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6905 words                DINOSHIFT
                             by
                       J. Brian Clarke

Stipulation:
     The present is inviolable. It cannot be altered by
changing the past.
     The future is not so inviolable--

     When Frederick Marion Degruton published his paper
Phased Timeshift Dispersion in the summer of 2119, critics
quickly recalled the ancient arguments against time travel.
As one writer succinctly put it; "It makes wonderful science
fiction. But fiction can tolerate the contradiction, for
instance, of a man going back in time and becoming his own
ancestor. Science cannot."
     Nevertheless it was not long before Degruton was
reluctantly persuaded into a TV studio, where interviewer-
journalist Gail Sovergarde turned on her famous charm.
     "Doctor Degruton, I understand your paper has created
quite a stir in the scientific community. I mean, time
travel! So I hope you will forgive me if I ask a question I
am sure you have already heard a thousand times. Can we now
change the past?"
     "No."
     A small man, sandy haired and painfully shy, Degruton
had decided the only way to preserve his equanimity before
this disconcerting female, was to say as little as possible.
     "I am so glad you said that." Her smile made him melt.
"Because to change the past is to change the present. Is
that not so?"
     "That is the accepted--" He shuffled uncomfortably.
"--way of looking at it."
     "But a valid one, surely?"
     "I suppose so."
     "Ah." She nodded knowingly. "So despite your discovery,
I still cannot go back and dispose of my grandfather before
he had children."
     "Good heavens!" Degruton was shocked. "Why would you
want to do that?"
     Disconcerted by the scientist's literal interpretation
of the elderly cliche, Sovergarde hurriedly re-phrased.
"Then if we cannot change the past, what can we change?
Presuming, of course, time travel is possible."
     "Read my paper, Ms Sovergarde. Believe me, the
calculations have been checked and double-checked by the top
people in the field."
     She held up a folder. "Triple-checked, Dr Degruton. I
have been assured your reasoning is impeccable. So again I
ask the question. What can we change?"
     "Not so much change, as create."
     "I beg your pardon?"
     "If we go back a couple of thousand years and arrange
for the--ah--removal of a certain itinerant preacher before
he started his ministry, Christianity would never have
happened. Right?"
     "Of course. That is obvious."
     "Obvious only in another continuum, Ms Sovergarde. Not
in our own--in which Christianity is an incontrovertible
fact."
     "I see." After a slight hesitation, Sovergarde asked
thoughtfully, "You are talking about an alternate history,
aren't you?"
     "Well I--" Degruton looked at the woman with dawning
respect. Never much interested in the comings, goings and
various scandals associated with the current crop of video
personalities, he came to the interview assuming this was
just another shallow, statuesque brunette with the gift of
gab and an astronomical clothing budget. But with the sudden
realization Sovergarde was more than just flesh-and-blood
cardboard, the scientist blushed and began to stammer.
"Y--yes, in a--ahemm--sort of--"
     Her smile was disarming, and with an effort of will he
forced himself to meet her questioning gray eyes. Somehow,
her projection of innocent curiosity inspired confidence.
"You are familiar with the concept of alternate histories,
Ms Sovergarde?"
     "In a science-fictional sort of way. As I understand
it, if someone from our time goes back and changes or
prevents some pivotal event of history; instead of altering
our past, the time traveller has by his action created a
branching alternate in which, for instance, Christianity
never existed. That alternate would be another timeline,
parallel yet separate from our own."
     "Timeline is the popular word. I prefer continuum.
Anyway, in the greater multiverse of which our own cosmos is
but an infinitesimal part, it is conceivable that infinite
possibilities already coexist in an infinite series of
continuums. By the way, I erred in when I implied alternates
are created. Any manipulation of a past event, simply opens
the door to the most appropriate of those infinite
possibilities."
     "But it is so theoretical."
     "Not at all. In fact, my colleagues and I have already
demonstrated the concept in the laboratory. The partitions
are not impenetrable, you see. We set up an experiment in
which we changed an event in past time, returned to the
present, and then shifted sideways to observe the
consequences of our manipulation."
     Sovergarde lifted both hands in protest. "Partitions?
Sideways? Sorry Doctor, you just lost me."
     "The experiment was on a modest scale of course,
involving nuclear reactions over nano-seconds of time.
Partitions are simply the boundaries separating the
alternate continuums from each other as well as from Prime,
which is our own continuum. Sideways refers to our ability
to shift across those partitions."
     "Getting back to Christianity--"
     Suspecting he should have chosen a less controversial
example, Degruton sighed. "If our time traveller somehow
prevents Christianity 'getting off the ground' so-to-speak,
he then has the remarkable option of being able to follow
the development of a non-christian continuum at any moment
during its history, up to and including the alternate's
calendar equivalent of our present."
     "But not beyond?"
     "Beyond?"
     "Into the future."
     Degruton looked wistful. "That would be interesting,
wouldn't it?" He frowned and shook his head. "Unfortunately,
that is one barrier beyond which we cannot go. As with the
speed of light, nature has its limits."
     "So the future can only arrive the old fashioned way?"
     "By becoming the present? Precisely."
     Sovergarde pursed her lips with disappointment and
consulted her notes. "About this technique--"
     "We call it Shift Dispersion, or S.D."
     "Alright, S.D. Does it have a practical application?"
     "Does a baby, Ms Sovergarde? Give it time."
     "Then do you have anything in mind? I mean, on a larger
scale than the experiment you just described?"
     "Oh indeed."
     "Can you tell me what it is?"
     "Not really. After all, we are at the beginning of
years of development work. But perhaps--" Degruton
hesitated, added weakly. "Really, it is rather premature."
     The famous, Sovergarde smile. "Oh Doctor, do tell."
     Degruton blushed, took a deep breath. "Dinosaurs."

     Ten years later.
     The Francis Bacon was a big ship, originally
constructed as a bulk carrier for the Mars run. Now rebuilt
to carry the massive SD generator in the main hold, her
Sovergarde fusion-drive had brought her to station above the
ecliptic in just over nine weeks.
     Despite the ship's size, personnel quarters were
limited and cramped. So the presence of Gail Sovergarde, in
addition to a dozen scientists and technicians, was
initially resented by those of the ship's crew who assumed
the journalist's only asset, other than her looks and her
network's financial resources, was her famous grandfather.
But Gail's willing acceptance of routine chores, plus her
charm and obvious intelligence, soon made her friends with
everyone--including, to Degruton's surprise--the other four
women on board.
     Degruton's own relationship with this surprising female
had matured over the years to something he thought was even
better than marriage. Their commitment had no formal
contract, their work frequently kept them apart, yet every
reunion had the giddy, sensual aspect of a couple of
teenagers discovering each other for the first time.
     But it was entirely business when Gail entered SD
Control as Degruton and a couple of colleagues anxiously
watched data scroll across a screen.
     "How's it coming?"
     Without looking around, Mary Scheaffer waved a hand.
"Hi Gail."
     "That bad, huh?"
     "Not really. Just the usual glitches."
     Gail glanced at the countdown display on the bulkhead.
"Seventeen hours to go. Are we going to make it?"
     "Damn right we are." Mike Brown, the other member of
Degruton's primary team, swung his chair around and grinned
at the tousle-haired journalist. Even at forty-two, with no
make-up, a touch of gray in her dark hair, and clad in a
baggy coverall, the journalist continued to attract the
appreciative male eye. Mike added, "What about your doubts,
lady? Still have them?"
     She shrugged. "I am like a lot of people I guess.
Intellectually I know we can't change our own past, and have
proved it. But gut-wise--"
     Her mind went back four years, to the first full-scale
test of SD. She remembered the nerve-wracking hours during
which she wondered if man had finally tweaked nature's nose
once too often--

     From a site in Nebraska, they time-shifted to around
500 A.D. and released a few horses into the broad grasslands
of first-millennium America. A dozen mares, a few foals and
a couple of stallions galloping away across the prairie,
hardly seemed enough for the nucleus of a viable population.
Yet Alternate 1-2125, the modern-time equivalent which was
the result of that experiment, turned out to be a revelation
--with Europe still in the steam age, and its few North
American coastal colonies warily co-existing with a
continent-spanning Inca Federation.
     Unlike Prime, in which a few hundred mounted
conquistadors under the leadership of Cortes and Pizarro
conquered the Americas for Spain, in A1 the thundering
cavalry regiments of the Inca had been more than enough to
snuff out the European upstarts.
     Despite Gail's misgivings, the return to Prime was
anticlimactic, proving what Degruton and her own common
sense always insisted--that because Prime's past was
unalterably written into the fabric of spacetime, its
present, although older by the six weeks subjective time
they were away, remained as familiar as an old and
comfortable shoe.
     Yet the nagging voice remained, like a constant itch
that could not be scratched--

     Gail blurted; "It's not so much what we're doing, Mike,
as the degree of what we're doing! Introducing a few horses
a few hundred years before their time did not seem such a
big deal, yet look how that ended up! Now we are about to do
something on a global scale." She took a deep breath. "All
at once!"
     Aware Degruton was also looking at her, she snapped,
"What is the matter, Freddy dear? Am I repeating myself
again?"
     "I am afraid you are, dear." He smiled and rubbed a
hand through what was left of his hair. "Anyway, do you
think you can stop it?"
     It was not a challenge, he was not that type. It was a
simple question.
     Gail admitted wearily, "Of course not. I only report
events, I don't influence them." She hesitated. "But I do
try, don't I?"
     "Damn right you do. Fortunately our dedication is
immune even to your charms." Degruton stretched aching
muscles and yawned. "Anyway, one or a thousand new
alternates, it doesn't really matter. Prime will still be
there when we get back; slightly soiled and slightly
glorious as always, but there."
     Gail whispered. "But we're about to create a whole new
Earth. Totally different--"
     "Create?" Degruton shook his head. "It beats me why you
insist on looking at it that way. We are not God, you know."
     "I know. It is what worries me."

     Although the calculations were meticulous and had
monopolized the Luna Institute's computers to the extent a
deputation of angry cosmologists demanded Degruton either
stop or get out, the results were still based on theory. So
when one of the detects reported a mass approximately where
and when it was supposed to be, excitement was tempered by
doubt as they waited for refinement of the incoming data.
     "Coincidence?", Mike wondered aloud. "Or just bloody
good luck?"
     "We will know for sure in an hour or two," Degruton
muttered as he watched the wavering blip on the screen.
     "Why so long?", Gail asked.
     "The detects are pretty widely spread, in space as well
as time. Twenty-Three is doing its best, which is not too
bad for a probe the size of a basketball. Eight is coming
within range, and Forty-Eight is not far behind. Those three
should give us a pretty good fix."
     "But you launched more than a hundred!"
     He looked up. "I'd have launched a thousand if we had
the budget and room for that many."
     "Three percent." Mary paused, added thoughtfully, "You
know, that's not so bad."
     Degruton nodded. Based on data from thousands of core
samples taken in and around the asteroid's supposed impact
point near the Yucatan peninsular, the computer's projection
of the incoming trajectory turned out to be both surprising
and fortuitous. The asteroid had been a rogue; a solitary
interstellar interloper arcing into the solar system from
high above the ecliptic. Unlike the countless anonymous
chunks of cometry debris which had always orbited the sun,
this was a loner which theoretically could be located.
Hopefully, they had done exactly that.
     Mike checked the readings. "Minus sixty-six million
years, give or take a couple of hundred thousand. Close
enough, I'd say. Let's arm Bertha."
     Degruton shook his head. "Not yet. Bertha stays asleep
and harmless until we are absolutely sure."
     So they waited as the cloud of tiny detects which had
been launched in a fan-shaped pattern north of the sun,
flickered in and out of time and space. Snug in its bulge on
the underside of the Francis Bacon, enough explosive power
to cinder half a continent or divert an asteroid, continued
its mechanical slumber.
     The pattern on the screen changed.
     "Eight is within range," Mike reported.
     "And--?"
     "Just a sec." Mike checked the scrolling figures.
"Intersect in two hundred and ninety days."
     "Intersect?", Gail queried.
     "With Earth's orbit. So far the data's not complete
enough to determine if there will be actual impact.
Whateveritis could still miss by a couple of million
klicks."
     "Equivalent to a bullet parting your hair," Mary
explained solemnly. "Unpleasant, but not fatal."
     "Not this baby," Mike declared flatly. "It's it!"
     "What makes you so sure?", Gail asked as she tried to
ignore the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. "As
Mary just said--"
     "--if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck--"
     "--it is the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs,"
Degruton interjected tiredly as he lifted both hands and
rubbed his temples. He took a deep breath, pressed a switch.
"Gerry? Time to wake up Bertha."
     The voice of Captain Geraldine Fuchs echoed the doubts
of Gail Sovergarde. "Are you sure? I don't want to commit on
a hunch."
     "You are watching the data?"
     "Of course."
     "Then be honest, Gerry. You know damn well it's no
hunch."
     A sigh. "When will you know enough to commit for
launch?"
     "We have enough to commit right now. We can tweak
Bertha's course as more data comes in."
     "OK. We need half a day for check-out. Launch any time
after fourteen hundred hours tomorrow."
     Later, Gail slipped out of SD Control and hauled
herself up the access well to the bridge. She found the
captain alone, standing in front of a direct vision port and
staring at the stars. The captain did not turn around as the
journalist entered. Instead, she wondered aloud, "Do you
think we will ever get there?"
     "Where?"
     Fuchs gestured. "Out there."
     "Of course we will."
     The captain turned around. Her thin, bony face was
expressionless. "What makes you so sure?"
     "Because there are people like you and--" Gail
hesitated.
     "Degruton?"
     "Yes."
     "I wonder."
     Fuchs returned to the command chair. "I will do it of
course. Launch, I mean. And I will watch and dutifully
applaud when Bertha explodes and nudges that asteroid so it
won't hit Earth sixty-something million years ago."
     "And then?"
     "I won't sleep a solitary wink until we get back and
find home is where and how we left it!"
     Gail sat down at the vacant First Officer's station.
"Me too," she admitted. She looked around the deserted
bridge. "Where is everyone?"
     "Down below, with Bertha. I may be uneasy about it, but
I intend to have the job done right."
     "Gerry, the concept has been proved. Whatever new
alternates we create or open up, Prime's present is
untouchable. It cannot change."
     The captain nodded. "You were there when they did the
thing with the horses, weren't you?"
     Gail nodded. "I was also there when they time-shifted
ahead fifteen centuries to see the outcome."
     "What kind of world was it?"
     "Is," Gail corrected firmly."  She took a deep breath.
"Steam trains, paddle wheelers, gas lights, one or two minor
wars. A Tudor named Henry the Tenth on the English throne,
and a North American federation of Inca chiefdoms with not
much technology beyond good roads and the telegraph. I could
have survived on that world I suppose, but I was glad beyond
relief when we shifted back to Prime."
     "I can believe that."
     Fuchs stared at her visitor from below lowered eyelids.
She found Gail Sovergarde pleasant enough, as long as she
did not dwell on the contrast between the journalist's lush
looks and her own scrawny hair-in-a-bun appearance. "You
still wonder if we're spitting in God's eye, don't you?"
     "I wouldn't put it that extreme."
     "I would. I have a nasty feeling we are going to regret
this."
     "I already told you--"
     "I know. We cannot change Prime's past, and Freddy and
his team have already proved it. But I suspect you don't
like this dinosaur thing anymore than I do, Gail
Sovergarde."
     The other woman shrugged.
     "OK, so we divert that asteroid. Then what?"
     "We spot check over a few million years," Gail replied,
relieved the conversation had moved to safer ground. "See
what happens."
     "Up until the present equivalent time?"
     Gail shook her head. "I thought that was the obvious
thing to do, until Freddy reminded me that we humans only
got started pretty recently."
     "What has that to do with anything?"
     "So what would we be like today, if our primate
ancestors climbed down from the trees during the Mesozoic
and not just four or five million years ago?"
     "We'd be--" An awed expression crossed the captain's
thin face. "Pure intellect?"
     "Perhaps. Or maybe we would have long since polluted
ourselves to extinction. No one knows. The point is, Freddy
would rather not expose us to whatever remote sensing
capabilities those distant dinosaur descendants might have.
Presuming they do evolve intelligence, we will shift back to
Prime long before they develop space flight."
     Fuchs nodded, slowly. "It seems Freddy has thought of
all the angles."
     "I think so. It is why my objections have been--"
Gail's smile was wan. "--muted."
     With a huge sigh of relief, the captain leaned back in
her chair. "You know, although I felt in my bones there was
something wrong, I could not figure out what it was. Now
you've told me--and it's pretty awesome--I am glad our lord
and master decided to avoid it." She smiled broadly.
"Dammit, I feel much better!"

     Bertha was launched on schedule. The detects had done
their job, plotting the exact course of the mountain-sized
wanderer to a point of impact on the Earth's surface
corresponding to what would be--in sixty six million years
--the Yucatan peninsular.
     The asteroid was still one hundred and ninety million
kilometers from Sol's third planet, when proximity fuses
exploded Bertha's fusion warhead just above the cratered
surface. On the screens it was a mere wink of light.
     For better or worse, it was done. There would be not be
another try. Bertha was a one-shot.
     Detect 23 was destroyed by the blast, 8's sensors were
overloaded beyond recovery. So it was nearly three days
before the Francis Bacon's own instruments, plus data from
the lagging Detect 48, finally confirmed that Mesozoic Earth
was saved by a margin of slightly less than five hundred
thousand kilometers.
     A few years later, Gail Sovergarde dictated into her
journal;

     And then we flitted from eon to eon like gods watching
the progress of their children. We saw icecaps advance and
retreat. Deserts, forests and plains shrank and expanded
according to the great cycles of nature. The dinosaurs
themselves changed, becoming smaller, swifter and more
intelligent. The giant carnivores and herbivores were
extinct within ten million years after AV (asteroid
avoidance), after which a few species of four-footed mammals
emerged on the plains. There were no mammal primates.
     We overshot the genesis of the dinosaur toolmakers by
some one hundred thousand years, but not their early
villages near the great rivers on both continents. We
watched as the villages became towns, as agriculture spread
and roads linked the towns in a great web of commerce.
Square-riggers sailed the seas.
     There were no wars.
     Perhaps the lack of conflict is why technological
progress was, by our standards, inordinately slow. It took
more than five hundred centuries for the dinosaurs to evolve
from early agriculture to the equivalent of a steam-powered
industrial revolution. It was another two hundred centuries
before the development of the first dirigible, and centuries
more before mixed fleets of dirigibles and lumbering
heavier-than-air freight carriers flew in their skies. By
our time, it was forty-five million years ago when we
prudently shifted out from that timeline and returned to
Prime's familiar present.
     For a few hectic months I traveled with the SD team
from city to city, and then to the Mars colonies. I shared
the accolades, although even Freddy freely admits my
coaching contributed in no small degree to his blossoming as
a public personality.
     Still, as always, there were the questions.
     Also, as always, the doubts.
     No one, not even Freddy, was particularly surprised
when the ban was imposed almost exactly one year after our
return from the Dinosaur Alternate. Although the SD projects
had not triggered the space-time discontinuance forecast by
Stennerdahl and others, in its collective wisdom the
Assembly instructed the Secretary General to suspend the
Shift Dispersion program pending 'further investigation of
any deleterious effects on the environment'.
     So it was done.
     The Francis Bacon resumed its unglamorous role as an
interplanetary freighter. Captain Geraldine Fuchs joined the
fledgling interstellar program, and I semi-retired from the
small screen to become a director of the network. Frederick
Degruton did not do much of anything, other than spend most
of his waking hours going through the voluminous reports of
Project Dinoshift, eating and showering when he was reminded
to do so, cat-napping but never getting a proper night's
sleep, and frequently muttering something about "What we can
do--"
     After a couple of months of this, I moved out. Because
I assumed we were still friends, I tried to keep in contact
with Freddy. But he did not return my calls or answer my
messages. Finally, in desperation I returned to the
apartment. As I expected, he had not bothered to re-program
the maglock--

     He was asleep. For a few seconds Gail stood in the
doorway of the familiar bedroom, watching as he snored
softly. To her surprise the place was clean. His clothes
were neatly folded over a chair, and what she could see of
him was scrubbed and clean shaven.
     But his face was painfully thin.
     She checked her watch. 10.30 am.
     In the old days, he was up by six. It was an irritant
she had learned to live with, as she ignored his puttering
around until she later joined him for breakfast.
     That was another life.
     Letting him sleep, Gail left the bedroom and wandered
into his office. Again total neatness, in contrast to the
chaos of tapes, disks, books and paper strewn about the room
the day she left. He had two terminals going at the same
time, she remembered, each hooked into a different data
base, neither ever being turned off. She also remembered
their bitter words, when he refused her request to use one
of the terminals after her portable crashed while she was
uploading to the network.
     On the evening telecast of that day, she had to use
someone else's copy.
     Now there was just the one terminal, turned off, the
keyboard placed with mathematical precision in front of the
screen.
     "Gail?"
     She turned. He stood in the doorway, blinking sleepily.
     "Hi, Freddy."
     He did not seem particularly surprised as he asked,
"What are you doing here?" For all the expression in his
voice, he could have been inquiring about the weather.
     She shrugged. "I was worried. You won't answer my
messages."
     He nodded. "Give me a few minutes to do this and that,
then we will talk."
     Gail watched as he went into the bathroom and closed
the door. 'This and that' was an expression from their
intimate days, and her heart skipped a beat when he used it.
On the other hand, neither of them had ever completely
closed the bathroom door.
     Guess there's not much of the old magic left, Gail
mused sadly as she went into the kitchen and busied herself
putting out fruit juice, milk and a couple of bowls of
cereal.
     When he came in, clad in a white shirt and slacks which
once fitted but now hung on his scrawny frame like an older
brother's discards, the journalist had to force herself not
to overreact. She simply commented, "You have lost weight."
     "I know." He grinned. "Guess I had better start eating
again."
     She went to the auto-chef and called up a pre-set
program. It had not been changed. "Eggs, toast and bacon
just as you used to like them. OK?"
     "OK," Degruton agreed as he began to spoon up the
cereal.
     During the next half hour Gail did most of the talking
while he ate and drank profusely. It was a chatty one-sided
conversation in which she described her new job at the
network, the day she spent in the company of the Secretary
General at the World Assembly Building, her new corner
office on the one hundred and thirtieth floor, and the
delight of her parents when she introduced them to the cast
of the eternally running soap; Tomorrow's Day.
     Finally, he pushed himself away from the table. "Thank
you."
     "For the food or the talk?"
     "Both. But especially for the talk."
     "In the trade, it's known as verbal diarrhea."
     "In your case, that is like calling a rose a skunk
cabbage. Gail, you are the only person I know who can make
even a discussion of potato blight interesting."
     "Potato blight? When did--?" She took a deep breath.
"Dammit Freddy, I am having the hardest time not discussing
you!" She glared at him. "No, not just you. Us!"
     Degruton reached over and patted her hand. "I know, and
I apologize."
     Is this about to become one of our re-unions?, Gail
wondered giddily as she tried not to look in the direction
of the bedroom. She hoped not. He looked frail enough that a
simple hug might break him.
     But if she was gentle--
     Instead, he said, "As much as anyone, you are the one
to blame for the past few weeks."
     The letdown was so complete, she could only gasp.
"Freddy!"
     "After all, you did spend a lot of time and energy
trying to get me to call off Dinoshift. So when we finally
got home and found everything as it was supposed to be, I
was tempted to make you eat your words."
     "But you didn't."
     "Didn't have the heart for it. Instead, I knocked
myself out reviewing the whole project from conception to
end. I did not know what I was looking for anymore than you
knew what was wrong, but the further I got into it, the more
I had a nasty feeling I was missing something fundamental;
like not seeing the forest for the trees."
     Gail said helplessly, "Freddy, I don't--"
     He was remorseless. "Your instincts were right, of
course. I did miss something. And it is because of my bloody
stupidity, life for all of us--all of humanity--may become
very precarious."
     Gail just stared at him. Physically, Degruton had lost
a lot during the past few weeks. But his eyes were bright,
and his words were those of a man who knew exactly what he
was saying. She licked her lips. "What have you found that
is so--" She fluttered her hands. "--devastating?"
     He beckoned. "In my office."
     She followed him into the unusually neat room, and sat
down as he tapped keys. He said over his shoulder,
     "We were looking for the killer asteroid. Right?"
     She nodded. "And we found it."
     "Meanwhile, the ship's sensors were scanning the local
region of space."
     Gail shrugged. "I learned enough while I was on board
to know space is not as empty as it seems. The computer
routinely plots the movement of every bit of cosmic flotsam
within range, and alarms the bridge if anything is a
potential threat."
     "Exactly. Not being particularly imaginative, the
computer doesn't give a damn what it detects, as long as
whateveritis is not on a collision course with the ship. In
fact, unless instructed otherwise, the computer even ignores
any object which changes direction."
     "Like a ship, you mean." Gail thought a moment, added,
"Makes sense I suppose. There are a lot of ships--" Her eyes
widened. "But not sixty-six million years ago!"
     "And even in our time, not above the ecliptic."
Degruton grinned. It was a peculiarly humorless expression.
"You are almost ahead of me, dear."
     He pointed at the monitor. "See that trace? It was
noted and recorded while we were determining the trajectory
of the asteroid. Course approximately paralleling that of
the rock, but separated from it by a couple of hundred
thousand klicks. Now look at the trace from about the time
Bertha exploded, and continuing until we time-shifted out of
there."
     "It's--" Gail was not an expert, but after months
aboard the Francis Bacon, she knew what she was looking at.
"It changed course!"
     "That's right. Even after Bertha shoved the asteroid
into an Earth-missing trajectory, the object continued to
maintain exact station with that confounded chunk of rock."
The grin relaxed, became a smile. "Interesting, wouldn't you
say?"
     "Interesting," she echoed weakly. She stared at the
innocent blip on the screen. "It is a ship, isn't it?"
     He nodded.
     "Not one of ours?"
     "How can it be?", Degruton asked reasonably.
     It was not the answer Gail Sovergarde wanted to hear.

     Earth's first multi-generation star ship was still
under construction. It was not scheduled for completion and
launch for at least another five years, and then its crew
would not see another world during their lifetime. It was
their unborn grandchildren and great grandchildren who would
set foot on the fourth planet of Epsilon Eridani. So on the
threshold of what was hailed as mankind's greatest (and most
expensive) adventure, it was a humbling realization to know
an alien star explorer had already visited the solar system
sixty-six million years ago.
     It was as if Degruton read Gail's mind. "You are
thinking it was a visitor from outside. Right?"
     She nodded. "Of course. What else can it be?"
     "Too small," he said. "That trace is of an object
comparable in size to the Francis Bacon. Big, but not big
enough to carry generations of star travellers."
     The journalist shrugged. "Perhaps it is a scout. One of
several launched from a mother ship."
     "Too big. I told you, only something comparable to the
Francis could return an echo that strong."
     "FTL."
     "I beg your pardon?"
     "Faster-than-light!"
     "Nah." He shook his head. "Good science fiction, bad
science."
     Gail was getting irritated. She muttered, "Small and
sublight. So it's either a robot, or manned by a crew kept
in stasis during the years or centuries of transit."
     Degruton addressed the air. "What do you know. She is
as smart as ever." He shook his head. "Nevertheless I don't
think so. Although you just mentioned a couple of remote
possibilities, there is another scenario which is much more
likely."
     "And that is?"
     He told her.

     Gail stayed with Degruton that night. She needed his
company, although she persuaded herself it was the other way
around. Yet Degruton was the one who after months of self-
deprivation was now calm and rational, who had suspected a
problem, discovered the nature of the problem, and then
solved it to his own satisfaction.
     That his solution anticipated the probable end of human
civilization as everyone knew it, did not seem to bother
him. He was transformed into a dispassionate observer, apart
from life as a reader is apart from the characters and
events in a novel.
     Could they tell anyone of his conclusions?
     Dare they?
     Gail did not understand how Degruton could sleep as if
nothing had happened, while she lay beside him and stared at
the ceiling.
     After all, even if he was wrong and mankind muddled
through the next few decades more or less according to the
prognostications of most futurists, there was no guarantee
it would remain that way. Although 'to the stars' had been
the battle cry for generations, and the culmination of that
yearning was currently nearing completion in lunar orbit,
there were still those who persisted with the disconcerting
question, 'But what if the stars come to us first?'
     Most people preferred not to answer that question, or
even consider it. Although Copernicus had forever dislodged
mankind from the center of the universe, an unconscious but
stubbornly insistent part of the human psyche held to the
myth of human exclusivity. Degruton's new evidence had the
potential to shatter that exclusivity--although the threat
was not from the stars, but from a co-existing continuum
barely a thought away in space and eons ahead in time.
     Frederick Degruton had solved his problem.
     But for Gail Sovergarde; journalist, instant insomniac
and a member of the human race, the problem was just
beginning.

     It could have been the biggest scoop of the age,
perhaps even of the past millennium, although that would
predate the media by a few centuries. Yet despite the
nagging insistence of Gail's journalistic instincts, she
continued her duties at the network as if nothing had
happened. It was a burden she doubted she could carry for
long. Either she would throttle Degruton, or vent her
frustrations on some of the expensive appliances and
furniture which were still unpaid for despite her exorbitant
salary.
     She even considered the purchase and installation of a
punching bag.
     But what Gail assumed was the scientist's indifference,
turned out to be a psychological smoke-screen covering up an
intense guilt. Degruton was convinced he had opened the
ultimate Pandora's box, and his guilt unleashed a side of
his personality which, over hours of equal parts of cajoling
and pleading, finally wore the journalist down to acceptance
of his insistent, "No one must know about this. Ever!"
     Ultimately, everyone would know. It was inevitable. But
until then, as Degruton added with uncharacteristic passion,
"Let people live their lives as if the future is theirs.
After all, until my stupid meddling, it was!"

     Months went by.
     Years.
     Degruton immersed himself in theoretical physics,
cutting himself off from all practical work. "A balanced
equation is a lovely thing," he told Gail, "but only if it
remains a mental construct apart from any hardware."
     She doubted it was possible for such a divorce,
especially considering the economic times and the natural
requirement to recover costs. But she supposed the
intellectual inertia of the academic establishment would
keep the high-profile physicist going for a while, at least
until some eagle-eyed bureaucrat cut off his research grants
pending a review of 'potential financial benefits'.
     The Gaea Messenger was finally launched toward Epsilon
Eridani, along with its complement of three hundred men and
women, including second-in-command Geraldine Fuchs. In
ninety-five years; barring accidents, epidemics, and
whatever other hazards might wait between the stars, more
than two thousand descendants would establish themselves on
the verdant fourth planet.
     But before man could reach the stars--

     The Messenger was barely beyond the orbit of mighty
Jupiter, when the alien ship appeared as if out of nowhere
and assumed exact polar orbit just above Earth's atmosphere.
The alien did not communicate, did not interfere with local
space traffic, and did not react to close inspection by a
dozen remotes sent out from Orbiting Complex Three.
     The visitor was a one hundred and twenty meter soap
bubble; perfectly spherical, almost completely reflective,
and apparently without inertia. When one of the remotes
extended a manipulator to touch the sphere, the sphere
simply floated away--as if indeed it was merely a thin skin
enclosing a vacuum. Eventually men joined their machines at
this orbiting mystery, where they applied everything from
diamond drills to a fusion torch in fruitless attempts to
obtain even a few molecules of the stuff comprising the
silkily smooth curvature.
     Perhaps it would have been better if there was a
minimum reaction to the crude probing, like a man brushing
away mosquitoes. At least it would be a recognizable display
of irritability. Worse and completely demoralizing was the
sphere's indifference, as if mankind's most advanced
technology was as ephemeral as a puff of smoke in the wind.
     It was on the fiftieth day after the sphere's arrival,
something finally happened. It started with a small bulge,
which gradually expanded until it was a ten-meter miniature
connected to the parent sphere by a narrow neck of
glistening material. It remained that way for a few hours,
during which men in their service pods gathered to watch
this monstrous birth.
     Suddenly the smaller sphere separated, wobbled, and
began to descend toward the Earth.

     When Gail and Degruton arrived at the Cape, the smaller
sphere was already on the ground amid a ring of apprehensive
dignitaries, scientists and technical people.
     "At least they had the sense not to use the military,"
Gail muttered as she and her companion were ushered through
the crowd to where Douglas Gruinne of the World Space
Organization stood with Alexander Duvenov of the Physics
Foundation. Duvenov, a small intense man whose genius as an
administrator overshadowed his previous career in cosmology,
glowered at Degruton, "It's about time. If that thing starts
popping at us, I want to be damn sure Frederick Degruton is
in the line of fire!"
     Degruton blinked. "I don't understand."
     "Come on man, it didn't come from the stars--we have
enough detects scattered around the system to spot anything
incoming half a light-year out! The monster that--that--"
Duvenov almost spluttered as he gesticulated at the gleaming
ball which had touched down so delicately it had not even
bent a blade of grass, "--thing came out of, shifted into
our continuum just like the Francis Bacon once shifted out.
Remember?"
     Degruton felt Gail's hand grope for his. The warmth of
the contact steadied him. "You figured it out, did you?"
     "That someone might follow you back across the
partitions to Prime?" Gruinne shook his gray, shaggy head.
"No, not really. Only when Big Mother popped into existence,
did we suspect shift-dispersion might have something to do
with it."
     Degruton wanted to feel triumphant, instead felt an
intense sadness.
     It had happened.
     Finally.
     He doubted the visitors (presuming there was more than
one) intended evil, or if they intended anything at all
other than to satisfy their equivalent of curiosity. And he
doubted they would be gone soon. Eons more evolved than
humanity, they would not be bound by the tyranny of time.
For them Earth was a zoo, with mankind the main exhibit. As
far as man himself was concerned, the pride which had
pointed him toward the stars would inevitably wither to dull
acceptance of his subservience in the universe.
     Duvenov and Gruinne had obviously figured out part of
the answer. But if they knew the whole story--
     There was a concerted gasp from the crowd as the side
of the sphere rippled and a being stepped out into the
sunlight.
     The being was neither beautiful or horrible.
     It was simply--different.
     Definitely humanoid, a little more than two meters
tall, with a graceful body topped by a slender head with
large golden eyes, the being walked directly to Degruton. At
first the scientist thought it was naked, until he realized
the silver-gray skin was a tight, form-fitting covering
which left only the face exposed. Dominated by those golden
eyes, the face had twin nostril slits, a thin lipless mouth
and no chin. There was a faint rough texture to the greenish
skin; perhaps all that remained of its dinosaur ancestry.
     "You are Degruton." The voice was contralto, without
accent and no inflection.
     "Yes," Degruton replied. Gail's hand tightened on his.
     "You expected us."
     So there are more of them. How many aboard the mother
ship? Just one? Or maybe a thousand?
     Degruton glanced at the nearby gantry from which his
and Gail's shuttle had departed to rendezvous with the
Francis Bacon. The being's choice of landing spot was almost
poetic.
     "I--" He swallowed. "--think so."
     "That is good. The circle is complete."
     "I do not--"
     "Who created the conditions for what, small one? It is
debatable. However we know what you did, and are grateful.
Nevertheless there are alternates, and there are alternates
within alternates. When we investigated the past history of
our planet and determined the near miss of the asteroid, we
wondered what the outcome would have been if the asteroid
had indeed impacted. So we effected a minor re-adjustment."
     It was too much.
     Frederick Degruton and Gail Sovergarde exploded into
hysterical laughter.