Turner was amazed to hear the creature whimper like a dog.

"Come, Janos!"

It shambled off away from him and through the mist. Turner could barely make out the figure of a very large man dressed in a long dark cloak, a high silk hat, and carrying a walking stick. he turned and walked away quickly through the fog, with the creature hunched over, shambling along behind him. Stanley Turner was still holding the knife out in from of him with trembling hands when the police arrived.

"Lord, what a bloody awful mess." said Grayson, looking around the courtyard.

"Bloody's the word, all right." said Constable Wilkes. shaking his head.

"I've never seen anything like this in all my life.”

It was still late and the fog was thick, but with the aid of their lanterns, they could see the bodies scattered all around the small courtyard. Blood was everywhere. They could hear the wailing of the women upstairs in their rooms, where members of the Metropolitan police force were trying to take statements from them. Grayson had instructed his men to keep the courtyard clear, not to allow anyone to come down until all the bodies had been removed and to keep everyone away from their windows. He also had a couple of men block off the entrance to the cul-de-sac. Wilkes had been the first to arrive on the scene, within moments after it had happened, and his whistle had summoned several other men on patrol, whom he had immediately directed to keep the neighbors inside.

"You've done well here, Wilkes.” said Grayson, nodding. "You've got the situation well under control. The last thing we needed was to have everyone tramping around down here, acting hysterical."

"Thank you. sir." said Wilkes. "But just the same, I'm glad you're here, sir. I was about at my wit's end. Near as I could make out, one man did all of this. One man! Makes Jack the Ripper look like a bleeding amateur."

"That's enough of that!" said Grayson. "I want no talk about the Ripper, understood? That happened years ago. It's over. Over and done with."

"Right, said Wilkes, indicating the bodies. "Tell them." "Get a hold of yourself, man." said Grayson. "Snap to. There's work to be done.”

"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, sir."

"Right. Now where's the bloke who survived?"

"Right over there, sir," Wilkes said, pointing. "Wouldn't let us move him, thinks his back is broken. He's in shock, I think. Keeps saying that a—"

"Who's that with him?" Grayson said suddenly.

A man was crouching down on one knee beside Turner, talking to him.

"Here, you!" shouted Wilkes, rushing forward. He grabbed the man and yanked him to his feet, spinning him around."Who are you?" he said. "How'd you get in here?"

"Dick Larson, The Police Gazette.”

"Oh, bloody hell!" said Grayson. "Who let him through?I'll have his guts for garters! That's all we need, reporters!”

"Come on, you, out!" said Wilkes, grabbing Larson by his coat.

"Just a moment," Grayson said. "How did you get here so fast?"

"I've been investigating the other killing, Inspector." Larson said, "asking questions of people in the pubs hereabouts. I heard all the commotion and I ran to see what was going on."

"Well, we don't need any reporters getting in our way.•• said Grayson. "Those damn stories you people have been writing are going to have the entire city in hysterics. I've got a responsibility—"

"In that case, I suggest you listen to me, Inspector," Larson said. "That is, unless you want it to get about that there's some sort of werewolf on the loose."

Grayson grabbed him by the shirtfront. "What did you say?"

"Steady, Inspector," Larson said, gently prying his fingers loose. "I don't want to frighten people needlessly any more than you do. This man's still in shock, but he's starting to come out of it. I managed to get a few words out of him about what happened here tonight. I don't think I'll print what he told me he saw. In fact, I've been trying to convince him that he saw something else, not only for the public good, but for his own good, as well. The poor sod's been through enough without being thrown into a madhouse."

"I think you and I had better have a little talk, Mr. Larson,” Grayson said.

"Stick around until I get this mess cleaned up. Wilkes, make sure he doesn't go off anywhere."

"Right, sir," said Wilkes. Grayson went to supervise the removal of the bodies and interview sonic of the neighbors. "You had to go and blunder in here, didn't you?" Wilkes said to Larson. "And here I'd just been complimented on how well I had things under control."

Larson held out a cigarette case to Wilkes. "Cigarette?" he said.

Wilkes looked around. "Thanks," he said, taking one.

"You're welcome, Constable—?"

"Wilkes. Brian Wilkes."

"Take it easy. Brian." Larson said. "I'm not going to cause you any trouble. Believe me something like this is bigger than just getting a good story. The maniac who did this must be stopped and it won't help you stopping him if we all start writing lurid stories about ghastly creatures lurking in the shadows of Whitechapel. Any idiot can write that sort of nonsense. I'd much rather write a story about how the police brought a deranged killer to justice than print stories criticizing you chaps and making your job that much more difficult “

Wilkes raised his eyebrows. "You having me on, mate?"

"Not in the least,” said Larson, puffing on his cigarette. "Look at it this way, Brian, I could hand you all sorts of rubbish about social responsibility and the like, and it wouldn't be entirely rubbish, mind you, but the simple fact of the matter is that I intend to make something of a name for myself as a police reporter, covering crime in the city, and I've a few ideas as to how to go about that."

"You don't say," said Wilkes. "How's that?"

"Well, there are places a reporter can go where a policeman would be too highly visible and there are people who would speak to a reporter, but would never be seen talking to police. A clever man could develop his own sources of information, information that the police might not otherwise have access to. Such a situation could benefit both that reporter and the police, if they were to work together."

"Yes, I suppose I can see that," said Wilkes. "What you're proposing is a sort of cooperation. Each scratching the other's back a bit, as it were. You let us in on a tidbit now and then and don't write anything we wouldn't like you to and in exchange, we let you in on things other reporters wouldn't have, is that it?"

"I see you grasp the concept," Larson said, smiling. "And if it would help your situation, I could sort of mislead other reporters and then I'd have all the proper details when the whole thing was wrapped up. I'd have the best story then, you see."

Wilkes grinned. "I shouldn't think that would make you very popular with your fellow members of the press."

"I'm not out to win any popularity contests, Brian. We're all competitors, after all. Except for myself and Tom Davis of The Daily Telegraph. We've made sort of an arrangement to get the lion's share for ourselves, a silent partnership, as it were. I'm going to speak to Grayson about it. What sort of chap is he. by the way?"

"Chief Inspector Grayson? Blade straight and steel true that one. I wouldn't try putting anything over on him if I were you. I'd present it to him straight up, like you've just done with me. If you deal straight with him, he'll deal straight with you, but Lord Help you if you cross him. He's like a ratting terrier. Once he's got his teeth into you, he never lets go until you're done."

"I'll keep that in mind," said Larson.

"You do that, mate," said Wilkes. He clapped him on the shoulder. "Thanks for the smoke."

"Don't mention it," said Larson. He smiled. It was a good beginning. Now to see if he could win Inspector William Grayson's trust.

• • •

"They did what?'' said Steiger.

They clocked out." said Linda Craven. "Right there in the teashop. One minute they were sitting at the table, drinking tea and then the next, they simply disappeared. There were several couples in the shop, but nobody noticed than clock out except me. I came in after them, as if I was waiting to meet someone and I was pretending to read a magazine, but I was watching them out of the corner of my eye. I saw the man Wells was with look around quickly, to see if anyone was watching, and then suddenly they were gone. I'm sorry, sir, the man didn't match Drakov's description and it just never occurred to me that he might have a warp disc."

"Christ," said Steiger. "What did this man look like? Describe him, carefully."

Craven bit her lower lip. "A small man, about live foot five or six, thin, grey hair and beard, very animated. Maybe late forties to mid-fifties, hard to tell his age exactly. His face was thin. sharp-featured. sort of delicate—"

"Moreau!" said Steiger.

Her eyes grew wide. "The head of S.O.G.'s Project Infiltrator?" she said.

"That's the one," said Steiger. "The description matches." "Oh, God," she said. "I should have put it together, but I just didn't think —"

"Never mind," said Steiger. "Nothing we can do about it now. Get back to Wells' house. If he shows up again, contact me immediately."

"Yes, sir."

"And Craven'? One more thing If you spot Moreau again even if it's in broad daylight with a dozen witnesses around waste him. Understand?"

She swallowed hard. "Yes, sir."

Wells stood motionless in the small apartment above the apothecary shop, his face pale, his breath caught in his throat. A moment ago, he had been sitting in a teashop in Fleet Street and now, suddenly inexplicably, he was . . . somewhere else. He blinked several times, looking around. Moreau stood before him, watching him anxiously.

"Where are we?" Wells said.

"In my rented room in Limehouse," said Moreau.

Wells shook his head "Limehouse? No, that isn't possible." "Look for yourself." said Moreau, moving to the window and opening the drapes.

Wells looked out the window. He could see soot-begrimed buildings, factories and warehouses and the river just beyond them. "Limehouse," he said softly. "This cannot be. I must be dreaming."

"I assure you, Mr. Wells." Moreau said, "You are not dreaming. If further proof is required, I can supply it."

"No, no, wait," said Wells. "I must take this in. This is incredible. I have to think."

"May I offer you a drink?" Moreau said.

“Yes, I think I'd better have a drink," said Wells. "A strong one, if you please."

Moreau poured him a whiskey and added just a dash of soda from the gasogene on the sideboard. Wells tossed it down.

"How is this possible?" said Wells. "How did we get here?"

"This bracelet you were so curious about." Moreau said, pulling up his sleeve and showing it to him, "It is called a warp disc. Simply put, it is a sort of time machine.”

"A time machine!" said Wells.

"It is capable of broadcasting a sort of field," said Moreau, "by tapping into—well, it would be far too complicated to explain to a man of your time. However, as you can sec, it does work."

"I think I had better sit down," said Wells. He slowly eased himself into an armchair and let out a long breath. "Dear God," he said. "Are you telling me that we have actually traveled through time?"

"Only in a manner of speaking." said Moreau. "No more than a moment or two have passed since we left the teashop. However, I could just as easily have programmed—that is, instructed the disc to take us back several centuries if I had wished to. Or ahead. The method of travel is called temporal transition. A sort of teleportation, if you will. We can go from one place to another within the same time period, or from one time period to another with equal ease."

Wells shook his head. "And all this is accomplished by a device so small that it can be contained within that bracelet? Amazing! It is beyond belief!"

"And yet you have experienced it, Mr. Wells," Moreau said.

"How can you not believe it?"

"Indeed," said Wells, "unless you have somehow mesmerized me and brought me here without my knowing it . . ."

"Would a more conclusive demonstration satisfy you?" said Moreau.

"I . . . I do not know," said Wells. "That is, I—" Suddenly. Moreau was gone.

He had simply vanished, right before his eyes. Wells blinked, then shook his head, then slowly took a deep breath and let it out.

"Steady on, Bertie," he told himself. "You're not going mad. You're only dreaming. This cannot possibly be happening. There is a rational explanation for all this, there has to be—"

Moreau suddenly reappeared before him and Wells jumped about a foot. Moreau was sweating heavily and his shirt clung to him, as if he had been in intense heat for some time. He was holding his coat in his hands. Something was wrapped inside it. And it was moving.

"I have brought you something." said Moreau. "A present.”

He placed his coat in Wells' lap. There was something wriggling around inside it. Wells sat perfectly still, afraid to move.

"What is it?" he said. "Not a snake? Moreau, you wouldn't—'•

"Open it and see."

Wells slowly untied the coat sleeves and unwrapped what was inside the coat. He stared, bug-eyed, at the small, ungainly, reptilian-looking creature cradled inside Moreau's coat on his lap. it was a baby dinosaur.

"You have studied the biological sciences. Mr. Wells," said Moreau.

"Perhaps you will recognize the creature as a baby sauropod. A Camarasaurus of the Upper Jurassic, to be exact. Have no fear, it cannot harm you. It is an herbivore. Its teeth and claws cannot injure you. I regret to say that you will not be able to watch it grow to its full size of 19.8 meters in length, with a weight that could reach as high as twenty-five tons. It will not live very long in this climate. It is far too cold for its constitution.''

Wells stared with disbelief at the shivering little great lizard in his lap. He touched it hesitantly. It looked somehow pathetic. "Take it back." he said.

"Please."

"As you wish," Moreau said. He picked up the coat, wrapped it around the little dinosaur, and disappeared again, to reappear a moment later, even wetter with perspiration than before. "Convinced?" he said.

Wells leaned forward and put his head in his hands. "I think I would like another whiskey, please," he said.

Moreau poured him another glass and then changed into a fresh shin. Wells held the drink in a trembling hand. He sipped it slowly this time, trying to calm himself.

"So it's true, then." he said finally. "My God, One c an travel through time!"

"Indeed, one can," Moreau said. "I have come from hundreds of years in the future. Mr. Wells. A future you shall write about one day."

"So that is what it was all about then," Wells said. "Those other three who came to see me—"

"What other three?" Moreau said sharply.

"The ones who told me about Nikolai Drakov," Wells said. "They said something about my story, 'The Chronic Argonauts' . . . they wanted to know if I had met him, if I had discussed the subject of future scientific developments such as biological experimentation—"

"What were their names?" said Moreau.

Wells sighed. "I have never been very good with names," he said. "It is surprising that I recalled this Professor Drakov's name. They were Americans. One of the three was a young woman. blond, quite fit and very striking looking, and the other two were men—"

"Was the woman's name Andre Cross, by any chance?" Moreau said.

"Yes, I do believe that was her name," said Wells.

"And the two men with her, Steiger and Delaney? One blond, hook-nosed, one with dark red hair, large, very muscular?"

"Yes, they are the ones!" said Wells. "They said they were scholars of some sort. Are they friends of yours?"

"Hardly friends," Moreau said. "They would not hesitate to kill me the moment they set eyes on me, in spite of which, I am enormously relieved to know that they are here."

"Why?" said Wells. "I understand none of this! What reason would they have to want you dead?"

"It is a long story," said Moreau, "but one that you must hear if I am to convince you of the danger we all face. It involves war, Mr. Wells. The greatest war of all time. A war to end all wars. And there is no telling how long it may last. It is even possible that it will never end. But first, you must meet the only other man who shares my secret. He may seem like an unlikely ally, but do not be deceived by his age or his appearance. He is a most unusual man. His name is Lin Tao . . ."

For a change, Ian Holcombe was glad for the help. It had been a long day and after working with Conan Doyle for several hours, he no longer had any qualms about "scribblers" in the crime lab.

"I owe you an apology, Doctor," Holcombe said as they were washing up and removing their aprons. Neilson handed them fresh towels. "About my behavior towards you earlier—"

"Think nothing of it," Doyle said. "And please, call me Arthur."

"Nevertheless, I do apologize. Arthur," Holcombe said. "You are a firstrate medical man. For someone not trained in pathology, you possess remarkable skill."

"Well, it's true that I am no pathologist," said Doyle, "hut I served as a ship's surgeon on several occasions, which is as good a way as any that I know to learn adaptability. And I had the good fortune to study under a most remarkable man once, Dr. Joseph Bell of Edinburgh, who taught mc the value of observing, rather than merely seeing. I never knew him to make a single incorrect diagnosis. His deductive faculties were brilliant. He could tell what a man's occupation was simply by observing him carefully. In fact, I modeled Sherlock Holmes on him."

"How is it that you became a writer instead of a practicing physician?" Holcombe said.

"A peculiar trick of fate, I suppose." said Doyle. “It seems that people would prefer me to stick to writing rather than practice medicine. They pay me truly exorbitant sums for my stories, but if I had to live off my medical training, Louise and I would doubtless starve." He chuckled. "I could not get any patients, and yet sometimes it seems as if the entire world is hammering down my doors, demanding more stories about Holmes. You simply would not believe the response to my killing him off. You should see my mail. I am berated with the most outrageous accusations. One woman called me a heartless brute." He sighed.

"My own creation has me by the throat. And yet, I must confess, right now I almost wish I had him here beside me, in the flesh, to help us unravel this mystery and bring this maniac to justice."

"You think it is all the work of one man?" said Holcombe. "Another Jack the Ripper?"

"The evidence certainly seems to support that theory." Conan Doyle said, putting on his coat. "The modus operandi in all these grisly killings is the same, with the sole exception of the Crewe girl."

"The additional hair samples matched the ones you found beneath the fingernails of Constable Jones?" said Holcombe.

"Yes• we got some good ones off the late Mr. Tully. He must have grappled with the killer. That we are dealing with a madman, there can he no doubt, not only from the sheer brutality of these crimes, but from the strength the killer obviously possesses. To throw five men around as if they were no more than kittens takes much more than ordinary strength."

"A madman's strength," said Holcombe.

"Indeed." said Doyle. "But what puzzles me most is the manner in which the wounds were inflicted. I thought, perhaps, that our killer possessed some kind of weapon, a small club of some sort fixed with sharp animal claws, similar to those carried by some tribes of African natives. A minor example of the taxidermist's art. That might have accounted for the animal hairs—or at least hairs that appear to be very like an animal's. But then closer analysis suggests that they are human hairs, albeit unusually coarse. Consider the testimony of the eyewitnesses who saw the struggle from their windows. From the way things seem to have occurred during the struggle, it would have been necessary for our killer to use both hands during the fighting, which means that if his weapon were a club or something that he had to carry, he would have had to drop it and pick it up again several times during the fight."

"So the claws, or whatever they were, had to have been worn upon his hands, like gloves?" said Holcombe.

"That does seem to be the only possible conclusion that the evidence will support," said Doyle, "and yet, it seems to me that something worn upon the hands in such a manner would have to affect the killer's dexterity to some degree. And consider the manner in which Tully's hands were crushed. The bones in the fingers were all shattered, as if squeezed in a powerful vise. And at least two of the witnesses report seeing the killer catch Tully's fists as Tully tried to strike him and then force Tully to his knees. No one saw anything resembling a weapon, although with the heavy fog, the reliability of these reports is open to some question. No one was able to see the killer's face clearly, which is truly unfortunate. Still, everything we know indicates that this struggle took place hand to hand, which raises the inevitable possibility, unlikely as it may seem, that the killer actually has claws."

"The werewolf hypothesis again?" said Holcombe sourly. Neilson pretended to be busy cleaning up. but he was listening closely. As common with doctors working around "lesser employees." the two men spoke as if he wasn't even there.

"For obvious reasons, I am as unsatisfied with that conclusion as you are, Ian," Conan Doyle said, "but when we conclusively eliminate all probable explanations, what remains, no matter how improbable it seems, must be the truth."

"But have we eliminated all the probable explanations?" Holcombe said.

"We do not yet possess enough evidence to say for certain." said Conan Doyle. "Consider this. We are confronted with a killer who murders with animal savagery, and in an animal manner. A man whose hands seem to have sharp claws. A man who tears the throats out of his victims with sharp teeth. A man who seems to have inhuman strength. What if our killer is not human? The more we consider these facts, the less it seems that we are dealing with a man."

"But the witnesses saw a man," said Holcombe.

"The witnesses saw what appeared to be a man," said Conan Doyle. "In the heavy fog, how could they be certain? Remember, no one saw the killer's face. I keep thinking about the sole survivor of the struggle, Stanley Turner. A face covered with hair” he said. What does that mean, a heavy heard? He said a man appeared out of the mist and called to the killer, called to him—or it—several times while it growled, apparently eager to attack Turner and finish him off. The killer finally responded and then, in Turner's own words, 'shambled off after the mysterious stranger. One might describe the movements of a great ape in such terms."

"A trained ape?" said Holcombe. "Dressed in a man's clothing?"

"A great ape would have the necessary strength required," Conan Doyle said,

"and the other elements would seem to fit as well, only the hair does not match that of any ape I am familiar with. Still, there are such rare creatures as the silverbacked gorilla, for example, which might have hair to match those samples that we have found. There are no such creatures in captivity in England that I know of, but great apes are very manlike and I have seen chimpanzees trained to an astonishing degree, so that they almost seem like people."

"But what motive would someone have to train such a creature to kill, apparently at random?" Holcombe said. "And how could someone keep such an animal concealed?"

"I don't know," said Conan Doyle, frustrated. "It is a maddening case. But the more I think about it, the more I consider the evidence, the more convinced I become of the fact that our killer is not human. The question is• if he is not human, then what is he?"

"I'd sooner accept the theory that we are looking for an ape rather than a werewolf," Holcombe said wryly.

"So would I. Ian, so would I." said Conan Doyle. "One thing seems certain, though, and that is that we are dealing with some sort of a monstrosity. I will be curious to see what happens in the next few days, if there will be any more killings after tomorrow night.''

"Why after tomorrow night?" said Holcombe, puzzled. "Because tomorrow is the last night of the full moon," said Conan Doyle.

Neilson almost dropped a tray of instruments.

"A werewolf' • said H. G. Wells. He removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Really, Moreau, this is too much. just how much do you think one man can absorb in just one short afternoon'?"

"Not only a werewolf," said Moreau, "hut I have reason to believe that Drakov may have created a vampire• as well. The template for the creature was outlined in the notes he showed me—"

"Wait, wait," said Wells, holding his bands up in protest. He glanced from Moreau to the old Chinaman, Lin Tao, then back to Moreau again. "Let me understand you. Are we seriously talking about werewolves and vampires, such as those described in folklore? Men who turn into wolves when the moon is full, capable of being killed only by a silver bullet? Corpses reanimated by the devil, existing by the means of drinking human blood? Beings you cannot see reflected in a mirror, who turn into bats and can be destroyed only by wooden stakes driven through their hearts?"

"No, no. of course not," said Moreau. "What you are talking about is fantasy, the supernatural. What I am talking about is science. Specifically, the science of genetic engineering and biomodification. Biological experimentation, if you will, that is my field. I had developed a new way of manipulating human DNA . . . no, that would mean nothing to you, of course. How can I put it? This werewolf we are discussing, in a way, it was I who created him. I was the one who taught Nikolai Drakov everything he knows, to my everlasting shame. I was the one who showed him how animal genetic material . . . well, how surgical procedures, for lack of a better way of explaining it to you, can create beings who are neither men nor beasts, but something in between, creatures in whom elements of both men and beasts are combined. I never dreamed that he would take it so far. It never occurred to me that he had been studying the field for years, that he was an insane genius who would be able to observe my techniques and duplicate them, even refine them, that he was using me . . ."

Moreau's voice trailed off. He balled his fists and took a deep breath, shaking his head in an agony of rage and frustration.

"I am only confusing you," he said. "I can see it in your face. How can I explain? How can I make you see?"

"Why not convince him as you convinced me, Phillipe?" Lin Tao said softly. "Why not show Mr. Wells how much one man can absorb in just one short afternoon?"

Moreau stared at Lin Tao. "I had considered it," he said, "but it frightens me. What if something should go wrong? I mean no offense, old friend, but you are not historically important. Wells is. He will write extensively about the future. He will leave his mark. I have already interfered too much in his destiny. I am afraid to take it any further."

Lin Tao looked thoughtful. "In the words of the poet Hakuyo, 'Over the peak are spreading clouds, at its source the river is cold. If you would see, climb the mountain top.' It time is, indeed, as you have explained it to me, like a river with no end and no beginning, then perhaps, Phillipe, you should he afraid not to take it any further."

Moreau licked his lips nenou.sly. "Creatures in whom elements of both men and beasts are combined,” he murmured softly to himself. "And then the remarkable coincidence of my name . . ." He shook his head. "But that was another world. another timeline. It's true, this one is almost a perfect mirror image—"

"Moreau, in Heaven's name, man, what are you mumbling about?" said Wells. "I understand none of this!"

"Perhaps not at this moment, Mr. Wells," Moreau said, "but you will very shortly understand it perfectly. As you have already observed, the type of warp disc that I wear can generate a temporal field large enough to transport more than one individual. You have experienced one very short temporal transition, from Fleet

Street to Limehouse. How would you like to experience a far greater one, from the 19th century to the 27th?"

Wells stared at him. "Do you mean that you propose for us to travel over seven hundred years into the future?"

"Exactly," said Moreau. "I think that would convince you of what science can accomplish beyond any shadow of a doubt." Wells swallowed nervously, glancing from one man to the other. "I am still not entirely convinced that I amt not dreaming all of this," he said. "But if it is truly possible to see the future, to actually travel there ... How could any man possibly. resist such a fantastic opportunity? When would we leave?"

Moreau pulled back his sleeve. "Right now."

5 _______

The waiting was driving Finn Delaney crazy. Andre had relieved him on the surveillance of Conan Doyle and he had relieved Steiger at the Hotel Metropole command post while Steiger took a break for some much needed sleep. Delaney had bathed and put on a silk robe. He sat drinking coffee, going over his notes on the mission, which were continually updated as new reports came in. They were making progress. but it was excruciatingly slow.

Ransome and Rirzo had been systematically eliminating names from their lists of recent leaseholds and depositors, trying to track down Drakov's alias in this time period. If he was using an alias and if he was even in this time period. Delaney could not believe he wasn't. It would not fit Drakov's pattern to release several hominoids in Victorian London and then clock out to another time period. He would remain close by, to watch and supervise his handiwork. Nikolai Drakov was a product of two times—the 27th century, where he had received his implant education, and the 19th, where he had received his values, twisted though they had become. Drakov was not the sort of man to remain behind the scenes for long. His ego would not allow it. He took responsibility.

Neilson was keeping them steadily posted on the progress of Grayson's investigation. Grayson was an unexpected blessing. He was doing much of their legwork for them. And Neilson's clandestine examination of Grayson's notes and files had produced an address for the missing Tony Hesketh. Rizzo had been pulled off the search for Drakov's hideout and he was now staked out in Bow Street, near Covent Garden, watching Hesketh's rooms. They were rotating their posts as best they could, shifting manpower where it was needed most, but they were still spread very thin. With the Temporal Crisis rendering the timestream unstable, the entire Temporal Corps was being spread thin. It was an insane. impossible task, trying to monitor all of history for temporal confluence points, where their timestream intersected that of the alternate timeline from which Moreau had come.

Ever since Delaney had studied Mensinger's Theories of Temporal Relativity back in Referee Corps School, he had been haunted by the feeling that irreparable damage to the timestream was inevitable. It was one of the chief factors responsible for his washing out of RCS, that and his inability to grasp the subtler concepts of temporal physics, or ten physics as the cadets in RCS had called it. Only a few could pass the stringent entrance examinations required for admission to RCS and of those only a handful ever made it through, those whose minds were capable of the intricate gymnastics necessary to arbitrate temporal conflicts as members of the Referee Corps. Delaney had not been up to the mental discipline required of temporal physicists and he had not been cold enough to maneuver battalions of temporal soldiers through historical scenarios, considering them as nothing more than factors in a point spread which determined the arbitration of international disputes. Deep down inside, Delaney had always known that he could never function as a referee, a temporal strategist; he knew he would never be able to escape the feeling that he'd he like the proverbial Dutch boy with one finger plugging up a hole in the dyke while with his other hand, planting a limpet mine to blow it open. And yet, at the same time, even while he had been frightened of the consequences of the Time Wars, he had found participation in them intoxicating. It was a life of unparalleled adventure and unprecedented risk. Once he had experienced it, he could never go back to being a civilian.

He had been among the first selected for the First Division, the elite unit of time commandos led by Moses Forester. Until then, he had been like an antipersonnel mine, buried just beneath the surface and forgotten until some hapless individual, usually an officer, strayed too close and triggered him off, making him explode. If not for Forrester, Delaney knew he would have wound up in a stockade o,. still worse, cashiered from the service. A military prison, even cybernetic re-education therapy, would have been preferable to being drummed out of the Temporal Corps. There was nothing for him in civilian life. Like an attack dog trained to kill, he could not be redomesticated without a complete change in his personality. He simply knew too much. And his personality was such that he could not take any direction front inferiors. A mundane civilian job would have been out of the question. What was left? A life of crime? His ethics would not have permitted that. What then? He would have wound up as a derelict, a drunk, no doubt, or worse, a drug addict or a cybernetic dreamer, fleeing from an unacceptable reality until his body gave up on a life of desperate fantasy and surrendered to the reality of death.

Delaney had few illusions about himself. There was no place for him in the structure of society except as a soldier and even then, it took an unusual commander who would know how best to use a man such as himself. Forrester was such a man. He didn't bother with pointless military protocol and senior officers outside his unit never fully understood his methods, although they respected Forester's results. To the average officer in the Temporal Corps. Forester's First Division seemed like a cadre of mavericks and screw-ups. From the strictly military point of view, that which governed the parade ground, the First Division had no discipline. They were a group of roughnecks, most of them completely lacking spit-and-polish, devoid of even the rudiments of military courtesy. They held themselves above the other units in the service, most of them had a disdain for regulations, they were often sloppy and insubordinate and given to using their fists too readily. But out in the field, on the Minus Side of time, they were a model of efficiency. The necessity of forming a unit to deal with temporal disruptions gave rise to a need for a different breed of soldier—one who could improvise and think fast on his feet, one who did not go by the book, because the book did not cover all contingencies, and one who was more than a little crazy. It called for the sort of soldier who was too smart, too aggressive, too independent and too much of a nonconformist to fit in well with any other unit in the service.

One of the first things Forrester had done when he began to form his unit was to check through the dossiers of those soldiers in the Corps who had the worst disciplinary records in their respective units. He had known what he was looking for and he had known that, in certain cases, the difference between a man confined to a military prison and an outstanding combat soldier was an officer who knew how best to utilize the unique abilities of those placed under his command.

The fact that Delaney, who held the record in the entire Temporal Army for the most promotions and consequent reductions in grade, had finally become an officer in the First Division, and a captain, no less, was one of the bizarre ironies of his career. Another irony was that he had now become not only a soldier, but a temporal agent, an operative of the TIA, which had been brought under the same umbrella with the First Division, both combined into one unit under General Forrester's command. Delaney had never liked what he referred to as "the spooks." the quasi-military operatives of the Temporal Intelligence Agency, who seemed to be recruited primarily from among psycopaths and paranoids. And now he was one of them. Part soldier, part spy, part assassin, part counterterrorist. His worst nightmares had come true—the timestrearm had been split and now they were at war with an alternate universe. A war which was, perhaps, impossible for either side to win.

Theoretically, Delaney knew, it was possible for there to be any number of universes existing at the same time, in different dimensions or planes of reality. Neither Time nor Space was a rigid concept. Mensinger's Theories of Temporal Relativity were, like Einstein's revolutionary concepts, only theories, after all. The fact that nothing had come along to disprove them categorically only supported the theories, it did not "prove" them in the conventional sense as "laws."

The Theory of Temporal Inertia held that the "current" (a word Mensinger used loosely. primarily as an analogue) of the timestream tended to resist the disruptive influence of temporal discontinuities. According to the "father of temporal physics," the degree of this resistance was dependent upon the coefficient of the magnitude of the disruption and the Uncertainty Principle.

The element of uncertainty in temporal relativity, expressed as a coefficient of temporal inertia, represented the unknown factor in the continuity of time. Professor Mensinger had stated that in a temporal event-location which had been disrupted, it was impossible to determine the degree of deviation from the original, undisrupted historical scenario due to the lack of total accuracy in historical documentation and due to the presence of historical anomalies as a result either of temporal discontinuities or their adjustments. In other words, if something happened to influence or alter an historical event. Mensinger maintained that it was impossible to tell exactly how the original event had taken place—because there was no way of knowing exactly what all the details of the original historical event were. Historical records were never absolutely accurate and there was no way of knowing the extent to which a disruption could affect an historical scenario. Consequently, if the historical event were adjusted to compensate for a disruption, there was no way of knowing if the adjustment itself had not introduced a disruptive influence, something that might not have a noticeable effect until years later.

The Fate Factor held that in the event of a disruption of a magnitude sufficient to affect temporal inertia and create a discontinuity, the element of uncertainty both already present and brought about by the disruption combined with the "force" that Mensinger identified as the Fate Factor to determine the degree of relative continuity to which the timestream could be restored. In layman's terms, this meant that history did not "want" to change and there were

natural forces at work to maintain the smooth and undisrupted flow of time. However, these forces did not necessarily come into play at the exact locus of a disruptive incident. A "ripple" in the timestream could be set in motion which would result in these compensating forces manifesting themselves further down the line in some other temporal event-location—with completely unforseeable results.

The “Timestream Split" had always been the greatest danger. In the event of a disruption of a magnitude great enough not only to affect temporal inertia, but to actually overcome it, the effects of the Fate Factor would be cancelled out by the overwhelming influence of a massive historical discontinuity. The displaced energy of temporal inertia would in that event—

according to Mensinger's theories—create a parallel timeline in which the Uncertainty Principle would be the chief governing factor.

Delaney remembered how one of his professors in RCS had explained it by setting up a hypothetical situation. "Suppose," the professor had said, "you were to clock hack in time to the American Revolutionary War. Suppose your potentially disruptive presence there results in your having to shoot an American soldier during a battle. This, in itself, creates a temporal disruption, but if this particular American soldier was not someone who was historically significant, the combined forces of the Fate Factor and temporal inertia would work to compensate for his death. For example, if this soldier that you killed originally survived the battle and one of his great, great grandchildren eventually did something of historical significance, the metaphysical influence of temporal inertia and the Fate Factor would probably influence event-locations all the way down the timestream in such a way that someone else would wind up doing the historically significant thing that the dead soldier's great, great grandchild would otherwise have done.

"However," the professor had continued, "suppose you accidentally shot General George Washington. You would have eliminated a historically significant figure at the key event location point in the timestream and temporal inertia would not be able to build up enough 'momentum' to compensate for that death. The Fate Factor would be cancelled out and the massive amount of displaced temporal energy that would result could split the timestream, creating a parallel timeline. The original, undisrupted scenario would then continue in a smooth temporal flow—the original timeline in which Washington had never died. The parallel timeline created by the split, however, would proceed from the point at which the event-location had been disrupted and changed—in this newly created timeline, the death of George Washington would become a fact of history and events would proceed from that point, taking Washington's death into account.

"This brings up a number of interesting problems," the professor had said, smiling grimly in a way that had sent a chill down Finn Delaney's spine.

"For one thing, having initiated a disruption in the temporal event-location, you would inevitably wind up in the timeline in which that disruptive event became a fact of history. In other words, you'd probably never be able to come home. Chances are you'd be trapped forever in t hat parallel timeline. If you were to clock ahead at that point, you would wind up in a parallel future, not the one you came from. Now, while that might pose an immense problem for you personally, it would be nothing compared to the problem it would pose for the entire flow of time, because Mensinger believed that if such an event came to pass, the combined force of the temporal inertia in both timelines would eventually result in their coming together again at some point in the future, like a confluence of rivers. And nobody knows what would happen in such a case. It's pretty scary."

It was much more than scary. It was terrifying on a scale that could not even be fully comprehended. Mensinger came closest to understanding it completely and his realizations had resulted in his suicide. The political stupidity which had brought about the Time Wars had been based on the conventional wisdom of the then-current scientific establishment, which had maintained that history was an immutable absolute. The past had already happened, they maintained, therefore, it could not he changed. By the time they knew better, it was too late to retreat. At least, from the political standpoint.

A student of history, Delaney had once written a thesis based on the folly of politically feasible halfway measures that had proved disastrous in the long run. He had used a number of examples from the past to illustrate his point.

America in the 20th century had been heavily dependent upon the use of automobiles, personal transport vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. It was the almost universally chosen mode of transportation. The trouble was that internal combustion engines emitted gases and hydrocarbon particles that polluted the atmosphere and in the more densely populated regions, air pollution resulting chiefly from the use of too many automobiles in too small a space resulted in serious health and environmental problems. A solution of some sort was needed, but the scientifically feasible solutions did not prove to be politically feasible.

One possible solution was to regulate the amount of automobile traffic allowed in any densely populated area and develop alternate means of transportation and alternate, nonpolluting fuels, but people would not sit still for being told that they couldn't drive their cars whenever they pleased and they did not want their taxes raised so that alternate—and less attractive— means of public transportation could be developed. The oil industry, with its massive political clout, was not very anxious to see a competitive fuel developed unless they could control it and they already controlled oil, so why go to the expense of developing an alternative fuel, testing it, setting up new plants and distribution networks and so forth, all of which would mean extremely long-term payouts and much smaller profits?

Another solution was to regulate the number of people who could live in any one area, controlling population density. This, too, would have been political suicide for any legislator who supported such a measure. The politicians wanted a fix that would not overly offend their constituencies. Politicians frequently wanted to have their cake and eat it, too. The fix they found was a halfway measure that made a certain amount of "common sense," given enough supportive propaganda, but it ignored economic and scientific realities. "Pollution Control" devices were incorporated into automobile engine design, additional plumbing in the engine that would help control emissions. It sounded good in theory, but the trouble was that these devices interfered with optimum performance and most were only good for about ten thousand miles before they required complete replacement—something few automobile owners ever did. The emission control testing programs instituted to enforce this were easily circumvented and little more than lip-service programs to begin with. The result was that engines so equipped not only gave performance far inferior to engines lacking these devices, but they polluted measurably more after a brief period than an engine without the extra plumbing that was routinely kept in a proper state of tune.

The populace was propagandized into believing that this "bolt-on solution" was the answer and someone else came up with the brilliant idea that if people drove more slowly, they would save fuel and thereby pollute less. Unfortunately, this had very little to do with the principles of automotive engineering. It was a "sounds good solution–that made sense only to the technologically ignorant, who knew nothing about horsepower curves, gearing and torque and therefore were incapable of understanding how a high performance sports car driven at 85 miles per hour could be made more fuel efficient than a family sedan driven at 55. They wanted simple answers, not engineering complexity. Slower speed meant less fuel used—it was wrong, but it made sense to most people, so they wrote a law limiting the speed to 55

miles per hour. Delaney had once driven an antique internal combustion engined car from Denver to Houston and he had concluded that only idiots on the densely populated east coast could have passed such a law. Had they been made to drive the same distance over the same roads at a speed of 55 miles per hour, he had no doubt the law would have been quickly repealed. But it wasn't, because it had great propaganda value and because rampant noncompliance with the law provided local authorities with easy revenue. Yet another way to fool the public and then skin them.

Nuclear energy was an even more graphic example. Before fusion was developed, nuclear power plants were potentially hazardous. If the proper safeguards were not observed, if personnel manning the plants were inadequately trained and if the plants were not constructed and maintained properly, then nuclear power plants could pose serious threats to the environment. In 1986, in the USSR, an accident occurred that was referred to in the media as a "fire"—a curious but more palatable term for a chain reaction. Dangerous levels of radiation were released into the atmosphere; an event which could have been prevented had the proper safety procedures, such as the use of concrete containment buildings, been observed. But the human factor was always the weak link. Engineering principles were only as efficient as the people who applied them. After the accident occurred, the danger was de-emphasized, the scientific ignorance of the populace facilitated political circumlocution, and the resulting "fallout of popular opinion blamed nuclear power itself as being too dangerous, when the real answer was that nothing could be rendered absolutely safe—it was all a question of relativity and trade-offs, of acceptable versus unacceptable risks, and of scientific illiteracy prevailing over educated and informed opinion. A scenario made to order for political stupidity.

The Time Wars were the ultimate example of people making decisions who were not even qualified to hold an opinion on the matter. When the Time Wars could have been stopped, the politicians prevailed, thinking about their own livelihoods, concerned about all the support industries created by the Time Wars which were providing jobs to their constituents, thinking about the propaganda value of being able to assure the folks back home that thanks to the Time Wars, they were immune to conflicts taking place in their own time—the only ones at risk were soldiers, all of whom were volunteers, and warfare in the past meant essential disarmament in the present. Propaganda, Halfway measures. Scientific illiteracy. Lies. Now they reaped the harvest.

The accident that everyone had dreaded had finally occurred. It was impossible to pinpoint exactly what had caused it. It was even impossible to determine if one particular event had caused it or if it was a result of cumulative temporal interference. Without an event-location which could be pinpointed, there was no "fix." And yet, the politicians were screaming for a fix. The scientists of the Temporal Corps had explained it to them over and over again, they had explained it to the media, but the question still persisted, always starting with the all-toofamiliar "yes, but" phrase. "Yes, but how can it be fixed?" They screamed for an investigation. Who was at fault? Who can the finger be pointed at? If enough money could be spent, surely a solution could be found. Wrong, said the scientists. There is no solution, because the problem can't be solved. We can't cure the disease, we can only treat the symptoms. As for whose fault it was, finding a scapegoat would accomplish nothing, because it was everybody's fault, the fault of all those people who thought that lunch was free, that something could be gained for nothing, that there was a way to live secure, without the threat of risk. But such an answer was politically unfeasible, and so they didn't want to listen. And they blamed the scientists.

It was similar to what happened to the space program in the latter part of the 20th century. An enviable safety record had lulled the public into complacency. Budgetary cuts voted by scientifically illiterate legislators steadily reduced the safety factors and created additional pressure to make space exploration more glamorous and relevant, to keep it in the public eye. And then, when an accident occurred, resulting in tragic loss of life, once again, the media and the legislators screamed. How could it have happened? Who was to blame?

The magnitude of the problem was too great for them to comprehend. And explaining complicated scientific principles to the public in uncomplicated terms took up too much time—it could not be reduced to a simplistic statement or two in a live-minute interview on a news program. And a five-minute attention span was the most that the media could hope for. They wanted it short, informative and simple and if they were told that it could not be short, informative and simple, they became impatient and suspected obfuscation.

Shortly after the Temporal Crisis, as the media had dubbed it, had been publicly announced, a reporter had cornered Delaney at a bar near Pendleton Base, frequented by soldiers of the First Division. She was eager for the "simple truth," as she had put it, that a "frontline soldier" could provide.

"How much time have you got?" Delaney had naively asked her.

"Take as much time as you need," she said. "We'll edit it together later for the broadcast. We just want to hear the simple truth about the Temporal Crisis as a frontline soldier sees it."

Delaney had emptied his glass in a long swallow and leaned back against the bar while they trained the camera on him.

"Well," he said, "the simple truth is not so simple. Basically, the Time Wars were a terrific risk right from the start, but people were either willing to accept the risk or else they simply didn't want to hear about it. I suspect the truth is they just didn't give a damn until something went wrong. And something was bound to go wrong, because we were screwing around with temporal physics."

"What does that mean, exactly?" she had said.

"Well, let's take a real basic example and I'll make it as simple as I can, okay?" Delaney had said. "Let's say that our country had a difference of opinion with the Nippon Conglomerate Empire. It got intense, no negotiated settlement could be reached, and so the grievance was submitted for arbitration to the Referee Corps. A ref was assigned to arbitrate the temporal action that would settle the whole thing. He asked the Nippon government to provide five hundred grunts and he asked our government to provide five hundred grunts. He selected an historical scenario for the arbitration conflict or the time war, as it’s more popularly called. He decided to use World War II. The troops were cybernetically indoctrinated and clocked back into the past, to fight among the troops of World War II. One of our guys got a bit carried away and used a warp grenade instead of a regular 20th century hand grenade. He didn't exactly set off a multimegaton nuclear explosion, he only used a small portion of the energy released by the grenade, no more than would have been released by a conventional 20th century hand grenade. The only problem is, he killed General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who went on to become the President of the United States."

"

Did this actually happen?" said the reporter.

"No, of course not, it's only a hypothetical situation," said Delaney.

"Well, now we've got a problem. We've got a fairly large temporal disruption and it has to be adjusted. So an adjustment team is clocked hack into the past, in the hope that something can be done about it before the damage becomes irreversible and a timestream split occurs. Let's say we get lucky. We're able to replace the late General Eisenhower just in time with one of our own people, someone from a special unit formed to deal with just such a situation. It's not an easy job. This person has been surgically and cybernetically altered to become General Eisenhower. He has to live out the rest of Eisenhower's life, exactly as Eisenhower would have lived it, based on what we know of history. A chancy proposition, at best, but it's the most we can do. There are certain to be at least minor discontinuities as a result, but we can bring all of our resources to bear on this and hope that the discontinuities will be relatively minor.

"Meanwhile, things like this have been happening all throughout the timestream, every time we've had a temporal conflict. Sometimes we've adjusted the disruptions. Sometimes we've had to replace historically significant individuals with people of our own. Sometimes we haven't caught the disruption, because it was really very minor. It all started to add up. Maybe it put a strain on temporal inertia and something happened to disturb chronophysical alignment in time and space and another universe somehow came into congruence with our own. I suppose it really doesn't matter how it happened, the point is that it happened. Somehow the timestream became unstable and our timestream intersected another timestream and now the two parallel universes are crisscrossing in time and space, intertwining like a double helix strand of DNA. Every now and then, there occurs an eventlocation at which both timestreams exist in the same time and space. Crossover becomes possible. And the people in this other timestream are not very happy with us.

"To anticipate your next question, the reason they don't like us very much has to do with that warp grenade our temporal soldier blew up General Eisenhower with. The way a warp grenade works, you set it for the amount of energy you want to use. Let's say you only need about one-tenth of one percent of the energy of the grenade's nuclear explosion. The rest of it is warped into outer space where it goes off, theoretically, without doing any harm. Only as it turns out, the surplus energy of that grenade didn't just go off with a big bang in outer space, as we had thought. Because of the congruence, most of that energy was teleported directly into the alternate universe, where there was one hell of an explosion. And we've been setting off more than just one warp grenade. In other words, we were bombing the hell out of the alternate universe without even realizing it and, understandably, they're somewhat annoyed with us. So now we're at war with them. The Temporal Crisis, as you people in the media call it. Only neither side really wants an all-out war. Nobody could survive that. So instead they concentrate on screwing up our history, in the hope that they can split our timeline and somehow force our universe away from theirs, and we do much the same to them."

"Where does it all end?" the reporter said.

"The hell of it is, it probably doesn't end." Delaney told her. "You see, you could wind up with timestream splits all over the damn place and nobody knows what effect that would have. We could wind up with all of them intersecting. A real mega-Tine War. Their universe is almost a mirror image of ours, but it's not exactly the same. The trouble is, the forces of temporal inertia in both universes are working to bring our two timelines together, so the only thing we can do to keep that from happening is to continue creating disruptions in their timeline while they continue creating disruptions in ours. In order to keep our two timelines from becoming one timeline, we have to maintain the instability. But if we maintain the instability, we're threatening our own temporal continuity. It's a Catch-22

situation. The whole thing is liable to collapse at any minute like a house of cards.'•

"So what's the answer?" the reporter said, growing impatient.

"What makes you think I've got an answer?" said Delaney.

"Yes, but surely you must have some ideas about how to resolve the Temporal Crisis. There has to be an answer."

Delaney shrugged. "Not really. In a complex world, I'm afraid there are no simple answers."

"So where does that leave us?" the reporter said, still pressing for an answer.

"I guess it leaves us with a lot of questions to which there are no simple answers," said Delaney wryly. "And that's the 'simple truth' as a 'frontline soldier' sees it."

He watched the report later that night. They had, indeed, edited his answer. It ran like this: "We just want to hear the simple truth about the Temporal Crisis as a frontline soldier sees it."

"Well, the simple truth is the Time Wars were a terrific risk right from the start. They just didn't give a damn until something went wrong. And something was bound to go wrong. It’s a Catch-22 situation. The whole thing is liable to collapse at any minute like a house of cards. And that's the simple truth as a frontline soldier sees it."

Delaney had to explain to Forrester about the editing. He received an official reprimand, which Forrester promptly "filed," and specific orders were issued to all military personnel not to speak to members of the media without special authorization. Paranoia settled in to stay.

Delaney wondered what would have happened if he had told them about the Special Operations Group, the First Division's counterpart in the alternate universe, and Project Infiltrator, a genetic engineering project headed by Dr. Phillipe Moreau, aimed at creating genetically engineered soldiers to be infiltrated into their timeline? What if he had told them that Drakov had kidnapped Moreau from the Project Infiltrator labs and set him to work creating hominoids, creatures bioengineered from human clones and modified with advanced surgical and cybernetic techniques, turned into monstrosities that were no longer human, but something else entirely? And what if he had told them that aside from the Temporal Crisis, they were all fated with the threat of Nikolai Drakov, an insane criminal genius who wanted nothing less than temporal anarchy, or failing that, an apocalyptic entropy, an end to all of time?

He imagined the reporter saying, "Yes, but what's the answer?"

He imagined himself replying with a variation on an old zen koan. "If the shit hits the fan and there's no one left to smell it, is there a stink?"

He checked his watch. Ransome was late. He should have reported in by now and gone off to relieve Rizzo at Hesketh's apartment. And it would soon be time for him to wake up Steiger, catch a couple of hours sleep himself and then relieve Andre at Conan Doyle's house, so that she could get some rest. It was monotonous. Watching and waiting. Something had to break soon. The bathroom door opened and Christine Brant came in. having been relieved at H. Wells' house by Linda Craven.

They were using the bathroom as a clocking in point, with each member of the team assigned a "window" during which they could make temporal transition. Using the bathroom as a temporal staging zone meant that they could all freely move about the rest of the apartment without having to worry about when someone might be clocking in at a certain point—it wouldn't do to be standing on the same place where someone was trying to clock in. The results would be very messy and very fatal. It also meant that in the unlikely event that someone else was present in the apartment, with the bathroom door closed, they would not see anybody suddenly materializing out of thin air. Someone clocking in could simply wait inside the bathroom until whoever it was had gone. As far as using the bathroom for its intended purpose was concerned, they resorted to the one in the adjoining suite.

"Anything?" said Christine Brant.

Delaney shrugged. "Ransome's late reporting in. Otherwise, no changes."

"How's Colonel Steiger holding up?" she said.

"I'm due to wake him in another hour. He's holding up about as well as could be expected, I suppose. He's getting anxious, as are we all. Any sign of Wells?"

She shook her head. "Not yet. Of course, there's no guarantee he'll be coming back to his house. Can I have some of that coffee?"

"Help yourself."

"Thanks." She sat down and poured herself a cup. "What do you think Moreau's going to do with him?" she said.

"I have no idea what to think," Delaney said. "I still don't see how Wells would fit in with what Drakov seems to have planned. Unless he's planning something separate that has to do with Wells." He shook his head.

"There are just too many variables. The best we can hope for is that Wells will show up again, with Moreau, and we'll get a shot at taking out Moreau and snatching Wells. The problem is, what do we do with Wells once we've snatched him? He already knows too much, but can we risk having him conditioned to forget his part in all of this? Would that affect his writing?" He shook his head again. "I don't know, Christine. It's going to be very tricky. The waiting's hard, but it's not the hardest part.”

You know, a very unpleasant thought occurred to me while I was on the watch for Wells," she said. "It's bad enough that Moreau snatched him from right under our noses, but what are we going to do if he doesn't come back?"

Delaney's hand froze with his coffee cup halfway to his mouth. "Don't even think about it," he said.

6 ___________

They met in the rooms of the Beefsteak Society. The Sublime Society of BeefSteaks was not in session at the moment. The tradition dated back to 1735, when John Rich, manager of the Covent Garden Theatre, founded the club for "men of noble or gentle birth," which net for a beefsteak dinner every Saturday from November to June. The badge of the society was a gridiron and its members wore blue coats and huff waistcoats, buff being a light yellow napped leather properly made from buffalo skin, though other skins were sometimes used. The motto of the club was "Beef and Liberty" and it met at the Lyceum Theatre. Grayson thought the whole thing was rather juvenile, but then there had always been a ritualistic fervor among the upper classes that he had never fully understood. If you want to meet once a week for a steak dinner, he thought, why not simply meet once a week for a steak dinner? Why make a bloody boys' club formality of the whole thing? In any case, it was a question that was never liable to concern him personally, as it was highly unlikely that he would ever he invited to join a gentleman's club. He was just a simple working class sod, happy with his station in life and if he wanted a steak dinner, he could bloody well just go down to the pub and get one.

Bram Stoker beckoned him to one of the chairs placed around the table.

"Please sit down. Inspector. May I offer you something to drink?"

"No, thank you very kindly. Mr. Stoker, not while I'm on duty."

"Are you making any progress with your inquiries, Inspector'?" Stoker said. "I take it that is what you wanted to speak to me about?"

"As a matter of fact, yes, it was," said Grayson. " I trust, Mr. Stoker, that we may speak in confidence?"

"Certainly, Inspector," Stoker said. "However, I should tell you that if what you have to discuss with me should happen to concern Henry Irving, I would be both honor and duty bound to take the matter up with him. He is both my employer and my closest friend."

Grayson nodded. "I quite understand. However, I don't think we will need to concern ourselves with Mr. Irving. There is certainly nothing to suggest that he is in any way involved."

"Involved in what. Inspector?" Stoker said.

"Well, frankly Mr. Stoker. at the moment I am not quite sure, but I suspect it may be murder."

Grayson watched Stoker carefully. The man suddenly became silent, but he did not avoid Grayson's steady gaze. He pressed his lips together and gave a couple of curt nods.

"I see," said Stoker. "Then if I understand you correctly, Inspector Grayson, you believe that Angeline Crewe was murdered, but you have no proof."

"No proof that I would feel comfortable presenting at the Old Bailey," Grayson said. "At least, not yet. However, there is no question but that Miss Crewe was subjected to at least one violent assault shortly prior to her death and it appears possible that she may even have cooperated in it."

Stoker frowned. "Exactly what are you implying, Inspector?"

"Those wounds on her throat were made by teeth. Mr. Stoker," Grayson said, watching the man for a reaction. "Human teeth."

"You're certain of this?" Stoker said.

"Beyond a shadow of a doubt," said Grayson.

"You are telling me that she was bitten in the neck by someone and, as a result, she died?" said Stoker.

"She died from loss of blood," said Grayson.

Stoker took a deep breath. "Is each of us wondering who will say it first?" he said. "Wry well, then. I will say it. Her killer bit her in the neck and drank her blood. In other words, a vampire?"

Grayson pursed his lips. "I sec that the thought had already crossed your mind," he said. "Tell me, are you a superstitious man, Mr. Stoker?"

"People in the theatre are always superstitious." Stoker said. "But let's speak plainly, shall we? If you're asking me if I believe in the existence of such creatures, 1 can only answer by saying that I would be disinclined to, but to my certain knowledge, I don't know. There are many things in this world which we cannot explain to our satisfaction. Frankly, when I saw those marks upon Angeline's throat, it was the first thing that crossed my mind, but then I had only recently read a novel by Sheridan Le Fanu about a woman who was a vampire. Are you familiar with the work?"

"You mean Camillo?" Grayson said.

"Yes, that's the one. You've read it then?"

Grayson nodded.

"So what do you think?" Stoker said.

"I found it entertaining, but to borrow your own words,•" said Grayson. "I am disinclined to believe in the existence of such creatures.—

"You would prefer to seek a more rational explanation." Stoker said, nodding. "Has it occurred to you that there are legends about vampires dating all the way back to ancient times, to Greece and Rome? And that there have been many apparently reliable reports concerning vampirism scattered throughout history since then'? Even up to and including recent times?"

"Yes, I am aware of that,” said Grayson. "In fact, I recently had an interesting conversation concerning that very topic with Dr. Conan Doyle and he was able to explain to me convincingly how such stories might have been sustained as a result of ignorance and improper observation."

Stoker smiled. "Yes, that sounds like Arthur. There's a man with both feet planted firmly on the ground, just like his detective. Sherlock Holmes. He claims the character was based upon an old professor of his, but the truth is that there's a lot of Arthur in old Sherlock. No, I don't imagine he would sit still for a moment to listen to any farfetched notions about vampires. And yet there is the tragic, albeit fascinating case of Angeline Crewe. Did Arthur offer any theories about that'?"

"As a matter of fact, he did," said Grayson. "And I am inclined to accept them. One of the things that he suggested was that . . . well, how can I put this delicately?"

"Please don't bother," Stoker said. "We have agreed to speak plainly, if you'll recall."

"Yes, well, meaning no offense," said Grayson, "but people associated with the theatre have a certain reputation for rather irregular behavior. And one of the things that Dr. Conan Doyle suggested is that we may be dealing with a case of sadistic perversion here. This theory seems to be supported by the fact that Miss Crewe apparently never made any mention of having been bitten in the throat and one would think that if she had been assaulted forcibly in such a manner, she would certainly have said something about it to someone. And it she had actually permitted such an act to be committed upon her person, and actually allowed the drinking of her blood, then what other conclusion could there be except that she was a willing participant in an act of such depravity?"

"I see," said Stoker. "It is an interesting speculation, to be sure. And, purely in terms of degree, certainly more rational than the vampire theory. However, has it occurred to you that the reason Angeline Crewe never said anything about having been so cruelly used might have been that she was frightened and humiliated?"

"I should think that if she had been frightened," Grayson said, "she would have been all the more anxious to speak out and have the blackguard who did it brought to justice, so that he would never be able to menace her or any other young woman again."

"One might well think so," Stoker said, "if one is a man. However, try to consider the situation from a woman's point of view, Inspector. A woman who is an actress and, unfortunately, as you have already pointed out, suffers from an entirely undeserved reputation for irregular behavior, as you put it. Just because a woman is an actress, Inspector, that doesn't mean she is immoral. And in this particular case, we have a young woman who comes from a good family, a family which has already suffered a certain amount of distress due to her chosen vocation. If the matter were to come to court, it would be purely her word against that of her assailant and you can be sure that the man's counsel would do everything in his power to discredit her testimony by attacking her reputation. I personally know of no woman who would not flinch from such an ordeal."

"Your point is well taken." Grayson said, nodding. "I had not thought of that. It is the sort of thing that might give some comfort to her family when all of this eventually conies to light—as it shall, rest assured on that account—but for the moment, let us leave the question of Miss Crewe's reputation aside and concentrate upon the fact of her demise. Whether she was a willing participant in depravity or whether she was forcibly imposed upon, it seems obvious that whoever was responsible cannot possibly be sane. Which brings us back to Dr. Doyle's observations upon this matter. And again. I remind you that we speak in confidence."

"Of course," said Stoker.

"I have been attempting to reconstruct something of Miss Crewe's recent past." said Grayson. "I know, for example, that she was seen frequently in the company of a young man named Tony Hesketh. You yourself confirmed this in our last discussion. Hesketh is missing, disappeared without a trace. I find this highly suspect. I have also managed to learn that Mr. Hesketh's character is not altogether what one might consider proper. I have established to my satisfaction that he was intimately associated with at least one young man of questionable moral character, if you get my meaning."

"You're saying that Tony Hesketh was a homosexual." said Stoker. He shrugged. "Frankly, that does not surprise me. I always thought that young Hesketh was a bit overly flamboyant and rather effeminate. I did try to dissuade Angeline from fraternizing with him. He seemed like a bad sort to me. You're suggesting that one mode of abnormality might breed another?"

"It is certainly possible." said Grayson. "I have the impression that young Hesketh straddled the fence, as it were. A jaded appetite that is already immoral and decadent to begin with could easily turn to more depraved pleasures. Hesketh may not be sane. Dr. Doyle cited a number of historical examples of so-called vampirism, but vampirism practiced by insane living persons rather than satanic dead ones. A form of perversion, if you will. And if this sounds farfetched, you should hear the details of some of these cases. Dr. Doyle mentioned one that comes vividly to mind, the case of a 15th century warlord named Dracula who murdered thousands of people in the most grisly manner—"

Stoker started. "What did you say that name was?" he said.

Grayson was surprised at the reaction. "Dracula," he said. "A prince of some sort. Vlad Dracula, known for his cruelties as the Impaler. Why do you ask?"

"Because I have met a man named Dracula," said Stoker. "And quite recently. too. A wealthy Balkan aristocrat. I remember the name because I liked the sound of it. It rolled rather ominously off the tongue. Count Dracula. He came to the theatre on a number of occasions. And he was a friend of Tony Hesketh's."

Wells stood at the hotel window, clutching Moreau's arm as if terrified of letting go. Below them, people surged past in a ceaseless wave of humanity, moving quickly and purposefully across pedestrian spanways high above the ground. The skyscrapers towered above them on all sides and far below, Wells could see other spanways, both vehicular and pedestrian. crisscrossing in a webwork of suspended roads and walkways. Just below them was a vehicular spanway that snaked among the buildings and tiny vehicles which were completely enclosed and shaped like sleek teardrops in a wide and dazzling array of colors traveled at amazing speeds just above the surface of the suspended roadway. Above them, machines flew through the air, small craft with stubby, swept back delta wings, occasionally diving down like kingfishers into the steel, glass and concrete jungle. often passing so close to one another that Wells could not see how it was possible for them to avoid collision.

"I cannot believe my eyes," he said. "Where are we?"

"London," said Moreau.

"London!"

"It would be safer to remain here," said Moreau.

"What is this place?" said Wells. "Is this your home?"

"Not exactly," said Moreau. "It is a hotel room. I pay for it by bringing certain coins and stamps from the 19th century and selling them privately to collectors in this time period. In this way, I have managed to establish accounts here, as well as a false identity. If my true identity were known, it is almost a certainty that I would be arrested. I am telling you this because I want you to understand that I am being completely honest with

"It is all so overwhelming; I do not know where to turn! Such astonishing growth! I would never have thought it possible that buildings of such amazing height could be constructed! And all those flying machines buzzing about like bees around a hive, how do they keep from colliding'?"

"They are equipped with guidance systems," said Moreau. "Far too complicated to explain, just think of them as devices which are capable of sensing everything around them and communicating with each other as they navigate."

"Amazing!" said Wells. “Moreau, can't we go outside for just a moment?

Please'?"

"Well, all right," Moreau said, "but only for a moment or two. However, you had best change into some different clothing first."

Moreau went to a closet and opened it.

"What manner of clothing is this?" said Wells, touching the sleek, shiny material and feeling it stretch. "It is made from materials such as I have never seen!"

"Synthetics," said Moreau.

"Synthetic materials'?" said Wells, touching the futuristic garments hanging in the closet.

"A blend of synthetics, created in a laboratory," said Moreau. "Form fitting, easily cared for. They will stretch to accommodate your size."

"But . . . it is all of one piece. Is this all there is to the costume?" Wells said.

"It will serve," Moreau said.

They changed and moments later, Wells stood before a mirror, examining himself in the black clingsuit. "I cannot say it flatters me.” he said.

"It seems terribly revealing. And what makes it shine so? It looks as though it is soaking wet."

"It is the nature of the material," Moreau said somewhat impatiently.

"And rest assured, in this time period, it is considered a conservative fashion. I should warn you that we are liable to see people, women in particular• wearing costumes that are far more revealing. Customs are very different here. Try not to be shocked."

They went outside into the hallway and took a drop tube to the lobby. Wells could barely contain himself. He wanted to know how the lighting in the hallway operated, how the drop tube functioned, what made the indicator lights work and where the cool air was coming from. Moreau made no attempt to reply to his torrent of questions, saying merely that it was impossible to explain hundreds of years of scientific development to someone who could not even comprehend most of the terms and Wells had to satisfy himself with brief explanations of what the function of various things was, rather than how they functioned.

They came out into the lobby and Wells gasped at the immensity of it, at the height of the ceiling, which was several dozen stories over their heads• at the huge colored fountain playing in the lobby's atrium and the strange music, coming from nowhere and created by instruments he could not even identify. As they walked across it and approached the large ornate glass doors leading outside, Wells was stunned to see them open by themselves and Moreau was unable to restrain him from repeatedly stepping on and off the sensor panels, making the doors open and close repeatedly, as a small child might do.

"Please. Herbert," Moreau said, finally dragging him away. "We must try not to attract attention to ourselves."

They went outside into the street and walked for a short distance, Wells craning his neck backward, looking up above them at the impossibly tall buildings and the traffic overhead. He stopped in the center of the sidewalk, gazing up with rapture and in moments• there were a number of people around them, likewise looking up, wondering what he was looking at.

"Herbert, for God's sake, please!" Moreau said, dragging him on.

They hadn't walked a block before an adolescent girl with varicolored hair cut in a geometric style and wearing high black boots, scarlet clingpanties and a see-through halter sidled up to them and propositioned Wells. Moreau grimaced and waved her off.

Wells grinned. "Well, in some respects at least, things have not changed very much at all."

"If you had accepted her proposition," Moreau said sourly, "I think you'd have found that things have changed more than you might think. Come, let us go back to the hotel. I do not wish to expose you to so much that your mind will be shocked by overstimulation. We have much to talk about."

"Please, can't we stay a little while longer?" Wells said. "Can't we walk about? There is so much to see! I have a thousand questions bursting from my brain!"

"Later, perhaps," Moreau said. "Regrettably, we cannot remain here for long. Bringing you here was a great risk and I am still not certain that it was the right decision. However, perhaps it was for the best. Perhaps now you will possess enough perspective to fully appreciate what I have to tell you. It would take hours to even begin to answer some of those questions you have, but I needed to eliminate your doubts."

"And that you have," said Wells, glancing all around him. "To think that I have traveled hundreds of years into the future! What a world awaits us! What astonishing accomplishments! Please, Moreau, can't we stay awhile longer?"

Moreau smiled, "Very well. But keep close to me. If we were to become separated, you would become truly lost, forever. —

"I do not know that I would mind that very much,— said Wells.

"Don't even joke about it," said Moreau.

"What would happen if we did not go back?" said Wells. "Purely for the sake of argument, of course."

"There is no way of knowing exactly what would happen.” said Moreau,

"but you can be certain that history would be changed. The results could be disastrous on an unimaginable scale. By the act of bringing you here, I have already altered history, but the risk is slight if we follow proper precautions. It is nothing compared to the risk we all face hack in your own time. And now that you have seen all this, perhaps you might begin to understand. Come, I will tell you about myself, about who and what I am and where I came from, and about the crowning achievement of my career, which has now turned into a nightmare that threatens all humanity. And it all began when a device known as a chronoplate was invented and man achieved the capability of traveling through time . . ."

"Count Dracula?"

The tall dark man in the black opera cape paused as he was about to get into his coach outside the Lyceum Theatre. "I am Dracula.” he said, turning around.

"Inspector William Grayson, Scotland Yard. Might I ask you to give me a moment of your time?"

"Certainly. Inspector. How may I help you?"

"I should like to ask you a few questions. I understand that you were one of the last people to see Miss Angeline Crewe alive. "

"Yes," said Dracula, " I suppose I must have been. I had heard about her collapse during rehearsal. Poor girl, a tragedy to die so young. But why should the police be interested? It was an illness, no?"

"We have reason to suspect that it may not have been.” said Grayson.

"Why, did she seem ill to you?"

"I thought she seemed a trifle pale," said Dracula.

"You had dinner with her and another young woman from the company, a Miss Violet Anderson?"

"Yes, that is correct.”

"And there was another gentleman present, a Mr. Anthony Hesketh?"

"Yes, it was Mr. Hesketh who introduced me to Miss Crewe."

"I see. When was the last time you saw Mr. Hesketh?"

"I believe it was that evening, when we all had dinner together."

"And you have not seen him since?"

"No, I think he said something about going abroad on business.”

"How well do you know him?"

"We occasionally take in a play together. We met here, at the Lyceum. He was kind enough to share my box with me and assist me with the language. English is not my native tongue, you know."

"You seem to speak it very well," said Grayson.

"Thank you, but my fluency is not all that I would like it to be. The theatre is an excellent place to hear it spoken properly. I never tire of listening to Mr. Irving."

"So you and Mr. Hesketh are not very close, then? You see each other only at the theatre?"

"And sometimes for dinner, afterward." said Dracula. "I am a very private person, Inspector. I generally keep to myself and only go out at night. Mr. Hesketh seemed like a very pleasant and well-educated young man, but he is only an acquaintance, nothing more. I could not even say what business he is in. I do not recall ever discussing it with hint. Such matters bore me. We spoke mainly about music, literature and the theatre. I fear that I am not being of much help to you."

"On the contrary," Grayson said, "every little bit of information helps. Might I ask what brings you to London?"

Dracula smiled. "I am a very wealthy man, Inspector Grayson, thanks to the fortunes of my family. I devote most of my time to travel. There is not a great deal to occupy one's time in my native country. The night life of London is so much more fascinating.

"

"I see, May I ask where you are staying'?"

"For the present, I am taking rooms at the Grosvenor. But I enjoy sampling your hotels as much as I enjoy sampling your theatre. In fact, I am enjoying England so much that I am considering purchasing a home here. Perhaps nothing quite so grand as my family castle in Transylvania, but on the other hand, nothing quite so old and drafty, either."

"Speaking of your family." said Grayson, "I once heard a fascinating story about a prince from your country whose name was the same as yours. He was also known as Vlad the Impaler. I believe."

"Yes, I am descended from him," said Dracula. "Not many people outside my country know of him and those that do, such as yourself, invariably ask me if it is true that my ancestor was as bloodthirsty as the legend has it. He was, indeed. However, he is a national hero in my country for having driven out the Turks, who were quite savage in their own right. It is fortunate for all of us that we live in times that are so much more civilized. I fear that my ancestor would not have approved of me. He was a merciless warlord, a voivode. and I am merely an extravagantly wealthy vagabond. No one shall ever tell stories about me. But now I have forgotten what we were discussing. Ah, yes. Miss Crewe and Mr. Hesketh, was it not? They seemed quite taken with each other. Such a pity. They made such a delightful couple. Have I answered your question, Inspector ... Grayson, was it'?"

"Yes, thank you, Count," said Grayson, "I will not be taking up any more of your time. Sorry to trouble you." "No trouble at all. Good night to you, Inspector." "And good night to you, Count."

Grayson held the door for him as he climbed in. then he shut it and waved up at the coachman. For a moment, he froze, startled at the sight of the coachman's face staring down at him. The lower half of the man's face was covered by a muffler. He had long grey hair and he wore a high-collared tweed coat and a bowler hat, but it was the eyes that startled Grayson. They were looking down at him with an absolutely feral gaze. For a brief moment, they almost seemed to glow in the dark and then the coachman cricked the whip and the horses took off at a trot. Grayson stared after the coach until it disappeared into the fog.

Private Paul Ransome woke up strapped to a bed in a large, luxuriously appointed bedroom. He had been drugged and he did not know how long he had been unconscious. The restraints would not allow him any motion beyond some slight movements of his head and neck. He felt ill, disoriented, and there was a maddening itch at a spot on his throat which he could not scratch. He felt nauseous and he had a fever. The sheets were damp with his sweat.

The bedroom door opened and a man dressed in a dark butler's suit entered, the same man who had answered the door of the sprawling Richmond Hill estate that Ransome had come to investigate. He had long, steel grey hair that hung down to his shoulders and he was powerfully built. He was swarthy looking, with sunken eyes, a high forehead and a prominent jaw. The mouth was wide, thinlipped and cruel. He saw that Ransome was awake, turned and left the room before Ransome could say anything.

Ransome desperately tried to remember what had happened, but his mind was a complete blank. He could not seem to concentrate. He knew he was in trouble. Bad trouble. And that knowledge was confirmed when the door opened once again several moments later and a tall, dark, well-built, striking looking man with emerald green eyes and a long scar down the side of his face came in and stood over his bed, looking down at him.

"Drakov!" Ransome said.

"Good morning, Private Ransome," Nikolai Drakov said in a deep voice. He smiled. "How do you feel?"

"Sick as a dog,” said Ransome. "What did you do to me?" "A number of things," said Drakov pleasantly, as if they were merely discussing the weather.

"Nothing fatal, however,"

"But I assume that's coming, right?"

"Oh, on the contrary, I want you alive. I have some very special plans for you."

"What happened?" Ransome said. "How did I blow my cover? I don't remember anything.–

"You remember what happened before you came here, don't you?" Drakov said.

"Yes, but after that it's all a blank."

"Good."

"What did you do, damn you?"

"Well, you might say I've influenced you somewhat, in more ways than one," said Drakov. "You see. I was prepared for you people this time. I no longer take any chances. You were scanned when you approached this house and your cybernetic implants were detected. I'm really very well protected here. Just the same, it now appears that I shall have to leave this comfortable house. A pity, but if you found me, the other members of your team cannot be far behind."

"It won't work, Drakov," Ransome said. "I'm not going to tell you anything."

Drakov chuckled. "Spare me the esprit de corps heroics. Ransome. You may not know it, but you have already told me everything I wished to know. I am quite looking forward to another confrontation with my father's first string team. You were just an appetizer. It's Delaney, Cross and Steiger that I want. And you are going to help me.–

"The hell I will,” said Ransome. "I'll die first."

Drakov grinned. "In a manner of speaking, yes, you will," he said. "But never fear, you shall be reborn. Your rebirth is in progress even as we speak."

Ransome felt a knot forming in his stomach. "What have you done to me?"

"How does your throat feel, Ransome?"

"My—•" Involuntarily, Ransome tried to raise his hand to his throat, but the restraints wouldn't let him move. "Jesus," he said. "Oh, Jesus.”

His eyes went to the butler standing by the door, watching him silently.

Drakov followed his gaze. "No, it wasn't Janos," he said. Drakov beckoned the butler forward. "However, Janos is someone you've been looking for. I thought you might like to be properly introduced. Pvt. Paul Ransome, Janos Volkov. Janos is, in a manner of speaking, one of my children. I'm really very proud of him. Janos is the very first of his kind, a triumph of genetic engineering and biomodification. He is the werewolf you've been seeking. I'm sorry to say that you will not be able to see Janos in all his hirsute splendor, as he has reached the end of his monthly cycle, but take my word for it, it is an impressive sight."

He nodded to the butler, who turned and left without a word.

"My plans for you, however," Drakov said, "do not call for infection by lycanthmpic genes. No, for you, Ransome, I have something infinitely more interesting in mind.”

Ransome was breaking out in a fresh sweat and he started to shiver. He fought to keep his teeth from chattering. "Whatever you've infected me with, Drakov, it'll never work, I promise you. I'll kill myself.–

"Yes, I'm sure you would," said Drakov, "which is why I have conditioned you with a number of programmed imperatives. A relatively simple matter of neutralizing your cybernetic implants and installing some of my own in a minor surgical procedure. When I have completed your programming, you will no more be able to commit suicide than you will be able to discuss what's happened to you with the other members of your team. I had hoped that it would be Finn Delaney who fell into my hands; he would make a splendid werewolf, don't you think? Or Andre Cross, what a wonderfully seductive vampire she would make. But you'll do for the moment."

The door to the bedroom opened once again and a tall, slim, middle-aged man with a drooping moustache and jet black hair combed into a widow's peak entered. He was sharp featured, with an aquiline nose, a high forehead, sunken cheeks and thin red lips. He was dressed in dark evening clothes and a long black opera cape with a high collar. His dark eyes were those of a psychotic.

Drakov smiled. "I could never resist a touch of melodrama." he said. "Allow me to present Count Dracula."

7 _______

Sgt. Anthony Rizzo waited for his relief, warning his hands over the glowing coals in his pushcart. The sweet and musty aroma of roasting chestnuts rose from the cart, which had become a familiar feature to the residents of Bow Street over the past week. Each morning, he arrived at the corner with his pushcart, near the old Row Street Police Court, and many of the local residents had made a habit of buying a small bag of roasted chestnuts from him on their way to work. Dressed as an Italian immigrant, Rizzo addressed his customers in a sort of broken Cockney, a mangled dialect spiced with Italian phrases and delivered in a robust, gesticulatory manner. It was a "purloined letter” method of surveillance, based on the principle of being so completely obvious that one would be overlooked.

The streets of London were full of vendors and musicians. Around Covent Garden, it was not unusual to see entire string quartets playing in the street, collecting money in the battered cases for their instruments, which they placed open before them on the sidewalks. The costermongers were a prominent fixture on the city streets. There were ice cream sellers: fruit vendors; men selling various wind-up toys for children; balladeers who performed songs of their own composition, often based on headlines in the newspapers, then sold the sheet music: muffin men ringing their bells and the ubiquitous flower girls, who were usually not girls at all. but mostly elderly women wrapped in shawls. selling hunches of flowers or fresh buttonholes for gentlemen to wear in their lapels. Sometimes these street vendors were regarded as a nuisance, but no one ever objected to Rizzo's presence on Bow Street, because Rizzo did not disturb the residents with any vendor's street cries. He depended instead on the anima of the roasting chestnuts to draw his customers. It worked well enough and he usually did a nice bit of business in the morning, less throughout the afternoon, and towards evening, as people started to return home from work, business picked up once more for several hours. Meanwhile, he kept his eye on Tony Hesketh's apartment just across the street.

Surveillance work was often very boring and Rizzo's stakeout was especially ennervating. Anything that could have made the long watch more bearable, such as reading a book or newspaper, was out of the question since it would distract him from his duties, so there was nothing for Rizzo to do except stand on his feet all day and sell his chestnuts, all the while keeping alert for any sign of Hesketh. By the end of the day, he was worn out. Someone would show up in the evening to relieve him, someone who could take advantage of the darkness and the fog for concealment and did not require a pushcart. Then Rizzo would go back to the Hotel Metropole command post to soak his feet and get some sleep. But now it was getting late and his relief had not yet arrived. His feet were tired and his back was sore. Rizzo was not especially worried. lie knew the team was being spread thin and relief would arrive as soon as they could spare someone, but just the same, he hoped they would send someone soon. He was tired and it would start to look unusual if he remained too late on the corner with his pushcart.

He sold a hag of chestnuts to a grey-haired gentleman in a long tweed Inverness and a bowler hat, apparently on his way out for the evening.

"Working a bit late tonight?" the man said with a smile.

Rizzo shrugged elaborately. "Aah. eez the wife, she 'ave 'er seezter comma to visit. All night long, ya-ta-ta-to-ta, like cheekens." He made rapid gestures with his hands, fingers together and outstretched, thumb and index fingers coming together and apart quickly in a representative gesture of ceaseless chatter. "Aah," he said. waving his hand in derision. I stay late anda sell my cheznoots."

" Don 't bl a me yo u on e b it , old ma n, " s aid t he ma n , grinning. "Know just how you feel. My sister-in-law's a bloody horror herself."

"Grazi," said Rizzo, accepting the man's money and putting . it in the little cash box on his cart. "Ciao, signori."

"Ciao to you, too, Sergeant Rizzo.”

Rizzo glanced up quickly. too late, his eyes focusing on the small plastic pistol held in the man's right hand. There was a faint chuffing sound, halfway between a cough and a hiss, and the tiny dart struck him in the chest. He barely had time to realize he had been shot before he lost consciousness.

Pvt. Linda Craven crooned a Cockney song to herself while she sat on an overturned basket by the curb, making fresh buttonholes from some of her flowers. She wore a long dress made out of Connie black linsey-woolsey, laceup ankle high boots with rundown heels, a black plush jacket, a long black shawl and a feathered hat. Every now and then, when someone would pass by, she would stretch out a handful of flowers and make a halfhearted, plaintivesounding pitch, punctuated by a sniffle. and then she would return to her song, a song about how," loverly" it would be to have a room somewhere far away from the cold night air, with lots of chocolate to eat and an enormous chair to sit in. Sung in an ear-gratingly Cockney whine, it sounded perfectly in keeping with the time, even though it wouldn't be written for years to come.

There was still no sign of H. G. Wells. She felt utterly miserable about the whole thing. She blamed herself for having slipped up badly It did not occur to her that perhaps the mason Steiger hadn't given her hell was that there really wasn't anything she could have done about the situation. The odds of her having been able to prevent what happened would have been infinitesimal. Even if she had recognized Moreau, a man she had never seen before, it would have been necessary for her to notice him activating his warp disc, an action easily concealed, and move quickly enough to kill him before he could clock out with Wells.

It would have seemed rather incongruous, to say the least, if a Victorian woman had suddenly opened up on a man in a London teashop with a laser or a disruptor pistol, which was one of the reasons why she wasn't armed with one. If anyone in the teashop had wondered where the two men at the table by the window had suddenly gone, they would have been struck dumb by the sight of a man being killed by molecular disruption, briefly wreathed in the glowing blue mist of Cherenkov radiation and then disintegrating right before their eyes. Paranoia ran high at TAC-HQ. The warp discs they all wore were failsafed and, in ease of an emergency, there was an arms locker hack at the command post, likewise failsafed to self-destruct unless it was opened properly. To remain on the safe side, the team had been issued weapons more in keeping with the time. In her purse, Linda carried a Colt Single Action Army revolver, otherwise known as a .45 Peacemaker. It weighed almost 3 pounds and it packed a wallop. It was an 1873 design and, although it would have been regarded as highly unusual for a young woman in London to be carrying such a gun, as a visitor from America, it was not beyond the realm of possibility that she might have one.

She knew what she would have to do if Moreau showed up again with Wells. She would have to make certain she could get a clear shot at him without endangering Wells or anybody else, which meant she might have to place herself in a position of vulnerability. She'd have to move fast and get in close, kill Moreau as quickly as possible and then either prevail upon Wells to return with her to the command post or take him by force. Wells would have to be debriefed. She had no doubt that she could handle Wells and she felt reasonably certain that she could take care of Moreau. After all, the man was a scientist, not a soldier. Still, it would be wry risky. There was a good chance that Moreau could return with Wells during someone else's shift on surveillance duty, but Linda hoped it would happen during her shift, so that she could redeem herself for having lost him in the first place. She didn't even want to think about what could happen if Wells never returned from wherever it was Moreau had taken hint.

She was only twenty-two years old, still a rookie, green and on her first mission. She was painfully aware of her lack of experience compared to the other members of the mission support team. She was thrilled to be working with the First Division's number one temporal adjustment team, but she also felt intimidated. Andre Cross was a legend in the service, as was Finn Delaney, already a veteran when she was still learning how to crawl. Steiger was Gen. Moses Forrester's second-in command and prior to that, he had been the TIA's senior field agent. She knew they couldn't have been happy to have a rookie assigned to their support team. None of them had said as much, but she was certain that on a mission of such importance, they would have preferred more experienced personnel.

Scott Neilson seemed to understand. Like her, he was a rookie, though he wasn't quite as green as she was and he seemed to think much faster on his feet.

"Look," he had told her one night while they were having dinner in a pub, "nobody's going to hold it against you that you're a rookie. They were all green themselves once. It's really very simple. You either learn fast or you don't make it."

"That's just what I'm afraid of," she had said. "It's not so much that I might not make it myself that worries me, but the idea that I might screw up due to my inexperience and it could mutt in temporal interference, a disruption or maybe even a timestream split. The idea of all that responsibility is simply staggering. The pressure's unbelievable. It gives me migraines:"

"And it makes you nauseous and upsets your stomach and you can't sleep and when you do sleep, you have recurring nightmares." Neilson said.

"I know, I've been there. They've all been there, except maybe Steiger. Nothing seems to bother him much, but then you've got to be pretty cold to be a TIA agent to begin with."

"So how do you handle it?” she said.

"You don't,” he said, "Believe it or not, after a while, it sort of handles itself. There's only so much pressure you can take before you either break or you just get used to it. You even become casual about it. You have to, otherwise you simply can't function. If you were the type who was liable to break, chances are it would have come out in your psych profile and you never would have made it this far. But almost everybody goes through what you're experiencing the first few times out to the Minus Side. Nobody expects a rookie to take it like a veteran. They're not going to cut you any slack, but they won't hold your inexperience against you, either. Anybody can mess up, even someone like Delaney, who's got more years in the service than both our ages combined."

“How long did it take before you learned to handle the pressure?" she said.

Neilson had laughed. "Are you kidding? I still have nightmares. Almost every night, except when I'm so exhausted that I don't even dream. And I'll tell you a secret—I don't really believe that anyone ever learns to handle it. They just learn to live with it. It's no accident that the First Division has a reputation for being such a bunch of hellraisers in Plus Time. You get drunk; you fight: you fuck: you get into high risk sports: whatever it takes to give you an outlet for the pressure."

"What do you do?" she said.

"Well. I don't drink and I'm afraid I'm not much of a. fighter." Neilson had said. "I barely made it through combat training."

She had smiled. "So what does that leave?"

Neilson grinned self-consciously. "Well, actually, not what you might think. I get into a lot of hand-eye coordination things.”

"Like what?"

"Quick-draw target practice with antique revolvers and semiautomatic pistols. Knife throwing, Darts. Sleight-of-

"What's that?"

"It used to be called close-up magic. Tricks with cards and coins and such." He had demonstrated by "walking" a coin across his lingers. "It requires lots of practice and concentration." he had said. "It takes your mind off other things and it sharpens your reflexes. Helps you think fast. Maybe you should give it a try."

"Well, antique firearms are noisy. I don't have any knives or darts. I'm not really in the mood for any magic tricks and I don't much feel like getting drunk and waking up with a hangover." She smiled. "What does that leave? You want to run down that list again'?"

They had spent the night together and their lovemaking had been frenzied and intense. Afterwards, they went to sleep holding each other and, for a change, there had been no nightmares. But then Moreau had abducted H. G. Wells and now the pressure was hack on, savage and relentless. It felt as if her every nerve synapse were charged with adrenaline-induced, hair-trigger sensitivity. She was scared, yet at the same time, there was an intoxicating rush associated with it, almost an orgasmic high, the intense, heightened perceptions of a sword dancer. She didn't realize just how intense it was until someone came up behind her and addressed her in a deep voice. "Excuse me; Miss, how much for a buttonhole?"

It wasn't until almost a full minute later that she fully realized what had happened. None of it had taken place with any conscious thought. She had turned and, in a galvanizing, white hot blast of instinctual response, the sight of the gun had registered and she reacted, throwing herself to one side as the dart missed her by scant millimeters. She clawed for her revolver, fired—but he was already gone and the bullet passed through empty air where he had been standing just a second earlier and struck a lamppost, ricocheting off it and whining away into the distance.

“Damn!" she shouted. "God damn it! Jesus . And then she noticed several people on the street staring at her with astonishment and she felt the delayed stress reaction kicking in. She quickly hit her warp disc and clocked out, materializing in the Hotel Metropole command post just as the dry heaves began. At some point, she became aware of Delaney standing over her and holding her while she retched, gasping for breath.

"We're blown," she said. "Dammit, we're blown! Drakov almost got me!"

Delaney didn't even pause to wait for an explanation. He bolted into the other room to wake up Steiger and then Christine Brant was steadying her, helping her to the couch as the shakes began.

It did not occur to her until much later that she had survived an encounter with the Temporal Corps' worst nemesis. Nikolai Drakov had the drop on her and she had lived to tell the tale. She wasn't a rookie anymore.

Pvt. Dick Larson stood over the body numbly staring down at what was left of Cpl. Tom Davis. The corpse was lying in a crumpled heap next to a pile of refuse in the alley. Blood was everywhere, covering the chest and spattered on the alley wall. The head was barely attached by a few ragged threads of flesh. Someone . .

. or something ... had twisted his head around completely, severing the spinal column, and then the body had been thrown across the alley. A large splatter of blood marked the spot where Davis had been killed and then another one marked the wall at about shoulder level where the thrown body had struck it and then dropped down to the ground.

"Thought you should sec this." Inspector Grayson said. "That's your friend Davis, from the Telegraph, isn't it'?" Larson nodded mutely.

"I'm sorry." said Grayson. "He seemed a decent sort. It looks as if he may have found our killer. Or the killer found him. I know the two of you were working together on this story. I thought perhaps you might be able to tell me what he was on to.'

Larson shook his head and turned away from the grisly sight. "I honestly don't know, Inspector."

"What was he doing down here?" Grayson said.

"Same thing I've been doing. I imagine,” Larson said. "Canvassing the pubs, questioning the locals. He must have stumbled onto something."

"Yes, apparently." said Grayson with a sour grimace. "Look, don't misunderstand me. I appreciate the restraint you've shown in writing about these killings and you've lived up to our bargain in keeping certain details confidential, but if you've discovered anything that you're not telling me, I want to know about it now."

"I wish I did have something to tell you, Inspector," Larson said, "but if Davis had uncovered something, he never had the chance to tell me."

"You're quite certain?" Grayson said, watching him carefully.

"Tom Davis was no fool," said Larson, "nor was he a hero. If he had learned the killer's identity, he would never have kept it to himself and he certainly would not have risked confronting him alone."

"Not even for the sake of an exclusive story?" Grayson said.

"Tom was much more than a colleague, Inspector," Larson said. "He was a close friend. I knew him. He wouldn't do anything like that."

"Well, I hope you're right," said Grayson. "I'd hate to think that a man died for something so foolhardy. I suppose the newspapers are truly going to scream about this. Losing one of their own and so forth. I don't wish to seem callous, Larson, but I do hope you will employ some discretion when you write your story. The manner of death is, after all, not quite like the others. There is no real evidence that the killer was the same."

"But you don't really believe that," Larson said.

Grayson looked down at the ground and pursed his lips thoughtfully. "No, I don't." he said after a moment. "Whoever killed poor Davis had to possess astonishing strength. Much like what happened in the courtyard, when those men were thrown about like so much chaff. Perhaps we'll be able to learn something from an examination of the body, but I'm almost beginning to believe that we may he faced with something beyond our ability to understand. There is some sort of horror loose in London, something that—" He caught himself and glanced up at Larson quickly. "I hope you will not quote me," he said.

Larson shook his head. "I have already forgotten what you said, Inspector."

Grayson looked relieved. "Thank you. My superiors are making things difficult enough for me as it is. For what it's worth, I promise you that I won't rest until I find this fiend and bring him to justice. And I shall find him. I swear it.''

Larson nodded and looked hack at the body. "I'll have to inform his . . . his family."

"Would you rather I do that?" said Grayson.

"No, I think it would be best if they were to hear it from me," said Larson.

"I'd better go and see to it, before the news reaches them some other way."

"I understand," said Grayson. "Forgive me if I seemed a bit—"

“No need,” said Larson. "You have your job to do." "Yes, and I'd best be on about it," Grayson said. "Please pass on my condolences to the poor chap's family." "Thank you, Inspector. I'll do that."

Grayson looked at him strangely for a moment. ' Larson . . do be careful."

"God damn it, no!" Delaney said. "It's much too dangerous."

"We have no choice," said Steiger. "If we're blown, we've got to move the command post now and that means someone has to stay behind and get word to all our people."

"We know where most of our people are," Delaney said. "We could set up a rendezvous and clock out separately, pass the word on to everyone directly—"

"And what happens if some of them clock in while we're out looking for them?" Steiger said. "They'd have no idea that we're blown and they'd be sitting ducks if Drakov made a strike on the command post. Besides, I don't want to risk having everyone spread out all over the place. That makes us vulnerable. We have no idea where Davis and Larson are—"

"Davis is dead," said Larson, entering the room.

"What!" said Steiger. "How? What happened?"

"I've just left Grayson. They found Davis in an alley behind a pub in Whitechapel," Larson said. "His head was twisted around 360 degrees, practically torn right off his neck."

"Ransome must have talked," Delaney said.

"What about Ransome?" Larson said.

"He's missing," said Christine Bram. "He was late checking in and there's been no sign of him.”

"Drakov must have got a hold of him somehow," said Delaney. "We're blown. Ransome must have told him about the entire operation.•'

"I don't believe it," Larson said. "Paul would never break." "The hell he wouldn't," Delaney said. "Be realistic. Anyone can be deprogrammed. How else could we have been blown?" "It might have been Rizzo," Andre said.

"Rizzo's missing, too?" said Larson.

Andre nodded. "I showed up to relieve him and there was no sign of him. I found his pushcart abandoned in the street. No one even had a chance to steal it yet."

"And Drakov made a try for Linda," Christine Brant said. "She got off a shot at him, but he was too quick."

"Jesus,-Larson said "tie's picking us off one at a time!"

"Which is exactly why I don't want everyone spread out now," Steiger said.

"We've got to pull in and regroup. And the sooner we're out of here, the better."

The door opened and Paul Ransome walked in.

"What's going on?" he said.

"Ransome!" Steiger said. "Where the hell have you been?" "Checking out the estates on our list, as I was supposed to be doing," he said.

"You missed your check-in by four hours!" said Delaney.

"Yes, sir, I know," said Ransome. "I'm sorry, but I discovered something and I wanted to make sure before I pushed the button."

"What are you talking about?" said Steiger.

"I found Drakov's base of operations,-Ransome said. "He's at an estate in Richmond Hill."

The sprawling Victorian mansion stood atop the hill overlooking the Thames Valley in Richmond, Surrey. The furnishings were all still in place and the pantry was fully stocked, as was the wine cellar. Otherwise, the house was empty. If there had been any servants employed in the mansion, they were gone now. There was nothing to indicate that anyone from another time had been present in the house and. for that matter, the mansion didn't even look abandoned. It simply looked as if no one was home, but the clothes closets were all empty and toilet articles were missing from the bathrooms. On closer examination, they found where the security systems had been concealed and then hastily removed.

"That's it," said Steiger. He glanced at Ransome and nodded. "Drakov was here, all right, but he apparently cleared out in a hurry."

"Sir," said Larson, "take a look at this.-He showed Steiger a sheaf of newspaper clippings about the killings in Whitechapel. "They were lying on a table in the library. Along with this." He handed Steiger a handsome first edition of Dracula. by Bram Stoker. A book that Stoker hadn't even written yet.

"Cute," said Steiger. "Obviously left behind for us to find. He's awful goddamn sure of himself."

"It may not be safe for us to stay here," Andre said.

"You think Drakov would booby-trap this place?" Delaney said. "That's not his style. Much too impersonal."

"Maybe, but I wouldn't want to bet on that," said Steiger. "Be careful what you touch."

"So it was Rizzo, then." Andre said.

Steiger nodded. "It had to be. He's the only one left unaccounted for. We can probably assume he's dead by now. We'd better get someone down to the crime lab at Scotland Yard to warn Neilson. He'll be getting off duty there soon and I don't want him going back to the Metropole."

"What do we do about a new base-ops'?" Andre said. "If Rizzo's talked. we can't use any of our fallback safehouses." "I've been thinking about that," Steiger said, "and I have an idea. Probably the last place Drakov would expect us to use. And maybe it would let us kill two birds with one stone."

Ransome coughed and sagged against a doorframe.

"Ransome," said Delaney. "are you all right'!'