-and we knew what to look for."

Ross realized his surprise must have shown, because Kelgarries went on. "Yes, we've already exchanged detailed briefings on all missions, on both sides. We each need to know everything if there's to be any hope of rescuing that survey team."

How detailed? Ross wanted to ask. He hid his reaction as the Colonel said, "We can explain the specifics this way: where would our team have searched? Should they spend countless weeks searching the entire planet for a possible Time Capsule, which could be anywhere? There was no signal at the transfer site, remember, so our base team had no clue that a search ought to be made. The sixth circle was quite far out." detailed? Ross wanted to ask. He hid his reaction as the Colonel said, "We can explain the specifics this way: where would our team have searched? Should they spend countless weeks searching the entire planet for a possible Time Capsule, which could be anywhere? There was no signal at the transfer site, remember, so our base team had no clue that a search ought to be made. The sixth circle was quite far out."

"Got it," Ross said, still trying to a.s.similate Kelgarries's matter-of-fact statement about exchanging info. "Sorry about the interruption."

Colonel Vasilyeva gave her head a quick shake. "All questions are important when we deal with the past and present, and how they are interlocked. And I have little more to tell you. The Time Capsule was an almost daily report, ending abruptly after Day Sixty-two-correlating with the present- about three weeks before the Capsule was found. The only common item among them all was a feeling of malaise-an allergic reaction, we judged-but this was also felt by our scientists in the present time, only not as severe. And once they returned to the globe ship, their symptoms disappeared."

"A broad-spectrum course of anti-allergens will take care of that," Kelgarries said.

The Colonel nodded. "We had not taken this precaution as the report made by your team"-she nodded at Gordon- "had not indicated illnesses."

"Nothing serious," Gordon said. "Could be a seasonal thing?"

"This is what we a.s.sume," the Colonel said.

Eveleen said quietly, "Any evidence of the vanished team turn up?"

The Colonel shook her head. "At that point, of course, new orders superseded the old priority, and our team searched. Except for the remains of the biologist, there was no forensic evidence whatsoever, not for many miles. Either they were buried on one of the other islands, or they just vanished. Our search team widened their circles of exploration until time and supplies ran out, and they were forced to return home."

"Grim," Ross admitted. "So where do we come in?"

Kelgarries said, "As the Colonel mentioned, the Baldies did severe damage to their bases and equipment a while back. They are still recovering."

"Slowly-too slowly," the Colonel said, her frustration evident in her voice. "Our government does not want to give us funds without results, and we cannot produce results if we do not have the funds to continue our work. So much of our energy has been forced into reconstruction!" She spread her hands, then shrugged. "And so, when the Major contacted us with the proposal to share information, we came instead to ask for help."

"Which we plan to give," Milliard said. "This planet is obviously important-only the treaty, which gave the data to you, according to the division of the spools, has kept us from exploring it further. We, too, would like to learn more about that s.p.a.ceport, and maybe the Baldies. If we can solve some of the mysteries about them, we might be able to defend ourselves better against them, should their attention come this way again. And we have to a.s.sume that it will."

Ashe tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair. "I agree. The only protection we have, and it's mighty slim, is our second-guessing their a.s.sumption that in destroying the Russians' bases they dissolved any Terran threat. But they might find evidence of us elsewhere-"

"Or they might just decide to come back here and mess around again with the primitive natives," Ross finished sourly. "I'm with you. So, what's the plan?"

"That my best agents go back with a Russian team to the starport planet, and find the missing Russians-and whatever information you can," Kelgarries said, grinning.

"Three of us?" Ross asked, indicating himself, Eveleen, and Gordon.

"No," the Major said. "Four agents from our agency will join four Russian Time Agents. Our fourth will not be American, however. I've other excellent operatives, from projects you three know little about. One of them seems fated to be a.s.signed to this project."

"Fated?" Ross and Eveleen spoke together, looked at each other, and laughed.

"Fated," the Major said.

He reached behind the desk and carefully pulled out an archaeologist's specimen box. Ross could see Cyrillic lettering on the side.

Kelgarries looked over at the Colonel, as if for permission, and when the Russian nodded, he opened the box. With reverent care he removed a small piece of what looked like dark wood.

"The Russian science team found this in the rubble at the library building. It was buried deeply-they found it after a week of careful sifting for artifacts."

He held it up, and Ross saw that it was indeed wood, carved-ancient-looking. A closer examination showed a woman's face. Human, singularly beautiful, and incredibly detailed. Ross, glancing at it, felt that he'd know the model on sight, were he ever to see her.

Just then a quiet beep sounded in the room. The Major moved to the desk computer and looked down at the message pad at the corner of the terminal. "Ah," he said, "just in time." He looked up. "Ross, you and Eveleen will go back as partners. Gordon, meet your new partner."

At that moment, the door opened, and a tall, well-built woman walked through the door. Dressed in an expensive business suit, the woman moved with grace and a.s.surance.

Ross looked up into her night-dark face, her black eyes, and he swallowed against sudden shock.

"Professor Saba Mariam," the Major went on. "These are Colonel Vasilyeva..." He went on with the introductions, which Ross barely heard.

Instead, he tried to process the fact that this woman and the carving had exactly the same face.

CHAPTER 3.

GORDON ASHE SIGHED as he sank back into an upholstered chair.

He and Ross were alone, finally.

Eveleen had volunteered to show Saba around the facility; Ross flopped down and idly flicked on a video.

Ashe just sat. The eternal full-spectrum lighting in the den of the suite they'd been a.s.signed gave no hint at the time. Gordon did not need to turn his aching neck to glance at the clock in order to know that it was late. His body knew it, his mind knew it.

The rest of the Russians-all except one-had arrived shortly after Saba, and Milliard had called a break for dinner, saying that they could all get acquainted over a meal.

Gordon hated that kind of gathering, ba.n.a.l chatter between people who did not trust one another, but who were forced by circ.u.mstance into the pretense that they did.

He'd managed to exchange half a dozen painfully polite comments with his new partner, and fewer with the new Russians. A poor reward for what had seemed an interminable meal. Boredom and stress combined to give him a headache.

"Okay," Ross said, killing the video with a careless swipe of his scarred hand. "I can feel your mood from here. Spit it out."

"I'm just tired," Gordon said.

"And?" Ross prompted.