Millennium by Everett B. Cole

Author:Everett B. Cole [Cole, Everett B.]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Sci-Fi Short
Published: 2010-03-07T17:38:39.156000+00:00

(10)

“The Man Who Came Early”

Testimony of Louise Baltimore

I got a taste of what the Council must have felt. I had told those nine pitiful geniuses that my mission was vital to the success of the Gate Project, and they had fallen over like ninepins. Now Sherman was doing the same thing to me. I suspected his authority was as spurious as mine had been, but didn’t dare say it, and…he could have been right. I felt the same superstitious dread of disobeying a message from the future.

At that, I had healthy self-interest—one might call it fear—pushing me to argue against the proposal. Lawrence and Martin didn’t even have that. It was fine with them if, assuming anyone had to go back at all, I lead a commando raid into that fateful hangar on that fateful night. They could sit safely uptime and have the great pleasure of second-guessing me when I came back with another failure.

I had a very unscientific, very primitive premonition. I was going to fail again. I think Sherman knew it.

* * *

It went off very quickly. There were details to iron out.

Lawrence was horrified to learn how far he had deposited me from my goal. He set his teams to work on the problem, and shortly was able to assure me that he could get me to within ten inches of my intended destination. I didn’t believe it, but why tell him that?

The practical details, on my end, were a lot less complicated. It would be a commando raid. I picked a team of my three best operatives to go back with me: Mandy Djakarta, Tony Louisville, and Minoru Hanoi. There would be no masquerade this time. We’d go back as thieves in the night. Our objective would be to get into that hangar, find the stunner, and get out without being seen.

I put Tony in charge of equipment selection and planning.

I guess Tony had been subjected to the same data-dump I had. At least he’d seen the same films. The uniforms he picked for us to wear wouldn’t have been out of place in a World War II movie. We were dressed all in black, with gloves and soft black shoes, and he even had soot for us to smear on our faces—except for Mandy, who didn’t need any.

We had equipment belts, but all we wore on them was detection gear that we hoped would help us locate the stunner. No weapons on this trip. Stunning someone would only magnify our problems.

Martin Coventry hovered over us like a nervous stage mother as we stood in line waiting for Gate congruency. He was full of last-minute bits of advice.

“You’ll be there from eleven to midnight,” he was saying. “We show Smith arriving at 11:30 and leaving an hour later. So for half an hour you’ll be there in the hangar with him, and—”

“We’ll walk on tippy-toe,” Minoru finished for him. “We’ve been through this, Martin. You want to come along and hold our hands?”

“It never hurts to go over these things.

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