A matter of time

sneered at the impossibility of BB-sized or gram-weight singularities left over from the explosion of the primal egg, Cash began to wonder if he were going to get any sense from the man at all. Then the man's mind skipped another track.

'There's only one way your corpse could've moved in time, so far as we know. The usual. Unless…' He steepled his fingers and studied the ceiling once more. 'I almost overlooked something. Fell into the obvious trap. When you think time travel, you always think of going back. It's a powerful, almost archetypal human drive, to go back and put things right. But your man came forward. And that's possible. There's a shortcut.

'The mechanism is that of Fitzgerald-Lorentz. When an object with mass nears the velocity of light, its time reference relative to slower objects grows retarded. If we could put a man into a spaceship and whip him up to ninety-nine point-nine nine percent the velocity of light and send him off to, say, the nearest star and back, to us it would seem like it had taken him about nine years to make the trip, but for him only a few months would pass. Of course, that's not humanly possible. But the theory's sound. It's been proven with atomic clocks in satellites and fast planes.'

Cash caught the stress of 'humanly.' 'You mean a flying saucer could've gotten him?'

Embarrassed, DeKeersgeiter nodded. 'It fits the least hypothesis as neatly as your time machine. There's more evidence that they exist. And it doesn't conflict with physical law.'

All Cash said was 'Thanks,' but thought, A whole new can of worms. What else would he come up with before they closed the case? Suspended animation? Perpetual motion machines? How about deals with the devil? Sister Mary Joseph had suggested that one already.

He got the hell out. Politely, but out.

And got hell.

The dispatcher had been trying to get in touch. Annie had called. Major Tran was on his way in from Fort Chaffee to look them over. She wanted Cash to meet him at the bus station. She was afraid to handle it herself. But Railsback, because he hadn't let the dispatchers know where he would be, wouldn't let him go.

Cash caught John leaving as he himself went into the station. They hadn't seen much of each other recently. 'You heard?'

'About the gook? Yeah.'

'Hey!'

'Sorry. Railsback's been on my ass.'

Beth was trying to get his attention. He held up a. finger in a wait-a-second gesture.

'I just wanted to know if maybe you could come over tonight. Maybe ease things a little. You know these people better…'

'Now who's doing it?'

'You know what I mean.'

'If he spent time over here before, he can cope. Probably better than we did over there. But I'll stop over.' He started on. 'Oh. I'll come by myself. You'd better keep Nancy and the kids away, too. Let Annie get settled before you sic the whole gang on him.'

'Right. Good thinking.' Cash didn't think his daughter-in-law would cause a problem, but the grandchildren might.

'Cash! If your personal life can stand it?…' Railsback. The way he had come on all week, life at home must have become hell.

Cash glanced at Beth, who just smirked and mouthed, I tried to warn you.

Once he turned, before he could say anything, Railsback snapped, 'What the hell have you been up to this time?'

Cash thought he was still pissed about not being able to get in touch. Wrong. As soon as he started to explain, Railsback interrupted.

'You shook a nut tree is what you did. I got a bunch of goddamned flying saucer freaks coming in here tomorrow. Here. They didn't even ask, they told me. Why can't you just write this creep off? You have to put our careers on the line over him? And don't bug the old lady no more, either. Last time you did I had a whole platoon of ambulance chasers shaking my phone off the wall.'

Surprise and surprise, Cash thought. DeKeersgeiter had moved fast. Cash hadn't suspected the man was that interested. And this was the first the lieutenant had mentioned the lawyers. Which meant that he had gone to bat for his troops. He wasn't as bad as he pretended.

'Look, Hank, there's got to be an angle on this thing. And Miss Groloch's in it up to her pointy ears. And covering up. You don't haul out the legal talent if you're not feeling guilty, not just 'cause you got a little pressure from a cop. Not if you're an old timer. Kids these days are something else. And we got prints, remember? With that we might be able to get a search warrant. Speaking of prints, whatever happened to the paper that came off of that doll?'

Railsback looked thoughtful, then sheepish. 'I sent it over to FBI.'

'That old, huh?'

'Looked like.'

'Well, I'm not letting go. Not even if I have to bring in Gypsies with crystal balls.'

Railsback was less angry than he pretended. He grinned, made a dirty crack, said, 'Norm, I read the Carstairs file, too. The sonofabitch didn't let go for eight years. And he didn't get anywhere. How come you think you'll do better?'

'Because I already have, Hank. I've got a print, and I've gotten a rise out of Miss Groloch. She gave me an angle herself, but I haven't had time to follow it up.' He explained the connection with Egan's Rats. 'Hank, it might