Time Riders

started, forgotten and unfinished; a teacup half full, cold and growing askin of congealed cream. Karl’s eyes followed a loop of cables snaking across the floortowards a wire cage.

A cage.

His mind flashed an image of the museum basement… fifteen years ago. A desperate gunbattle, then hastening into a cage similar to this. Static electricity, sparks, then aterrible sensation of falling.

‘My God… you are making a time machine?’

Kramer muttered something in response.

Karl’s eyes followed another thick string of cables away from the cage, across the labtowards what appeared to be a small beer keg suspended in the middle of a protective metalframe by an array of thick springs. The unfamiliar frame confused him for a moment. But thebeer keg, he suddenly recognized.

‘Paul! You have one of the atom bombs in here!’

Kramer sighed, and looked up. ‘Indeed.’

‘Is it… is it deactivated?’

‘No, Karl, it is primed and ready for use.’

Karl immediately felt his scalp begin to prickle. ‘You understand… you understandhow dangerous it is to have this aboard the command ship, when it is primed for-’

Kramer’s smile was cold and lifeless. But worse than that was the vacant look in hiseyes. Karl felt his leader — his friend — was looking through him, beyond him, not at him. The muscle tics in his face he’d firstnoticed some weeks ago, the tremor of Kramer’s jaw were more pronounced. His eyes lookeddeep, hooded and dark from lack of sleep.

‘Paul, what is wrong? Will you tell me what is going on here?’

Kramer’s eyes seemed to focus back on him. ‘My old friend,’ he said, somewarmth finally returning to his lean face, ‘I believe it is over for us.’

‘Over? What is over?’

‘Someone has come for me, Karl.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You saw that body. You remember it? On the day we took the White House?’

Karl cast his mind back. Yes, he remembered a curiously fusedbody. Remembered it had troubled him for a few nights, but then their high-powered weapons,their incendiary bombs, habitually produced all manner of twisted and unpleasant corpses.He’d had no time to reflect further on it; the business of governing a conquered nationhad made sure of that.

‘Do you see, old friend… that’s them.’

‘Them?’

‘They know where we are… They know when we are. And they’re going to come.’

‘They? Who?’

Kramer shook his head, that tremor in his jaw uncomfortably exaggerated now. Karl realizedPaul must have experienced some kind of a nervous breakdown.

‘Our actions in history, Karl, have angered them. And nowthey’re coming to exact payment. To take their pound of flesh.’

Karl frowned. ‘You are talking of other time travellers?’

Kramer’s eyes, red-rimmed and glistening, widened. ‘I’veseen it in my nightmares. Perhaps I glimpsed his face in the gap in space-time, Karl. When wetravelled back to 1941. I must have seen his face then… in that swirling chaos betweenthe present and past.’

‘Face? Whose face?’

‘The devil, Karl… Satan. Death. Chaos.’

He regarded his leader in uncomfortable silence.

He has gone quite mad.

‘Paul, there is no such thing as the devil.’

‘Oh, but there is. You and I stepped through a gap in space-time, a gap in the laws ofphysics… you and I may have stepped briefly, so very briefly, and placed our feet inHell itself.’

This has to stop. Paul is not himself.

‘And Hell has our scent now, Karl. It has our scent. It isseeking us and it will punish us.’

Karl’s eyes stole away from Kramer’s intense face, and darted again to the atombomb nestled in its metal support frame. He could kill us both with thisdevice. Kill everyone aboard the command ship.

Kramer turned and followed his gaze. ‘Yes, Karl. This device… you want to know what it is?’

‘You have an atom bomb linked to a time machine?’

Kramer shook his head. ‘It’s not a time machine. I’d need things Ican’t get my hands on in 1957 to make one of those. No… it’s a doomsdaybomb. An atom bomb magnified infinitely by Waldstein’s displacement field.’ Hepointed at the wire cage. ‘It will ensure a blast and gamma radiation that will wipe outevery living thing.’

‘My God!’ gasped Karl.

Kramer’s face creased with a playful grin. ‘It is aGod-like thing, is it not?’

Karl felt his heart thumping through his charcoal-grey tunic, through the silver eaglestitched on his left breast pocket.

‘Paul, this is… this is madness.’

‘I consider it a kindness, my old friend.’

‘What?’

‘Yes… yes, a kindness. We mistakenly let some dark force come into the pastbehind us. Something evil… chaos itself. It is seeking us.It will come for you and I, and will come for every other soul in this world. I can see thatnow.’

‘Paul… listen. There are no angels, or demons, or — ’

‘It will come for every soul in this world… because this is a world that shouldnever have been. Every person living right now is living a lifethat should never have been.’

Karl found his hand instinctively, slowly, reaching down for the pistol on his belt. Beingmerely decorative it was unloaded, but perhaps Kramer would not be aware of that.

Am I really going to pull my gun on him?

Yes. He needed Paul to come with him now, away from thiscontraption, where he could talk to him, where he could reason with him safely. And, if needsbe, he would order a physician to provide sedatives for the Fuhrer. The man needed to becalmed, desperately needed some sleep by the look of him.

‘You know, Karl, I wanted to make a better world, a better future,’ said Kramer,his tired eyes rimmed with tears. ‘Instead — ’ he shook his head — ‘I believe I’ve condemned us all to something worse than death itself.’

‘But you are talking of supernatural things, Paul. Devils,angels, God, Satan — these are things that belong to the Middle Ages. You are a man ofscience, not some insane… priest.’

‘Perhaps the supernatural is what lies beyond our science? It is in that gap inspace-time.’ A solitary tear rolled down Kramer’s gaunt cheek. ‘The factis… I know the devil has arrived and is coming for us as we speak.’

He’s gone too far.

‘I have to ask this, Paul… Is this devicefunctional?’

Kramer nodded. ‘It is.’

I have no choice, then. Karl’s hand stole into his holsterand with one fluid sweep pulled out the pistol. He aimed it at Kramer. The gun was steady. Hisvoice wasn’t. ‘Paul… I’m s-sorry. You must understand I cannot letthis go any further.’

Kramer remained calm, his eyes on the gun. He smiled, not unkindly. ‘I’m afraidit’s something I have to do.’

Karl cocked his gun. ‘Look, come with me, Paul. We’ll talk about this in yourquarters. You and I — ’

Kramer calmly reached for the intercom on his workbench.