Marooned in Realtime

years to learn, it wouldn't interfere.'

'Time is something you don't have, mister. If you spend a century tooling up for this job, you'll lose the viewpoint that's your value to me.'

She had a point. He remembered how Marta had misunderstood the effect of Robinson's sales pitch.

'Sure,' she continued, 'there are high-tech angles to the murder. Maybe they're the most important angles. But I've already got expert help in that department.'

'Oh? Someone you can trust among the high-techs?' He waved at the mug shots on the walls.

Korolev smiled thinly. 'Someone I can distrust less than the others. Never forget, Brierson, my devices will be watching all of you.' She thought for a moment. 'I was hoping she'd be back in time for this meeting. She's the least likely to have a motive. In all the megayears, she's never been tangled in our little schemes. You two will work together. I think you'll find your skills complementary. She knows technology, but she's little... strange.' Yelen was silent again; Wil wondered if he would ever get used to this silent communion between human and machines.

There was movement at the corner of his vision. Wil turned and saw that a third person sat by the table. It was the spacer woman. He hadn't heard a door opening or footsteps.... Then he noticed that she sat back from the table, and her seat was angled slightly off true. The holo was better than any he'd seen before.

She nodded solemnly at Yelen. 'Ms. Korolev. I'm still III high orbit, but we can talk if you wish.'

'Good. I wanted to introduce you to your partner.' She smiled at some private joke. 'Ms. Lu, this is Wil Brierson. Inspector Brierson, Della Lu.'

He'd heard that name before but couldn't remember just ,1 here. The short Asian looked much as she had at the party. He guessed she hadn't been out of stasis for more than a few clays: her hair was the same dark fuzz as before.

Lu stared at Korolev for several seconds after she made the introduction, then turned to look at Brierson. If the delay were not a mannerism, she must be out beyond the moon. 'I've read food things about you, Inspector,' she said and made a smile that didn't involve her eyes. She spoke carefully, each word an isolated thing, but otherwise her English was much like Wil's 'forth American dialect.

Before Brierson could reply, Korolev said, 'What of our prime suspects, Ms. Lu?'

Another four-beat pause. 'The Robinsons refused to stop.' The library windows showed a view from space. In one direction Wil could see a bright blue disk and a fainter, gray one -the Earth and the moon. Through the window behind Lu hung a bobble, sun and Earth and moon reflected in its surface. The sphere was surrounded by a spidery metal structure, swollen here and there into more solid structures. Dozens of tiny silver balls moved in slow orbit about the central one Every few seconds the bobbles vanished, replaced by a much larger one that contained even the spidery superstructure. There was a flash of light, and then the scene returned to its first phase.

'By the time I caught up with them, they were off antigravity and using impulse boost. Their flicker rate was constant. It was easy to pace them.'

Quack, quack. For a moment, Wil was totally lost. Then he realized he was seeing a nuke drive, very close up. The idea was so simple that it had been used even in his time: Just eject a bomb, then go into stasis for a few seconds while it detonates and gives you a big push. When you came out of stasis, drop off another bomb and repeat the process. Of course, it was deadly to bystanders. To get these pictures, Della Lu must have c snatched the Robinsons' bobble cycle exactly, and used her own bombs to keep up.

'Notice that when the drive bobble bursts, they immediately generate a smaller one just inside their defensive frame. A battle would have taken several thousand years of outside time to resolve.'

Objects in stasis had absolute protection against the outside world. But bobbles eventually burst: if the duration was short, your enemy would still be waiting, ready to shoot; if the duration was long, your enemy might drop your bobble into the sun -and absolute protection would end in absolute catastrophe. Apparently the advanced travelers used a hierarchy of autonomous fighters, flickering in and out of realtime. While in realtime, their processors decided on the duration of the next embobblement. The shortest-period devices stayed in sync with longer-period ones, relaying conclusions up a chain of command. At the top, the travelers' command bobble might have a relatively long period.

'So they got away?' Hidden by time and interstellar depths.

Pause, pause, pause, pause. 'Not entirely. They claimed innocence, and left a spokesman to demonstrate their good faith.' One of the windows brightened into a picture of Tammy Robinson. She looked even paler than usual. Wil felt a flash of anger at Don Robinson. Clever it might be, but what sort of person leaves his teenage kid to face a murder investigation? Lu continued. 'I have her with me. We should be landing in sixty minutes.'

'Good. Ms. Lu, I would like you and Brierson to interview her then.' Beyond the windows, forests replaced the black and bright of space. 'I want you to get her story before you and Brierson leave for the restart of Town Korolev.'

Wil glanced at the spacer. She was strange, but apparently capable. And she was as powerful a witness as he could get. He ignored Yelen's auton and tried to put the proper note of peremptory confidence in his voice when he said, 'One other thing, Yelen.'

'Well?'

'We need a complete copy of the diary.'

'How — What diary!'