CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Brilliant daylight broke through the flimsy flaps of Anthony's tent. He bolted awake. Had it already happened? What time was it?
He jumped out of bed and saw astronauts in fatigues roaming the camp. He rubbed his eyes. Everyone looked normal--no excitement, no commotion.
He stopped a man who was walking by. "Has anything happened in Communion?" he asked.
The man turned. "Well, we had some men move the obstructions to the roadway this morning. We found nothing unusual; just some flooding."
That was all? Anthony felt a sickening feeling that he should not have slept so long. He threw on his clothes and washed up as fast as he could, then demanded to be taken into Communion as soon as possible.
"Eager to continue with the project, I see." But of course, that's not where he was headed.
The sky was clean and bright blue, devoid of any clouds. The breeze was cool and refreshing; it would have been one of those perfect mountain days in the last century on Earth. In the distance, the tree-dwellers cooed happily in the invigorating weather.
Anthony hopped off and immediately headed for Eve's hut. "But Anthony," someone called after him, "Your station is on the West side of town."
"I'm not going there," he answered. "I have to check on the Novacadian who escaped."
"Very well."
The Novacadians were strolling the streets peacefully, and even the front of Eve's hut looked quiet and undisturbed. As he opened the door, he called out her name using telepathy. He found her sleeping in a back room.
"Eve." He touched her lightly. Even when she was asleep, she looked like an angel. If there were fear in her, her countenance revealed no sign of it. Her lips were pursed, slightly open, and she was sighing--a noise that was barely audible.
When he touched her shoulder, she opened her eyes. "Anthony."
He smiled down at her. "You're alright," he said.
She made no sound.
"I was hoping that nothing would happen before I got here. I wanted to make sure that nothing happened to you."
She closed her eyes. "Nothing will happen to me, Anthony. Not until the proper time. You have no reason to worry."
"But what about Autumn?"
"It's true. He is near the breaking point."
"Today?"
"Yes."
Anthony felt the blood pumping through his veins. "I have to stop it."
"But you cannot."
"He will kill people, Eve, and he will take down Novacadians with him."
"There is nothing that can be done."
Their eyes met, then they both sadly looked away. "I have learned to speak in my mind, now, Eve."
"I see," she said.
"They had us move in with two old sisters--Sarah and Rebecca--and they taught me how."
Eve sat up. "You are hoping that somehow you can use this telepathy you have learned to try and communicate with the other humans, are you not?"
"Well, it's worth a try, don't you think? I am not a Novacadian, and so I am not vulnerable to their 'vibrations.'"
She rested her pale hand on top of his. "I doubt it will work, Anthony, but you can try."
A puzzled engineer approached General Garrison in the evening with some even more startling news.
He had been hesitating to say anything about it, since it was probably just an old probe that they had decided to bring back before getting it too close to the storm, but with the news of the duplicate probes, he promptly made the decision to call it to the general's attention.
"Sir?"
"Come in, of course."
The engineer, with thick glasses and a stooped posture, stood before the general's desk. "Well, what have you to say?" the general asked.
"Sir, I apologize for not reporting this sooner, but I think this may be of interest to you."
General Garrison leaned forward. "What is it now?"
From behind his back, the engineer pulled out the probe. "Its code matches the one we sent out yesterday, but--"
"But?"
"It came back to the airbase two weeks ago."
Scientists and mathematicians worked steadily on the project. What they concluded was that the anomaly, the "storm," was actually some sort of inner-atmosphere time warp.
It was growing, they found. And the larger it grew, the further back in time it "warped" things, be it atmospheric gases, flying objects like probes, or whatever else got in its way. The rate of growth to the length of time warped was exponential. Meaning, the warp was going to send thing farther and farther back in time, at faster and faster rates. They now knew that this anomaly was indeed very dangerous, even though the scientists were excited. They'd never seen one before and were anxious to study it. But the fact remained: if they got too close, even though it apparently spit objects back out intact, they might end up somewhere in the Jurassic period on Novacadia--and who knew what that might be like.