The Depths of Time by Roger MacBride Allen Read Free Book Online

of what had happened.
    “ Keep me informed of progress, ” Koffield said.
    “ Yes, sir. ” Sheelton shifted uncertainly in his seat, but did not stand up. “ Sir, there is one other matter ... ”
    “ What, Lieutenant? ”
    “ Well, sir—The intruders moved uptime through the timeshaft wormhole, instead of just waiting for seventy-nine years to pass. ”
    Koffield smiled sadly. “ That one I can ’ t help you with, Lieutenant. I can ’ t figure it out either. ”
    “ No, sir, that ’ s not it. I mean, I think I have figured it out. ”
    Koffield looked at Sheelton in surprise, and then damned himself for a fool. Why assume that he had the only—or the best—mind on the ship? “ Go ahead, Mister. Tell me. ”
    “ Well, sir, the intruders had the portal nexi codes, or knew how to get around them. That gave them the ability to go through the hole. But why would they want to go through the hole, if they didn ’ t need to do any time travel? ”
    “ That ’ s the question, all right, ” Koffield said. “ I ’ d gotten that far by myself. Is there anything more? ”
    Sheelton reddened visibly. “ Ah, yes, sir. I wouldn ’ t waste your time if that was all I had. What if it wasn ’ t travel—space travel, time travel, whatever—that they were interested in? What if it was the wormhole they cared about? ”
    That notion hadn ’ t occurred to Koffield, but now the thought made his insides freeze. Now he could see what Sheelton was after, and he cursed himself again, for blindness far worse than his arrogance. “ Go on, ” he said.
    “ A calibration run, sir. The only way to get exact, perfect data on a wormhole is to go through it, measure all the dynamics, and measure your exact temporal and spatial coordinates at either end. The exact data, down to the nanosecond and the micrometer. ”
    Koffield nodded, still half in shock. Sheelton was right. It made sense. It was the only possible reason for making an uptime run through a wormhole. “ Thank—thank you,
    Lieutenant. That ’ s a startling thought. But I do believe you ’ re right. I do believe you ’ re right. ”
    “ Thank you, sir, ” Sheelton said, smiling broadly. He stood up and saluted again. “ I ’ ll get to work on the courier drones at once, sin ’’
    Koffield absently acknowledged the salute with a nod, and stared at the closed hatch long after Sheelton had gone.
    Calibration run. That had to be it. But if that was it, then there was a world of fresh trouble brewing. No one needed to measure down to the nano and the micro in order to travel through a wormhoie. In the scale of an interstellar trip, being five or ten minutes off in time, or a few hundred kilometers off target in space, was less than trivial. The intruders would only need that sort of precision data if they were planning to retune the wormhoie, reaim it, change it somehow.
    Timeshaft wormholes—their creation, control, ” tuning, and operation—were the exclusive province of the Chronologic Patrol. Before the intruders ’ assault, Koffield would have rejected out of hand the notion of anyone ’ s seizing control of a wormhoie. The idea that any group of outsiders would, or could, interfere with the Chronologic Patrol ’ s monopoly was absurd, impossible, on the face of it. But the intruders had done a half dozen impossible things already. Koffield was fully prepared to believe they could do one more.
    But. If they had made the uptime run to obtain the calibration data, that meant they intended to use that data in some way. And that clearly implied something that scared the hell out of Anton Koffield. He was the master of a ship that was half-crippled, nearly derelict, and very definitely time-stranded after her first encounter with the intruders.
    And if the intruders were planning to make use of that calibration data—then that meant the intruders were coming back.
    “ All right, ” Koffield said, walking the circle of the operation stations on the bridge.