Time Riders

The unit turned hesitantly.

Behind the glass plates of the gas mask, a complex computer loaded with AI that was still inthe process of learning, still almost childlike, was desperately juggling mission prioritiesand variables, calculating a million different ways to proceed.

Liam watched the lumbering figure move away.

Oh blimey. What kind of a mess am I stuck in now?

CHAPTER 39

2001, New York

‘How long until the return window, Madelaine?’ asked Foster.

Maddy looked up at a screen. ‘We’re counting down the last two minutes,’she replied.

‘All right, then. We’ll find out what the boys have seen and work it out fromthere.’ He smiled thinly.

The sudden erasure of history before 1956 made it almostimpossible to identify exactly when and where things had begun to change — and to zero in on that. While the wipingout of historical records may well have been on the whim of some insane Nazi dictator, toappease his ego no doubt, it also had the additional effect of completely hiding the tracks ofwhomever had instigated this time shift. If that’s what some time traveller hadintended, then he was being very, very clever. Leaving no trace, no tracks… nothing forthem to identify the moment they’d arrived in the past.

Very clever.

Maddy interrupted Foster’s train of thought. ‘Uhh, Foster… a warningdialogue box has come up.’

He looked at it.

LOCATION POINT PHASE INTERRUPTION

ABORT OR CONTINUE?

‘The computer’s picking up varying density packets inthe pick-up window.’

‘Meaning?’

‘The computer monitors the area inside the target window for the minute before we’re due to send back our operatives. If there’s alot of unexpected movement through it, we can assume there are unwary people or perhaps ananimal walking across it. If it’s persistent enough, the computer flags awarning.’

‘What do we do?’

‘Wait and see if it continues,’ he replied, pointing to a graphic display on thescreen. ‘There’s a density packet spike. Someone or something walked through aboutten seconds ago.’

‘We aren’t going to leave them?’ asked Sal, her voice brittle withworry.

Foster shook his head. ‘That won’t happen,’ he reassured her. ‘If weneed to abort this window, we’ll try again in an hour.’

He looked at the display. There were no more density spikes.

‘It looks like a one-off,’ he said. ‘Could easily have been a bird flyingthrough, or rubbish blown across. It happens quite often.’

Sal managed a wan smile. ‘OK.’

‘Thirty seconds,’ said Maddy. ‘We aborting or continuing?’

The display looked flat. Whatever had passed through didn’t look like it was comingback. In all likelihood it was Liam accidentally stepping in too early. The support unit hadprobably advised him to stand clear and now they were both waiting patiently to come home.

‘Continue,’ said Foster.

Maddy clicked the mouse and the dialogue box winked off screen.

‘Ten seconds.’

Sal turned towards the middle of the archway’s floor, ready to welcome them bothback.

‘Keep well clear, Sal,’ said Foster, pointing at a faint circleof yellow chalk on the concrete, scuffed and in need of a refresh. It marked out the dimensionof the return window. You really didn’t want to be standing there when it opened.

‘Five seconds.’

The generator hummed, the lights momentarily flickered and dimmed. Foster looked at thegraphic display, expecting to see the graph spike as Liam and Bob stepped in together. But itremained flat.

Come on, boys… stop messing around.

‘And three… and two…’

The graph suddenly spiked.

The lights went out completely.

As they flickered back on, he was about to turn round and give them both a telling-off forcutting it so fine when he heard Sal’s scream.

A young man stood there, staring at them, eyes widened with fear and incomprehension — a young soldier, perhaps no more than a couple of years older than Liam, blond hair croppedshort, his pale choir-boy cheeks smudged with dirt and flecks of dried blood. He wore a blackrubber boiler suit, rolled down to his waist. Beneath it was a grey army tunic with oak leaveson the collar and an eagle emblem on the chest.

His eyes darted from Sal, to Maddy, to Foster… and then to someone else’sdismembered leg and arm lying at his feet amid a scattering of dried leaves, twigs and acircular tuft of blood-spattered grass and soil.

‘Was — ?… Was istdas?’ He looked down at the severed limbs on the ground, oozing blood on to theconcrete floor. ‘Was geschieht?Wo bin ich? ’

His mouth fluttered in fear, his voice broken, shrill, like a child suddenly finding himselflost in a crowded mall.

Maddy reacted first. She stood up and slowly approached him, hands raised.‘It’s OK,’ she cooed softly. ‘Everything’s all right…We’re not going to hurt you.’

The young man gathered his wits enough to unsling his gun and swivel the barrel down to pointat her.

‘Halt, stehen bleiben!Wer sind Sie?Wo bin ich?’

Maddy shook her head. ‘I don’t… I don’t do German, sorry,’ shesaid, offering him a friendly smile.

‘Keep him talking,’ said Foster quietly.

Maddy pointed to herself. ‘My… name… is Maddy. And you?’

The young German stared silently at her, his breath rasping in and out, fluttering withfear.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked in her best motherly voice.‘This,’ she said, pointing to Sal, ‘this is Sal.’

‘Hi,’ said Sal, smiling sweetly and slowly offering him a small hand toshake.

He glanced from one girl to the other.

‘Ich… Ich bin Feldwebel Lohaans.’

Maddy guessed she was hearing his rank and surname.

‘But what’s your first name? Hmm?’ she asked,taking another step forward.

The young man racked his gun nervously. ‘Stehenbleiben!… Stay! ’ he barked, licking his drylips.

Maddy stopped dead and shook her head apologetically. ‘Sorry. I’ll stay rightwhere I am. I won’t hurt you.’

He nodded, seeming to understand that. He took another deep breath. ‘You… Amerikaner?’

She smiled. ‘Yes.’

‘This…?’ he said, and shrugged, lacking the words in English to completethe question.

‘This place is in America. In New York, actually.’

The man’s eyes widened. ‘This… NewYork?’

She nodded.

He snorted nervously. ‘Washington… zehn-’ he made a whooshing noise — ‘NewYork?’