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Presently Feofil tapped a jagged graph display on the plasma screen of the chronodyne resonometer.
"Resonance, that's it! Look, here's the evidence. The instant our own flux-field went into action, so did a second flux-field. The two fields resonated momentarily. This had the effect of subtracting most of our spatial momentum. We got glued to the Earth's worldline, kilometer for kilometer, year for year."
"A second flux field?"
"It must have been Captain America's Shield switching on, Commander."
"Deliberately? Are they trying to sabotage our mission?"
"Spontaneous, I'd say. There must be an acausal trigger effect, independent of distance." Feofil pointed at the isocalendar. "Look, our temporal momentum got slowed as well. This will affect our point of emergence in past time; it could shake it give or take fifty years."
"Are you sure that it wasn't malicious?"
"I'm not sure of anything, sir. The other flux-field switched on the very instant ours did, without even a nanosecond's delay! No human skill could have arranged it. And I can tell you, if it was intentional, it was a bloody stupid thing to do. Time-energy must have been transferred."
"To the Earth."
"Probably."
"How does that affect us?"
Feofil shook his head. "I'm not a time-theorist; nobody aboard it. Those kinds all stayed behind at their comfortable research jobs in Academgorodok and Krasnoyarsk. We're space colonists, after all, so what do we need to know about time-theory?"
"We used to be space colonists. Right now, it looks like we'll end up colonizing the Earth a century or two ago."
Ila unbuckled herself. "You forget Cosmic Censorship. Paradox isn't allowed. I'm going to take a naked eyeball look." She drifted upwards towards the observation pod.
"Watch it! It could be damn disorienting, seeing all this with the naked eye."
"It's my duty---Commander." With that, Ila disappeared through the hatch.272Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡWStj53mtgF
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Milan turned to Tasha. "What's your opinion of the consequences, Earthwise?"
"How the hell would I know? Time-storms, maybe?"
"Time-storms? Now just what are those, Ringkels? Come on, tell me. Are they anything like thunderstorms?"
"I don't know what they're like. Or if such things can happen. It's just a word that masks our inexcusable ignorance."
"T minus 15.5 years," said Feofil.
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At T minus 25 years Ila bobbed back through the hatch; catching hold of Milan's seat, she righted herself.
"Was it rough up there?"
"Of course it's bad. That's not the worst thing!" Scrambling to her own seat, she fiddled with the radar. "I suspected as much---we're floating towards the Earth. We're on a collision course!"
"Oh, felgerkarb! How long have we got left?"
"How many years till it happens, that's the important thing," said Feofil. "Not how many minutes ahead, but how many years ago. Ila, patch yourself into my console and we'll try to compute it."
"But the Galactica can't possibly enter the Earth's atmosphere," said Tasha. "We're not aerodynamic."
"Yes, we can enter the atmosphere, I'm sorry to say," snapped Milan. "What happens next is another matter altogether."
Tasha hesitated. "The flux-field might protect us, as if we're in an envelope. I mean, we're not in direct contact with our own space-time environment, right? We're only in virtual contact."
"Correct. But can we navigate, while we're in virtual contact? Well, maybe we can at that! Tasha, fire the starboard and upper attitude jets, then light the plasma torch."
She swallowed. "Acknowledged. Five seconds and counting...."
Five seconds later the ship jerked and shuddered; but the main screen remained full of the Earth, swirling amorphously.
"This isn't normal motion that's drawing us in," said Tasha hopelessly. "The Flux is doing that."
"Any chance of killing the field?"
"Before the preset time? I'd have to reprogram."
"How long would that take?"
"By the looks of it: too long."
"Do it anyway---conditions may alter. Feofil, any idea what year we'll make Earthfall?"
Tig had been trying to average the fluctuating readings of his datascope. "I think it'll be sometime between 1910 and 1908."
"Where, geographically speaking?"
"Possibly it'll be...where we were looking at before Tasha threw the switch."
"The Indian Ocean? Colorado Rockies? Suppose we re-enter there? We'd end up over...Siberia!"
"I'd say the best estimate is 1908."
"1908?!! Oh, felgerkarb!!! That was the year of the Tunguska explosion. Are we the Tunguska event?"
Tasha sat back. "If so, then we're dead, simple as that. Because Tunguska already happened... we can't alter that, can we?"
"Tunguska might have been something else: a giant meteor, anything. Keep trying!"
"Or it might have been the first and last redstar from the future."
"T minus 37 years."
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