An hour and twenty minutes from their arrival? Had they found anything? He wondered what the mission time was now relative to this most recent field breach and was determined to work out some kind of program to correlate the time on the other end of the field as related to time in The Now with each field opening. Some kind of time check transmission that would update every sixty seconds.
Back in the past, it could be an hour after Dwayne recorded the message or it could be days. It was maddening. Not for the first time did Tauber consider running into the Tube and going into the past, just for a peek, just for some confirmation. He could run back to the present, and no harm done. But if the field was not as stable as he thought, if it collapsed while he was in prehistoric Nevada or while he was in transit…
No, he realized, he was useful to Caroline and the others on this side of the Tube. The men he hired were the best chance to bring his sister and her colleagues back alive. His job was here manning the controls and making sure Parviz and Quebat kept the reactor at maximum efficiency.
The ambient noise made by the Tube faded to silence. The cloud of frozen gas thinned away to a light mist. The field was closed and would not reopen for two days when the reactor was at optimal output again. Tauber was alone with his fears again for forty-eight hours.
The only thing for it was to stay busy. He had a full two days to worry and he wasn’t going to start now. Work was the remedy, work, or fall into a blue, disabling depression. Caroline would never give up like that, Tauber told himself. He thought of making another call on the satellite phone but decided against it. No reason to let their benefactor know that the crisis continued. Tauber might need more favors if there were still any favors to be had.
Time and money. Money and time. One was limited in supply. The other was malleable and fluid but still beyond his ability to control with any real precision.
He ran the last audio transmission from Roenbach through the filters and listened to it a dozen times over until he’d pieced it together. He wrote it down on a legal pad word for word.
Roenbach to Tauber. Mission time oh-one-twenty-two. We are at a half-ring formation of rock with a cave at its base. I’d say three klicks west/northwest from insertion point. The cave opening is on the north face of the escarpment. We found an encampment of humans. Roenbach out.
Humans? Was that possible? Were the chronometric readings off and the Tube opened a field in the wrong era? If there was an indigenous aboriginal population in the time frame that Caroline and the others entered, it would explain a lot. If only Dwayne left a more detailed message.
Tauber thought again how his sister, Phillip, and Martin were no more than a forty-five-minute hike from where he stood, separated from safety by a gulf of millennia.
He left the buried Tube chamber and stepped blinking into the blast of desert sun. Parviz and Quebat were exiting the reactor hut in their rad suits. Parviz turned the spigot on a faucet and began spraying Quebat with a garden hose. It was a rough and ready way of cleaning as much of the stray radiation off them as possible. Parviz, the more adept at English, constantly assured Tauber that this was adequate.
“The rocks all around us give off as many rems as we are releasing,” Parviz would say as though Tauber were a child. “There are no worries. Hosing off a precaution only.”
Tauber stood by waiting as they hosed each other down and then stripped off the Tyvek coveralls and dropped them into a steel oil drum. They were in boxers and t-shirts. Quebat’s shirt said What Happens In Vegas . . . Tauber didn’t approach until Parviz had ignited the discarded suits with lighter fluid and set them ablaze.
He joined them as they walked to the community hut.
“Any good lucks, Dr. Tauber?” Parviz said.
He asked the same question each time.
“Only a transmission from Mr. Roenbach,” Tauber said. “They made it through and gave me their current position. Well, relative to…” He trailed away. This whole enterprise lacked its own language. How to convey the complexities of dealing with two planes of time progressing at different rates in relation to one another?
“They okay, then? So far so good, then?” Parviz said. That about summed it up.
“Look, can I talk to you guys?” Tauber said. They stopped as one and regarded him. “It’s about the reactor,” he said.
“Over breakfast, please?” Parviz said and held the door to the hut for Quebat.
Tauber had re-heated coffee from the night before. Parviz set the table and Quebat prepared haleem, a nauseating mixture of lamb chunks and oatmeal. The two sat and adorned some kind of crusty flatbread with a thick smear of butter while their bowls cooled.
“You had a question, Doctor?” Parviz said.
He took a bite of the bread.
“It’s about the re-charge time,” Tauber said and took a chair across from them. “I know we’ve discussed this before. But are you absolutely certain there’s no way to step up the process? Can we carve some time out of the forty-eight-hour regimen?”
“The timetable was worked out by Caroline and me,” Parviz said. He took a sip of tea and continued. “Her requirements were sixty million volts at a sustained, controlled amperage of two hundred thousand amperes.”
“Yes,” Tauber said.
“Were you an engineer, I mean a nuclear engineer, you would understand better the balance we must achieve and how difficult it is to manage and maintain.”
“Yes.”
“The reactor is small, and it takes time to build
