Well hello. Long time no see. Back to the Infinity Song storyline for a bit, with a modest interlude along the way. Not a huge section but a long enough read for a cup of coffee or tea.

Music? Where to begin…

Have you seen the Project Hail Mary film yet? One featured song in the karaoke scene is from Harry Stiles, called Sign of the Times, and it’s a thoughtful piece of music worth listening to. The soundtrack from Disclosure Day, by John Williams, is a soothing journey with many delicate piano scenes reminiscent of his soundtrack for Sabrina. And speaking of, Sting released a new, expanded edition of Mercury Falling that includes the song Moonlight, the music from the end credits of that film. Sting also released The Night Watch, a live piece recorded in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, a very painterly summation to the jury with Sting making a very strong case that older can often be better.

Now, off to the story.

The Infinity Song

Chapter 6

“Harry? That you?” 

Callahan squinted once before he pinched the bridge of his nose, balancing the phone on his shoulder while he tried to ignore the burning in his eyes. “Speaking,” he barked tersely. “Who’s this?”

“It’s Ted, man! You don’t recognize my voice?”

“Ted? Sorensen? Well how the devil are you?”

“Good, man, real good. Listen Harry, I’m graduating next Saturday and I wanted you to come.”

“When and where, Amigo!”

“GW, going to be in the stadium – unless it rains. And it starts at noon.”

“Noon, huh. Well, I’m supposed to be on duty but let me talk to the captain. Can you hang on a minute?”

“Sure, man!”

Callahan walked over to Bennett’s office and stuck his head in the door. “Got a second?” he asked.

“No,” Sam Bennett snarled, “but that’s never stopped you before. What now, Callahan?”

“An old friend of mine is graduating from high school this weekend, and I need to be there.”

“Friend? From high school?” Bennett growled.

“More like a relative,” Harry replied. “Kinda. But I used to babysit when he was in diapers.”

Bennett shook his head and smirked. “You? Diapers? I’d have paid real money to see that.”

Harry turned red while he examined his shoelaces.

“And I suppose you need all weekend?”

“No, I can cover Sunday.”

“Switch with Delgetti, and don’t forget to put it on the board. Oh, and make sure you tell Frank; he’s supervising this weekend.”

“Thanks, Captain,” Callahan said as he walked back to his desk and picked up the phone again. “Ted, I’ll be there around eleven. You going to do anything special this weekend?”

“No, not really. I may have an internship at one of the stations…”

“Television?”

“Yeah, but I won’t hear ’til next week, so, and, a few of my friends are heading over to Yosemite, maybe do some photography.”

“You have a camera now?”

“Yeah, a Nikon, an F2.”

“Cool. Can I pick up a lens, maybe for a graduation present?”

“Oh, Harry, man, I appreciate that but really, you don’t need to do that…”

“Unless I want to, you mean?”

“Well, I could use a wide angle if you run across a good deal.”

“What else do you have?” At the mention of Nikon his memory flashed to his Looney Junes, then he heard Pail Simon singing Kodachrome in his mind’s eye…

“Right now I got a 50 1.4 and a 35 F2.”

“Okay. I’ll talk to one of the crime scene photographers, see if anything new is out there, what they recommend.”

Ted coughed, hesitating: “Harry? Do you think I could do a ride-along?”

The question surprised Harry, perhaps because Ted had never shown any interest in police work before. Never. “Well…sure, but it would have to be in a black and white, so you’d be riding with a patrolman.”

“That would be perfect.”

Again, Callahan wondered what this was all about. “Okay then. If you really want to pursue it just let me know. I’ll see if I can grease the skids for you.”

“Oh really? Well, that’d be great. Maybe we can talk about it some more at graduation…”

They exchanged pleasantries and Ted soon rang off, then Harry called one of the crime scene photographers for some advice. He was shocked when he learned how much good Nikon lenses would set him back, but he and Ted had been close over the years – once upon a time. Then Captain Bennett growled Callahan’s name and that put an end to that. It was time to get back to work.

+++++

Anna Regina Kant’s designs for her garden might have been seen as random creations, careless if pleasing to both the mind and the spirit, but in her mind’s eye she had placed things as they had been in the garden behind her childhood home – at least as best as she could remember. And yet she had created this garden with one thing in mind.

When her flowers bloomed and the honeysuckle flowed, when hummingbirds came and hovered before her and when the bees searched for just the right stamen, her memory seemed to Come Alive. She had woven a chair from old vines and sturdy branches so she might cocoon herself amongst all this life – and so one afternoon she began her travels again. To random places at first, easy carefree places that came to mind so easily.

Then she began deeper explorations. Of her father’s garden at first, then one evening she found her maternal grandparents and she watched them for what felt like days. Kind, learned people, they were hardly the simple peasants her father claimed. They were both musicians and yet her grandfather was also an officer in the East Prussian Navy, a man who regularly sailed the Baltic and North Seas. She remained out of sight as she watched them, as she had learned to do a long time ago, and she watched them carefully. She watched her mother’s birth. She visited from time to time and watched her mother grow up, as she learned to play the piano, as she went to school. One evening she watched her mother fall in love, and she came to know her father in an entirely different light. 

But now, handcuffed and sitting in the back seat of a black Peugeot sedan, she wondered why these men had taken her. They didn’t appear to be German, though one of the men in the front seat seemed to speak German in a radio. Yet the radio was of a kind she had never seen before. Bright white numbers on a small black display, like nothing she had ever seen, anywhere. And the driver spoke Spanish, yet with a strange accent, not European, anyway. They passed through Honfleur and continued south along the west banks of the Seine, passing small farms along the way – with not one policeman to be seen.

So she leaned back and relaxed. There was nothing she could do – except, perhaps, worry about Niels Bohr. Soon she closed her eyes – and in a crazy, gut-wrenching instant she saw Niels and the Old Man walking in her garden – talking about what they needed to do now that she’d been abducted…

So she followed the crazy sensation in her belly, and she went to them…

She was not at all sure how she found herself back in her garden, but Neils and the Old Man jumped back in dismay, stunned and wordless, when she appeared.

+++++

As the four men in the Peugeot realized their captive had simply disappeared, the driver turned around to look at the rear seat just as his right foot mashed down hard on the accelerator. He failed to see a hard bend in the road just ahead, or the small creek that fed into the Seine twenty feet below, until the sedan was already airborne.

+++++

“What have you done?” the Old Man cried.

But Anna just stood there beside them, and as yet she had no reply waiting – for she didn’t understand what had happened any more than they.

“You were in the car?” Niels Bohr asked. “Did you feel something?”

She nodded carefully, slowly.

He sighed: “I was reaching out to you. Is that what… could you feel that?”

She shrugged. “I think they were South American,” she finally said, “but one of them spoke German. He used a two-way radio, only like something I’ve never seen anywhere before.”

The Old Man flinched when he heard that. “Sorensen’s people. It was just a matter of time, I suppose,” he muttered tiredly, missing his inadvertent pun entirely. 

“We need to get out of here, and quickly,” Niels said, casting a wary, sidelong glance at Anna.

“Yes,” she nodded, “we weren’t that far from here – really just on the other side of the village.”

The Old Man seemed upset as he looked around the garden, and to the road beyond these protective walls, then he nodded and held out his cane. The old wooden walking stick was about a foot off the ground when he looked at them carefully. “Put your hands on mine. You will feel disoriented and your stomach will feel – unsettled…”

And after they had placed their hands on his he rammed the filigreed cane down into the earth; instantly they felt rolling waves of thunder overhead, then a blinding flash of lightning as white heat surrounded them…

…and Anna Regina Kant thought she had been blinded by the intense light, and so complete was her disorientation that she dropped to her knees and tried to hold onto the earth. Yet as her hands searched for grass she realized she was now kneeling on cold, bare metal, and it was indeed very cold. Her eyes were open, at least she thought they were, yet about all she could see was a bright white haze, so luminously bright – it was as if she looking at the sun through an early morning fog. She lifted her head, tried shaking her mind to clear her field of view, then she simply wished she hadn’t.

She was in a large room, a large metal room, and everything in here was pure white. The walls, the floors and ceiling, all white. And the room was littered with neatly arranged conveyances, all white and each about the size of a railway carriage. Men and women in pale blue coveralls had turned and were staring at her – and at Niels – and then a cacophonous alarm of some sort started blaring in the ceiling, while an unseen voice bellowed over a loud-speaker: “Unauthorized personnel on the Hangar Deck!” repeated the voice, followed by “Security Team to the Hangar Deck, now!”

Niels was helping Anna stand and she realized all the other people in the room, this so-called hangar deck, were now running for the exits, then men in dark gray armor were flooding in behind the workers, soon surrounding Niels and Anna. The Old Man, she then realized with a start, was nowhere to be seen.

The security team stood there encircling the two and one of them spoke softly into a device wrapped around his face. Their weaponry was unrecognizable, their faces hidden behind black glass faceplates – but when she started to cry the security team fractionally relaxed. A little.

A minute passed and a sliding door hissed open; two men in white coveralls walked onto the deck and over to Anna and Niels. She saw patches on both their left shoulders, patches with meaningless logos and with words that related incomprehensible information: the letters NASA and ESA featured prominently, but arcing across the bottom of these patches were two ominous words: Operation TimeShadow.

“What kind of ship is this?” Niels Bohr barked angrily.

One of the men held up what looked like a black glass plate right at Bohr’s face, then a voice inside the glass started speaking: “Facial features recognized. There is a better than ninety seven percent probability that this is the physicist Niels Bohr, however I have no information on the other human.”

The man obviously in command turned and waved off the security team, then he spoke directly over a ship-wide system: “Cancel security breach. All teams report back to your stations.”

Men and women filed back onto the hangar deck and this time Anna had the presence of mind to read the writing on the backs of these coveralls. The light gray suits proclaimed Lockheed Skunkworks in bold red letters; the light blue suits represented something called the Boeing Phantomworks. She saw another on the far side of the deck working on an improbable looking device, and these people were from something called NorthropGrumman, and these people had an embroidered blue goose on their sleeves.

“Who’s in charge here?” Niels growled in heavily accented English. “What kind of ship is this?”

“It’s not really our ship, actually,” the younger of the two men said. “We’re just kinda borrowing it.”

Niels looked as if he had been slapped across the face. “What? Borrowed? From who?”

“From whom,” replied the younger man.

“What? Seriously, are you correcting my grammar?”

The younger man nodded and grinned. “Sure am. And my name’s Henry.”

“Alright, Henry, from whom did you borrow this ship?”

“Some friends.”

“I see. So you’re not going to tell me. Might you tell us where we are?”

“Sure. Follow me.” And this Henry led Niels and Anna from the hangar deck into a long corridor, and the first thing that hit them was the smell.

“Gott im Himmel!” Anna screeched before her gag reflex kicked in. “What is that odor?” she managed to get out between sour retches.

“Oh, you get used to it after a few minutes, and it’s basically pretty harmless.”

“Yes, but,” Niels said, stifling a sudden urge to vomit, “what makes such a foul odor?”

“Oh, I think it’s a combination of fuel and, well, body odor. Mind you, we don’t smell like this, but the owners of this ship sure do.”

Niels stepped out into the long corridor and then froze in mute wonder, shocked as he was by the view out a large rectangular window dead ahead. Then he looked from right to left and realized the corridor was not flat but curved, with the walkway sloping up and away when he looked in either direction. Looking at the visible cord and ordinate he tried to work out a possible diameter of the circle he was in and quickly gave up on the idea – for the number was simply preposterous. ‘Nothing on earth could slope up like this,’ he mumbled inwardly, but while he followed this Henry to the window he kept hoping his knees wouldn’t give out.

“What is this!” he cried when he arrived at the glass window, and as he reached out and placed his hand on the surface.

For he was staring out into deep space at a planet that was not earth, yet it was far too close – so how could that be?

“That’s Venus,” Henry sighed as he pointed to the milky ball. It seemed so close…that Neils wanted to reach out and touch it. 

But Niels Bohr the physicist stood and held his right hand in front of his face and extended his thumb and placed the fingernail next to the milky white orb. The end of his thumb represented a two degree angular separation and as he held his thumb beside the planet his knees felt weak again, for Venus was three thumbs wide. He thought a moment, tried to recall the formula to use the apparent angular size to compute the distance of an object from the observer. 

“Ah, yes, the physical diameter of the object divided by the angular size expressed in Radians. Henry, to you recall the diameter of Venus?”

“Sure. About 12,000 kilometers, give or take.”

“So, three thumbs equals six degrees of angular separation, or roughly 0.1047 Radians,” he muttered, doing this simple equation in his head, “which means we are 71,800 miles from Venus, which is preposterous! If Venus was this close to Earth we would all be dead!”

Henry looked at Neils and smiled. “True enough, but our current speed is approximately 300 kilometers per second, and we’re not on Earth.”

“What do you mean we’re not on Earth?” Anna cried. “Just where are we?”

“We emerged from the Sun four days ago, and as Earth and Venus are at Inferior Conjunction, or about 42 million kilometers apart, we’ll reach Earth orbit in 35 hours, then we’ll slingshot around both the earth and the moon in order to slow down enough to achieve a stable circumpolar orbit.”

Bohr’s eyelids were twitching like semaphores and he felt an intense migraine coming on, but he stood at the viewport staring at Venus as if trying to absorb everything about this moment. “I see nothing but clouds? How can that be?”

“The atmosphere is roughly 96 percent carbon dioxide and the atmosphere is dominated by what’s known as a runaway greenhouse feedback loop. On top of that, the windspeed averages 450 kilometers per hour so winds circle the planet in about four days, and this wipes out any local variations in temperature, even at higher latitudes. No polar ice caps, of course, so temperatures remain constant no matter the latitude.”

“It sounds hellish,” Anna sighed, now standing beside Niels and staring at the planet.

“What did you mean by ‘slingshotting around the Earth and the Moon?’” Niels asked, now somewhat contritely.

“We adjust our trajectory to use gravitational influences to further reduce velocity. We’ll pass over the Gulf of Alaska then over the west coast of the Americas, and after we cross Antarctica we’ll change course, head for the Moon. We’ve actually been decelerating for a day or so, and that’s why you feel gravitational influences right now. In about thirty hours our deceleration will make it almost impossible to stand up and move around the ship.”

“You seem reluctant to tell me from whom you are borrowing this ship. May I ask why?”

“You may ask.”

“But I shouldn’t expect an answer?”

“Something like that. Your arrival here was – unexpected.”

“Well, as it happened we were fleeing some rather aggressive Nazis,” Niels said sarcastically, “so I do hope this wasn’t too much of an inconvenience. In any event, the Old Man didn’t exactly tell me where he was taking us.”

Henry smiled. “I see. Well, as I’m not privy to these things, perhaps you’ll take that into consideration.”

Niels nodded. “Yes. Sorry. You mentioned a fuel source behind this odor? What is it, if I may be permitted to ask?”

“Hydrogen. The odor comes from a fluid used to cool parts of the power plant. That, and the owners usually don’t bathe, at least not in a way we’re used to on Earth.”

“What year is it?” Niels asked.

And Henry simply smiled. “I’m sorry, I can’t answer that one, too. As it happens, we’re at war right now.”

“Oh? With who?”

“With whom,” Henry replied with a shrug.

“Sorry. It’s been a few years since I spoke English so much.”

“We’re getting awfully close to that planet,” Anna said, stepping back from the viewport.

“Yes, we’ll get closer still but we won’t quite be in the planets atmosphere, and you’ll be able to see Earth once we complete the next orbital maneuver. Sorry, but right now I need to take you to your quarters, and I’m afraid as space is rather limited currently, the two of you will be sharing a room with two midshipmen. You’ll be hot-swapping bunks, and as they’re on duty right now you’ll need to use this time period to catch up on some sleep. Oh, and you’ll not be allowed to roam the ship, I’m afraid. An off-watch officer will need to be with you whenever you leave your quarters.”

“I expected as much,” Niels sighed as he turned and looked at Anna. “Shall we?” he said – as he offered his arm.

Anna smiled as she grabbed hold and fell in beside Niels, both once again following this Henry chap, and she was content to walk down the smooth arc of this long passageway in silence, to let Niels look closely at everything as they passed. Eventually they came to the section of the vessel where the crew resided, yet they both stopped short when they realized the scale of these rooms was all wrong. Their ‘room’ was about eight feet wide, but half that width was taken up by the two-tiered bunk beds. There was a locker for each crewman and a bench built-in between the lockers, but most startling of all were the bunk beds, for they were easily more than twice their own length. Niels estimated they were three meters long, which meant the ‘owners’ of this ship were hideously tall. Neils walked into the room almost in a state of shock, while Anna did her best not to retch again – because this tight little cabin stunk like rancid cheese and dirty feet, and so intensely in these close quarters her eyes began to water.

“Are there any of these other crewmen onboard right now?” Niels asked Henry.

“Sorry, can’t answer that one, either.”

Niels nodded. “I’m curious. Assuming we can go back to where we came from, will we remember any of this?”

Henry smiled as he turned to face Niels again. “Truthfully, I wish I knew,” he shrugged, “but really, I have no idea. None of us do. This is something new to us…”

Perhaps Niels bought the man’s pleas of ignorance, but Anna certainly did not – even if this was a dream.

+++++

Henry Langston’s cell phone chirped and once again he ignored the damn thing and left it untouched inside his coat pocket. He and Carter had about twelve more boxes of supplies to help the boys get loaded – and only a brief weather window to see them off on their last leg to the Faroe Islands, or Scotland if the weather deteriorated further. He looked up at the white owl perched on the starboard spreader and shook his head again, wondering what that was all about as he bent over to pick up another cardboard box, this one loaded with fresh fruit and lettuce.

But his phone chirped again – and somehow more insistently this time. He sighed, put the box down on the damp planks beside The Blue Goose and reluctantly fished the damn thing out of his pocket. He saw the US prefix, then Berkeley California on the screen and sighed as he opened the call.

“Yes, Dietrich,” he snarled.

“Henry, dammit, I’ve been calling you for hours! Why don’t you pick up?”

“It’s early here. I had calls muted.”

“It’s almost noon, dammit!”

“We’re loading supplies on Hank’s boat right now. Can this wait?”

“No, not at all. Look, Henry, that ship heading our way made a braking burn and is shedding velocity. As predicted it appears to be entering a circumpolar orbit…”

“Any new developments, Dietrich?”

“Why yes, Henry, yes there are.”

“And?”

“The ship has a tail.”

“A tail?”

“Another ship is following it,” Dietrich snarled. “It was so close we never picked it up on radar, not until it was picked by a surveillance satellite. Then apparently the government got a few images, but as I’m sure you can imagine they aren’t in a mood to share.”

“Were you, Dietrich?”

“Point taken, but don’t you think the group ought to be in on this?”

“I’ll see what I can do. Have you spoken to Rand?”

“Well, for some reason he too isn’t taking my calls.”

“Okay. Well, I’ll see what I can find out, but I’m not making any promises. Understood?”

Dietrich Aronson sighed; he understood now. The working group was dead, all that hard-won cooperation suddenly dead and gone, just one more thing lost in the dust. “Yes, I think I understand now, Henry. Thank you for your – time.”

The line went dead. Henry sighed as he picked up the box and stepped aboard his son’s boat. His own father was not amused.

+++++

Dietrich Aronson turned away from yesterday and sighed. Jenna Goodman came to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

“What did he say?” she asked.

“He seemed uninterested,” Aronson replied, “at best.”

“Which means he already knows about the other ship.”

“So it seems. You don’t think we have the technology to pull something like this off, do you?”

“I can’t imagine how we could,” she lied, these words followed by her best poker face.

He studied her features, her reactions to the question, and everything was perfect. Too perfect. Only the pupils of her eyes remained fixed as she spoke. And this absence of pupillary reactions was, Rand Alderson had told him earlier that morning, the one flaw that Richardson Autonetics had not been able to account for. Yet. And if this quasi-human construct was willing to deceive him about a question of such overriding importance, what else was she willing to do? He crossed his arms protectively and nodded. “No, I suppose a deception of such magnitude would be impossible for any government to maintain. Oh well, when will the lead ship enter orbit?”

“Zero-six-thirty GMT.”

“So about ten tonight,” he sighed. “I suppose I had really ought to go home and get some sleep.”

Goodman nodded. “I think I’ll stay here and get the scopes and tracking software updated with our latest calculations. Do you still want to use the Takahashi?”

Aronson nodded. “Yes, the fluorite refractor. We’ll want all the image quality we can get our hands on.”

“Understood. You want anyone else involved?”

“Benji Ozawa in Hawaii. I’m sure the Chinese will try something too, despite the time difference.”

“They launched something two hours ago. Unscheduled, so probably a new surveillance satellite.”

Aronson shrugged. “Has the smaller ship moved any?”

Jenna shook her head slowly. “Still five kilometers aft of the black field, velocity holding remarkably constant.”

“So probably not of terrestrial origin? Isn’t that what you’re implying?”

She nodded. “Shall I call Miss Brown? She’s still in Pasadena, I think, and she’s very good at this sort of thing…”

“I suppose so,” he said with an exasperated sigh, then smiling as an errant image crossed his brow. “I wonder if Henry will mind very much if we poach one of his prize students.”

Jenna smiled too. “I’ll see if I can get her up before the ships enter orbit.”

“Southwest into Oakland, if you can,” he added. “She can leave from Burbank.”

“Would you like me to call Rand?”

Aronson scowled. “I don’t think he’ll take your call, but you might as well try. Maybe he knows something we don’t. Anyway, I’m off . Time to face the music – on the home-front.”

“Oh, that’s right. You didn’t make it home last night, did you?”

He nodded. “That’s right, and now there’ll be Hell to pay.”

+++++

A SpaceX Starship stood on Pad 3 at Boca Chica, the countdown in a preprogrammed hold at T minus 40 seconds; Rand Alderson stood beside one of the program monitors from Boeing’s PhantomWorks, both of them staring at methane pressures on the second stage readouts. Numbers were updating on the central screen in the local Mission Control facility, and as this was an unscheduled, and therefore a rushed launch attempt. A first attempt the day before had been scrubbed and now tensions were high – and mounting – because yesterday a second stage turbo-pump had failed at T-minus 29 seconds. Then it had turned out the pump was nominal. Which meant the problem was elsewhere. And no one knew where. And as this was a manned mission, NASA flight controllers in Houston were also in the loop, which only added to the anxiety level in the room. And because of the nature of this mission, there were dozens of people from Lockheed, Boeing, and even the NSA, scattered throughout both facilities.

Alderson had been briefed-in on the TimeShadow project only last week, and he still hadn’t gotten his head around all the implications, or the scale, of this ongoing operation. An ARV, or, in this case, a single copy of a ship originally manufactured off-world, had been in operational testing for almost ten years. And if that wasn’t strange enough, the current pilot of the ship had died of cancer – almost five years ago. Radiation exposure. And yet he had been piloting the ship for the last year and a half – which made not the slightest sense.

Henry Taggart. That was the pilot’s name. And he had been located not in some place, not some where, but in another time.

When Rand Alderson first heard that little bit of news his mind had stumbled to a dead stop, stifling the impulse to laugh out loud because all the other people in the briefing room, located deep within the Pentagon’s E ring, had remained icy cold. He learned about Taggart’s mission to eastern Siberia, to one of Sukhoi’s facilities where, apparently, engineers had been trying to examine a spacecraft of some sort. A ship not built be humans, the colonel leading the briefing advised quietly. Taggart and an Air Force intel officer had been tasked to retrieve the ship, unaware that lethal radiation permeated the entire structure. Both men died and the Russians went on a rampage, attacking Hamburg and Amsterdam, hostilities ending only after a brief nuclear exchange left Amsterdam and St Petersburg in flaming ruins.

But this Air Force colonel kept talking about imminent hostilities.

Against – who?

He’d heard rumors about the development of a spaceport, presumably in Chile or Argentina, tied to a neo-Nazi group, so could this be the mysterious adversary.

Apparently not. 

But now this ‘resurrected’ Taggart’s mission was drawing to a close, and with hostilities considered imminent a military command crew was launching to take Taggart’s place in the ARV – which was the how and why behind this launch attempt. And this launch was why Alderson and twenty other boffins had been stuffed inside an Air Force C-17D and shuttled to south Texas. 

But something wasn’t right. Things weren’t adding up. He knew he was an outsider; in fact he was certain he had no business being here…yet the team in charge of the project had insisted he come. Which had only made him feel more out of place; more isolated. He regretted not being able to talk to Henry and Dietrich, to tell them the things he’d learned since returning to D.C., but he’d had to turn over his phone when he’d boarded the transport.

He heard clapping and saw that the countdown had resumed; the mood in the darkened room instantly shifted from tense anticipation to an almost adolescent sense of excited expectation. Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the video feed coming from the pad as the clock counted down past 30 seconds, then 20, until the audible countdown from 10 seconds began. He found himself standing on his toes trying to get a better sightline of the feed…

The StarShip on top of the SuperHeavy disappeared inside an impossibly bright flare, then amber clouds of billowing smoke filled the screen. An overhead image, apparently from a drone, then filled the large central screen, and it was obvious the huge ship was beginning to move. Another image flickered and came on, and the fire coming out of the ship’s Raptor engines hit the flame trench and the smoke turned white, then gray.

The SuperHeavy was perhaps a hundred feet above the pad when the StarShip mounted above the booster assembly simply vanished. There was no explosion, no visible reason why this happened; the manned ship simply – vanished.

And now the SuperHeavy first stage was dangerously out of balance. The computers managing almost every element of the launch knew that something had changed but the AI was now dealing with something so far beyond the realm of the possible that it simply shut down. The booster rolled, an unplanned, uncommanded roll, then in an instant all the booster’s engines shut down.

The Range Officer was barking orders now, but the Mission Controller knew the score. He reached down and hit the auto-destruct button and that was the end of the mission.

As soon as the StarShip disappeared the colonel and his entourage turned and looked at Alderson. “You ready to get to work?” the colonel asked as he closed on the physicist.

“What?” a suddenly very scared Rand replied. “Who…me?”

“You’re going to Vandenberg,” one of the others said. This one was a three star, and quite imperious in manner.

The central screen flickered and suddenly an empty expanse of ocean filled the display, and Alderson turned and stared at it. The image was enhanced, probably IR cameras being utilized, so he turned and looked at the three star general and shrugged.

“What’s that?”

“That? Well, that’s the North Atlantic, west-northwest of Iceland.”

Alderson’s mind leapt to Henry Langston – and his son, the boys now almost two-thirds the way across, the finish line almost in view. They were setting out from Reykjavik any time now, as soon as their last supplies were loaded.

“Why? What’s going on out there?”

“We’re not sure. That’s why you’re going up.”

“Me? Up…where, exactly?”

“Dr. Alderson,” the colonel said, his voice steady, almost patiently…like he was explaining something obvious to a recalcitrant child, “you’re going to carry orders up to Mr. Taggart?”

Alderson shook his head. “I most certainly am not,” Alderson growled.

“Yes, you most certainly are,” one of the three-star generals admonished, slowly getting in Rand’s face. “And you’re leaving right now. In irons, or not; it makes no difference to me.”

Rand looked at the colonel and his entourage of heavy brass and nodded; now he knew why they’d insisted on his coming to Boca Chica, and that meant they’d suspected something like this booster calamity was going to happen. How they knew was, of course, not a topic up for discussion.

But something else was clawing at the back of consciousness: if the adversary was in South America somewhere…why was all their attention focused on the North Atlantic? What was going on out there?

And was it a coincidence that Henry and his boy just happened to be right where these satellite images were coming from.

Why Iceland?

Why now?

And what did Henry Taggart and the stolen ARV about to enter Earth orbit have to do with all this?

INTERLUDE

Ophelia’s Song.

November 22, 1949

Now that the corn was in and had been hauled to the silo, there wasn’t much left for Warren Valentine to do out in the fields so he’d taken to changing the oil in the old Fordson tractor in the barn. The Ford, like all things Irish, was a temperamental old beast given to moods, and she was now chalky gray with too many years under her axles, but Warren had learned to drive on the old beast and he couldn’t bring himself to trade it in. He’d cut down several old maples last August and dragged each one up to the shed off the main barn, and after the falling leaves of autumn had finished their dance it had been time to move the tractor to the shed to run the saw. He’d dress-down the timber over the winter and season it in the loft for a year, then use the lumber to start work on an addition to the house.

He put his “old oil” pale on the ground under the motor and did his best not to scuff his knuckles when he coaxed the bolt from the bottom of the pan, and while the oil drained he found the red paint on the shelf above the gas cans and touched-up the old paint on the wheels and seat. He heard Martha in the stall a few feet away with one of the milk cows, and the rhythmic pulses of her squirt-squirting the milk was almost like music to his soul, and he smiled at the embracing comfort of ancient routines as their daily lot unfolded with the sunrise.

Thanksgiving was the day after tomorrow and he’d have to drive Martha into town in the morning, let her finish her grocery shopping. His mom and sister were coming, arriving by train from Minneapolis because his mother still refused to get out on the highway. His father, on the other hand, simply refused to come, period, but Warren chose not to think of that just now. He and his father were…well…there was bad blood between them for years. Always had been, even though the situation was really all quite understandable.

His parents had told him this simple truth just once.

His father had come home after the war – the first one – shot up and in bad shape. He’d also suffered serious injuries in his groin and the fact of the matter was he’d never have kids. Knowing that his wife, Warren’s mother, wanted kids badly he’d asked a friend, a close friend, to stand in for him. Nine months after the fact Warren had come along and his father just never made the connection. Their relationship had always been…delicate. Fragile. Distant.

A few weeks after they told Warren this unsettling news he announced that he wanted to meet his biological father, and after some acrimonious discussions between father and son a meeting was reluctantly arranged for the coming summer. This happened because Warren’s biological father had been in intermittent contact with Warren’s mother ever since the boy had been conceived, and as it happened he was still in the Army, though now a light colonel in the Air Corps. He’d been based in Hawaii for years so Warren had the first real adventure of his young life, crossing the Pacific in a Pan Am clipper, a real flying boat, then spending a month on the island of Oahu.

But the most important outcome of that summer was that Colonel Ernst Ripley had taught Warren to fly – all around the Hawaiian Islands. Ripley had turned out to be the ideal surrogate, too. He’d kept in touch with the boy’s mother so was always kept up to date on Warren’s progress in school and on the football field, so it turned out their first summer together was anything but awkward. Ripley was an outgoing sort, completely unlike his father back home, and as a single aviator he cut a fine figure on the social scene wherever he landed. And he was very good looking, too, at least according to Warren’s mother.

But of course by the time Warren returned to the farm in Minnesota, and to his father’s domain, the old man had somehow grown even more bitter. Warren did his best to try and pull his father back into his life, but he soon realized that any kind of reconciliation would have to be a two-way street. When that was not forthcoming, he spent more time at school than he otherwise might have, at least until his second year of high school.

That was 1936, when drought condition from the ‘Dust Bowl’ era went from bad to worse. When the topsoil took to the sky, and dry husks of corn fell back to the earth, simply unable to grow anymore. There was no grass to hay dairy herds, and even the modest garden where Warren’s mother grew tomatoes to put-up for the winter was struggling.

It was a hundred and five degrees on the Fourth of July that summer, and one of their dairy cows simply dropped dead after a half hour grazing in that heat. Warren had seen it happen and called out to his father and together they’d quickly moved the others back to the relative cool of the old barn. His father told him to get the weakest looking watered down, then his father had climbed on the tractor and driven down to the flats by the river. He cut and baled marsh grass and carried this fresh ‘hay’ to his cows, and together they saved the herd that day. 

But the crisis was far from over.

The river that defined the farm’s southern boundary line had just about run dry when the locusts arrived, and what remained of their pasture after that was pitiful to behold. Worse, it meant that the family would have to get through the next winter on savings – because there’d be no income from crops with the coming of autumn. 

But then Franklin Roosevelt came on and talked about the crisis facing family farms and what he planned to do about it. His father was a cynic about anything to do with the government so didn’t believe a word of it, and he didn’t until the relief checks started coming in the mail. Of course, the old man never knew that Warren had applied for the assistance.

The farm had originally belonged to Warren’s grandparents, and they’d kept at it until age made the demands of day-to-day farming almost impossible, and even they couldn’t remember conditions as bad like this. His grandparents had moved to St Paul almost ten years ago, and Warren’s father took over the day-to-day operation of the farm after that, and the assumption was that Warren would take over one day.

That notion vanished after Warren learned to fly, but to make matters worse The Colonel had also started teaching Warren to play the guitar. He’d even sent the boy home with one, a brand new mahogany flat-top made by Gibson. Whenever he finished up his chores after school, Warren would carefully remove the L-00 from its brown case and then he’d get the practice book The Colonel’d sent back with him. He’d study the little black and white line drawings of finger placements and then start playing chords, at first mystified as he learned this new language. Pretty soon he was getting into the groove – further inflaming his father.

He listened to the radio, of course, especially whenever Roosevelt’s ‘fireside chats’ aired – because now he truly understood what good governance meant for people in distress. After school started that year he found himself paying attention in Civics class, and then he started talking with his teachers after school. His teachers noted a change in the boy, a maturity he’d never displayed, and they wondered where that had come from. Certainly not from his father, a mean tempered old snake.

Football practice was insufferably hot that year, and the playing field was a flat pitch of dry grass and even drier mud around the fifty yard line. Soon the players realized that the field was just as hard as Main Street, and that the 50 yard line was a maze of cracked earth just waiting to trip up the unwary runner. In the end it didn’t matter; Warren made all-state running back and held the division scoring record that year.

He got close to Martha that year, too. He’d known her since first grade, and he’d always liked her – but then again most everyone liked her. She was bright and cute and her father was the only physician within fifty miles, with the first floor of their home part clinic and part hospital – and the kitchen was there, too. There were always a few dozen people gathered in the backyard, right outside that kitchen door, there for the soup Mrs Hayer made every morning for the unemployed and the homeless. On weekends Martha helped get their bowls ready, and pretty soon Warren came by on Sunday after church and he helped out, too.

Dr Hayer took a shine to Warren after that, seemed to recognize a kindred spirit in the youngster, and the physician began to mentor the able-minded student. Soon, whenever chores at home allowed, he was helping out in the clinic, learning how to sew up nasty lacerations and even how to pump a stomach. Warren loved the work and soon loved the idea of going to school to become a physician. Dr Hayer of course did everything he could to encourage this interest.

The next summer was spend in Hawaii again, learning more about aviation, especially military aviation. He spent time with The Colonel’s friends, pilots all, and he grew comfortable with their swaggering, good-natured banter. And the girls that always seemed to be around them. He earned his pilot’s license that summer, the real deal, and The Colonel began talking about events in Germany and Japan. There was a war coming, he told Warren. A big war, much bigger than the last, and it would be fought in the skies. 

Before he returned to the mainland that summer Warren started to fly bigger aircraft. Big planes with two engines, some even with four, and he enjoyed every minute of it.

Dr Hayer began paying Warren after he returned to Ophelia, after school resumed his senior year, paying him a little for each patient he helped out with, and this was money the family desperately needed. Warren kept his grades up, was accepted at the University of Minnesota and with that his father realized that the family farm would more than likely have to be sold. One more bad year and he’d not be able to pay taxes on their 350 acres. Livestock prices had fallen and crops were nonexistent for the second year in a row, and the family’s only income came from their modest dairy and poultry operations.

Then the cost of attending the university became an issue. The money, which the family simply did not have, amounted to ninety dollars for tuition and three hundred dollars for room and board – per academic year. However there was someone in Hawaii more than happy to pay this amount…with one little caveat. A new Naval Reserve Officer Training Corp was being established at the school the next summer, and a licensed pilot was all but guaranteed entry into the program. A monthly stipend was provided, so the financial impact on the family would be negligible. Warren’s father knew he was beat, knew his almost-son would leave and never return, and he seemed to withdraw into an icy cocoon after that.

Yet as graduation approached, Warren was still dedicated to the proposition of going to medical school, not becoming a pilot.

Even as The Colonel kept advising him that War was ‘right around the corner,’ and that nothing would be more important to the country than men like Warren becoming pilots.

Maybe because Dr Hayer’s mentorship meant more to Warren than anyone else knew. He liked flying, but he loved fixing people who were hurt.

Could he, he asked The Colonel, do both? 

The Colonel simply smiled, and the deed was done. Two weeks after graduation he reported to The Armory on the UM campus and was soon wearing the uniform of a naval midshipman. A week later he was in San Diego boarding an aircraft carrier. He assumed he was going to learn to fly – all over again.

+++++

The lieutenant standing before them on the hangar deck looked like he’d just walked off a Hollywood film set. Khaki coveralls, aviator sunglasses, maybe six-feet tall. Brown hair, green eyes, crows feet from squinting into the sun. His arms were crossed over his chest and he looked supremely bored as he turned and addressed the assembled Middies.

“The difference between a pilot and a naval aviator is that the naval aviator knows his limits.” He paused to let that sink in for a moment. “The pilot is dead certain that limits do not apply to him. The aviator understands limits. The great aviator knows these limits but is not afraid of them. In fact, he cherishes these limits – because it is his understanding of limits that allows him to surprise his adversary. And to prevail in combat you need to master of your limitations.”

He paused again and scanned the room.

“There are ten of you here for this crossing and while I’m sure you all think you’re going to be flying for the next ten days, nothing could be further from the truth. You will each be assigned to shadow an officer, and you will each learn every facet of squadron operations. From aircraft operations to maintenance to personnel, you will learn it all. You will bunk together and chow together, but when not so engaged you will be with your assigned officer and you will be learning what this aviation thing is really all about.

“Because this is a warship, and because world events are somewhat dicey at the moment, you would do well to remember exactly where you are at all times. If war does indeed break out, you will be in the middle of it. Accordingly, if you’re having second thoughts now is the time to speak up. Once we cast off our lines this ship won’t see land again until we reach Pearl, where you will gather your belongings and march your sorry asses across the pier to the Lexington. You will then be returning to the West Coast, and from there to your schools to finish orientations.

“You are here because you each have pilot training, and you would do well to remember the difference between a pilot and a naval aviator. In other words, be mindful of surprises, and above all…your limits.”

The lieutenant looked at all the expectant, upturned faces staring at him, trying to project an aura of utter contempt, then he simply shrugged and turned to an ensign and nodded. 

Names were called. Assignments doled out. The middies were shown to their quarters and then taken to the officer’s mess – then they were abandoned.

And that was only their first surprise of the morning.

+++++

Hurry up and wait. Everyone on the boat always complained about just that, but at first none of the Middies really believed it was true. After a week at sea all that changed. And because the boat was steaming across the Pacific in the middle of summer, every time the Middies stood to attention – sometimes for hours at a time – they began to poach in their own juices. Until it grew hotter still – when they began broiling in the ship’s narrow passageways and dank spaces as they waited and waited. One of their number griped about it and found himself on his knees scrubbing enlisted heads with a toothbrush. You waited, and you learned. Or you didn’t, and in that case your career in the Navy was soon finished before it had really even started.

And after three weeks at sea, or roughly ten days each way, Warren was having doubts of his own. Maybe he’d have been better off concentrating on his studies and getting into medical school. Flying was fun, but was it worth all this…aggravation?

All the Middies were mired in the same thought, too. If war really did break out, why not just go down to the nearest recruiter’s office and sign up for flight training then? After all, he’d not spent one minute inside an actual aircraft the entire time onboard, on either crossing. Was the twenty bucks-a-month stipend really worth all this – waiting?

To Warren it absolutely was. Working through the numbers with Martha before he graduated, they’d figured out how to survive on that amount, and the truth be told that much money was more than he’d ever had before at any time in his life. With his room and board paid for by The Colonel, that stipend was literally his to save, or to spend, as he saw fit. But with Martha attending the University of Chicago he figured he’d need about half that amount to visit her two weekends a month, taking the afternoon Hiawatha on Friday and an overnighter back to Minneapolis on Sunday night. Giving up that stipend meant giving up on seeing her during the academic year, and that was something neither wanted.

What she wanted, now more than ever, was to get married – and Warren thought he understood her reasoning. He was a little less sanguine about marriage, given a possible world war looming on the not-so-distant horizon. If he was killed? Then what? What happened to her and, heaven forbid, a child or two – if that were to happen…? But she was adamant – if he was to perish she wanted a part of him to remain with her. He found it impossible to argue with that; he was, in word and deed, humbled by her honesty, and by her love for him.

And then Poland fell, just as the academic year began. No one said as much out loud, but war was a certainty now. His classes in military science were instructed with real urgency, and it was announced that those who finished up the year achieving advanced standing academically would qualify for advanced training next June, and after that he knew he wouldn’t be going to medical school until the war was over, assuming he lived.

Assuming he lived?

He had never considered the possibility of dying before but now, lying beside Martha on their few Saturday nights together, he knew his future was inextricably intertwined with hers now and forever, and with this war. Indeed, maybe having a child was not simply the prudent thing to do. Maybe he would be tempting fate not to?

And so it happened that at the beginning of his second summer away from home he found out she was indeed pregnant. He found out just before he shipped out to Beeville, Texas, to begin primary flight training at the training center for pilots that already held a pilot’s license. She was only a few weeks pregnant when France fell and the Battle of Britain began…and after that the winds of war began blowing insistently, blowing harder and harder with each new headline in the news. The coming war was now impossible to ignore, and even the few isolationists remaining in congress – Republicans all – began falling into line. Charles Lindbergh had once been one of Warren’s heroes – until it turned out the pilot of The Spirit of St. Louis still supported Hitler and the Nazi Party – both in Germany and here in the states. Now he, and every single one of his classmates, detested the man – and all that he stood for. 

Warren had become something of a minor sensation in high school both on the football field and on those rare nights there was a dance at school – because of his guitar playing. This continued at the university after he made the football team as a walk-on at his old position, running back, and because whenever he felt stressed out he pulled the guitar from its case and sat somewhere in the shadows and played slow, wistful songs of longing and heartache. The ROTC program required he study engineering but he otherwise concentrated all his efforts on the life sciences, because engineering simply made him feel heartsick. Soon enough people gathered and listened when he played the guitar and sang songs of headache and confusion. Songs, he realized, of his life in Ophelia.

After Warren returned from his summer in Beeville he spent two weeks with Martha, and he asked if she was ready to get married. Stunned by his apparent change of heart, she asked him why. Why now?

“Because,” he told her, “I think I’ve finally realized just how dangerous this kind of flying really is, and how easy it will be get killed. I might be a good pilot, but the guy in the other plane might be better. Or the engine in my plane might just quit – when I’m a hundred miles away from the nearest carrier. Odds are pretty good once I leave it will be the last time you see me. At least that’s what the C.O. of our training squadron told us on the first day of class…”

“Maybe he was just trying to get you to pay attention,” Martha replied.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

“You sure you want to get married?”

“I’m sure I want to be the father of our baby…”

“Warren, of course you are…”

“That’s not what I meant. I want to be here for all of it, for every minute of his – or her – life, but now I’m certain I’m going to miss out on the first few years of that life, at a minimum.”

“I know.”

“Have you decided what you’re going to do this year?”

She nodded. “I’m staying home this year, with Mom and Dad. Maybe I’ll go back to school next year…”

He looked away, crestfallen. “I’ve taken that from you, too. Oh, Martha…”

“Warren, I wanted this, maybe more than anything I’ve ever wanted, so don’t you dare feel guilty about…”

He grimaced. “I’ve never felt guilt over this, Martha. Not once. It’s just – well, when I remember how much you wanted to go Chicago, to the same school your father went to. How you’ve always wanted to follow in his footsteps. I remember how much you talked about that, how much it meant to you…”

“Having a baby isn’t going to change any of that, Warren.”

He remembered looking at her just then, inside that moment. Like a fly trapped in amber. Lost within a sigh, lost in darkness, suddenly feeling sick to his stomach, not really sure why she was lying to him. Did she really believe she trying to protect him?

Or had she simply been lying to herself all along?

+++++

She was bringing in the wash, trying to beat a storm blowing in from the southwest. Sheets were flapping on the freshening breeze and one of his shirts popped off the line and fluttered across the grass on its way to the barn…

Warren looked down at the setter sprawled out by his chair and smiled. “Sam? You think you could go get that for her before it gets dirty again?”

Sam looked amused as it stood and stared, then he bolted across the grass, tracking in on the errant shirt just before it hit the worst of the mud, then he trotted proudly back to Martha  and sat until she took the grass-covered shirt from him. She rubbed his head while she looked at Warren. “Thanks!” she said with a grateful smile.

“Need a hand with that basket?”

“No, no, you best keep off that leg. It still looks angry.”

“Feels angry, too.” He looked down at the leather harness keeping his new leg attached to the stump of the old and shook his head in dismay one more time, as if the world really wasn’t sure of his disgust with this current state of affairs.

“Did you finish with the tractor?” she said as she walked up to the front porch.

He nodded. “Used the last of the motor oil. Need to go into town tomorrow and pick some up. You need anything at the store?”

“I need to stop by the sewing shop.”

“Again?”

“I ordered some new fabric for that cushion,” she said brightly, nodding at his stump. “Supposed to help with chafing.”

“Why don’t you take Sam and go find my old leg. I want it back.”

She smiled as she put her basket down and sat beside him. “Oh, thank goodness…you made lemonade. Oh, Warren, I needed that. How’d you know?”

“Used those limes today. The ones you picked up at Hirschmann’s last week. Didn’t want them to go bad.”

She took a long sip and leaned back in her rocking chair. “You mashed some cherries, too, I see. Mm-m, this is so good.” She paused while her eyes swept the horizon. “Going to be a bad one,” she said as she watched the clouds gathering along the horizon beyond the trees. 

“Barometer’s already down ten points,” he said softly. “Going to be a real worm-worrier.”

She nodded, looked at the letters on the little table between their chairs – and she saw one from the university. “Letter from school?” she asked.

“My final exam scores,” he sighed.

“And…?”

“I did alright…”

She nodded. “Mind if I look?”

“Not at all,” he said as he took another sip from his glass. 

She opened the letter, read through all four pages. “Straight As again. Top of your class. And they want you to speak at graduation?”

“They do. I don’t think I will.”

Thunder rumbled through the trees and Sam trotted up the steps, settling on Warrens good foot – then letting slip a contented sigh. A tree line about a mile away disappeared behind a silvery-white veil of rain; two cardinals flittered by, ducking into the house Warren had built for them last year. “What about your internship?” she asked.

“Starts in ten days. By the way, you have a letter from Chicago in that pile.”

She looked up from the papers in her hand and leaned back again. “Warren, I’m not sure I can take another rejection letter.”

“Want me to open it?”

“Would you mind?”

He sifted through the pile, opened the letter from The University of Chicago and read through it twice, then carefully folded and placed the paper back in the envelope before he handed it over to her. “I wouldn’t exactly call this bad news,” he sighed – while she looked away expectantly, “but you be the judge.”

“Would you just tell me, please?”

He rubbed his stump and leaned back, looked out at the clouds and the rain, now less than a half mile away. “The residency program has provisionally accepted you.”

“Provisionally?”

“Yes, provisionally. In order to gain full admission you have to cook dinner tonight, and,” he paused for dramatic effect, “do the dishes.”

She turned and looked at his impish grin then flew into his arms. Sam moved, reluctantly, to make way for this latest intrusion, then he looked at the green clouds advancing across the fallow pasture on the far side of the railroad tracks and the hair on the back of his neck stood on end – just before he let slip a long, low growl.

Warren looked at Sam then at the clouds and he pushed himself upright. One look was all it took. “Martha. Basement, now,” he said quietly.

She too was a child of the great midwest prairie. She knew that tone of voice and pushed herself off Warren then helped him stand. “Come on, Sam. Time to go downstairs…now…”

Warren looked at the tornado and shivered. It looked to be about a half mile wide and it was heading their way. He grabbed his cane and took Martha’s outstretched hand and they raced through the house. Because of his leg he never went to the basement these days and now he looked at the stairwell carefully, nervously, then grabbed the handrail and remembered the words his therapist had drilled into his mind: ‘Down with the bad, up with the good, down with the bad…down with the bad foot and take all your weight on the good…’

He maneuvered his prosthetic leg onto the first tread and heard the tornado seemingly right outside the front door. “The hell with this,” he growled, sitting down on the top step then scuttling down the stairway like a crab. He pushed himself up and bolted into the shelter his grandfather had built into the foundation almost fifty years ago and pulled the iron door to and slammed the arm down that held the door in place. 

A lone light bulb shone but that probably wouldn’t last. He’d replaced the supplies down here last summer so there for food and water for a few days, and new candles, too…

“Martha, get a couple of those candles going, would you?”

She looked at him, her eyes wide with fright, then she nodded. “You think it’s going to hit us?”

He simply nodded then looked up at the concrete ceiling as a colossal roaring began…

© 2025-26 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is a work of fiction, plain and simple. Thanks for dropping by. See you for the next part of TimeShadow.